Men at Work [Quick Read] (7 page)

Mostly, Ian wanted to talk to Emma. To tell her how sorry he was and how he would do anything to get her back. A few times he even picked up the phone, but then he remembered how she had tearfully begged him not to make contact until she was ready to talk to him.

Thinking he would do a shop run for anyone in need of a can of drink or a bar of chocolate, Ian stood up and started taking orders from his fellow workmates. As not even management should be left out, Ian headed to Douglas’s office, knocked on his door and walked in.

“Hi Doug,” said Ian. “I was just wondering if . . .”

Ian didn’t finish his sentence. He suddenly knew what he had to do. For a long moment the two men stood looking at each other blankly.

“Are you all right?” asked Douglas. “You look a bit funny.”

“As it happens, Douglas, I’m not the slightest bit all right,” said Ian. “And I haven’t been all right since Emma left.”

“Not again,” said Douglas. “I thought we’d moved on from all that.”

“You might have,” said Ian, “but I haven’t. The thing is, Douglas, you shouldn’t have sacked her.”

“Come on, Ian,” replied Douglas. “You know as well as I do that I had no choice.”

“But you sacked the wrong person.”

“What are you saying? Has new evidence come to light?”

Ian shook his head. “I did it, Doug. It was me. I sent the email from Emma’s computer. I wanted her to get sacked because I was sick of her messing things up for me at work.”

There was a silence.

“You do know that I’ll have to check out what you’ve said and, if it’s true, I’ll have no choice but to sack you?”

Ian nodded. “That’s fine. It is all true. But it doesn’t matter any more because I quit. Doug, I thought this job was the best thing in my life but it turns out that I was wrong. The best thing in my life is a beautiful, bright, funny girl called Emma Richards and the only thing in the world that matters to me is to get her to come back to me.”

Ian left the office unsure where to go next. He had to talk to Emma but first he had to find her. It was just after four. Would she be at home or might she already have found herself a new job and be out at work? Ian decided to try her mobile and hope that she would answer the call, but the phone rang out before directing him to her voicemail. Ian had to make a decision. To leave a message or not? He took a deep breath and started. “Emma, it’s me. I know you asked me not to call you. I know you need time to sort out your head. It’s just . . . it’s just . . .” Ian struggled to finish his sentence. “It’s just that . . . well . . . I need to speak to you. Things have changed and I need to speak to you right away. Okay, I’ll leave it at that. I just want you to know, Em, I really do love you. I love you with my whole heart. And there isn’t anything, and I do mean
anything at all
, that I wouldn’t do if we could be together again.”

Ian looked up at the grey sky. It looked like rain and he only had a few minutes before he got soaked to the skin, so he decided to make his way home and wait for Emma there. He pulled up his jacket collar and tried to walk as quickly as he could up the hill towards Five Ways. In fact he was so busy walking as quickly as he could that he failed to see someone walking just as fast in the opposite direction. Both he and the other person came to a sudden halt. Ian was about to apologise but he found he couldn’t speak because standing there right in front of him was Emma.

“I just . . . I just . . . I just called you,” said Ian. “How did you get here so quickly?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “I’ve got a time machine. You must have noticed it in the house? It’s big and blue and shaped like an old-fashioned police box.”

“So what are you saying? This was an accident?”

Emma nodded. “They do happen, you know.”

“Yeah . . . but . . .” Ian’s voice trailed off. If it wasn’t an accident and Emma had been on her way to see him, then the last thing he wanted was to make a big deal about it in case she changed her mind.

“It’s fine,” said Emma. “You can relax, I’m not stalking you. I was only coming this way because I got a call from HR this morning to say that I could pick up my final pay cheque. I’m meeting up with Rukmani in an hour for coffee and then I’ll be out of your way.”

“But that’s not what I want,” said Ian.

Emma shrugged. “Well we can’t always get what we want, can we?”

Ian looked into her eyes and saw that she was still hurting as much as when he had first told her about his betrayal. “I’m just really glad to see you,” he said. He took in a full view of her. “You look well,” he said. “Really well.”

“That’s what being unhappy does for you if you can’t eat,” she said. “And you’re not the first to notice I’ve lost weight. Everyone I know keeps telling me that I look wonderful. I’m thinking I ought to get my heart broken by the person I trust most in the whole world a bit more often. You know, maybe every few months, like liposuction and Botox combined, only cheaper.”

There was a long silence and then Ian spoke. “You do know that I’m sorry, don’t you?” he said quietly. “I meant every word of my message just now. I would do anything for you, absolutely anything. All you have to do is say the word.”

“Anything?”

“Yes, anything at all.”

“So I could ask you to walk over broken glass and you’d do it?”

“In a second,” said Ian.

“I could ask you to give away all those stupid comics of yours and you’d take them straight up to Oxfam?”

“I wouldn’t even blink an eye,” said Ian.

“Okay,” said Emma. “How about this? How about if I asked you to turn around right now, go back to work, knock on Douglas’s door and tell him the truth about what really happened with those emails? Would you do that?”

Ian shook his head.

“I knew it,” said Emma. “You
do
love that job more than you love me.”

“No, it’s not that,” said Ian, taking Emma’s hand.

“What is it then?”

“I’ve already done it,” said Ian. “I told Douglas everything this morning – about the email and why I did it. And I told him for one reason and one reason only, Em. Because without you, nothing else matters. I don’t care about my job. I don’t care about having a laugh. I don’t care about any of it, if it means I can’t have you.”

There was a silence. Ian couldn’t work out what Emma was thinking. Was she about to give him a second chance or was she going to kick him out of her life forever?

“What do you say, Em? What do you say to giving me a second chance?”

“I don’t know,” said Emma. “Part of me wants to forgive you because despite your many, many faults I love you more than life itself. But then part of me wants to give you a punch in the face.”

“So do it.”

“What?”

“Punch me in the face.”

Emma looked horrified. “I’m not going to punch you in the face! What do you think I am?”

“It will make you feel better.”

Emma shook her head. “I can tell you right now it won’t make me feel better.”

“It will,” said Ian. “I promise you.” He reached across to her and held up her hands. “Just make a fist, pull it back and let go.”

“Ian Greening,” said Emma, “I am not going to punch you in the face.”

“Yeah, you will,” said Ian. Emma’s hands were still in the air and she had now made a fist with her right one. “All you need is a little bit of help.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” said Ian, “what would do the trick? Me saying how much I hated it when you made me eat homemade sandwiches . . . or how I was annoyed that the Ad Girls stopped flirting with me? Or that I couldn’t stand the book club you started or . . . or how much I loathed your cute cat calendar or . . .”

Ian hadn’t finished when a small but well formed fist flew through the air at high speed and landed on his nose with such force that he spun around twice before falling to the floor.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to hit me!” cried Ian as blood poured from his nose.

“I know I did,” said Emma. “But that was before you started having a go at my cute cat calendar.” She knelt down, pulled a bunch of tissues from her bag, and held them to Ian’s nose.

“You were right about one thing though,” said Emma, as she helped Ian to his feet.

“What was that?”

“Punching you in the face really did make me feel a whole lot better.” And without another word she wrapped her arms around Ian, and as the grey skies finally opened up and it began to rain, they shared a long kiss. And although Ian knew that they were not only both out of work but in danger of catching their death of cold, he was also aware that now they had each other again, everything would be okay in the end.