The office phone rang and the three of them sat there not answering it. Andrew was about to bite but Keith’s frustration got the better of him first.
“Hello, Death Administration. Yep. Sure. Yep. Right.”
Andrew reached for his earphones and pulled up his Ella Fitzgerald playlist (he had only very recently discovered Spotify, much to Keith’s delight, who’d spent a month afterward calling Andrew “Granddad”). He felt like starting with a classic—something reassuring. He decided on “Summertime.” But he was only three bars in before he looked up to see Keith standing in front of him, belly flab poking through a gap between shirt buttons.
“Helloooo. Anybody there?”
Andrew removed his earphones.
“That was the coroner. We’ve got a fresh one. Well, not a fresh body obviously—they reckon he’d been dead a good few weeks. No obvious next of kin and the neighbors never spoke to him. Body’s been moved so they want a property inspection a-sap.”
“Right.”
Keith picked at a scab on his elbow. “Tomorrow all right for you?”
Andrew checked his diary.
“I can do first thing.”
“Blimey, you’re keen,” Keith said, waddling back to his desk. And you’re a slice of ham that’s been left out in the sun, Andrew thought. He went to put his earphones back in, but at that moment Cameron emerged from his office and clapped his hands together to get their attention.
“Team meeting, chaps,” he announced. “And yes, yes, don’t you worry—the current Mrs. Cameron has provided cake, as per. Shall we hit the break-out space?”
The three of them responded with the enthusiasm a chicken might if it were asked to wear a prosciutto bikini and run into a fox’s den. The “break-out space” consisted of a knee-high table flanked by two sofas that smelled unaccountably of sulfur. Cameron had floated the idea of adding beanbags, but this had been ignored, as were his suggestions of desk-swap Tuesdays, a negativity jar (“It’s a swear jar but for negativity!”) and a team park run. (“I’m busy,” Keith had yawned. “But I haven’t told you which day it’s on,” Cameron said, his smile faltering like a flame in a draft.) Undeterred by their complete lack of enthusiasm, Cameron’s most recent suggestion had been a suggestion box. This, too, had been ignored.
They gathered on the sofas and Cameron doled out cake and tea and tried to engage them with some banal small talk. Keith and Meredith had wedged themselves into the smaller of the two sofas. Meredith was laughing at something Keith had just whispered to her. Just as parents are able to recognize variants in the cries of their newborns, so Andrew had begun to understand what Meredith’s differing laughs denoted. In this particular instance, the high-pitched giggle indicated that someone was being cruelly mocked. Given that they kept very obviously sneaking glances in his direction, it seemed it was probably him.
“Rightio, lady and gents,” Cameron said. “First things first, don’t forget we’ve got a new starter tomorrow. Peggy Green. I know we’ve struggled since Dan and Bethany left, so it’s super-cool to have a new pair of hands.”
“As long as she doesn’t get ‘stressed’ like Bethany,” Meredith said.
“Or turn out to be a knob like Dan,” Keith muttered.
“Anyway,” Cameron said, “what I actually wanted to talk to you about today is my weekly . . . honk! Honk!”—he honked an imaginary horn—“. . . fun idea! Remember, guys, this is something you can all get involved with. Doesn’t matter how crazy your idea is. The only rule is that it has to be fun.”
Andrew shuddered.
“So,” Cameron continued. “My fun idea this week is, drumroll please . . . that every month we have a get-together at one of our houses and we do dinner. A sort of Come Dine with Me vibe but without any judgment. We’ll have a bit of food, I daresay a bit of vino, and it’ll give us a chance to do some real bonding away from the office, get to know each other a bit better, meet the family and all that. I’m mega-happy to kick things off. Whaddya say?”
Andrew hadn’t heard anything past “meet the family.”
“Is there not something else we can do?” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Oh,” Cameron said, instantly deflated. “I thought that was actually one of my better ideas.”
“No, no, it is!” Andrew said, overcompensating now. “It’s just . . . couldn’t we just go to a restaurant instead?”
“Toooo expensive,” Keith said, spraying cake crumbs everywhere.
“Well, what about something else? I don’t know—Laser Quest or something. Is that still a thing?”
“I’m vetoing Laser Quest on the grounds I’m not a twelve-year-old boy,” Meredith said. “I like the dinner party idea. I’m actually a bit of a secret Nigella in the kitchen.” She turned to Keith. “I bet you’d go crazy for my lamb shank.” Andrew felt bile stir in his stomach.
“Go on, Andrew,” Cameron said, confidence renewed by Meredith’s giving his idea her blessing. He attempted a matey arm punch that caused Andrew to spill tea down his leg. “It’ll be a laugh! There’s no pressure to cook up anything fancy. And I’d love to meet Diane and the kids, of course. So, whaddya say? You up for this, buddy?”
Andrew’s mind was racing. Surely there was something else he could suggest as an alternative? Life drawing. Badger baiting. Anything. The others were just looking at him now. He had to say something.
“Bloody hell, Andrew. You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Meredith said. “Your cooking can’t be that bad. Besides, I’m sure Diane’s a fabulous chef, among all her other talents, so she can help you out.”
“Hmmm,” Andrew murmured, tapping his fingertips together.
“She’s a lawyer, right?” Keith said. Andrew nodded. Maybe there’d be some catastrophic world event in the next few days, a lovely old nuclear war to make them all forget about this stupid idea.
“You’ve got that beautiful old town house Dulwich way, haven’t you?” Meredith said, practically leering. “Five-bed, isn’t it?”
“Four,” Andrew said. He hated it when she and Keith got like this. A tag team of mockery.
“Still,” Meredith said. “A lovely big four-bed, smart kids by all accounts, and Diane, your talented, breadwinning wife. What a dark old horse you are.”
Later, as Andrew prepared to leave the office, having been too distracted to do any meaningful work, Cameron appeared by his desk and dropped down onto his haunches. It felt like the sort of move he’d been taught in a course.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “I know you didn’t seem to fancy the dinner party idea, but just say you’ll have a think about it, okay, mate?”
Andrew needlessly shuffled some papers on his desk. “Oh, I mean . . . I don’t want to spoil things, it’s just . . . okay, I’ll think about it. But if we don’t do that I’m sure we can think of another, you know, fun idea.”
“That’s the spirit,” Cameron said, straightening up and addressing them all. “That goes for all of us, I hope. Come on, team—let’s get our bond on sooner rather than. Yeah?”
—
Andrew had recently splashed out on some noise-canceling earphones for his commute, so while he could see the man sitting opposite’s ugly sneeze and the toddler in the vestibule screaming at the utter injustice of being made to wear not one but two shoes, it simply appeared as a silent film incongruously soundtracked by Ella Fitzgerald’s soothing voice. It wasn’t long, however, before the conversation in the office started to repeat itself in his head, vying with Ella for his attention.
“Diane, your talented, breadwinning wife . . . smart kids . . . Beautiful old town house.” Keith’s smirk. Meredith’s leer. The conversation dogged him all the way to the station and continued as he went to buy food for that night’s dinner. That’s when he found himself standing in the corner shop by multi-bags of novelty potato chips named after celebrities and trying not to scream. After ten minutes of picking up and putting down the same four ready meals, feeling incapable of choosing one, he left empty-handed, walking out into the rain and heading home, his stomach rumbling.