by Kit Eyre
I peered at the piece of paper until the words stopped bleeding into one another. ‘Bounced cheques, North West?’
She sighed. ‘Give it here.’
‘Standing orders, Yorkshire and Humber?’ I asked as soon as she’d taken it.
‘Danni, promise me you won’t leave. I couldn’t stand–’
‘Where’s this going?’ I interjected, holding the document up and avoiding her gaze.
After a moment, I felt her wither back into the sofa. ‘Box near the rotting rug.’
We went on like that for another twenty minutes, with blunt questions and tentative answers. I didn’t sit down, prowling around the cellar and scuffing my shoes through blankets of dust instead of staying in one place for too long. The rhythm was finally interrupted when the door upstairs clattered open.
The noise shocked my eyes towards Jude for a split-second, but I hastily dragged them away. By the time Caroline appeared, shielding her nose, I was poring over a scribbled memo from 2005 about a toilet repair in Redditch.
‘Oh, you are down here,’ Caroline muttered through her fingers. ‘I expected you’d be slacking off, the pair of you. Listening to jazz or whatever it is you like, not sitting here like a couple of mutes.’
‘Don’t judge us by your standards,’ replied Jude.
Caroline bridled but turned her attention to me instead. ‘Did you give Gill permission to leave reception at four?’
I nodded. ‘I’ve arranged cover, there’s no problem.’
‘You’re the cover, so I’m told. Yet again.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you didn’t think to run it by me first?’ she queried.
Jude let out a soft growl. ‘There’s nothing to get in a tizz about, is there? Danni can work on reception, Gill struggles. She always has.’
‘You’re no longer on my team, Jude,’ Caroline pointed out.
‘No, I’m on your pay grade, which means I’m allowed to express an opinion when the situation merits it. Believe me, I read the small print the day I got the job – just in case.’
Although Caroline glowered and opened her mouth, she forced it shut and stamped back up the staircase. How she made a door that struggled to close at the best of times quiver in its frame was beyond me but, once the echo had diminished, I was left frowning at Jude.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘Well, she can’t boss me about anymore. She should know that.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t want you sticking up for me.’
‘You haven’t much of a say in that,’ Jude returned with a bleak smile.
I averted my gaze back to the memo in my hand and crumpled it into a ball. Once I’d tossed it in the direction of the rubbish pile, I turned to the next document. ‘Invoices, South West?’
Four o’clock couldn’t come quickly enough.
Down in that cellar, I felt like I was being suffocated by Jude’s misery. It wasn’t put on, not that I could tell anyway. It was more like she was trying to bottle it up and it was leaking out around the edges, just like her fear had before, just like her desire had. By the time I escaped up to the switchboard on the first floor, it was like I was kicking against the current to reach dry land. Planting myself beside Gill as she finished up on a call was the equivalent of dragging myself out of the water and landing with my mouth wide open on the beach.
‘Are you alright?’ Gill asked as she slipped the headset off. ‘You look terrible. No offence. I mean –’
‘I’m fine,’ I interrupted, though the words were more like a croak and proved her point. I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘It was the dust down in the cellar, that’s all. Threw up all sorts.’
She tucked her arms around her stomach. ‘Was it Caroline? Did she have a –’
‘Hey,’ I said, a little more firmly, ‘I can handle Caroline, okay? I take the flak so you don’t have to. So, go on, get your work done and I’ll see you tomorrow. Email me if anything comes up down there.’
With a smile, she trotted off down the stairs. Once her steps had faded, the only noise on the landing was the snarl of the computer. I stood motionless for a couple of minutes, letting it reverberate around my brain while I stared at the wilting Gerbera daisy on the desk. Then the phone screeched and startled me into grabbing the headset. I’d barely managed to get it onto my head before I jabbed at the button to answer the call.
‘Good afternoon, Gerbera Living, Danielle speaking.’
There was a lengthy pause and a crackle on the line.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Is anyone there?’
