Hearing her voice, he looked up in surprise and then held his hand against the door so it wouldn’t shut, allowing Ellie to leap inside.
‘Thank you,’ she gasped, slipping in and standing in front of him. ‘I need to speak to you, quite urgently.’
He smiled and nodded. ‘What is it? Do you need help with something?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Is it SAS? Have you been reading about it?’
‘Er no.’
‘Okay, do you want me to stop by your desk later and ….?’
‘No! I need to talk to you now. There’s something I need to tell you,’
He blinked, looking a little worried even as he nodded his head. ‘What is it?’
She’d been rehearsing ever since Laura had delivered her early morning pep talk. In her head, she had practised how she would tell him with a little apologetic grin about the original mix up at The Flying Horse, how she had wanted to go to the football to watch Logan, not Jeff, how Carl was very definitely her ex and not her fiancé. She had it all sorted out in her head, now she needed to stop thinking about it and start talking.
Taking a deep breath she opened her mouth. ‘Logan …’
Someone cleared their throat, a small but definite clearing of the vocal cords and Ellie froze, her mouth still hanging open. Because it hadn’t been Logan. She was standing directly in front of him, staring right at him, and he had made no move whatsoever. Which meant only one thing and cautiously, Ellie shuffled fractionally sideways so she could look over her shoulder.
Mr Goodfellow stared back. And not just Mr Goodfellow but the CEO of StaySafe Insurance Group, the Director of Human Resources and the Administration Director, all standing behind her and to a man, waiting to hear what Ellie had to say.
‘I … er … I…’
Her cheeks were suffused with colour and she was praying very hard that the ground would simply open up and swallow her, immediately. Her eyes flew to the large red numbers above the lift doors. Never had they moved so slowly. They were still only on floor 6.
‘I … er… oh ….’
‘What is it Ellie?’ asked Logan gently. ‘What did you want to say?’
Perhaps the lift would fail. It could shudder to a creaking, groaning halt and then plummet to the basement as they all screamed in fright and were thrown around its confined interior. It would be infinitely preferable to this, decided Ellie.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, shaking her head violently. ‘It’s completely gone out of my head.’
‘But you said it was important,’ piped up Mr Goodfellow. ‘Can’t you remember what you wanted?’
‘Nope.’ Ellie shook her head and held her hands aloft to emphasise the point. ‘Gone. Completely gone.’
‘It was only a minute ago you jumped in the lift yelling his name. And now you can’t remember why?’
‘No. Nope. Sorry. No.’
They were all staring at her, even Logan who was looking almost as embarrassed as Ellie.
Tutting, Mr Goodfellow shook his head. ‘Well can you remember what it was about in general?’ he demanded. ‘What sort of thing are we talking? Statistics? Interpretations? Analytics?’ he barked.
Love, the unrequited sort, misunderstandings and mishaps, thought Ellie.
‘Sorry, it’s gone,’ she apologised. ‘Completely.’
The lift shuddered to a halt and the doors slid open. No-one moved, the CEO was looking at Ellie with an interest verging on the concerned and Mr Goodfellow was rolling his eyes in irritation.
‘I er …’ Logan waved his hand towards the door. ‘I …er…I need to get out.’
‘Right! Of course, you do,’ babbled Ellie, jumping out of his way. ‘Of course, please, don't let me hold you up.’
She pressed herself against the wall and let Logan exit the lift.
‘Are you ….?’
‘No! No, I’m sure it will come back to me later. I don’t think it was important actually, now I come to think of it. It was just a little question I wanted to ask, nothing urgent at all. Bye Logan, sorry for … well bye!’
The lift doors closed and silence reigned. In desperation, Ellie started humming, a cheerful little tune that was meant to put everyone at their ease and show how very relaxed she was about the incident. The lift shuddered to a halt once more and one by one they all stepped out, the CEO giving her a searching glance as he walked past.
‘Are you getting out Ellie?’ asked Mr Goodfellow.
‘No, no. I'm going up a few more floors.’ She wanted the doors to close and everyone to disappear.