o you’re Lucy’s life.’ Nosy was sitting on the edge of Life’s new desk, which he’d assigned for himself further away from me. Louise had positioned herself there for the last few minutes and was heavily monitoring him.

‘Yep,’ he replied, tapping away on his laptop, not looking at her.

‘And that’s your job?’ she asked.

‘Yep.’

‘Are you anyone else’s life as well?’

‘Nope.’

‘So it’s just one person at a time.’

‘Yep.’

‘When she dies, do you die?’

He stopped tapping and raised his head slowly. He glared at her, she didn’t take the hint.

‘Do you?’ she asked again. ‘And I don’t mean, if you’re both in the same car accident. I mean, if she dies and you’re in a different place do you drop dead too?’

He began typing again.

She chewed her bubble gum, blew a small bubble that popped and stuck to her lips. She scraped it off with her false nails. ‘Do you have family?’

‘Nope.’

I stopped working and looked up at him.

‘Do you live alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Are you allowed to have one?’

‘Yes.’

‘I mean, are you able to have one? Like, as in, does your, you know—’

‘Yes,’ he interrupted her. ‘It works.’

‘But you don’t have one.’

He sighed. ‘A girlfriend or a—’

‘A girlfriend,’ she interrupted, horrified.

‘No.’

‘So you live alone.’

‘Yep.’

‘And your life revolves around Lucy.’

‘Yes.’

Suddenly I felt sad for him, guilty even. I was all he had and I wasn’t giving him much. He looked up suddenly and I quickly looked away and back at my paperwork.

‘Do you want to come to my wedding?’

‘Nope.’

Louise finally dragged herself away from his desk, to annoy somebody else, but as soon as she was gone, I heard the keys of his laptop stop tapping. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. He was staring at his screen, chewing the inside of his mouth, lost. I mistimed it and he caught my eye.

‘Did he call?’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think? Mr Shake ’n’ Vac.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘No.’

‘Did he text?’

‘No.’

‘Bastard,’ he said, seeming insulted.

‘I don’t mind,’ I said, amused by his reaction.

‘Lucy.’ He swung his chair around to face me. ‘Believe me, if I care, then you care. Look.’ He pointed at his chin.

‘Eeww.’

‘Is it big?’

He had a great big spot on his chin.

‘Massive,’ I said. ‘It looks sore. You got that because he hasn’t called?’

‘No, I got this because you did something to make him not call.’

‘Of course, it’s my fault.’

Graham had stopped working and was watching the exchange with amusement. Then Edna’s door opened and we all looked up. She stared at me, then at Twitch. ‘Quentin, could I see you, please?’

‘Of course.’ He stood up, pulled his brown trousers up past his belly as usual, pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose, smoothed down his tie and made his way to Edna. He didn’t look at any of us, which made it worse. As soon as the door closed I jumped up and gasped.

‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it,’ I said to the others.

‘What?’ Mary looked concerned.

‘She’s called him in.’ I made big eyes at her and for some unknown reason pointed repeatedly at the door.

‘Yes, so?’ Louise asked.

‘What? None of you think this is a big deal?’ I asked, astonished. Usually it was me who wasn’t concerned.

They shrugged and looked at each other.

‘What about you?’ I looked at my life.

He was examining his phone. ‘Do you remember if I gave him my number? Maybe he’ll call me. Or even a text. A text would be nice after last night.’

‘Quentin is going to get fired and it’s all my fault,’ I exclaimed.

They all jumped up from their chairs wanting to know more, apart from Life who rolled his eyes at my dramatics and then turned his attention back to his phone for a call from Don.

‘I can’t tell you.’ I paced up and down, wringing my hands. ‘We don’t have time for that. I have to think of a way to prevent him from getting fired.’ I looked at them all, they stared back at me with dull tired faces. If they could think of a way of stopping him from being fired they would have either used it already to help the others we lost or they were saving it for themselves. I paced some more, going through everything in my head.

I looked at Life, looking through his phone, searching for a text. ‘Maybe the signal is out,’ he said to himself, raising his phone in the air and moving it around. ‘I’m going to try out in the hall. He opened the door and left the room.

‘I know what I have to do,’ I said firmly.

‘What?’ Nosy asked but I couldn’t answer, I was already charging towards the office, my mind made up, the words forming in my mouth.

I pushed open the door and burst into the room. Edna and Quentin looked up.

‘Fire me,’ I said firmly, standing in the middle of her office, my legs apart ready to take on the world.

‘Excuse me?’ Edna asked.

