Free SEVEN DAYS by Silence Welder

last evening together and how she had failed tragically to transform their friendship into intimacy. She wondered how much of that Barry had already shared with the rest of the office.
    She should have known better than to sleep with an ex-colleague. It was always going to get back here at some point. It wouldn't have been so bad if she's actually got somewhere with him. As it was, the news that Peter had turned down a relationship, not once but twice, would be on every floor of the office. The warehouse lads were not beyond writing limericks on toilet walls.
    She was steeling herself for the revelation of this imaginary poem, seeking words that rhymed with ‘Judy’ and ‘dumped’, when Barry said:
    “I don't know who this Mark is and it's no business of mine...”
    “No, it's not.”
    “...but when it gets in the way of your work, it does concern me.”
    She was about to say something that she might regret.
    The old Judy would have smiled now and told him that he was absolutely right.
    The new Judy, whoever she was, was about to say the first thing to come into her head. The new Judy terrified her.
    “If I'd written the name Peter instead of Mark,” she said, “you wouldn't have minded. You'd have thought it was sweet. I know that you're a little bit in love with Peter and that you want to protect him from getting hurt. It's admirable. Rest assured that I care about him a great deal too and I wasn't toying with his emotions. Not that it's any business of yours.”
    Barry's mouth hung open, reminding her of something she had once seen in a travelling circus. There, squirting water from a pistol into the open mouth won you a prize. Here, it would get you the sack.
    She didn't feel afraid of losing her job, though.
    She felt impervious.
    Perhaps, she thought, this is what righteous anger feels like.
    Barry composed himself, barely.
    “I'm not in love with Peter,” he said, reddening. “I'm merely looking out for the interests of our team and the company.”
    “What do you want me to do, Barry?”
    “I want you to put in for holiday by the end of the week and I want you to take it.”
    “We'll see about that.”
    “And I want you to go home. Now. Get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning.”
    “I can't go home,” Judy laughed. “It's not even lunchtime.”
    “We'll get by without you,” Barry said.
    She didn't like the way he said that.
    She looked around her cubicle and a few pairs of eyes averted themselves from hers.
    “Fine,” she said. “I'll go.”
    She swept her papers up into a pile and opened up her bag to dump them inside.
    “Leave them,” Barry said.
    “These orders need verifying,” she said, indignant.
    “The only orders you need to concern yourself with our mine. Go.”
    She was about to protest, when a sadness came over his face and he practically pleaded with her:
    “Enjoy it,” he said.
    She closed her bag. Without the folders and half a ream of paper from the archive files, it felt pointless to carry it home.
    “I might leave this here,” she said.
    “It will be here tomorrow,” Barry said. “I promise.”
    She noted that he didn't say anything about her job being there too.
    * * * *
    She almost considered getting off the train a stop early and popping into the William Morris gallery on her way home, but that would have been salting her wounds. It would be a while before she could enter any gallery without thinking of her experience with Mark.
    “It's a good thing we didn't go on a date,” she told herself. “I'd be suicidal by now.”
    Although she was alone, she found herself moving through the flat as though somebody was asleep. She tip-toed from room to room, afraid of echoes. Echoes reminded her how alone she was.
    She flicked on the television for company. There was a nature program about nightingales on BBC1, alongside a history of Mark Twain on BBC2. ITV had a news item about this year's examination marks and Channel 4 seemed safe until it turned out to be a show