Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield Page B

the computer’s screwed and silly cows like you are asking for the moon? You can fuck off. Your bloody files are in here somewhere. Either find them your bloody self or come back later.’ She kicked one of the heaps with a booted foot and the files lurched sideways, but Rose had not finished. There was an impulse to malice she could not resist.
    â€˜And while I’m at it, don’t you come this holier-than-thou bit with me ever again. You and Mr Cotton, both with an afternoon off each? Good, isn’t it? What’s it to be then, your place or his?’
    Helen wanted to slap her: Rose was waiting to be slapped, but something in the insinuation raised an inhibiting twinge of guilt. The files toppled in slow motion as Rose strode from the room. The other clerks watched from their tables and desks in a deathly silence. Helen breathed in and out slowly. She stared at the window where she had seen Rose’s reflection two weeks before and saw only her own, paler and older face. With the others as an audience, she knelt on the floor and began to go through the papers, looking for those which bore her name, seething but still using her eyes. For the moment she hated Rose to the same degree the girl seemed to despise her in return. Perhaps that was why none of the clerks helped her, but let her grub around on the floor, humiliated. If they’d offered, she would have refused.
    Redwood came into the room, as uncertainly as he always did for fear the clerks might bite him or reveal his failure to remember most of their names.
    â€˜Who was shouting in here? I won’t have it … Oh! Helen, what are you doing?’ She looked up from the floor with a fiendish grin.
    â€˜Looking for a contact lens, sir.’ Sir was inconsistent in his observations, but there were some details he never forgot.
    â€˜I didn’t think you wore lenses.’
    â€˜I do now. Was there anything in particular you wanted?’
    â€˜That shouting …’
    â€˜It was me.’ He beckoned her out of the room with evident disgust, poised for a reprimand. From beyond the door, Helen heard the buzz of voices no longer suppressed, cutting through her back like an icy wind.
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    I n the lavatory, Rose Darvey sat and gulped. Trained as she was in several aspects of self-control, she had long since mastered the technique of crying while remaining silent. You held your nose, so that the effort of breathing through the mouth somehow suspended the rising of the noisier sobs. Putting her hands over her ears also encouraged the silence which had always seemed so imperative when she cried. She sat with the door locked, trying one method after the next, while large tears ran down her face and made a mess of the make-up so carefully applied in the spotlight over her bedroom mirror. She couldn’t make shadows in here: it required a light without a shade. She had bitten her fingernails down to sore stumps, another reason for habitually playing with her hands. Granny had placed some bitter solution over them once to make her stop it: it had worked temporarily. Granny, Granny, help me now, please help me now, where are you? The vision of Granny somehow increased the size of the hairball in her chest: the effort to make no sound felt like a thistle lodged in her throat. Granny, she thought. Got to try and see Granny. Granny could help. See Granny and do something about this bloody baby, before I go mad. Can’t tell Michael, just can’t. He’ll never love me.
    â€˜Rose?’ A timid voice. ‘Rose. You all right Rose?’ A plaintive whine from one of the others sent to enquire. Rose was her colleagues’ heroine; she made them laugh, she knew more than any of them and was afraid of no-one. ‘Rose, come out of there, will you? Only we’re worried about you. Come out, please.’
    The plea in the voice made her freeze for a moment. Come on out, darling, and no harm will ever befall you again. Rose