All of a sudden the phone rings. Rudely dragged back to the present I pick up the receiver and answer tersely. It's Madeleine asking if she can come over with a bottle of wine to talk about something. Normally I'd be glad but right now I don't want to be hauled back to reality. Madeleine senses it and says: ‘Hey, Corinne, what's the matter? Have you got someone there? Am I interrupting?’ She makes me feel somewhat ashamed of my attitude and I tell her: ‘don't be silly, of course you can come round. I've got something to tell you too.’
A few minutes later there's a knock at the door and Madeleine slips in, heading straight through to the living room with a big smile on her face and a bottle of red wine under her arm. When she asks why I sound so distracted I go and fetch the first pages I've written and read them aloud to her. ‘It's good,’ she says, ‘really good,’ genuinely fascinated. ‘But when I think how long it's going to take you to write it all down I think we're not going to be able to meet up for so long in the evenings. But I can't wait to see how it turns out.’
Over the next couple of months things at work take a radical turn for the worse, to the extent that the ‘old’ boss resigns leaving lots of people, including me, uncertain about their futures. There's a whole different atmosphere about the place before long. One day I come in for a meeting to find the receptionist in tears. Another day I walk in on a real shouting match. There aren't as many orders coming in as there used to be and some of my customers start complaining for the first time. I keep hoping that things will pick up again, but what matters more to me now is getting back to my writing each evening, which has become a virtual addiction.
Towards the end of August I get an invitation through the post to a school reunion in October. I look forward to it hugely, wondering what's become of all my old school friends, none of whom I've seen since we all left. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing my old friend Therese.
There are already lots of people there when I arrive and I'm almost embarrassed to find that at first I hardly recognize anyone. Dressed up in my elegant black leather suit and with my bright red hair I feel exaggeratedly conspicuous. Everybody else seems to be a lot more understated. After an aperitif, we all go up to the restaurant for dinner. The table is shaped like a horseshoe so that all twenty or so people present can see each other properly. Only now do I notice a new arrival. That's Markus, a boy I remember from school who had almost the same name as my former boyfriend! Sitting next to one of our former teachers. He's the life and soul of the party cheering everybody up with his witty comments and big beaming smile, just like back at school. He's grown up to be an attractive man. Of course, I liked him way back in the third year. On the other hand, he thought I was too tall and skinny. I found out later that's why he never replied to my crazy little notes.
During the meal he keeps making provocative comments about my appearance to the teacher next to him and at one stage calls out, loud enough for all to hear: ‘Hey Corinne, if you'd looked like that years ago I'd have fancied you.’ I shoot back, ‘Well it's your own fault you didn't take the chance twenty-five years ago, when you still had it.’ A lot of people laugh at this although one or two don't get the joke.
Unfortunately my old friend Therese doesn't turn up and a few others I'd like to have seen don't show either. After dinner we end up in little groups talking to one another and laughing and drinking. Markus is the focal point for a lot of the women, unsurprisingly, as he's good looking and talks intelligently and amusingly. He runs an engineering firm now, and is married with two daughters. A proper ideal husband, I think to myself, slightly jealous of the woman who's found a man like him to share her life with. At that moment I made up my mind that my next partner would be as self-confident, good-looking and good-good-humoredas Markus. If he had said he wasn't married I would have told him I didn't believe it. But that's how people lose sight of one another. Long after the reunion night I keep talking to my girlfriends about it and meeting Markus like that.
Napirai has taken to the kindergarten and her new childminder like a duck to water. She's a lively, self-sufficient little girl and yet still very affectionate. Every night when I pick her up to take her home she throws her long arms and legs around me. She's the sunshine of my life, the only thing that matters.’
Slowly, however, I'm beginning to get fed up with work. Nothing gets done properly any more, and there's a high staff turnover. Some people have been sacked but others have just left because they can't take the atmosphere any more. I've started thinking myself about what I should do. I've been with this firm three years now and built up a good client base. I earn enough to maintain a decent standard of living and take my daughter on holiday every year.
I return to work after the Christmas holidays with a funny feeling in my stomach and an absolute lack of enthusiasm. As ever at the beginning of the new year, I drive in to the office to wish everyone a happy new year and talk over coming plans. But this time the minute I enter the building I can sense there's something wrong. The boss calls all the sales representatives to a meeting and tells them the company's in trouble, that there are going to have to be compulsory redundancies and that includes the whole of the sales force.
I'm left sitting there as if someone had slapped me round the face. This man's only been in the job for a year and already he's ruined the firm and we've all lost our jobs. I ask him how he thinks he's going to get new contracts if he doesn't have any sales representatives. Quite coolly he says he's going to deal with the big clients himself, while the smaller ones are going to have to accept the situation and come in themselves to place their orders. He makes it sound so easy. I'm quite shocked!
All the same I'm calm enough to negotiate my redundancy terms with a clear head. I suggest that the firm continues to pay my wages for the three-month notice period and I'll continue to turn up to see customers I've already arranged to meet but won't try to attract any new customers, as there's nothing worse than trying to sell something with no enthusiasm. By the end of our discussion we're both glad enough to be parting on good terms.
Nonetheless I drive home still feeling numb. I can hardly believe how quickly the firm went belly-up. Right now I don't know if I've got the guts or enthusiasm to start all over again. I feel I really need to talk it all over with someone and so decide to call by on my friend Anneliese. She's the one who's been good enough to type up my handwritten manuscript on her computer and is always impatient to get the next installment. But even after seeing her I find myself out of sorts and not knowing what to do next, so I drive over to my mother's. It's her turn to hear my sorry tale. She looks worried for me, but tries to cheer me up by saying: ‘Up until now you've been so lucky. You'll do it again. You'll soon find a new job. don't let it get you down!’
But for the first time in my life I no longer feel so sure about that and I start to feel that so far every time I build something up I get it taken away from me. Over the next few days I take work as it comes and I'm glad when a prearranged meeting falls through. I drop in to see one or two customers to say goodbye personally. A lot of them feel very let down and tell me that without me coming round to see them they won't place any more orders with the company. In the meantime, however, I start thinking about finding a new job and start studying the situations vacant adverts, but there's nothing even remotely suitable.