Free When She Was Bad by Tammy Cohen Page B

Her face was on fire and she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to speak.
    ‘No, but . . .’
    ‘Actually I asked Chloe to do the collection.’
    Paula’s voice sounded strange and unusually gravelly in the tense air. Chloe felt weak with gratitude as Rachel Masters’s attention shifted suddenly to her deputy.
    ‘And you specifically asked her to do it on company time?’
    Paula’s cheeks flushed a vivid fuchsia at odds with her burgundy-coloured top.
    ‘No, of course not. I assumed she’d have the sense to do it at lunchtime.’
    Chloe felt a stinging in the back of her eyes at Paula’s uncharacteristic unkindness. Please God, don’t let me be about to cry, she thought.
    ‘Right, Chloe. I suggest you take your envelope and go back to your desk and get on with what you’re actually being paid to do.’
    Rachel turned on her heel and Chloe’s feet finally recovered their function enough to allow her to slink back to her desk. She could feel eyes on her as she moved but refused to look at anyone for fear a sympathetic glance would unleash the tears she was only just managing to hold back.
    Her computer pinged with an email. The name Ewan Johnson appeared in her inbox in bold.
    Bit harsh that. U ok?
    She bit her lip and typed back, No. She is a total bitch. Am going to start looking for new job.
    Seconds later came the response. Shes tough but thats what shes here for
    No please don’t do that . No I’ll miss you if you go .
    Chloe minimised her inbox and called up the mailing list she was in the middle of putting together for Rachel Masters. She stared at the names until the letters became random black dots on the page.
    Her eyes burned.

14
Paula
     
    Paula had once tried to describe anxiety to Ian – when they were still married and he was still obliged to feign an interest.
    ‘It’s like my nerves are made up of tiny ants and most of the time they’re all asleep but then they’ll wake up and start crawling around and as they crawl they bump into each other and more wake up and they start crawling faster and faster and suddenly there are masses of them swarming around like crazy until it feels like my insides are on fire and I just want to rip open my ribcage and claw great big holes in myself.’
    He hadn’t asked again.
    Normally she kept the worst of it at bay with pills she got from the doctor that sometimes made her feel like she was looking at the world from behind a thick pane of glass, and that reduced her to fits of mid-afternoon yawns. Recent hormonal fluctuations had reduced their effectiveness, however. Either that or her anxiety levels had outstripped the medication. Whatever the reason, she was once again waking in the night with her heart racing, her tormented brain forcing her through the litany of catastrophes awaiting her – bankruptcy, illness, death.
    Six years ago, when Ian had left his job in IT to set up an eBay shop buying and selling vinyl, she’d generally been supportive. She knew he was miserable at work and she reasoned he’d either make a go of things with the new business or, more likely, grow tired of it when it proved harder than he’d imagined and get another full-time job. What she hadn’t bargained on was his doing neither option. The vinyl business had been sluggish at best, even with him travelling the length and breadth of the country trawling through charity shops and car-boot sales, but when he tried, reluctantly, to find a new job, his fifty-something age counted against him. Gradually he stopped the excursions out, buying and selling exclusively online, with increasing apathy. In the two years since they’d split up, he spent most of his life holed up in the back bedroom in which he now both slept and worked, but his contributions to the household budget were minimal and unpredictable. They’d already remortgaged once to release equity, with the result that they now owed more than ever on their South London Victorian terrace – just at the time they’d