Guilty Feet Read Online Free PDF

then that was it as far as she was concerned. There could be no redeeming themselves after that.
    She could never quite get her head round what Dan did for a living, and for that reason she was unable to take him seriously. I think she preferred to believe he was just my flatmate rather than my boyfriend, and when I told her I’d left she kept up the pretence. ‘About time you had a place of your own, darling. You were never going to meet anyone nice when you were sharing a place with another man.’
    Hopeless.
    I felt guilty for not having been in touch with Jean, and a bit hurt that she hadn’t tried to make contact with me. On the other hand, though, how would she know where I was?
    I’d briefly considered dropping her a line, but decided against it in the end. I didn’t want to make things awkward for her now that Dan was going out with Aisling.
    Nothing was happening in the office, so I decided to compose a response to Dan. In draft form. I didn’t want to be goaded into shooting directly from the hip, as I was very tempted to do. I needed to consider this long and hard. So I did. I considered it so long and hard that it wasn’t until just after four o’clock that I actually clicked on Send .
    In the meantime Sid had told me that something was definitely brewing. I guessed he was trying to make up for getting his predictions so wrong yesterday and didn’t take very much notice of him. Then Susan, dumpy forty-seven-year-old bit-on-the-side of Rob, thirty-one, stirred things up a bit by bursting into tears and storming out of the building. Rob left himself half an hour later, and that all had to mean something .
    And later still, at about two o’clock, several strange men in expensive suits had appeared in Reception. They’d asked to be shown to the MD’s office and there they remained as I sent off my e-mail.
    Dan , it began. (I’d changed my mind by now, and if Sarah wasn’t ‘Dear’ to him then he wasn’t ‘Dear’ to Sarah.)
    What’s wrong with George Michael?
    Give me ‘Careless Whispers’ sooner than ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ any old day of the week .
    I didn’t even bother to sign off.
    Of course the stress and uncertainty of the past few weeks could not be ruled out as a possible reason for my inability to express myself better, but the fact is I was really fed up. The tension was thick in the office now, and Sid, who kept hovering around my desk like the grim reaper, had ‘I told you so’ written all over his child-like face.
    And he was right. At exactly four-fifty (I’d been watching my watch for over an hour) the company MD appeared with the expensively suited men and announced that we should all clear our desks immediately. He didn’t even bother to use the word ‘regret’, and there was certainly no mention of monies due.
    I considered enquiring whether I might take my computer in lieu of remuneration, but quite honestly I didn’t have the bottle. One glance at the stony-faced Suits and any hint of bravado vanished immediately.
    Still, I could do one final check on my e-mails, I supposed. Maybe Cass would have replied to my pathetic pleas by now with an offer that I couldn’t refuse.
    She hadn’t. But when I did a last-minute visit to my Hotmail account, to see if my mother had sent me any more glad tidings (she hadn’t either), I checked Sarah’s mail too. And found a reply from Dan.
    I was startled by the speed of his response, but I didn’t have time to read it now so I printed it off and slipped it into my bag.
    We were actually escorted out of the building by the Suits. And as we gathered, hunch-shouldered in the persistent drizzle, we half hoped, I suspect, that someone might come up with a plan. I had flashes of putting myself forward as leader. Of giving a speech so full of passion that they’d all be putty in my hands. I’d suggest the old tying ourselves to the railings trick (if there were any railings), or storming the building, holding hostages if necessary,