Working Wonders Read Online Free PDF Page A

end, the paper igniting and the plastic melting.
    Fumes, he thought, slinking his way to the car. But one of his colleagues saw him and peeled off from the group.
    ‘Hey! Hey everyone, it’s Arthur!’ The crowd of people gathered round, then all began to clap and cheer. Arthur took a step backwards, touching his bump again. Marcus, the accounts manager, came running up to him.
    ‘Hey, well done, mate!’
    ‘Yeah!’ shouted one of the secretarial staff. ‘Won’t be getting any more paper jams from this bloody thing, will we?’ She kicked the smouldering mass with her shoe.
    ‘Yeah! Collate THIS!’ yelled someone else, kicking it again.
    ‘That was great, what you did,’ said Marcus, clapping Arthur on the shoulder. ‘Much respect.’
    ‘Yes, well, um, good,’ said Arthur. ‘Well, I’m off.’ And he wandered slowly towards his car. As he reached it, he turned and looked up at the offices. He could see Ross, eyeing him up from behind the glass. When Ross noticed him, he very slowly drew a line across his throat.
    Cock, Arthur thought to himself. That tosser’s going to sack me after all.
    The house was quiet when he got in. Unused to being around during the day, he padded up and down, looking for something to do. The semi looked gloomy and dark – immaculate but somehow unpleasant. Arthur didn’t like the relentless tidiness; it implied a panic that anyone should ever smell anything or see anything not entirely bland and lemon-scented. He picked up the TV remote control, then threw it back on the sofa in fear. His life may be going to the absolute shits, but nothing would make him watch daytime television.
    He knew he should phone Fay, but he was putting it off for as long as possible.
    Putting what off? he suddenly thought. How much with Fay was he really putting off?
    He went over to the mantelpiece and pushed aside a prominently displayed christening invitation. Fay had left next to it a Baby Gap catalogue, with a note for him to look through and choose the ‘cutest’ pair of dungarees for some sprog or other.
    I’m not ready for a baby he thought, for the millionth time since he’d been … well, a baby. I’m not ready for a baby with Fay he thought, more honestly. Oh well, if I’m about to lose my job for being a nutcase, it’s hardly going to be an issue. I’ll have to tell her tonight.
    ‘Do you want to watch West Wing ?’
    ‘Yeah, all right. Nice dinner, by the way.’
    ‘Thanks. It’s called pasta – apparently the Italians invented it. Not bad, eh? Shall we have it again sometime?’
    ‘Give us the remote.’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘Fine. Why – are you?’
    ‘No, no, I’m fine.’
    ‘Okay.’
    Well, she’ll find out soon enough, thought Arthur, crawling through the next morning’s traffic. When I get given my cards … do they still give cards? Well, P45. Whatever. I hope I get redundancy. Ooh. What if I get redundancy? Maybe I should go round the world. On my OWN. Maybe I should go to Brazil and get plastic surgery and a fake passport and become a diamond smuggler.
    He parked, for possibly the last time, and looked up at the grey building. Its boundless conformity scared him; always had. Whoever designed this building – what were they, a robot? Did they really despise people so much? To go through thousands of years of civilization and end up with a big grey portaloo with windows that didn’t open and flat roofs without gardens?
    The office actually went quiet when he walked in. People would kind of half look at him, then pretend to be incredibly busy with something else as he approached. Ooh, the walk of shame. Any doubts he might have had about whether or not throwing a photocopier out of a window was quite as cool a feat as Lynne had implied were immediately confirmed. He could feel the tension in the air. He was going down.
    And sure enough, when he got to his desk, there was that consultant bitch Gwyneth standing imperiously over it, her back to him. He felt his