Chapter Eleven Its Following Us

This was one seaside journey which would not end in a sandcastle competition and an ice cream on the pier….

I had to ring round and make some hasty childcare arrangements- and then follow the list of instructions which had been left to me in a separate envelope. The first was to check that Mr Edison was still there and not suspicious. Then I had to choose someone to take with me as further instructions would be issued en route and obviously if I were driving I would not be able to answer the mobile. I knew who I would ask before I had read the rest of the sentence.

Chapter 10 A Trip To The Coast

I opened the letter and began to read….

‘ I bet you wonder what on earth you let yourself in for working here..I am sorry I was so abrupt with you when you first joined,but I could see that you would be exactly the right person for this task. There were a few checks I had to make first – to just reassure myself I had indeed made the best recruitment choice.

Chapter nine – Addressee Only

Due to the power cut the night before, the alarms had been affected and getting to where we all had to be at the times we had to be there proved to be awkward and fraught with problems – it was 9-45 by the time I got to work. Full of last night and the strange goings-on with the computer, I was ready with apologies and got ready to go into the warehouse. Deano stopped me. I was to be upstairs, a position was available for Ms Bright’s assistant, and she wanted to talk it over with me.

Chapter Eight A Power Struggle?

So there we all stood, a row of dominoes waiting to be felled by a flame that wasn’t there. Yet no-one had said anything about a drill taking place. It was getting quite chilly stood in the carpark. I had placed the file in my boot – this had been quite easy in the hubbub of humans hustling for self preservation. But looking around there had been no sight of Ms Bright, and I wondered where she had got to. In my search I caught the eye of Maggie, and she smiled nervously before looking down. Next to come into my line of vision was QC Jez and he winked suggestively – my turn to look away, before believing it safe to resume my search – where, to my relief I saw Ms Bright emerge from a side door.

Once we had been cleared to re-enter the building by the fire attendants, the rest of the day passed without much further ado. Home I went, and resolved to get to the bottom of the whole secrecy thing. I had been given strict instructions to keep this private, so had told no-one about the file I carried in my car. Having said that, I had had the distinct impression I had been followed, but dismissed it. I was just an ordinary mum, why would someone follow me?

Chapter Seven Fire In Her Eyes

Headed back downstairs now, I got down to the first floor and the den of iniquity that was a stationery cupboard – and heard a click clacking of footsteps on the stairs behind me. In an otherwise silent atmosphere the sound reverberated, and a voice called out. I turned – it was Ms Bright. In her recently re-heeled shoes.

She asked if she could have a quiet word about company business. I followed her into an office down a little corridor and she asked me to shut the door.

Had I been given ‘ the Manual’ yet? She would have known from the perplexed expression that I wore that, no, I had not been issued with this bulging file that looked as if it could do battle with War and Peace – and win! I questioned the necessity of my having a copy if all I were doing was packing light fittings in the warehouse. She became quite agitated and told me that obviously there was room for a move up the career ladder for those employees who showed promise. But – and we seemed to say this at the same time – only if they took the course that showed them how to work at height! We both grinned and I felt some of the former ice chipping away, she appeared to be much more at ease with me and told me that there had been enough messing about in this place. Some shady business was going on and she had been asked to get to the root of it.

Chapter Six Smile, You’re On Camera

Tom, I had gathered to mean, Mr Edison, was in his sixties, and married with four grown-up children. No-one had seen Mrs Edison for quite some time and of course, the joke was that he’d done a ‘brookie’ on her and she was under the patio. He had been talking apparently to the office staff about recent renovations  to his home and the landscaping of the garden. Of course the women were of an age where Brookside was in fairly hot competition with the others, and probably most of them wished it still were!

Chapter Five A Sense of Gilt

I turned and walked quickly back to the staircase, making my ascent to the second floor. Miraculously remembering Cheryl’s directions, I turned to the right and entered an open plan office. Still a bit shocked at who I had seen – and what I had or had not ’seen’, I stood at the doorway to the office. Lorraine was nowhere to be seen, though my instruction had been to seek her out and sign this Accident Book.

Then it occurred to me it was a Friday – hadn’t she said something about not working on Fridays? I was still reeling a little, as I enquired of the whereabouts of this Book. My cut fingers were now throbbing as though the bandaging were too tight, and my head had begun to ache. I just wanted to be home now and sat on the sofa. I felt a takeaway beckoning. It had been a tumultuous and chaotic week, and I felt like I were at some crazy funfair – without the fun part. There were too many thoughts to process, and it all felt a little dreamlike as Ms Bright was now in front of me saying how it was her turn to ask if I were alright, referring to that mornings’ heel episode. She remarked how pale I were and told me I should go home, have some rest and they’d see me back on Monday.

Chapter Four – The Pain Of Glass

Next morning dawned chaotic and foggy. Bleary-eyed we each got ready for school or work, and the day began. Getting the children to school proved less eventful than the previous morning and I got to work early – in time to follow Ms Bright as she parked her jet black Mini, and got out, wearing a jet black trouser suit, complete with crisp white blouse under the tailored jacket. She click clacked across the car park, and swore gently when her heel got trapped in a drain. It was still trapped and she was now struggling, so I decided to get out and help her if I could. As would any decent woman. I called to her to stop struggling, that I would help. The more she turned the more the heel stuck – and more than the heel, she was becoming slightly unglued herself. We all have these really awful times, I myself had lost the heel on a boot on an evening out. It wasn’t even the end of the evening. And I don’t go out much. That was hardly fair, now was it?

Chapter Three – A Packet of Crisps and A Purple Power Ranger

It wasn’t really until I had to stop at the traffic lights that I began to wonder what that email from the agency had said . But I knew I wouldnt really get a chance to read it until the kids had gone to bed that night. First we had the rigmarole of the hours between 4 and 7 to contend with – Mum’s Internet Cafe, where the kids got to go on their school website while I concocted a healthy filling snack for them. Failing that it was a packet of crisps in front of Power Rangers. Had I remembered to get something out of the freezer for tea?

Chapter Two – My First Day

The morning had not begun well, the children were suffering from sticky mattress, and it took all my patience to coax them from their warm beds, feed them and drive them to school, managing to get my son sat down for register just as nine showed on the classroom clock.  Bidding a fleeting goodbye to my son, I passed through my younger daughter’s classroom to say the same to her, but she was not letting me off so easily, and tears fell easily as she told me I had forgotten her bookbag, and ‘Miss’ would be cross.