Free Infidelity for Beginners by Danny King Page B

hope.”
    “No, no,” I reassured him then quickly amended that before
he asked me why I hadn’t done my report then. “Well yeah actually. On and off,
you know. I’ve been run off my feet and pretty worried, to be honest.”
    “Oh no, she’s all right isn’t she?” Norman fretted.
    “Oh, yeah, fine. She’s okay now. Just pretty ill then,” I
told him, as I tried to express as much unspoken manly concern as I could
without inviting too many awkward and unanswerable questions.
    “What was the matter with her?”
    Like that one.
    “The doctors weren’t sure. They think it was just a virus,
but it pretty much laid her out for the whole of Christmas,” I said,
desperately trying to shake him off the scent. I didn’t want to go into
specifics and start talking about symptoms and rashes and lumps and that sort
of thing as I didn’t feel particularly comfortable steering my excuse through
these sorts of waters but fortunately Norman didn’t press.
    “Is she okay now?”
    “As a daisy. I think we both just need some exercise. We’re
joining the gym on Friday so that should sort us both out,” I reassured him.
    “Well, please pass on my best and tell her to take care.
These things can sometimes reoccur,” he said, handing me repeat rights for this
particular excuse on a silver platter.
    *
    The rest of the day ticked along
quietly, as work days have a tendency to do, and most people spent it trying to
remember what they’d been doing when they’d tossed their files over their
shoulders twelve care-free days earlier. Godfrey put himself fairly and
squarely in charge of clearing away every last residue of Christmas and even
used a wet paper towel to clean the fake snow off the corners of our windows
that Rosemary had sprayed last year.
    “Oh leave it, it looks nice,” Rosemary said when she
wandered around and saw him wiping away her handiwork.
    “… mumble mumble fucking Christmas mumble…” was all I could
make out of his reply and to be honest I had to agree. If there was one thing I
couldn’t stand it was a never-ending Christmas. I liked there to be a definite
cut-off point, a “that’s it, all over, unplug the fairy lights and chuck away
the cards,” followed by a nice quiet, drab January to help straighten out the
routine. Consequently, I wasn’t looking forward to next week’s office Christmas
party.
    Our MD had decided it would be fun to have it on January
13th to give us a bit of a treat in what was traditionally a rather depressing
month, though cynics might’ve raised an eyebrow and wondered how much Joe
Bananas cost to hire in January compared to December. Either way, no matter how
much tinsel Godfrey ripped down we hadn’t got rid of it yet.
    Another constant reminder of Christmas was Elenor’s endless
partying stories. She’d sung her own praises all morning down the telephone to
whomever she could think to call and now it was my turn to get chapter and
verse. They were pretty tedious, naturally, but I found myself hanging on her
every word. It helped that she’d come around and sat in my cubicle, twisting
gently in the swivel chair a mere two feet from mine and pulling down the hem
of her tight lycra skirt every time it threatened to divulge its secrets.
    “It was amazing,” she laughed, at something that sounded an
amazingly long way away from amazing. “I mean, we must have been mad. How can
you drink eight jelly shots?”
    “I don’t know, one after the other?” Godfrey suggested from
the other side of the partition, having been subjected to the same anecdotes as
me, only with none of the knee entertainment to keep him interested.
    That was the thing about Elenor’s stories. Up close and
personal they were strangely enchanting. Move them back a few feet and point
them at someone else and they lost all their appeal.
    “What’s the matter Godfrey, stay in on New Year’s Eve with Casablanca and a bottle of red wine
again?” Elenor asked, slapping the smirk clean off