“No, thank you. I’ve just had a cup.”

Not the right move, she thought again, her physical discomfort now mirrored by a frown on her section head. No matter. She wanted to know why she was here.

He sat down opposite her, forcing his trousers to ride up his legs. The brown argyle socks failed miserably to protect Marie from the vision of his pale skin, exposed and decorated by dark, wiry hairs.

“I shall have one anyway. If you’ll excuse me.”

Not bothering to move, he pulled the door open slightly and lent his head around into the open office, asking his PA to bring him in a cup. With a brief smile as he looked forward to his liquid refreshment, Bob pushed the door closed and turned once more to face the anxious Marie.

“Well, thank you for coming.

“I expect you’re wondering why I asked you in to see me?”

There was not one glimmer of hope all afternoon, not one redeeming feature as she sat at her desk waiting for Bob to call her into his office. The repeated cups of tea failed to calm Marie’s already frazzled nerves, and by the time Bob sent a call asking for Marie’s immediate attention the only effect of the drinks was to send her bladder into a spasm, so much so that as she stood up she had to shuffle to the adjacent office and prayed that the meeting wouldn’t last so that she could get off to the loo. She knew that she should have gone earlier, but Bob was notorious for keeping waiting the staff he had asked to report to him, and then going ballistic if they should get sidelined into another task. Or head off for the loo. So Marie had waited, thinking that she’d have been in and out of the office by early afternoon, and in the meantime filling herself with tea as she got more and more worked up over why he wanted to see her.

“Ahh, Marie, good of you to come in. Are you well? You seem slightly flushed.”

If only, she thought.

“Do take a seat”. He pointed to one of the two white leather chairs, immaculate in their presentation of a leader.

“Thank you, Mr Charleston” Marie managed, sitting down with her legs crossed so tight that her circulation would probably stop.

“Tea?”

He looked at her but she ignored his adoration.

“Darling?”

“I’m not interested” she muttered, barely audible but to the cushion that she held in a tight grip as she sat, knees up in front of her, feet marking the white cloth of the sofa.

“Please. We need to talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to say. I can’t believe what you wrote. And after you’d told me..”

“What do you mean, what I wrote? I haven’t written anything.”

She said nothing, to start with, but then pulled the journal out from under the cushion and handed it to him.

“This.”

He took the book and looked at its battered cover. Certainly, it looked like it was his writing. Opening the pages – well, as far as he knew it was his. A record of a mundane life. Hardly anything to get worked up about.

“Look at your last entries”

He flicked the pages towards the middle of the book. He hadn’t bothered to keep the journal for a couple of years. Nothing to write about, at least nothing that he wanted to remind himself about. As he turned over the last couple of pages – this couldn’t be right – the dates were last week. It looked as though it was his writing but he’d not even seen the book since they’d moved into the flat together, and that was a year ago. But yet it seemed as though he’d written..

“Go on. Read it. Bastard.”

The final entry was written exactly one week earlier. As his eyes scanned the hastily written text, a sickness filled his stomach and his vision blurred.

“I.. I didn’t write this.

“Honestly.”

She tore the book from his hands and threw it to the floor. “Of course you didn’t. Someone broke and forged it for you. What the hell did you mean by that. Tell me.”

“I can’t”

“Try”

“But I didn’t write it”

“You make me sick”.

The journal had falled open on the final pages, and his eyes scanned once again the impossible words that were in front of him.