Going Green

by Nick Spalding

  OTHER TITLES BY NICK SPALDING

  Logging Off

  Dumped Actually

  Dry Hard

  Checking Out

  Mad Love

  Bricking It

  Fat Chance

  Buzzing Easter Bunnies

  Blue Christmas Balls

  Love . . . Series

  Love . . . From Both Sides

  Love . . . And Sleepless Nights

  Love . . . Under Different Skies

  Love . . . Among the Stars

  Life . . . Series

  Life . . . On a High

  Life . . . With No Breaks

  Cornerstone Series

  The Cornerstone

  Wordsmith

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Nick Spalding

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542017503

  ISBN-10: 1542017505

  Cover design by Ghost Design

  To everyone who is trying to do what they can. Keep it up. It’ll be worth it, trust me.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter One

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  Glass . . . Glass . . . Glass . . .

  Why do none of these sodding drinks ever come in something made of glass?

  Hugh Burnley Fishingstool tells me I should be buying more of my drinks in glass bottles, instead of plastic ones, but how the hell am I supposed to do that when there are literally none on display here in the Meal Deal section of Boots?

  I shouldn’t even be spending this much time looking, though, because time is something I most definitely do not have today.

  I’m already ten minutes late for work, and I simply don’t have the precious minutes to waste peering at the refrigerator section, trying in vain to locate a smoothie that isn’t contained within the dubious confines of a single-use plastic bottle.

  Hugh Wormley Fittingshawl will just have to look down on me with disgust.

  I have to get going, and I have to get going now!

  I grab a bottle of Evian, and pile it on top of my chicken mayo sandwich, along with a slightly sweaty-looking millionaire’s flapjack. None of this looks all that appealing, if we’re being perfectly honest here – but given that the sandwich person who used to come around the office at lunchtime has been let go thanks to all of the cutbacks, and because I have no time to prepare food myself, I am forced to grab this kind of bland culinary experience every day, or starve to death.

  If it were only the sandwich person that had disappeared from work, then things wouldn’t be in the dire straits that they are. But so much more has gone wrong, and it isn’t over yet.

  . . . which is the reason I can’t be any later than I already am!

  It’s become hard enough to avoid getting the heave-ho from Stratagem PR recently – without turning up dishevelled, and ten minutes late.

  I have to get to work!

  The queue at the till is of course twice as long as it usually is.

  When I eventually get to the girl on the till, I curse myself internally when I realise I have once again forgotten my bag-for-life.

  There are now ten or twelve of the bloody things floating about in the cupboard under the stairs. Sadly, I don’t also have one tucked away in my handbag, waiting for me to pull it out and do my bit for the polar bears.

  I’ll just buy another one. It’ll be fine.

  Hugh Turnley Wobblingschool will be turning in his grave. Or possibly his kitchen, as I’m pretty sure he’s still alive.

  But I don’t have time for the guilt to suffuse every part of my being. That’s just the way of things today.

  Neither do I have time to exchange pleasantries with the till girl. As soon as she’s idly beeped the Meal Deal across the scanner, I stuff it all into the hastily grabbed bag-for-‘life’, and head for the exit as fast as my late-for-work legs can carry me.

  My idiotic Mercedes C-Class starts to clobberdy-bang before I’ve even driven it out of the car park. The clobberdy-bang usually doesn’t begin until I’ve been driving for at least five minutes, but this morning it starts as soon as I turn the ignition key.

  I have no idea what the clobberdy-bang is. It is a thing of purest mystery.

  The clobberdy-bang has been going on for a few months now, but the car is still driving okay, and the noise really isn’t all that loud – especially if you turn the radio up.

  Okay, the occasional black smoke that emanates from the exhaust pipe when it happens isn’t good, I will concede that. But again – and I can’t stress this enough – the car is still driving okay.

  I’ll get the problem sorted out at the garage sooner or later, but it will not be today. I’m sure the car will get me the five miles down the road to work, clobberdy-bang or no clobberdy-bang. The Germans know how to build cars that can put up with things like clobberdy-bangs. They’re famous for it.

  I’ve said clobberdy-bang way too much. The phrase is now going around and around in my head like a strange, alien mantra.

  God, I’m tired. I probably shouldn’t have been up until 1 a.m. last night ordering stuff in the ASOS sale, but it was up to 70 per cent off, for crying out loud. I simply had no choice!

  I’m riddled with buyer’s remorse this morning, of course. In a couple of days I’m getting three dresses, two tops and a pair of leggings delivered to my door that I will probably feel a bit sick about taking from the delivery guy. Especially when I still have two pairs of jeans I have yet to wear that I bought in the last ASOS sale. Cream and burgundy seemed like a good idea at the time.

  What can I say? I’m a sucker for an online bargain – and for browsing the internet at inappropriate times.

