‘Nothing really.’ Logan slipped off his stool. ‘Tea?’
‘Yep, please’
‘Toast?’
‘Don't worry I’ll make it.’
Logan gestured to the stools, ‘No, sit down. I’ll do it.’
A few minutes later, he passed Cally a mug of tea and a plate with buttered toast and proceeded to pace back and forth, the polished floor squeaking slightly with each turn. Cally didn’t know what to say or do for the best. There was a tension in the room she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with. Not only that, she still had the feeling in her water that very bad news lurked just around the corner. Shedidknow she’d be keeping that little morsel of knowledge under wraps. As she sat eating the toast and drinking her tea, minutes seemed to take hours.
About twenty minutes later, she’d gathered her jacket, been to the loo, and they were outside the house, walking across the road to Logan’s car. As he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, Cally peered over at four-storey Grade II listed Georgian properties and gulped at their magnificence. Tall, white, beautiful old houses stood on all four sides of central gardens and just behind where the car was parked, a huge iron gate with a lock led the way inside. Through wrought iron railings, lush well-kept lawns were maintained with crisscrossing gravel pathways. The paths divided the space into neat sections of greenery with benches strategically placed here and there surrounded by flower beds. The scene was completed with mature leafy trees, Victorian-style lamp posts, low boxwood hedges, and a statue in the middle. Very, very nice.
Logan didn’t even give it a second glance, clicked the remote control for the car, opened his door, leant over and pushed Cally’s from the inside. She hopped in, kept her mouth shut, and sat looking out the window as Logan slowly inched the car around the fancy London square. After navigating their way through the traffic, the same as the night before, they found themselves in the hospital car park and took the same routethey’d hurried along the previous evening. Arriving in the ICU reception, Cally continued not to say much as Logan paced in the queue to speak to the staff behind the desk. Once through the main entrance, Logan opened the door to the inner waiting room and gestured for Cally to go in first. Seeing no one in the waiting area, Cally immediately felt as if something was very wrong. For a long time, no one walked past the door. There was no sign of Reg, Cecilia or Anne and no news via their phones.
Just as Cally was thinking about doing a coffee run, she peered down the corridor through the sliver of glass in the door and saw Reginald come out of a door with a doctor. Cally read the situation instantly; she could see by Reg’s body language that the news wasn’t good. His face was grave, as if every little part of him sagged and had gone grey. Cally remained where she was, didn’t pass on her observations to Logan, kept quiet, and watched as Reg and the doctor disappeared again. Half an hour or so later, the waiting room door opened. Reg stepped in, Cecilia behind him. Reginald's face was ashen, his eyes red-rimmed.
Logan was on his feet in a flash as Anne came in behind Cecilia. 'What's happened?'
Reg's voice was barely above a whisper. 'He's gone.'
Cecilia sobbed and Anne said nothing.
'What?' Logan’s voice cracked. 'What do you mean? It can’t be right! They said he was stable!'
Reg shook his head, his eyes unfocused, he mumbled, not very easy to understand. 'His brain. They couldn't... there was nothing they could do.'
Reginald and Cecilia looked shell-shocked. Anne's face was streaked with tears. Reg seemed to have aged years in the span of minutes. His whole face looked as if its skin had somehow deflated.
'Our dear, sweet boy.' Cecilia’s words dissolved into weeping as Reginald pulled her close.
Cally focused on Logan not quite sure what to do. He stood slightly apart from the others, his face a mask of shock and grief. Feeling somewhat detached, as if watching a particularly surreal and very unpleasant film, she stepped beside Logan. His face was stony as he looked down at the floor and gripped Cally’s hand. Anne began to sob.
26
Early the next morning, Cally had left Logan asleep and crept out of bed after a very unsettled night of tossing and turning this way and that. After finding herself awake in the early hours, she’d grabbed her pile of clothes from the chair by the door, padded down the hallway to one of the main bathrooms, and locked the door behind her. The same as in the en-suite guest bathroom, in the main bathroom there’d been no lack of high-end toiletries to see Cally through. She’d showered, pumped a ridiculous amount of posh shower gel onto her skin, washed her hair, done the same with the conditioner, rinsed off, dried herself with the plumpest towels she’d ever got close to in her life, and then tiptoed down the stairs to what the family referred to as the “drawing room” at the front of the house.
The room, the same as everything else in the house, was comfortably luxurious and quietly opulent. For a second, Cally just stood in the doorway looking at it all: a huge old fireplace and mantel, thick, heavy curtains perfectly aligned in beautiful folds pulled back over floor-to-ceiling shutters, lamps nearly as big as her on highly polished tables, two oversized, overly plush sofas, so many expensive cushions the dents in their tops just so. Strolling over a beautiful rug with plaited edges that toppeda herringbone floor, Cally sat in one of two wingback chairs by a wide, deep window nook looking out over the square. A soft pitter-patter of rain doused the window panes in tiny speckles of light, and a swish of cars passing around the square filled the air. Cally looked past two exquisitely manicured bay trees on the marble front steps and watched as the rain fell onto the pavement. A heavy sky full of grey clouds draped the whole scene in a muted wash of faded colours in perfect sync with what was going on in the house.
Cally pulled her MacBook Air onto her lap, flipped up the lid, pressed the button in the top right-hand corner, and checked into the chatbot portal to make sure her shifts were covered for the rest of the week. Then, resting her chin on her hand on the arm of the chair, she idly watched the rain and thought about how long she’d worked on the chatbot. She’d found the jobs years before on a job board and had made the application along with hundreds of others. She remembered the ghastliness of the online video assessment via a pre-recorded woman from some remote HR department. Then came ridiculous multiple-choice questions in the next round. After that had involved role playing, again via a pre-recorded session of videos. Finally, at the end of the tests she’d had a video call with a human in a call centre in Ireland and eventually a job offer in her inbox.
She shook her head as she watched a woman with an umbrella and a little girl in a yellow raincoat and pink wellies stroll to the gate of the garden opposite in the middle of the square, open the gate with a key and walk in. Here she was in a very posh house, logging into the portal and looking at her shifts just as she had done for a long time. Albeit in very different circumstances and by way of a fancy MacBook Air, she was still there with the chatbot in her life. Sometimes, she felt as if the customer service job was ultimately a crutch, a stable part of her life that, no matter what she did or where she was, simplywas always there for her on the other side of her screen. She’d told herself that she hadn’t yet given notice for the job because she wanted to keep the extra money for a bit longer. Really, she wondered if that was true. She knew deep down it wasn’t.
Just as she was pondering when she’d give up the chatbot job, she saw the doorknob turn, and the door quietly opened into the room. The housekeeper, Larissa, whom Cally had met the day before, smiled. ‘Morning.’ Larissa held up a tray. ‘I thought you might be in need of a cup of tea.’
Cally smiled. ‘Ahh, thank you so much! You didn’t need to do that. I didn’t think anyone was up yet. I was trying to be quiet and keep a low profile.’
‘I don’t think anyone else is. I started at five and heard you come down.’
Cally raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s an early start.’
Larissa put the tray on the small table beside Cally. ‘There’s a lot to do in a house of this size.’
‘I suppose there must be.’ Cally looked at the mug of tea and a little plate of pastries. ‘So kind of you, thanks.’
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Larissa asked.
‘Oh, yes and no. It’s a habit. I've been getting up early for years.’
