A Hopeless Romantic

That sounded good, she thought. Polite, responsive, involved. They were big on being ‘involved’ where Laura worked.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Rachel said. She fiddled with one of the buttons on her cardigan. She was normally very much in control; this was odd. ‘I’ve – I’ve been worried about you.’

‘Oh?’ said Laura. She crossed her legs and shifted forward in her seat, leaning attentively towards Rachel. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Is everything OK, Laura? At home?’

Laura felt as if she were in an episode of Grange Hill. ‘Eh? You mean – with my mum and dad? Yes, of course it is.’

‘No, I mean with you,’ Rachel said, her smile remaining fixed. ‘In your life. Is everything OK? No…problems?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Laura automatically. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Your behaviour…’ Rachel trailed off, and then gathered herself for the full attack. ‘I’m afraid we are all rather concerned about your behaviour and the deterioration of your performance in the last few months. Laura, I have to ask you: Are you using drugs or alcohol in any way that might affect your work or home life?’

Laura’s jaw dropped. The first thing that flitted through her mind, unbidden, was, How can you say that to me! I’m George and Angela Foster’s daughter! I’m from Harrow!

She looked at Rachel, whom up until this point she had always thought of as a reasonably sane person, and blinked.

‘No, of course I’m not,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m not.’

She assumed Rachel meant using alcohol in a seriously bad way, not the four white-wine spritzers she’d had the previous night with Hilary.

‘This…this isn’t about the pay reviews, is it?’ she said weakly.

Rachel looked bewildered. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘This is what I mean about you, Laura. It’s absolutely not about the pay review. Oh god. How do I say this?’

‘What?’ Laura said, feeling something, a cold clamminess seize hold of her. ‘It’s about the fundraising project, isn’t it?’ she said wildly, trying to throw some obstacle in the way, something that would stop the conversation going any further, something that would mean she had control over where this was going. ‘I’ve nearly finished, honestly. I’ve got to speak to a couple more people, but since Easter was early I haven’t been able to pin them down and –’

‘Laura,’ Rachel said quietly, putting her hand out towards her over the desk. ‘We’re suspending you.’

There was a silence, broken only by the sound of the printer whirring outside the door. Someone coughed, far away.

‘Laura?’ Rachel said.

‘What?’ said Laura. ‘Are you serious? I mean – are you…What?’

‘Laura,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to do. I think you’re a great person to have on the team, and I’ve loved working with you – well, at least, I used to. But I’m afraid you – your – well, over the past six months or so, your performance has deteriorated so much that I’d – I’d –’ She looked down at her notes. There was a pause.

‘Just say it,’ said Laura, sitting bolt upright in her chair.

‘I’d call you a liability.’ Rachel looked up at her again, and that’s when Laura knew this was for real. She was composed. Cold, even.

‘You’re late. And I don’t mean ten minutes late now and then. You’re consistently late, and you never explain why, even though I warned you formally about it three months ago.’

‘Rachel, but you were always being late when you were seeing Boyd!’ said Laura.

‘I was late once a week, on Mondays, because he lived in Nottingham and I spent the weekends with him,’ said Rachel, and her voice quavered. ‘But I made the time up, more than made it up. Laura, can’t you see the difference?’

‘But –’ Laura said. It was true, she’d been getting in a bit later this year, but that was because Dan was working on a project at the moment that was nearer than before so he was getting a later train and she’d wait on the platform to go with him…

‘It’s not acceptable, Laura. You’re getting in at ten every day when most of us have been in since well before nine. You take long lunches every day. You leave at five on the dot. Your absence report is staggering – do you realise you’ve been off sick for twenty-five days over the past year?’

‘I was sick!’ Laura gasped.

‘No you weren’t, Laura,’ Rachel said. ‘You just couldn’t be bothered to come in. They were all on Fridays or Mondays. What were you doing?’

Laura remembered the Friday morning in January when she and Dan had been on the train platform, and Amy had rung him to say her father wasn’t well and she was taking the day off and going down to Dorset for the weekend. They’d looked at each other, there on the bench in the winter gloom, and Dan had grabbed Laura’s hand, walked briskly out of the train station with her, taken her back to her flat and basically ravished her all day, all night, and for the rest of the weekend.