  . . . which is why I have sandy eyes and a permanent yawn today.

  Luckily for me, the traffic isn’t too bad this morning, and I manage to make it to Stratagem in relatively good time – having made up a few minutes by breaking the speed limit to the extent that I’m lucky there are no coppers about.

  As I pull frantically into the large car park that serves the whole ten-storey office block, I have to slam on my brakes so I don’t crash straight into a tall man in a slightly ill-fitting suit as he crosses in front of me.

  My fault entirely. I’m going way too fast – such is my desire to get up into the office as quickly as possible. He looks at me through the windscreen of the Mercedes in horror, backing away a few paces as I screech to a halt. I return the look with one of harassed apology. He’s a good-looking guy, which makes this near collision even worse. The first attractive man I’ve been around in ages, and I nearly kill him.

  It’s at this moment that the car decides to give me the biggest clobberdy-bang of the day yet, accompanied by a billow
of black smoke from the exhaust that travels straight over to the poor man I’ve nearly just shuffled off this mortal coil, enveloping him in its toxic miasma, forcing him to cough out loud.

  Mouthing ‘sorry’ for all I’m worth, I drive slowly past him as he recovers from the gassing I’ve just delivered, and carry on deeper into the car park, my heart hammering.

  I find a parking space right at the back, near the bins, and leap out of the car, grabbing my Boots Meal Deal as I do so.

  It’s only ten past nine by the time the elevator door pings open, and I hurry across the fifth-floor atrium towards the company’s main doors.

  That’s not too bad, is it? Not a sackable offence, to be just ten minutes late? It was all the fault of the poor selection on offer at Boots.

  As I walk into Stratagem PR’s offices, the familiar blanket of gloom enshrouds me like an unwanted relative.

  It’s been like this for weeks now. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to work in a coffin, pop by sometime.

  Okay, I may be slightly exaggerating for effect, but not by much. My place of work has gone from one I thoroughly enjoyed, to somewhere I dread coming into each and every day.

  It’s a little hard not to feel that way, when you can see the place falling apart in front of your eyes, like a slow-motion car crash that just won’t end.

  It was a tractor crash that started it all, two years ago . . . but that was only the first in a long series of misfortunes that have plagued Stratagem PR.

  Not least of which was when Pierre left Peter. That was the real turning point, I think. A company can’t really survive the break-up of its founders. Not this one, anyway.

  Peter and Pierre Rothman have been the beating heart of this PR firm since I joined five years ago – and when one half of that beating heart decided it didn’t want to be with the other half any more, it stopped beating completely.

  Poor old Peter has tried his best to keep going with Stratagem on his own, but it’s been like watching a pining dog circling a gravestone. Without his partner by his side, Peter has been lost, distracted, and the whole business has suffered for it.

  Clients started deserting us like rats leaving a sinking ship after Pierre was gone – the biggest rat being my ex-boyfriend Robert, of course. I pleaded with him not to take his property development company away from Stratagem, but he was having none of it – which meant I was having none of him from that moment on.

  I broke up with him right in the middle of Stratagem’s offices. It was highly embarrassing for everyone concerned. Except Robert – I doubt he has the capacity to be embarrassed about anything. There I was, all snotty and teary-eyed in front of all my colleagues, and he looked entirely unconcerned about the whole thing. Given that I’d made such a huge deal of dating him to everyone, he could have at least pretended to care that I was splitting up with him in such a histrionic manner, the utter bastard.

  Sigh. Never mix business with pleasure, kids. That’s the hard and painful lesson I learned with that relationship. Thank God it only lasted a few months.

  The Christmas flood didn’t help Stratagem’s fortunes either. We all came in on 27 December to find that the whole office had turned into an aquatic fun park. So had the offices in two of the floors above us, and every single one below.

  All because somebody had shoved a pair of knickers into something called a macerator. Quite how they’d managed this is anybody’s guess. The plumbers were so nonplussed, one of them thought it could have been an act of God.

  Given that the knickers were white, a bit baggy, and emblazoned with Santa Claus penetrating one of his reindeer, I’m more inclined to think it was an act of Drunk.

  The water penetration took weeks to sort out. We all had to work from home, and as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a vast difference between working in the office and ‘working from home’ for those who aren’t used to the experience.

  The whole episode cost Stratagem thousands – and added to Peter’s mounting stress, of course. We’ve all been tiptoeing around him in the months since – hoping against hope that the company’s fortunes would start to turn.

  This has not yet happened.

  Hence the pervading sense of gloom and doom that hits me like a depressed sledgehammer the second I walk on to the office floor.

  I fight against it as I hurry my way over to my desk. If I can get to it, and keep my head down, then maybe no one will notice how tardy I am.

  I get some fairly desultory glances from most of my work colleagues as I rush past them, trying not to make eye contact. This previously vibrant, happy bunch have been reduced to cold stares and shrugged shoulders. It really is quite a horrible thing to both witness and be a part of.