‘Afternoon, Danni. What would you say if I told you there was a bomb in the building?’
Chapter 3
June 2011
Snoring drifted across from the other bed.
It wasn’t the noise keeping my eyes pinned to the trickle of light creeping under the doorframe. I’d always found Gemma’s nocturnal habits comforting, from the way her toes poked out from the duvet and snagged on the mattress to the bouts of incoherent mumbling, even when the name tripping off her tongue was someone else’s.
With Jude, it’d been different from the start. The nights snatched together had been precious and we only surrendered to exhaustion when it wasn’t a choice anymore. She slept like a statue, motionless apart from the puffs of breath occasionally puckering between her lips. By rights, it should’ve been easy for me to sleep next to her, but I’d been fascinated by her hair, her skin; everything I hadn’t realised I’d wanted until she’d showed me.
I sighed and twisted onto my back. My leg throbbed, though not half as much as the inside of my head.
For the last year, I’d schooled myself into forgetting her name. Her face was a blur with blonde hair and her voice this gravelly echo that could’ve been anyone’s. Since that cow at Wolverhampton had mentioned her name aloud, though, I felt submerged again. I couldn’t breathe, watching the pinpricks of light above me just fade away.
I found myself blaming Harriet.
It’ll help, she’d said; we need to know why, she’d said. According to her and Gemma, this whatever-it-was at Gooseberry House in the morning was a breakthrough. We’d rattled them by raking it all up. I’d never had Harriet down as an optimist, but she seemed to reckon they were just going to roll over and let us in.
They weren’t. They wouldn’t. And, after a year of prying my mind away from a pair of green eyes piercing through me, they were back. I hated myself for it.
Gooseberry House was like most of the recent builds.
We stepped through the automatic doors, only to be assaulted by the stench of bleach with the faint aroma of something putrid clawing at the edges. I tucked my fingers under my nose until the urge to gag had receded then managed a look around the empty generic lobby.
Gemma was approaching the bell on the desk when a plump woman in an oversized smock scuttled through an open office doorway. Her glasses swung on a limp cord around her neck and it took a while for her to get a hold of them. She finally blinked into our faces and beamed.
‘Oh, hello. Are you visitors? I haven’t seen you before.’
I exchanged a bemused look with Harriet. Neither of us had expected a mumsy woman with no clue who the hell we were. Then, as I glanced back, her eyes meandered down to my stick and her expression altered. Her voice didn’t though.
‘Of course. It’s Danielle, isn’t it? Do you mind if I call you that?’
I shook my head mutely.
‘Good, good.’ She fumbled with her keys. ‘Well, I’ll just get him for you.’
‘Who?’ asked Gemma before she trotted off. ‘Sorry, we weren’t . . .’
‘We weren’t told who,’ Harriet supplied.
The woman’s brow cleared as she came up with the right key. ‘Oh, Mr Knight, of course.’
I froze. So did Harriet.
‘He’s a very pleasant man,’ the woman continued. ‘He said he didn’t know what time you’d arrive, but
could he use the broadband while he waited. Not often we’ve got directors dropping in – this is a first, would you believe – so he can do whatever he likes. You three just stay here and I’ll fetch him.’
She bustled through a door, the click shattering my suspended animation. I twisted around and dragged my leg towards the entrance. Harriet darted after me and grabbed my wrist.
‘Hold up, Danni. He’s orchestrated this. He wants us here for a reason. If he wants to talk, we hear him out. He’s the best link we’ve got.’
‘You don’t think I know that?’ I snapped.
Gemma rested a hand on my shoulder. ‘Dan, this is something. We wanted something different and here it is. I know you’re scared but, really, what’s the worst that can happen? Been there, done that, right?’
‘And lived to tell the tale,’ Harriet murmured. ‘More than some can say.’
I exhaled and rubbed at my forehead. We all knew she’d won.
Chapter 4
February 2010
Silence roared in my ears.