She smiled at the memory. She could feel her cheeks flushing. Dan went out of the flat once, on Saturday afternoon, to get some milk, and he brought back the papers and some roses for her. OK, they were nasty petrol-shop roses, but roses are roses.

‘Things…’ she said carefully, trying not to smile again. ‘I know, I know,’ she continued suddenly. ‘I know I’ve been a bit crap. But – it’s all going to be fine. When I get back from holiday – you know – oh, I wish I could say more than that, but I can’t. I’m sorry, Rachel. I know I’ve been useless.’

‘That’s exactly it,’ Rachel said, looking grave. ‘Laura, look, the problem is you don’t know you’ve been useless. You’ve had two formal warnings – this is your third.’ She leant forward, her dark brown eyes huge, full of concern. ‘That’s why I have to suspend you. You’re lucky you’re getting that, you know. I should just be firing you, but oh, Laura, I think you’re so good. I just – I just don’t understand it!’

A tear rolled down Rachel’s cheek. Laura watched it as it splashed onto her personnel file. Rachel went on, ‘You’re rude to the volunteers, you’re hopelessly disorganised, nothing ever seems to get done. Four schools didn’t have any reading programmes in place for the New Year just because you hadn’t got the forms and police checks sorted out. And you know how desperate those schools were for help.’

‘They –’

‘And the fundraising,’ Rachel said. ‘You know we’re looking for a big cash injection. You know how crap funding this year is. You were in charge of it, and you’ve done nothing about it, have you?’

‘Well –’ said Laura. ‘Linley Munroe – Marcus Sussman – I was going to contact them for the…but then he…’

‘Oh Laura,’ said Rachel softly. She swallowed. ‘It’s just – I just don’t understand why you, of all people…why you’ve lost interest, why you don’t even seem to care.’

‘I do care!’ Laura said. ‘I do. It’s just…I’ve been crap.’

As she said it, she realised how inadequate the words were. How she was someone who’d always prided herself on getting the job done, not letting people down, how she’d scorned others for their blinkered approach, their inability to get off their arses and do something to make a difference to their lives, other people’s lives. Over a hundred children, the ones who most needed some individual attention, some special reading time, had been let down by her. Money that people could use, that could really make a positive difference in someone’s life, perhaps permanently – not there. Just because she never got round to it. Because she was thinking about herself. About her and Dan. And Amy. She was the blinkered one. She heard Jo’s voice clearly in her head. ‘Don’t you ever learn?’

‘And the holiday,’ Rachel was saying. ‘You’ve never cleared it with me, never asked for time off. You know we have to clear it with each other. Everyone else in the office is away, I couldn’t have let you go then in any case.’

‘Well, I’m going,’ Laura said stubbornly.

‘I know you are, love,’ Rachel said. She smiled sadly. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do any more. I’m suspending you, effective immediately, you’ll be on thirty per cent of your pay and we’re getting someone in from Lambeth to cover your job. Our school programmes finish next week. I want you to take two weeks to think about things. A fortnight from Monday, OK? And then we’ll call you back in after the school terms are over and see where we are.’

‘See where we are?’

Rachel shuffled the papers on her desk. ‘Well. Where we are with a view to reinstating you again. Or whether we have to…make this permanent.’

Surely this couldn’t really happen, surely they were just threatening her? It was a bad dream and she’d wake up in a minute. She was a responsible person, a working girl, like all her friends. How would she explain it to them? To her parents? To her grandmother? She didn’t get – suspended, it was ridiculous!

‘But what will I tell – everyone?’ Laura said angrily. ‘You can’t do this to me. You really can’t, seriously. This is fucking ridiculous.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Rachel said. Her voice was distant, unfamiliar, suddenly. ‘I just don’t get it, honestly I don’t, Laura. I’d always thought you were one of the best, the brightest of all of us. I hoped one day you’d run the programme, or become an adviser, a consultant, perhaps even working with the Government…I honestly thought you could do whatever you wanted. Be someone who made a real difference…’

She left the sentence unfinished. Laura stood up and held the handle of the door in tears. She shook her head at Rachel, wordlessly. Rachel sighed, and looked at her.

‘There’s a boy somewhere at the bottom of all this, isn’t there?’ Laura heard her saying to herself as she ran out. ‘God, there always is…’