‘Fire me,’ I repeated. ‘I do not deserve to be in this job.’ I looked at Quentin and hoped that he would understand this, ‘I am a two-bean salad. I didn’t deliver on what I promised, I don’t deserve to be here, I only truly appreciated being here in the past two weeks. Before that, I took this job and everybody in this building for granted.’ I studied Edna’s face and she just looked shocked. I needed her to be angry, I needed her to fire me so that Quentin could stay. I gulped. ‘I gave everybody nicknames, I’d rather not tell you what they are but if you want me to I will.’ I closed my eyes tight. ‘Yours was something to do with a fish.’ I opened them again, embarrassed. ‘I wasted a lot of time. I smoke indoors. I am a fire hazard, I could have killed us all.’

I heard Mary gasp behind me and realised that I hadn’t closed the door and they were all listening. I turned around. Life had come back into the office and was staring at me with an open mouth. I hoped that he was proud; I wasn’t lying, I was sacrificing myself, I was doing the right thing to protect an innocent man.

‘Up until last week, I didn’t even like this job,’ I continued, spurred on by the sight of Life. ‘I wanted to be fired. But I realise now that was unfair because all of these good people were being fired all around me and it should have been me. I’m sorry, Edna, and I’m sorry to all the people who were fired and I’m sorry to Louise and Graham and Mary and Quentin. Please don’t fire Quentin, he has done nothing wrong. He didn’t know about my Spanish lie until that morning, he honestly didn’t know. Please do not punish him for my mistakes. Fire me.’ I finished and bowed my head.

There was a silence. It’s fair to say it was a shocked silence.

Edna cleared her throat. ‘Lucy, I wasn’t firing Quentin.’

‘What?’ I quickly looked up and then at their table; there were papers strewn about, diagrams, instructions.

‘We were discussing the new heating-drawer manual. I was asking Quentin to translate the Spanish section.’

I made an oh shape with my mouth.

Quentin was sweating. ‘But Lucy, thank you very much for defending me.’ He twitched more than ever.

‘Eh … You’re welcome.’ I wasn’t sure what to do so I started to back away. ‘Shall I just …’ I threw my thumb back towards the open door.

‘I think,’ Edna raised her voice, ‘bearing in mind all that you said and all that has occurred in the past while that you should …’

She left it for me to answer. ‘Leave?’

She nodded. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

I thought about it. Felt so embarrassed it was beyond belief. I nodded and whispered, ‘Yes. Em, perhaps it is. I’ll go get my things.’ I halted. ‘Do you mean now?’

‘I think that’s a good idea,’ she said gently, clearly embarrassed for me but probably happy that I’d solved her problem.

‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘Em … Bye, Quentin. It was lovely working with you.’ I shuffled over and held out my hand. He took it, looking rather confused, looking from Edna to me. ‘Eh, thank you, Edna. I enjoyed working with you,’ I lied, having just revealed that I thought she was something close to a fish. ‘Maybe I can call you another time for a reference or something.’

She looked unsure but shook my hand anyway. ‘Good luck, Lucy.’

I turned then and finally faced everybody in the office. They were lined up on the walkway to the door. Life wasn’t in the office.

‘He’s outside,’ Mouse told me.

I shook everybody’s hands. Once again, for the third time in a fortnight, they weren’t sure whether to love me or loathe me. I packed away my things – I didn’t have much, I had never personalised my desk – and I awkwardly backed out of the room, waving and thanking them and apologising all at the same time. Then I closed the door, and took a deep breath.

Life was looking at me. Fuming is not the world. ‘What the hell was that about?’

‘Not here.’ I lowered my voice.

‘Yes, here. What the hell did you do that for? You were keeping your job, I can’t believe it but for some reason, you got away with it. And what did you do? Threw it all away. Marched in there and deliberately threw it all away. What is it with you? Why do you deliberately sabotage every good thing that happens in your life?’ He was shouting now and I wasn’t just embarrassed, I was also scared. ‘Do you want to be miserable?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘Would you just ignore everybody else for one moment and concentrate on me?’ he shouted. ‘For once!’

I looked at him immediately. He had one hundred per cent of my attention and everybody else’s.

‘I thought you’d be proud of me. I defended Twitch, even though it turned out I didn’t actually need to, but I did. I put other people first instead of myself, and now we have enough time to go to see Blake so that I can tell him I love him. Everything works out just … em, perfectly.’