For a moment, I thought he’d gone; hung up on me after playing a prank. I sat, transfixed by a crumbling leaf on the daisy, until a puff of air splintered down the line and I crumpled back into my chair.
‘Come on, Danni, answer the damn question.’
I prised my lips apart. ‘I don’t know.’
Images were whizzing through my mind, mostly from London five years ago. We’d crammed into the meeting room – where I’d been not five hours earlier – and watched survivors dribble out of the station exits like stunned cattle. All of us crowded round the desk, not answering any calls or queries; just watching like the rest of the country until Harriet let us go home to our families. I’d gone home, but Gemma had been out with someone else.
Jude must’ve been in that room, I realised with a jolt. We didn’t know each other properly at the time, but she must’ve been. And, even if she wasn’t, she was here now. I shuddered and dug my fingers into the edge of the desk.
The man’s voice cracked through my ears again: ‘You’ve got bomb guidelines, yeah? Normal these days.’
‘Somewhere . . .’
I scanned the board at the rear of the desk. It was littered with old memos, menus for local pubs and frayed company policies. Underneath a gruesome scrap of card showing heavy-lifting disasters, I found a tattered piece of A4 – ‘Emergency: BOMB THREAT’. There was a rough pen drawing below the title of a man with his head next to his feet, little puddles of blue either side of his cheeks.
‘Have you found them?’
I nodded until I realised he couldn’t see me. ‘Yes.’
‘What’s the first question?’
The words wobbled in front of my eyes then set. ‘It’s not a question. It says alert management.’
‘Well, that’s already wrong, isn’t it? You should ask if you can, if I’m letting you.’
‘Sorry,’ I murmured.
‘You didn’t write them.’ He paused and I heard his teeth click together. ‘All right, let’s kill two birds with one stone. We’ll talk about demands, what I’m after, and you can take that to Harriet Fitch. You’ll need a pen.’
I barely made it to the toilets before my tuna sandwich reappeared.
Once I’d rinsed my mouth out with lukewarm water, I leaned against the wall and stared into the mirror ahead of me. A flake of regurgitated fish lingered on my chin, causing me to gip again and twist back towards the loo. Nothing came of it so I returned to the wall and propped myself up like a dummy.
I was dragged out of my trance by a door slamming somewhere on this landing. There was only the meeting room and Michael’s office up here, so I knew it had to be him. He was there when I yanked open the door, shoulders curled to stop his head brushing the ceiling.
‘Danni, are you covering reception? What’s going . . . You look terrible – what’s happened?’
A scorching tear drizzled along my nose. I swiped it away and managed to give him a garbled account of the phone call. By the end of it, he’d shrunk a bit, curving over the desk and clawing at his neck.
‘I’ve got – I took notes,’ I concluded, grabbing them from the desk.
He took the paper without looking at it. ‘You should be proud of yourself, you’re holding up well. Most people would’ve been out that door and to hell with the rest of us.’
I shrugged.
‘We’ve got to do as he says. We’d better talk to Harriet right away.’
As he strode towards the staircase, I asked, ‘Do you think it’s a hoax?’
‘No,’ Michael admitted, turning back with a pained smile. ‘There’s too much detail, isn’t there? He listed my address and that was right. No reason to suspect the others aren’t. He’s proving he knows us so we’ve got no choice but to take him seriously.’
I swallowed. ‘Yeah, I wanted someone else to say it.’
‘Listen, we need to stay calm, you and I. Or, at least, we need to pretend we are. I mean, if we panic, the guys downstairs definitely will and we can’t have that. Harriet’s got a good head in a crisis, and we’ve got Jude and Matt as well. We’ve got to hold it together.’
‘How can you be so matter-of-fact about it?’ I questioned.
‘I’m not, believe me.’ He levelled out a hand and it juddered under the strip lighting. ‘Two hours ago I was arguing with a plasterer in Leicester, but if I hadn’t set off when I did . . . Well, it’s better I’m in here.’
