‘Sorry,’ he slurred. He reeked. 40 per cent proof in his veins instead of blood. ‘To say sorry, sorry for last night.’
‘Sorry? Look at you now.’
‘Got a taxi,’ he said, ‘not the car, no car.’ As though that made everything all right.
‘You come here, you barge into my office in front of my colleagues, you can’t even see straight, you stink like a brewery and you call this some sort of apology.’
‘Sorry,’ he said again.
‘You can’t do this, Dave. You are not part of my life any more.’
‘Just friends.’
‘No.’ She shook her head irritably. ‘Not friends. Not even that. Not anything. You left me, Dave. It’s over. It’s dead and buried. I’ve moved on and you need to do the same. And this, getting pissed out of your head, have you any idea what people think? Word gets round – and it will – you’ll be suspended.’
‘OK, OK.’ He waved his hands to shut her up. ‘You are out of control,’ she said, ‘sort it.’ She felt her temper rising, warmth in her face.
‘You don’t understand-’
‘You’ve got that right. And you need to understand…’ she said hotly, ‘… you need to understand that you are making a complete prick of yourself. You could lose everything.’
‘I already have,’ he said.
‘Oh, spare me the bloody melodrama.’
She began to clear up the stuff scattered over the floor, papers and pens and Post-it notes. Kevin’s in-tray, his Man United trinkets. Arranged them roughly on the desk.
‘Get up,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive you home.’ She didn’t want to say ‘to your mother’s’, didn’t want to rub it in.
‘I can get a cab,’ he offered.
‘No.’ She didn’t trust him not to just head off to some pub or off-licence. At least if he got into the house he might sleep it off. God knows how his mother was coping with it. But that wasn’t Gill’s concern.
Dave went to stand up, failed, tried again and made it.
There was a dark patch round his crotch. Oh God, he’d pissed himself. He wasn’t even aware he’d done it. She felt her stomach drop, a moment’s sadness. This had gone way beyond the occasional bender. He had been a proud man, a vain man who thought he was cleverer than he really was. Sometimes a stupid, weak man, particularly where women were concerned. Now he was a wreck. How could he not see that, sense her disgust, want to stop it?
‘You come here again,’ she said, ‘off your face and I will have you escorted from the building and inform professional standards.’