73.

I don’t sleep well, but it’s not because of typical sleep troubles, but because I’m excited to get the week underway.

When did I last feel like this? I can’t remember – not specifically. I was once like this, but that excitement and anticipation congealed into the mire that’s made everything so arduous. No more, though. I begin to catalogue what I need to do.

Autumn. She’s the first stop. I want, I need to tell her my news. And not because I’m boasting, but because there’s a purity to her happiness – she’ll genuinely feel good for me, and there’s something about, some validation that I’ve never experienced with my mother or Lana or anybody else. I’m unsure how or why I started undervaluing that, but I know I need to appreciate that more.

You know those stupid cliché moments in storytelling where the pigheaded character has an epiphany, and everything he once took for granted he appreciates, and he vows to be less of a dick moving forward? That’s this moment, but it was obviously coming. My whole existence has been geared toward finding the right way forward and this has to be it.

I’ve experienced this before, but only in those transitory moments, like getting hyped to exercise, or eat better, or appreciate work more, but there’s always that qualification that this attitudes aren’t fixed in life, that they’ll crumble. Not now, though. Now’s the chance to fix it all.

So what else is there?

Melody and this stupid meeting … and that’s as far as I explore that. It’s dismissible. Melody’s dismissible. No, that’s not right either. It’s not Melody who’s dismissible. She’s just a young writer basking in being the golden child. Most people would behave the same. I’d behave the same at her age with her success. What’s dismissible is my angst.

See how much better I am?

In the afternoon, I’ll have to finalise the funeral arrangements for my mother and whatever that takes. They’ll want something to bury her in. The tatty gown she wore in the home won’t do. I haven’t even spoken to them about what happens to her things. There’s another call to make. I can do that one on the drive up to see the funeral director.

Which leaves this morning free.

So here goes.

74.

It’s an hour earlier than I’d usually get out of bed, but I do so and breeze through my morning routine, then set off for work.

The drive is easy – an hour earlier, and I’m beating the peak traffic. Our parking lot is empty. Well, there’s something I hadn’t anticipated. I check the time on my clock – 8.15, which means I’m here forty-five minutes before anybody else.

Getting out of my car, I enter Gainsborough, take the stairs up to our floor (even my legs feel lighter), and stride into the office, basking in its emptiness. There’s something here now, a sense of something I’ve lost. No, not lost. But shut away. It’s the others with their chatter and all that typical office socialising. They tarnish this quiet, and in doing that this place loses something. Or it’s prejudiced to become a reflection of them. Right now, though, with none of that happening, I think about why I got into publishing.

It was because writing was leading me nowhere, and I thought I could take those skills and apply them somewhere so they could be used as a speciality. And I’ve been good at it. One of my teachers said I was the most “gifted editor” (his words, not mine) he’d taught in all his years teaching. I loved that, loved what it meant, loved what I could do. But I’ve lost the enjoyment from it.

This reminds me of those intermittent reprieves in between periods of anxiousness, false hope that everything was quiet, that I was in control, and that when that anxiousness arose I’d be capable of handling it. There was a beauty to that hopefulness … well, until I learned ultimately the anxiousness didn’t care about it, and bullied it back into subjugation.

I sit at my desk, flick on my computer, and sort through emails, but then it occurs to me what would be good would be to surprise Autumn by sitting at her desk in her office. Then, when she comes in, there I am. Juvenile, maybe, but that’s the mood right now, so that’s what I do.

Her office smells of her, and there’s a comfort in that familiarity. It lasts moments because then a new terror hits me: this will turn to shit. Because that’s what’s happened in each of these cycles. They’ve turned to shit.

I try to shake the thought off – not just shake the thought, but shake it off like it’s clung to me. This is like the Veracity email: before I opened it, it was both an acceptance and rejection at the same time. It’s like Luca has told me, Thought defines reality. I’m inviting the wrong reality. It’s no different to any time anxiety or depression incapacitated me, inviting this overwhelming sense of doom.

“Fuck off,” I tell it.

The elevator pings – the door’s slide open.

