Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely - Gail Honeyman Page 0,6

turning my face to the wall.

She left and I climbed down from the couch. I pulled my trousers on, consoled by the thought that the hair would surely grow back before our first intimate encounter. I didn’t tip Kayla on the way out.

When I returned to the office, my computer still wasn’t working. I sat down gingerly and called Raymond in IT again, but it went straight to his preposterous message. I decided to go upstairs and find him; from his voice mail greeting, he sounded like the kind of person who would ignore a ringing telephone and sit around doing nothing. Just as I pushed my chair back, a man approached my desk. He was barely taller than me, and was wearing green training shoes, ill-fitting denim trousers and a T-shirt showing a cartoon dog lying on top of its kennel. It was stretched taut against a burgeoning belly. He had pale, sandy hair, cut short in an attempt to hide the fact that it was thinning and receding, and patchy blond stubble. All of his visible skin, both face and body, was very pink. A word sprang to mind: porcine.

“Erm, Oliphant?” he said.

“Yes—Eleanor Oliphant—I am she,” I said.

He lurched toward my desk. “I’m Raymond, IT,” he said. I offered him my hand to shake, which eventually he did, rather tentatively. Yet more evidence of the lamentable decline in modern manners. I moved away and allowed him to sit at my desk.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked, staring at my screen. I told him. “Okey dokey,” he said, typing noisily. I picked up my Telegraph and told him I’d be in the staff room; there was little point in my standing around while he mended the computer.

The crossword setter today was “Elgar,” whose clues are always elegant and fair. I was tapping my teeth with the pen, pondering twelve down, when Raymond loped into the room, interrupting my train of thought. He looked over my shoulder.

“Crosswords, eh?” he said. “Never seen the point of them. Give me a good computer game any day. Call of Duty—”

I ignored his inane wittering. “Did you fix it?” I asked him.

“Yep,” he said, sounding pleased. “You had quite a nasty virus. I’ve cleaned up your hard drive and reset the firewall. You should run a full system scan once a week, ideally.” He must have noticed my uncomprehending expression. “Come on, I’ll show you.” We walked along the corridor. The floor squeaked beneath his hideous training shoes. He coughed.

“So . . . you, eh, have you worked here long, Eleanor?” he said.

“Yes,” I replied, increasing my pace.

He managed to keep up with me, but was slightly out of breath.

“Right,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I started here a few weeks ago. I was at Sandersons before. In town. Do you know them?”

“No,” I said.

We reached my desk and I sat down. He hovered, too close. He smelled of cooking and, faintly, of cigarettes. Unpleasant. He told me what to do and I followed his instructions, committing them to memory. By the time he had finished, I had reached the limit of my interest in technological matters for the day.

“Thank you for your assistance, Raymond,” I said, pointedly. Raymond saluted, and heaved himself to his feet. A man with a less military bearing was hard to imagine.

“No bother, Eleanor. See you around!”

I very much doubt it, I thought, opening up the spreadsheet which listed this month’s overdue accounts. He loped off with a strange bouncy walk, springing too hard on the balls of his feet. A lot of unattractive men seem to walk in such a manner, I’ve noticed. I’m sure training shoes don’t help.

The other night, the singer had worn beautiful leather brogues. He was tall, elegant and graceful. It was hard to believe that the singer and Raymond were members of the same species. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. There was throbbing pain and the beginnings of an itch downstairs. Perhaps I should have put my underpants back on.

The leaving do started around half past four, and I made sure to clap extravagantly at the end of Bob’s speech and say, “Hear, hear, bravo!” loudly, so that everyone noticed me; I left at 4:59 p.m. and walked to the shopping mall as fast as the chafing occasioned by my newly hairless epidermis allowed. I got there by quarter past, thank God. Bird in the hand is what I was thinking, given the importance of the task, so I