A Year at the French Farmhouse
Gillian Harvey
1
‘Don’t think of it as a dead end. Try to think of it as an opportunity!’ Mark said brightly, flashing his perfect porcelain veneers. ‘You’ll be given a generous redundancy package: three months’ salary, plus an additional lump sum to keep you going.’
‘I… what?’
For a moment, time slowed. Through the slightly grubby window above Mark’s head, Lily could see the shadows of cars purring by on the road; the flicker of figures walking purposefully past. Muffled snippets of conversation filtered in and out of the basement office as people outside on the pavement moved closer then further away. The sights and sounds of ordinary life seemed suddenly jarring.
‘In the current climate, it’s a generous package,’ Mark added into the silence.
Lily looked at the executive toy on Mark’s desk – a silver row of balls that, when tapped, perpetually rocked back and forth. She imagined what would happen if she picked it up and lobbed it through the frosted window – the glass shattering; balls everywhere.
‘Lily? Everything all right?’ said the man who’d just ripped the rug from under her entire life.
‘Who said it was a dead end?’ she asked suddenly, the words only just sinking in.
He at least had the good sense to blush. ‘I didn’t… I mean, of course,’ he stammered.
But this wasn’t his fault. The partners had brought Mark’s company in to ‘streamline the business’; and avoid the awkwardness of giving loyal employees the boot.
Although it wasn’t the boot in the traditional sense, was it? She wasn’t being ‘sacked’. It wasn’t that she’d messed up on a client file, or started turning up for work late. She was simply surplus to requirements, and they were trying to survive in a world where every man and his dog thought he could design his own logo.
She’d have done the same, probably, in their shoes. Not that she’d be seen dead in a pair of ‘comfort brogues.’
She looked again at Mark, with his untroubled, unmarked brow, sharp, fitted suit; nails that had probably had a more recent manicure than hers. He couldn’t be much more than twenty-five. Employed to deliver bad news, but with no real sense of its impact. She was just another name on his to-do list.
She wished she could say that it didn’t matter anyway. Or that she’d had the chance to quit before they’d fired her, marching purposefully out of the office and leaving the partners wondering if they’d made a mistake.
And if only they’d held off till this time next year, she could have. By then she and Ben would have their house on the market and be packing for a new life in France. They’d been planning for years, but each time they’d tried to fix a date something had come up: a promotion at work, Ty getting into a new sports club and so on. Then a few months ago they had finally agreed on a definite time. ‘OK,’ Ben had said. ‘Let’s take a year to get Ty settled at uni, then we’ll go for it!’
She’d leaped into his arms laughing, and he’d twirled her around as if they were twenty years younger, and she was ten kilos lighter.
It had been the culmination of a lifelong dream; and she’d been looking forward to dramatically handing in her notice next spring. Now, even that minor victory had been snatched away.
‘I take it I get to go home now?’ she asked, turning to face Mark as she reached the office door.
‘Well, it’s entirely your decision,’ he said. ‘There is a one-month notice period but the partners were keen to stress that if you don’t feel able to come in, it won’t reflect badly on your exemplary record.’ He smiled again, delivering yet another pre-rehearsed line.
She almost took the bait. But not quite. They knew she was a perfectionist, that she always wanted to do the right thing. But she wasn’t going to endure a month of working effectively for nothing when she could be out finding another job. Or finally cleaning out the kitchen cupboards. Or, if it came to it, sitting on the sofa watching reruns of Homes Under the Hammer while working her way through a giant pack of Pringles. ‘Right, well, I’ll be off then,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from wobbling.
Mark’s eyebrows raised slightly, but he said nothing.
She raced into the corridor and up the stairs to the ground floor, then made a beeline for the exit, hoping to escape before she started to cry. But when she was halfway across the main office, her progress was thwarted by the thwack of a door almost opening in her face. Her boss, Grahame, stepped out of the toilet; saw her, coloured and vanished back inside, a lock clicking audibly.
That’s right, she wanted to yell. You hide, Grahame. Don’t want to have an awkward conversation. Or, I don’t know, thank me for my decade of service. I’ll just go quietly, shall I?
Inside the bathroom, she heard the sound of a flush. She swallowed her words.
‘Well,’ she said, turning to the other eight employees and backing towards the reception desk, in no doubt that her face was red from the heat she could feel prickle her skin. ‘I guess this is goodbye.’
The words sounded dramatic in her head, but in the office on an average Friday afternoon all she received in return were a few grunts of vague acknowledgement. As if redundancy was infectious and nobody wanted to catch it.
‘Bye, honey!’ said Karen on reception, looking up with an oblivious smile as she passed. ‘Early finish, eh!’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, have fun, honey!’
Once she was safely inside her car, Lily allowed the tears to fall. They streamed, hotly, down her cheeks – tears of anger, disappointment, fear for the future. And an inexplicable shame at finding she was surplus to requirements.
The shame came as a surprise. Redundancies aren’t uncommon – she knew that. Friends, ex-colleagues, strangers on social media – she’d seen it happen frequently. Often people used the opportunity to try something new, or even took it voluntarily to make the most of a fresh start.
But nobody had ever mentioned the gut punch you felt when it actually happened. No one had ever said how it felt humiliating and infuriating and so many other ‘atings’ she couldn’t properly find words for.
Eventually, she wiped her eyes on her sleeve – something she’d spent the last eighteen years training Tyler not to do – and started the car. Switching on the radio, she tried to engage herself with the hot topic of the day on LBC – whether raising a dog was easier or harder than raising a child. ‘At least babies wear nappies!’ a woman was saying. ‘You don’t see mums in the park picking up their kids’ poop.’ But she couldn’t focus. Instead, she kept thinking of the meeting, imagining how she could have reacted differently. Turning over chairs, or doing a Jerry Maguire: loudly vowing to start a new firm, and taking one of the better interns with her for the ride.
Maybe she should have yanked Grahame out of that toilet and forced him to actually explain his reasoning to her. Made him look her in the eye and… well, if nothing else, apologise. Because not only had he used to be her boss until about half an hour ago, she’d also thought of him as a friend. He’d looked at pictures of Ty growing up; he’d spoken to her about his family. Come to think of it, she’d even helped him pick out an anniversary present for his wife, Brenda, last month – her choice of necklace had got him out of the doghouse for last year’s gift disaster: a voucher for a ‘nooks and crannies luxury wax’ at the local beauty salon.
She felt the tears well again and shook her head. No. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She’d been through worse. And it wasn’t as if they were going to be in financial difficulty. Ben’s job was going well; they had some savings. Ty was off to university soon and even had a part-time job lined up for when he arrived. They would be OK.
She would be OK.
She began to drive the familiar route home. Cars hummed rhythmically as they passed in the opposite direction and the larger shops began to morph into smaller stores, newsagents and corner shops as she reached the outskirts of town. Everything was the same; but everything seemed somehow different – she was detaching from her ordinary life, like a greying plaster dropping wetly from a graze.