I slept restlessly and when I finally got up before 6, I was tired and grumpy. I went to the gym again before work, but found it difficult to concentrate. I had kept myself awake with an anxiety and uncertain dreams. By the time I was on the treadmill I had convinced myself that I was being ridiculous. Not only that, I was embarrassed with myself. What was the matter with me? I was being unreasonable and suspicious. So what if my father had come to some arrangement with my sister. She could have lent him money for anything - maybe she got a better interest rate, I had no entitlement to any money, and my parents had always helped out whenever they could, they had lent me money for my car, I had paid them back quickly, now I was earning and they had been retired, they needed all their money to live on and were always promising us the house when they died- although I had always thought of that as very far off. And both of them somehow. It was trivial. It didn't need discussion. I needed to get a grip.
At lunchtime, the office was full of people. There were interviews going on and a housing association had sent some representatives to discuss working with us. Kate was bustling around the office and asked if I would talk to the housing association people. Someone had bought lunch in and several of us were hovering around the sandwiches. Katja and Ed were introduced as my guests and I led them to a quieter corner, I didn't have an office, just a desk, and the comfy chairs were being used by interview candidates.
Katja was in her twenties, glamorous and serious, she didn't smile at anything, I told myself that her strong Polish accent meant that she hadn't understood all my witty comments, but her English was clearly too good for that. She had all the figures at her fingertips and was very convincing. Ed, in his thirties smiled gently and mostly let her talk. He was clean shaven, and a little too groomed for my taste, generically good looking in the sort of style your mother would approve of. (Not my mother, I thought.) When Katja walked back to get a coffee - I hadn't seen her eat - Ed smiled at me confidentially and became a bit more chatty.
"We're a good charity." he said. "Do you like working here? Do you work with lots like us?"
"Er...yes." I replied, slightly wrong-footed. "Mostly housing associations, and the council, not all vulnerable people, but mostly adults. And it's good, nice place to work. What about you?"
"I like it." he said. "Always a bit uncertain, you know. Do you live locally?"
"Yes, other side of town." I said. I wasn't good at these conversations at the best of times, and it was an unfamiliar feeling for me, but I thought he might be flirting a little bit. Or he was just being charming. I wasn't sure I liked it. He was younger than me, I felt quite confident with men my own age or older, but I was worried he might be mocking me.
"I haven't been here long." he said and turned to face me a little more directly. "I lived in London for a bit, but it's so expensive."
"Um.." I didn't want to encourage him too much, it wasn't quite my kind of conversation, but he seemed to be the sort of man who didn't need too much encouragement to talk.
"My parents used to live up here, so I wasn't unfamiliar with it. It's nice though, I didn't think there'd be so many...y'know... cases like this. Benefits and stuff."
"Yes, no." I felt like he hadn't yet been in our world for long enough yet, a world where politically correct terms and euphemisms came easily alongside inappropriate jokes. Perhaps he was only used to mixing with people from a similar middle class background to his. He perhaps hadn't known life was like this in a Midlands market town. He thought life was in a city. I smiled at him a little more kindly than I intended, I meant to be maternal and pitying, he mistook it for encouraging. But I was grateful, he had taken my mind off my immediate issues and made me more aware of the wider world again.
"I don't have a card yet." he said. "Have this one, then you can get hold of me if you need to. Maybe you should show me the sights." He laughed at his own joke, and wrote his number on the back of a card with Katja's name on. "Genuinely." He held my hand with both of his as he gave me the card. "Give me a call. I'd love to see you again."
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