Read Online Stop the Clock by Alison Mercer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Alison Mercer
Ads: Link
forgotten something. Something important.
She turned to the diary section and flicked back to the end of March: 20 March was marked by a small red cross. The next week, there had been various evening engagements: the launch of the Dunmore Gallery summer season; the opening night of that Rattigan revival; cocktails in the Oxo Tower with a bunch of telly people.
28 March: Natalie – what a disaster that had turned out to be. 30 March: G. Diary code for the Grandee – Justin. Their last night – an awful, lacklustre conclusion to so many years of hopeful anticipation . . .
The entry for 3 April said: hygienist 8.00 a.m. She distinctly remembered that her gums had still been tender as she sat nursing her gin and tonic in a corner of the Queen’s Head after work, and looked up to see Dan coming towards her.
27 April: her birthday. A Monday. She’d planned a quiet drink with an actress friend, but had been stood up – something to do with a shoot for a toothpaste commercial overrunning.
Today’s date was 29 April. Which meant she was nearly two weeks late.
Someone cleared his throat, and she looked up from the incriminating diary pages to see Jeremy, the opinion and comment editor and her boss, wearing anunnatural smile and reaching across her desk to present her with a small envelope.
Jeremy was a little terrier of a man who compensated for his lack of stature by barking at people as frequently and aggressively as possible. When she first started working for him Tina had been continually on edge, but she’d come to realize that he was quick to move on and growl at the next hapless passer-by, and there was something to be said for having a boss with a short attention span, who didn’t always hang on to your mistakes.
It was Justin who’d advised her on how to handle Jeremy –
someone like that may be tough on you, but if you give him what he wants he’ll probably end up being your biggest fan
– and this had turned out to be true; it was Jeremy who had swung it for her to finally get her own column.
‘My goodness! Is it presentation time already?’ she said, taking the card and opening it. A couple of M&S gift tokens fell out.
‘Yes, I’ve got a meeting at one, so I thought we’d better get on with it,’ Jeremy said. ‘Congratulations, Tina. You’ve got through a whole ten years without taking maternity leave. Long may it continue!’
Tina opened her card and glanced through the signatures. There it was, Dan’s spiky scrawl, so different to Justin’s well-formed copperplate:
Here’s to another ten years, I hope they bring you the happiness you deserve.
What was
that
supposed to mean? She
had
been happy. Still was, come to that. She loved her job – she loved pretty much everything about it. The access; theright to ask questions; the urgency of having a deadline, and the relief after meeting it; the kick of seeing her name in print; the surprising insights into what other lives were like. More than that, she loved the feel and smell of newsprint, and the satisfaction of contributing to something bigger and louder than she was. Why, then, did it suddenly seem as if all this was not enough – too transitory, too ephemeral? An assembly of people who came and went, creating tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, the day after’s unsearched-for internet archive . . .
She looked beyond Jeremy to where Dan and Julia were standing in the space between the news and features sections, apparently oblivious to everyone else. They were laughing about something, and Julia was pressing her body towards Dan, and his arms were reaching for her as if opening up for an embrace.
‘When you’re ready, Tina,’ Jeremy said, ‘let’s go, shall we?’
Other colleagues were already mustering behind him: Anthea Trask, freshly lipsticked, smiling brightly; Monty Delamere, the pot-bellied, whiskery parliamentary sketch writer, who’d put his hand on Tina’s knee in the taxi after her first
Post
Christmas party, but had
She turned to the diary section and flicked back to the end of March: 20 March was marked by a small red cross. The next week, there had been various evening engagements: the launch of the Dunmore Gallery summer season; the opening night of that Rattigan revival; cocktails in the Oxo Tower with a bunch of telly people.
28 March: Natalie – what a disaster that had turned out to be. 30 March: G. Diary code for the Grandee – Justin. Their last night – an awful, lacklustre conclusion to so many years of hopeful anticipation . . .
The entry for 3 April said: hygienist 8.00 a.m. She distinctly remembered that her gums had still been tender as she sat nursing her gin and tonic in a corner of the Queen’s Head after work, and looked up to see Dan coming towards her.
27 April: her birthday. A Monday. She’d planned a quiet drink with an actress friend, but had been stood up – something to do with a shoot for a toothpaste commercial overrunning.
Today’s date was 29 April. Which meant she was nearly two weeks late.
Someone cleared his throat, and she looked up from the incriminating diary pages to see Jeremy, the opinion and comment editor and her boss, wearing anunnatural smile and reaching across her desk to present her with a small envelope.
Jeremy was a little terrier of a man who compensated for his lack of stature by barking at people as frequently and aggressively as possible. When she first started working for him Tina had been continually on edge, but she’d come to realize that he was quick to move on and growl at the next hapless passer-by, and there was something to be said for having a boss with a short attention span, who didn’t always hang on to your mistakes.
It was Justin who’d advised her on how to handle Jeremy –
someone like that may be tough on you, but if you give him what he wants he’ll probably end up being your biggest fan
– and this had turned out to be true; it was Jeremy who had swung it for her to finally get her own column.
‘My goodness! Is it presentation time already?’ she said, taking the card and opening it. A couple of M&S gift tokens fell out.
‘Yes, I’ve got a meeting at one, so I thought we’d better get on with it,’ Jeremy said. ‘Congratulations, Tina. You’ve got through a whole ten years without taking maternity leave. Long may it continue!’
Tina opened her card and glanced through the signatures. There it was, Dan’s spiky scrawl, so different to Justin’s well-formed copperplate:
Here’s to another ten years, I hope they bring you the happiness you deserve.
What was
that
supposed to mean? She
had
been happy. Still was, come to that. She loved her job – she loved pretty much everything about it. The access; theright to ask questions; the urgency of having a deadline, and the relief after meeting it; the kick of seeing her name in print; the surprising insights into what other lives were like. More than that, she loved the feel and smell of newsprint, and the satisfaction of contributing to something bigger and louder than she was. Why, then, did it suddenly seem as if all this was not enough – too transitory, too ephemeral? An assembly of people who came and went, creating tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, the day after’s unsearched-for internet archive . . .
She looked beyond Jeremy to where Dan and Julia were standing in the space between the news and features sections, apparently oblivious to everyone else. They were laughing about something, and Julia was pressing her body towards Dan, and his arms were reaching for her as if opening up for an embrace.
‘When you’re ready, Tina,’ Jeremy said, ‘let’s go, shall we?’
Other colleagues were already mustering behind him: Anthea Trask, freshly lipsticked, smiling brightly; Monty Delamere, the pot-bellied, whiskery parliamentary sketch writer, who’d put his hand on Tina’s knee in the taxi after her first
Post
Christmas party, but had
Similar Books
![Knight, Kayla - Her Long Hot Surrender [Raw Texas Heat 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.com/598849/thumbs/152x264/knight-kayla-her-long-hot-surrender-raw-texas-heat-3-siren-publishing-menage-everlasting.jpg)
