Free In the Falling Snow by Caryl Phillips

past her and into his office, swings the briefcase up on to the desk, and then punches on his computer and watches as the screen flickers and buzzes to life. He shouts through the open door.
    ‘Ruth, any messages?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Not really? What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘Mr Wilson said he’d like to see you. In his office.’
    He clicks on his email account.
    ‘Any particular time?’
    He does not hear if Ruth answers or not, for he is scrolling down the list of one hundred and twenty-seven messages that decorate his screen. There is no reason for him to open any for he has read them already. Yvette has copied their entire correspondence, including his appreciation of her attentiveness in bed, to everybody in the department. He sits down and stares in disbelief. When he looks up, Ruth is standing before him.
    ‘Well, if it means anything to you,’ begins Ruth, ‘we all kind of knew that something was going on between the pair of you. It was pretty obvious to me, but other people soon guessed, but what’s the big deal here? You’re both single, right?’
    He rubs his face in the palm of his hand.
    ‘The big deal here is that Yvette seems to have it in for me.’
    ‘Did you two have words?’
    ‘Well, sort of. Last night I told her that we should cool it a bit.’
    ‘Oh, I see.’
    ‘What do you see?’
    ‘Well that’s it then, isn’t it?’
    He pauses and looks again at the screen. ‘What time does Mr Wilson want to see me?’
    ‘He said after you’ve had a chance to read your email.’
    He looks up at her. ‘So she sent this to him too? Bloody hell what good does she think is going to come from this? Okay, so I’m embarrassed, is that what she wants?’
    Ruth shrugs and throws out a helpless arm.
    ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gordon, but I don’t know what she wants. I haven’t got a clue.’
    He opens the door to Clive Wilson’s office and sees him sitting at the rectangular conference table with Lesley Thornton, his deputy, seated to his right. He sits at the table opposite them, although this makes him feel as though he is being interviewed, and he loosens his tie and undoes his top button. Lesley is careful to betray neither a smile nor a scowl, but her coldness has been a feature of their exchanges since the fateful policy-making retreat in the New Forest. On the third and last night, they had both slipped into the village for a Sunday nightcap, careful to choose a different pub from the one which they had been frequenting as a group. Over a dry Martini she complained about the rudeness of the staff that she inherited on being promoted earlier in the year, and how the table manners of the last guy she dated seemed to have been picked up from the chimps at Regent’s Park Zoo. She even did a quick impression of him eating spaghetti which was genuinely funny. Like many country pubs, come eleven o’clock the place officially closed, but the curtains were simply drawn and the drinks continued to be served and so they both decided to stay on.
    Once they returned to the conference hotel, she invited him to her room for a quick raid of the mini-bar, but as soon as she closed the door they began to clutch and paw at each other, tossing clothes in all directions until he pushed her back on to the bed and unzipped her brown leather ankle boots. He didn’t stay the night, although she made it clear that she wanted him to. She pointed to the small digital alarm clock on the bedside table and insisted that it had never let her down. She was sure that if they set it for six in the morning he could easily get back to his own room without being seen by anyone. But he sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her and pulled his belt an extra notch tighter before standing up and turning around. It had not been in any way satisfactory, her lust being more desperate than sensual, which made him feel slightly used. She was now wrapped in a white cotton sheet, and much to his embarrassment he realised that