A clump of people shoot out like a meteorite fragmenting when it hits the atmosphere. (Actually, I don’t know if meteorites do that. They might just burn up. But you get the idea.) Max, Florence, and Bell skew off to their desks, leaving the nucleus of Autumn, Shia, and Melody fucking Merlot, the three of them pausing to chat gaily in front Shia’s desk.

This pisses me off. And strikes insecurity. Shia ultimately replaces me on the Melody fucking Merlot edit, but seeing the three of them together before the meeting I’m meant to have with Autumn and Melody makes me feel this had all been prearranged, and all I did was play out a façade so they could arrive at the conclusion they needed to.

But Autumn wouldn’t do that to me. Surely. It’s petty of me, but now I’m annoyed. And it doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter. But it does because I feel jilted. No, fuck this. But I can’t just shake this off. It clings to me, its pincers hooked into me, and the pain is that combination of edginess and jealousy.

No, I can’t fuck this. That’s what I tell myself, as I watch Shia smile, and sit at her desk. Melody says something to her – it has to be something flattering given the way Shia throws her head back coquettishly, and offers this humble smile, like she’s been embarrassed. Then they clasp hands, like a goodbye handshake, and Autumn begins leading Melody to the office.

I project the best-case scenario for myself: Melody hit up Autumn to have Shia do the editing, but Autumn tried one last time to keep the edit with me. That’s why we met. There. Good. In fucking fact, brilliant. Once they find me in here, I’ll commend Melody for being such a magnificent, daring, innovative voice, and volunteer that Shia should edit the book.

Melody will be happy, Shia will be happy, and I’ll look magnanimous.

I ready myself as Autumn arrives at her office doorway, but she stops so abruptly that Melody crashes into her back.

“Can I help you?” Autumn asks.

And she asks it with such surprise, that I immediately assume she’s joking me. Like I’ve beat her to work, here I am now sitting and waiting for her in her office, and she’s now playing along with me being here waiting for her, but that assumption, that deduction, that expectation, whatever the fuck that is, arises and exists for a millisecond, because what hits me then is how rigid she is, how defensive, how she’s poised her against the door jamb, as if ready to flee if needed. She even glances repeatedly over her shoulder, like she’s orienting where everybody else is in the office if she needs them.

“It’s me,” I say, although I say it as reflex, because already I’ve picked up this is about as fucked as it could possibly be.

Autumn holds out one hand back, stopping from Melody proceeding in.

I rise, and I know this is futile. “Autumn, it’s me!”

“How do you know my name?” she asks.

I don’t enter this charade. I might’ve, once, but I’ve experienced enough in these cycles that I know there’s always something gravely wrong, and here it is. Here it fucking is. Everything else has gone well – breaking up with Lana, the offer from Veracity, but here this is: the fuckeduppedness.

“Autumn,” Melody says, placing a hand on her shoulder, “are you okay?”

“What’re you talking about?” Autum says, stepping back, until she’s squeezed against the jamb, because inside of her head, she’s also realizing that maybe it’s not a case of an intruder being in her office, but somebody she knows but just doesn’t recognize.

“You know who it is,” Melody says.

I step around her desk, and approach, although I know it’s the worst thing I could do. “It’s me,” I say.

“Security!” Autum says. “Security!”

It’s not security, but the others who run in, pushing their way past Autumn and Melody; Max tries to assure Autumn it’s just me, and then Bell backs him up, and then Florence and Shia try to back them up, but each assurance compounds the issue, until Autumn is waving them away, waving them away desperately, while hyperventilating, clutching at her temple and backing into a desk in the main office.

By now, building security have arrived, two stocky men in navy uniforms, hands on tasers holstered on their belts as they frown, unable to assess what the exact danger is – I’ve never really spoken to security other than the typical, “Morning” or “Evening” and “Have a good weekend”, and there’s been a procession of security in my years at Gainsboro, but these two know me enough that they know I’m not threat, that I’m meant to be here, so they can’t assess that there is a threat anyway.

But now Autumn screams and screams and screams, this high, piercing shriek as she reconciles this is a problem within her, and yet it’s not something she understands, and that fear overwhelms her as she backs into a table, tries to sink onto a seat, but misses it, and falls onto the floor, clutching at her head as she keeps screaming and fixes on me in terror.