  I know damn well that, in about twenty minutes, I will be exhibiting exactly the same kind of behaviour. The atmosphere in this place does it to you.

  Still . . . this apathy does mean that nobody really gives a shit that I’m late for work, so I am able to reach my desk and set myself up for the day without anyone taking me to task.

  I should be happy about this, but I’m comprehensively not – because any workplace that doesn’t care whether you’re late or not is probably a workplace that isn’t long for this world.

  The knickers are well and truly stuck in the macerator – figuratively speaking, anyway.

  I fire up the PC and look at my inbox. This is free of new emails, save for a spam piece of marketing, asking me if I want to invest in gold bullion. I have about as much money in my bank account as there is hope in this office, so I delete the offer and sigh.

  There was a time when my inbox would be full every day.

  . . . is it possible to slit your wrists with a plastic bottle bought in Boots?

  Just behind me I hear the sound of Peter’s office door opening, and I turn to see him walk out. He has a tentative, nervous look on his face.

  Oh dear.

  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

  That is the face of someone who’s about to impart dreadful knowledge.

  I’m about to lose my job.

  The cold certainty of it strikes me at my very core. Peter hasn’t even opened his mouth yet, but I know what he’s about to say.

  He’s going to stand there in front of the dozen of us that are left, out of the twenty plus who used to work here, and he’s going to tell us that our jobs are going into the same macerator that chewed up the Xmas knickers.

  My heart leaps into my throat.

  I’m going to have to find another job. I’m going to have to go to job interviews. I’m going to have to – gulp – put myself out there again.

  ‘Good morning, everyone,’ Peter says to us, hesitantly. I instantly feel incredibly sorry for him. This must be so very difficult.

  Pierre was always the stronger of the two when it came to this kind of stuff. He used to do all of the hiring and firing. Peter was always the creative driving force of Stratagem, and Pierre was the businessman.

  ‘I have some . . . some news I need to impart to you.’ Peter takes a deep breath, and unconsciously pulls at the front of his tailored powder-blue shirt.

  This is like watching a small boy confess that he’s just smashed the greenhouse window with his football.

  ‘If you could all gather in the conference room at ten a.m., I’ll tell you about it then.’

  Oh, great. He’s prolonging the agony.

  Why not just throw our P45s at us now, and let us get out of here before lunchtime?

  ‘What’s this about, Peter?’ asks Nadia from her desk next to mine, a distraught look on her face. My heart instantly goes out to her. I only have myself to worry about, but Nadia has a daughter, a husband and a mortgage. She’s not been the same since Kate left Stratagem last year, and everything that’s gone on since has probably hit her harder than it has the rest of us.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s about the future of the company, Nadia,’ Peter replies, in a very shaky voice.

  ‘Are we losing our jobs?’ Terry pipe
s up from his desk at the other end of the office.

  Terry McClellan is in his late forties, and is probably dreading the prospect of having to find new work even more than I am. The marketing and PR business is cruel enough to people like me, in their early thirties – it’s an absolute horror show for anyone around the age of fifty. The chances of Terry finding another job easily are slim to none.

  Peter looks anguished. ‘Please, Terry. Let’s just all meet in the conference room shortly. I’ve been asked to wait until then to say anything more.’

  ‘Asked?’ Terry replies, confused. ‘Asked by who?’

  ‘Everything will be made clear shortly, Terry. Please just wait.’

  Well, this is slightly bizarre. There’s obviously someone else calling the shots here. Is it Pierre? Has he come back? Are things nowhere near as bad as they seem?

  If that were the case, I doubt Peter would look so distraught.

  As we all watch him slump back through the tinted glass door to his office, I start to chew on one fingernail, and wonder what’s in store for us when we go into our small conference room in a few minutes.

  I have to fight down another swell of panic when I realise that the most likely outcome is still the loss of my job – regardless of who is pulling the strings.

  Oh God.

  I don’t want to lose my job. I love my fucking job!

  Well . . . I did, up until the last few months anyway. Stratagem was a fun, exciting place to work. We had some great clients (with the large and obnoxious exception of my aforementioned ex-boyfriend, Robert Ainslie Blake), a strong portfolio and a happy work environment. My colleagues and I used to go out together for drinks on a Friday night, and we’d generally have a whale of a time. We got along so well that it was always something I really looked forward to.

  I want that back again! I don’t want it to all fall apart!

  I don’t want to have to update my bloody CV, and try to prove that I’m worthy of employment to anyone else. I want to stay here!

  . . . I’m aware that I’m starting to sound like a spoiled little girl who doesn’t want to go to Grandma’s for tea, but fear and stress always tend to make me regress a bit. Sometimes the unfairness of the world just makes you want to retreat back to a time when things were simpler and easier to understand.