My fingers skidded across the glossed banister. ‘Why five past four? It’s such a random time. You know, why not in the middle of the day or in the morning or–’
‘Danni, stop. Let’s get through this step by step, okay? We need to speak to Harriet as a matter of urgency. Though, for the record, I’m not sure there’s a customary time to issue a bomb threat. It’s not afternoon tea.’
I stuttered out a whine instead of a laugh and let him guide me down the stairs. He gripped my elbow on the way past the front door then steered me into the main office. Then his arm fell away, causing my knees to tremble, even if the muddle at the back of my mind was relieved.
There were so many comings and goings around here that no one looked up from their desks. Everyone just went on tapping away at their keyboards. George and Julie were on the phone and there was the tinny sound of Radio 5 Live filtering from Matt’s desk. I knew where Jude’s desk was in relation to any spot in the office but, as I had so many times lately, I forced my eyes deliberately away. Me turning up like this with Michael would be a flashing neon sign that something was up; she’d notice, she always noticed.
Harriet’s partitioned office was straight ahead, her wiry figure hunched over the keyboard. She was mouthing words to herself, beating her fingers on the desk. It was soothing, normal, until Michael urged me forward with a nudge to the spine.
As we crossed to the office, he muttered for Jude to join us. I heard it through a bubble, the words catching before they struck me properly, then the bubble popped when he knocked on the door. We filed in there, Harriet letting out a low growl and tossing her pen across the desk.
‘What’s the committee for?’
‘I was about to ask the same thing,’ Jude said, her voice quivering.
‘We’ve got a bit of a situation,’ Michael explained. ‘Danni, tell them.’
I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. Jude’s fear was radiating through the office and it’d snagged in my throat. I was desperate to look at her, at the same time as being petrified about what might happen if I did. So I wrapped my arms around my stomach and swallowed down the fur in my mouth.
‘Danielle?’ Harriet prompted.
‘There’s – there’s been a call to switchboard,’ I said, my tongue heavy. ‘A man claims he’s put a bomb somewhere in the – this building.’
Jude’s gasp rippled along my neck, but I kept my eyes fixed on Harriet’s rumpled brow.
‘Are you serious?’ she asked.
‘I wouldn’t make it up,’ I muttered.
>
‘No, course not.’ She paused and reached for another pen to fiddle with. ‘Tell me exactly what happened. Everything.’
I repeated what I’d told Michael upstairs, my words more jumbled than before. Harriet’s patience baffled me. Every now and then, she nodded and, when I faltered, she tried to ease me into my next sentence. Focusing on her kept my mind from wandering to Jude and Michael a few inches away.
‘Why does he want Vincent Knight here?’ Harriet questioned when I’d done. ‘We’ve got a dozen directors on the board.’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘It’s probably unwise to disregard his instructions,’ Michael put in. ‘Can you call Knight? Get him up here as soon as possible.’
Harriet pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Easier said than done. What do I say we want him for? One whiff of a bomb threat, he’ll be straight onto the police.’
‘If there’s one thing I know about Knight, it’s that his ego’s the size of France,’ said Michael. ‘Tell him it’s an important problem, something we need just him for. Make it about the move. He used to work the area, don’t forget that. It’s not so far out of the realm of possibility that we need his help.’
‘And what about the other demands?’
‘We follow them to the letter. We have to.’
For a moment, Harriet looked her size, crumpled into her chair with Michael’s shadow stretched over her. Then she drew herself to her feet and crossed her arms.
‘All right, you go round and collect the mobile phones. Don’t let a panic get out, be clever about it. And unplug the direct lines and the broadband connections while you’re at it. You’ll think of some excuse. Power surge, I don’t bloody know.’ She twisted around. ‘Jude, shut all the blinds on this floor, do the same upstairs. And lock up down here, like he said to. We can’t have anyone making a run for it.’