Page 13 of In the Same Boat

‘I thought the pain in my arse had gone…’

‘Yeah, well, he’ll be back,’ I reply. ‘The water Terminator. He Zoom’d into the last meeting. He was banging on about drainage capacity not matching projections – my fault, obviously. Even though it’s his fault – if he’s even right about it being wrong.’

‘Which… it’s Jon… so he probably isn’t.’

I sigh. I can always count on my work husband to bitch with me.

My PC has gone to sleep while I was chatting. I wiggle the mouse violently to wake it up. It freezes for a moment – like it can’t quite get itself going today either.

Bloody hell – I have twelve new emails. Emails to reply to ahead of my next meeting – that will probably result in more emails, more meetings. Nothing that actually feels productive.

I take a sip of my (now stone-cold) coffee and start working through them. Annoyingly, I’m good at it, sorting through the messages, prioritising tasks, telling people what they need to hear. I like to break things down into manageable steps, so that I can get things done as promptly as possible. Of course, more things crop up almost right away.

Next, Tom and I run through the project updates. Numbers. Timelines. As an anxious thinker, I’m especially good at identifying all of the risks and coming up with ways to manage them. Yes, I’ve basically monetised the panic attack. Yes, you should be impressed.

‘We’ll need to reassess the drainage modelling,’ I tell him. ‘The current projections aren’t aligning with the on-site data.’

‘How far off are we?’ he asks.

‘Enough that we can’t ignore it,’ I say with a sigh.

‘Are you okay, Sammie?’ he asks, his tone making it obvious that he’s changing the subject from work.

‘Yeah… I’m fine…’

Even I think I sound like I want to tell him.

‘Oh, shit, it was your blind date last night,’ he says as he realises. ‘How did it go?’

Rebecca, one of the girls in the office, set me up with Danny. Her boyfriend is Danny’s PT – at least he was, before Rebecca set him up with me. I sent him a message this morning, thanking him for a lovely evening. I know, it hasn’t been long, so it’s not that weird that he hasn’t replied – except he has read the message. There’s no clearer sign than being left on read, is there?

‘It was… good,’ I say.

‘Right, well, my missus says I’m not good at reading between the lines, but I got that loud and clear,’ he replies. ‘What happened?’

‘It was all going so well,’ I begin. ‘I cooked, the house looked great, he seemed really nice, funny, interested in me…’

‘That sounds positive…’

‘And then my mum walked in.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yep – ah. She told me she would be out, so I thought it would be safe. Rebecca had bullshitted something about me being an amazing cook, so I had to actually make a decent dinner materialise, and I did. I couldn’t believe I’d pulled it off. But then Mum walked in, and it became immediately obvious that we lived together, and I could see it all over his face. He didn’t want to get involved.’

‘Woman loves mum enough to let her live with her – it’s not exactly a shocking headline,’ he points out.

‘But it’s not a great line to open a Matcher profile with either, is it?’

‘Yeah, fair,’ he replies. ‘How long is she staying now?’

I shrug.

‘She sold her house,’ I say. ‘So… undefined. She isn’t really making any moves to find anywhere. And what kind of monster would I be, if I pushed her?’

‘But if it’s having an impact on your life…’

‘It’s fine,’ I insist. ‘She needed to downsize, since she lost Tony.’