Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely - Gail Honeyman Page 0,125

closer into the embrace, in fact, because, I was forced to admit, at that particular time and in those particular circumstances, and feeling the way I did, the sensation of being held by him was nothing short of miraculous. I said nothing, and, very slowly, my arms crept up, tentative as winter sunlight, so that they were placed around his waist, the better to bury myself into the embrace. My face rested against his chest. He said nothing either, intuiting, perhaps, that what I needed most at that moment was that which he was already providing and precisely nothing more.

We stood this way for some moments, and then I stepped back and rearranged my hair, wiped my eyes. I looked at my watch. “You’re ten minutes late for work, Raymond,” I said.

He laughed. “So are you!” He stepped forward again, peered closely at me. I stared back at him, rather like the fox had done earlier.

He nodded. “Come on,” he said, holding out his arm, “we’re both late now. Let’s go in. I don’t know about you, but I could really do with a cup of tea, eh?”

I linked my arm through his and he walked me inside, all the way to the door of the accounts office. I disengaged from him there as quickly as I could, anxious that someone might see us together like this. He bent down and put his face close to mine, speaking in rather a paternal manner (at least, I assume that’s what it was—fathers are hardly my area of expertise, after all).

“Now then,” he said, “here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to walk in there, hang up your coat, put the kettle on and get started. No one’s going to make a fuss, and there won’t be any drama—it’ll be like you’ve never been away.”

He nodded once, as if to reinforce his point.

“But what if—”

He spoke over me. “Honestly, Eleanor—trust me. It’s going to be absolutely fine. You’ve been unwell, you took some time off to get better and now here you are, back in the fray. You’re great at your job, and they’ll be over the moon to have you back. End of,” he said, earnest, sincere. Kind.

I did actually feel better after he said this—quite a bit better.

“Thank you, Raymond,” I said quietly.

He punched me on the arm—gently, not a real punch—and smiled.

“We’re so late!” he said, eyes wide in faux horror. “Meet you for lunch at one?”

I nodded.

“Go on then, get in there, give ’em hell!” he said, smiling, and then he was off, lumbering upstairs like a circus elephant learning a new trick. I cleared my throat, smoothed down my skirt and opened the door.

First things first: before I went to my desk and faced everyone, I had to have the dreaded back-to-work interview. I’d never had one before, but I’d heard the others muttering about them in the past. Apparently, HR forced you to have a meeting with your boss if you’d been off for more than a couple of days, ostensibly to make sure you were fully recovered and fit for work, and to see if any adjustments needed to be made to ensure you stayed well. In reality, however, the popular view tended toward this process having been designed to intimidate, to discourage absence and to check whether you’d been—what was the word?—ah yes, skiving. Those people didn’t have Bob as a boss, however. Only the section managers reported to Bob. I was one of them now, the Praetorian Guard, the elect. Bob was an odd kind of emperor, though.

He stood up and kissed me on the cheek, and while he hugged me, his little potbelly pressed against me and made me want to laugh. He patted my back a few times. The whole thing was excruciatingly embarrassing, but really, really nice.

He made me a cup of tea and fussed around with biscuits, making sure I was comfortable.

“Now then, this interview. It’s nothing to worry about, Eleanor, a formality—HR gives me a hard time if I don’t do these things, you know what it’s like.” He made a face. “We just need to ticky boxy” (what?) “and sign the form, and then I’ll let you get back to it.”

He was slurping from a mug of coffee and had spilled some down his shirtfront. Bob wore thin shirts, a vest visible beneath, which added to the overall impression of an overgrown schoolboy. We went through a list of insultingly banal prescribed questions from a form. It