Free The Unorthodox Arrival of Pumpkin Allan by Suzie Twine

interested. Ian continued, “for the time being, to stop the flow of potential disasters, we must all put a finger in the dyke!”
    Now this would have been fine and would probably have gone unnoticed, but for the fact that Ian went crimson, started to sweat profusely and dropped a pile of papers on the floor in his fluster, “Ah, um, ah, sorry Adrienne,” he stuttered, looking somewhere over her head. “Ok, we’ll um, yes, we’ll, er, call it a day then. Um…….Adrienne, if you wouldn’t mind waiting behind please.”
    As they left the conference room Lois and her colleagues burst into hysterical laughter. When Adrienne came out, several minutes later she headed straight for the loo, with her hands up to her face, shielding her expression. Lois followed her in. The ladies loo had always been their own private meeting room, one advantage to being in the minority.
    “What did he say?” asked Lois.
    Adrienne was laughing too uncontrollably to speak for several minutes.
    “Well,” she said eventually, “he said he was sorry for drawing attention to me in such an inconsiderate way.” Adrienne laughed some more, “I said I didn’t know what he was referring to, could he explain to me what he meant. At which point he stuttered and squirmed his way through where the phrase comes from, trying to explain that in no way was he referring to me or my sexuality!”
    It took Lois and Adrienne a good twenty minutes to return to the office floor, ten of which were taken-up recovering their composure and repairing their make-up. The other ten, making decisions about their futures. As Ian was soon to become their manager, his performance this morning was enough to confirm to Lois that the right thing for her to do at this point in her life was to resign. For Adrienne, it wasn’t so simple. Much as she would like to move on to pastures new, particularly now, in the knowledge that Lois would be going, jobs were hard to find in the current climate and she did have plenty of support from her male colleagues.
    “Are you going to report him? Ian, I mean,” asked Lois.
    Adrienne thought for a moment. “Nah, I don’t think so. It’ll only create more awkwardness in the department and he never really does anything wrong, other than be very uncomfortable in my presence and nobody could be reprimanded for that. And to be honest, it is very very funny seeing him get himself into these situations and then trying to crawl his way out!”
    Lois went back to her desk, drafted her resignation, printed it out and gave Tom a quick ring to make sure he really meant what he had said that morning. He was delighted at the idea of her staying at home to look after their baby. Lois went on to tell him about the meeting, which had him roaring with laugher. When he was able to speak again, he said he thought there was a post available at his company that would suit Adrienne perfectly.
    Lois said her goodbyes to Tom, passed the phone to Adrienne and went straight to HR to hand in her notice. She walked back into the office with the biggest smile on her face. The icing on the cake was hearing that Adrienne was meeting with Tom’s manager after work to discuss the vacancy.
     
    When Lois got back to the flat that night, tired, but happy, Tom was raring to go. “Don’t sit down!” he said, as Lois sat down. “Car’s packed, we’re off to our new house!” Lois was astonished. He’d tidied the house, packed and loaded the car, bought food and he’d even thought to include the picnic hamper. All this he had done with one arm in a sling and the other clutching his ribs at every given opportunity. “It took a long time!” he giggled, slightly high from his painkillers. “I had to take it all out a handful at a time, I’ve made twenty five journeys to the car. The taxi driver was very helpful and so were the staff at the supermarket. Anyway let’s go, it would be good to arrive in the light.”
    “Ah…..yes,” said Lois cautiously, “I