“What?” I snapped at Toby who was currently leaning in my doorframe smiling at me.
“Well, good morning to you, my little ray of sunshine,” he said, strolling in and throwing himself down on my sofa. I felt my eye twitch. My brown leather, beaten up, squashy sofa had seen better days and didn’t really go with the office décor in any way, but I was very protective of it. I didn’t really even like anyone else sitting on it, which I knew was a little odd. Toby caught my gaze and rolled his eyes. “Wow, you are so weird about this sofa. Well, I’m hungover so you can just put up with me sitting on your precious for a few minutes. Lanie’s with her mum this week so I let the Treepost clients convince me to go out with them last night. Huge mistake.”
Barbara immediately jumped off the documents that her massive butt had been obstructing for the last hour to make her way over to Toby. “Oh shit,” muttered Toby as she leapt onto his lap and proceeded to dig her claws into his thighs before turning in multiple circles and finally collapsing her great weight onto him, closing her eyes with a snort. “Agh!” he cried as she dug in her claws, likely piercing his skin through his trousers.
I sighed. “You know what you have to do.”
Toby rolled his eyes and frowned down at the cat then flinched when she clawed him again. “Christ, okay, Babs. No need to be so aggressive about it.” He started stroking her head and that chainsaw purr filled the room. “Your cat is a psychopath.”
“I know.”
“Why the hell do you bring her into the office?”
“She’s started doing dirty protests if I leave her alone at home now,” I told Toby, taking the opportunity to look through the Barbara-abused documents. “That bloody cat can go for days without shitting, but as soon as she sees me leaving in a suit she’s straight upstairs to my bed and… well you don’t want to know. I think she likes the office. And my usual cat-sitter called in sick. I can’t get anyone else in as Barbara’s fussy about which humans she’ll tolerate. And there aren’t many sitters who’ll tolerate her either.”
Toby winced and Barbara continued to rhythmically dig her claws into his legs until he speeded up his stroking. “Can’t think why.”
“How is my goddaughter?”
Toby frowned. “I dunno, mate. She won’t talk to me. Maybe it’s a teenage thing but…” his voice dropped a little lower and I could hear the concern in his tone, “she’s sort of gone into herself. I mean, Maggie can be a grade A bitch to me, but she’s a good mum and even she’s at a bit of a loss.”
“Lanie not speaking?” My eyebrows went up in surprise. “But she can talk the hindlegs off a donkey.”
Toby snorted. “Not now she doesn’t. You haven’t seen her in a while. She’s changed. I don’t know if it’s the divorce or school or what, but I do know that I’m not handling it very well. The kid won’t tell me anything and the more I push the more she shuts down.”
“Christ, I’m sorry, mate,” I said, feeling a bit bad for moaning about myself when Toby was so obviously worried about his daughter. There was a twinge of guilt as well. I’d been so distracted lately that I hadn’t been as engaged as I should have. “Can you bring her round next week? I’ll cook her tacos. She loves my tacos.”
“Sure, don’t expect much convo out of her though. Or even really to see her face. It’s all dark hoodies and thick eyeliner now.” Dark hoodies? Lanie’s favourite colour was pink.
“Okay, well just bring her round and we’ll see.”
“Thanks, man. Maybe you can talk to her. You’ve always been her favourite Godparent. Not that there’s much competition mind – my brother-in-law and his wife are still massive twats. Anyway listen, I came in here to ask you why you’re hiding?”
“Hiding?”
“Yes, hiding.” Toby raised his head off one of the arm rests to look at me. “It’s like we’ve slipped back fifteen years and you’ve gone totally asocial. Don’t make me dig you out of that hole again, mate. Once was enough.”
“I’m just busy. These systems don’t upgrade themselves.”
“I heard what happened last week,” he said quietly, and I pushed back from my computer screen, resigned to the fact I wouldn’t be working for a while. “And I don’t necessarily think that the correct response is continuing to send shitty emails asking our architects to change a perfectly good design.”
“I emailed about a valid concern.”
Toby raised his eyebrows at the obvious lie. It had not been a valid concern, and Verity’s company had demonstrated this by plugging the change I’d suggested into their Building Information Modelling software, then sending me a graphic reimagining of the catastrophic stairway collapse that my suggestion would have caused. I was secretly quite impressed – they’d even managed to add in the human figures usually used in these graphics to give scale, but instead of showing them walking about, the new designs showed people trapped under building debris and crushed by the ceiling caving in. It was less a building design and more a scene from a horror movie.
Toby sighed. “Did she message you?”
I shifted in my chair and avoided eye contact with him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Verity,” Toby said. “You know, the girl you’ve been in love with since you were sixteen. The girl you made a scene with at the site last week. Did she message you? I assume that was who you were trying to provoke with your dickish suggestions.”
“I wasn’t trying to provoke anyone. I really did–”
“Come on, Hazza. It’s just me here.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and swallowed my pride. “No, she didn’t.”
“Have you tried just being honest with her?”
