She looked up with a smile as I teetered over her now and held up her hand to steady me. ‘Watch it, Meg! Hey, are you okay?’

I tried to smile as Debbie gazed at me in concern. I probably looked like I had just been in a wrestling ring with a freight train. ‘I’m good, Deb. Just one of those days. I’m going to go someplace quiet and work on my presentation, okay? Catch you later.’

I sped away before Debbie could say anything and escaped to the terrace where the gust of cool wind that whipped on to my face immediately made me feel better. I slouched in a corner and buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t stay here any more. I had to get away. There was no place here for me any more, that much was clear. As far as my tryst with GF was concerned, it was the end of an era.

Twelve

I looked through bleary eyes at Sammy’s worried face and tried to smile. It turned out more like a grimace and Sammy’s expression switched from worry to panic. ‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ she asked immediately, coming to sit beside me and putting her arms around me.

‘I’m fine, Sammy. Strangely enough, I’m not even feeling anything. I think it’s just the exhaustion of the last couple of weeks.’

I saw Sammy and Rishi exchange worried glances as I said that. Great, now I probably had them thinking I was psychotic or something.

‘I’ll be fine, guys—relax,’ I said with forced cheerfulness ‘Honestly, it’s just the tiredness, so I think I’m going to crash now. Tau, don’t you think you should be heading back too? You’re presenting at the conference tomorrow, right?’

I looked across the table at Vijay and Debbie whose faces were mirroring Sammy’s worried expression. When I hadn’t returned to my desk for over an hour after bumping into Debbie that morning, she had figured something was wrong and gone looking for me. She and Vijay had taken me out for coffee to the Beans Coffee Hut where I’d narrated the entire sequence of events that had transpired in Shiv’s office. Vijay had tried very hard to convince me to go back and speak with Shiv and give him my version of what had really happened, but I had refused point blank. I couldn’t bring myself to even go back to my workstation, let alone go and talk to Shiv. There was no way I was going back there to justify my behaviour and beg for another chance.

I had left for home soon after, straight from the coffee shop, without bothering to return to office. There really was no need for me to stay—the only work I had planned that day involved my presentation for the conference and I wasn’t required to do that any more. Sammy had taken one look at me as I walked through the door and instantly bundled me off to bed with some hot chocolate. Even the Momster, who normally reserved the half-hour after my return from work every day for laments related to my marital status, had remained uncharacteristically quiet. I had fallen asleep as soon as I lay down on my bed—a heavy, dreamless sleep from which I had awoken feeling groggy and disoriented. Sammy had woken me up for dinner and I’d emerged from my room to find Debbie waiting for me in the living room. Vijay had turned up soon after with my stuff from office, and I had just finished recounting the events of that morning for the second time as everyone gathered around the dining table.