Free In the Falling Snow by Caryl Phillips Page B

senses.’
    ‘According to Ruth, she’s not come into work today. I can go and see if she’s at home.’
    ‘Have you called her?’
    ‘No point. I know her. She won’t answer her phone. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to go round and see her.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘What’s good about it?’
    Clive laughs now. ‘Take it easy, cowboy. We’re all working to get a resolve here.’
    Clive stands again, but Lesley remains seated and with her right thumb she nervously pops the nib in and out of a cheap office biro.
    ‘Let’s have a drink and a chat at the end of the day, Keith. By then you should be able to reassure me that everything is fine, okay?’
    The walk from the tube station to Yvette’s house has lost whatever thrill it once possessed. Without the prospect of a sexual encounter, he can now see that this part of London is bleakly suburban, and even the temperature seems to have dropped a few degrees in the space of twenty-four hours. It is positively freezing, but he resists the urge to draw further attention to himself by donning the sunglasses that he likes to wear when walking these less than friendly streets. Today, he doesn’t care if people see him staring back at them, he just wants to get this business over and done with, and then hurry back to the office. It suddenly occurs to him that from Colin’s point of view, not contesting the terms of the divorce and leaving his estranged young wife in a mortgage-free terraced house might have been the price he had to pay to escape this dreadful location. He crosses the road and can see that Yvette’s blue curtains are closed. He presses the annoying bell and then waits. He presses again and although he is tempted to open the letterbox and demand that Yvette stop messing about and come down and talk to him, he knows that there is little point in becoming aggressive. He backs up a little along the crazy-paved path and looks at the upstairs windows to see if there is any movement of the thin curtains, but nothing stirs. He closes the gate behind him with a clatter, and then pauses to let a young woman, who is wheeling a child in a pushchair, pass by. He knows that he is imagining it, but he is sure that the young woman looked at him disdainfully. He watches as she wrestles the pushchair down off the pavement and crosses the road, before moving on purposefully in the direction of the local park. Eager to flee the site of what is fast beginning to feel like a crime scene, he walks quickly away from Yvette’s house and back in the direction of the tube station. He knows full well that at the office his colleagues will have spent the greater part of the day studying the one hundred and twenty-seven emails, and he will most likely have already become the elderly Lothario at the centre of a dozen risqué jokes.
    Clive Wilson returns from the bar and slides into the chair opposite him. He hands him a glass of Pinot Grigio.
    ‘There you go, mate. Bottoms up.’
    Clive tips his own glass of red to his mouth and swallows deeply, and then he places the half-empty vessel on the table between them.
    ‘So how about going on leave for a while? It’ll give us a bit of time to work out what to do about the girl.’
    He looks quizzically at his boss but says nothing in reply.
    ‘Come on, old man, she works for you. It isn’t going to be easy with the two of you in the same office.’
    ‘Why not send her on leave? How come you’re asking me to step aside?’
    ‘Whoa, hold on a minute. This is paid leave, Keith. No hint of censure or anything like that. We can even call it a research break.’
    ‘And what about her? Doesn’t she even get a rap on the knuckles?’
    ‘Lesley’s going to sit down and talk with her. Better if it comes from a woman. She’s going to make it clear to her that she’s bang out of order and that whatever the emotional distress that she might be feeling, she has no right to copy your private emails to the whole department.’
    ‘And that’s it?’