He lowered his voice but the anger bubbled beneath his words as he battled to keep them under control. ‘The problem, Lucy, has never been your ability to put other people first, it has been your complete inability to put yourself first. But however much you try to dress this one up as a selfless act of kindness, it doesn’t cut it. You did not go in there to defend Quentin, you went in there to give up again and I wouldn’t put it past you to have concocted this entire thing just to get to Blake quicker than tomorrow.’

I can’t say it hadn’t passed through my mind.

‘But I love him,’ I said weakly.

‘You love him. Will your newly discovered unrequited love pay the bills?’

‘You sound like my father.’

‘No, I sound responsible. Know what that means?’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly, standing up for myself. ‘It means I live unhappily ever after. Whereas I am now taking back control of my life.’

‘Taking it back? Who had it?’

I opened my mouth and then closed it again.

‘Please don’t put the guilt trip on me. I’ll get another job.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know where,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to look around, I’m sure there’s something really great for me. Something that I’m passionate about.’

He groaned at the use of that word. ‘Lucy, you’re not passionate about anything.’

‘I am about Blake.’

‘Blake won’t pay the bills.’

‘He might if we get married and I have babies and I give up work,’ I said, joking of course. I think.

‘Lucy, you had a good job and you threw it away. Congratulations. I am so fed up with you, when are you going to grow up?’ He looked at me with such disappointment, then he walked away.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ I started to follow but he sped up. I ran after him and joined him in the elevator. There was somebody else in there so we didn’t speak. He looked straight ahead while I stared at him and willed him to look at me. The elevator doors opened and he darted outside at top speed. Finally we were outside in the chilly air.

‘Where are you going?’ I called. ‘We have to go to Wexford! Woo-hoo!’ I whooped. ‘To follow a dream. See? Life? I have dreams.’ I ran along behind him like a small dog.

‘No, Lucy, you have to go for dinner with your family.’

‘You mean, we have to go for dinner with my family.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m done.’

He rushed towards the bus stop. A bus swiftly came along and stopped and he got on and was lost from sight, leaving me standing alone in the car park.

When I got back to the apartment I tried to ignore the tousled bed while I packed my bag for Wexford. There was no point waiting till tomorrow to go and see Blake if I didn’t have a job any more; I officially no longer had anything here to hold me back, apart from dinner at my parents this evening … and a cat. I knocked on Claire’s door and waited, hearing the music to In the Night Garden in the background. Finally Claire answered. She looked exhausted.

‘Hi, Lucy.’

‘Are you okay?’

She nodded but her eyes filled.

‘Is it your mother?’

‘No.’ A tear ran down her cheek and she didn’t bother wiping it. I wasn’t sure if she even noticed it was there. ‘She’s actually getting better, it’s just Conor, he’s, you know, not well.’

‘Right.’

‘And I haven’t been getting much sleep. Anyway.’ She wiped her face roughly. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Oh, you know what, you have enough on your plate, it’s okay.’ I backed away.

‘No, please, I need a distraction, what is it?’

‘I have to go away for a few days and I was wondering if you would be able to take care of my cat? I don’t expect him to stay in your place or anything, just check on him every now and then and maybe bring him to the park when you’re going, and feed him?’

She was looking at me angrily.

‘What? What have I said?’

‘You don’t have a cat,’ she said, her eyes dark.

‘Oh! I forgot you didn’t know.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I’ve had him for years but if anyone finds out I’ll be evicted and it just doesn’t seem worth it,’ I joked then turned serious. ‘You don’t mind that I have a cat, do you?’

‘I’ve never seen him.’

‘He’s right behind me.’

‘No, he’s not. Lucy, whatever you’re doing, it’s not funny.’

‘I’m not doing anything. What are you talking about?’

‘Were you talking to Nigel?’

‘Nigel? Who’s Nigel? Should I have been?’

‘My husband,’ she said angrily.

‘No! I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. What …’ But I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence because the door slammed in my face. ‘What the …?’ When I turned around to interrogate Mr Pan on what on earth he’d done to poor Claire, I finally understood. Mr Pan wasn’t there, he’d run off down the corridor leaving her to think I was asking her to mind an invisible cat. Feeling cruel, even though that hadn’t been my intention, I ran after him and found him, right at the feet of a grumpy neighbour who never spoke to me.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ I said in shock. ‘Is that a stray cat? How on earth did he get in here? Or maybe it’s a she? Who’s to know? Let me just get rid of him for you.’ I scooped Mr Pan up in my arms and hurried back to my apartment, mumbling, ‘Dirty, yucky, horrible stray cat,’ for anyone and everyone to hear.