Truly Madly Guilty

'Let's hope not,' said Erika. She ran a finger along her forehead. Was that sweat or rain?

She'd calmed down as she waited in the rain outside the library for the cab. Her breathing was steady again, but her stomach still rocked and roiled, and she felt exhausted, depleted, as if she'd run a marathon.

She took out her phone and texted Clementine: Sorry, had to rush off, problem at work, you were fantastic, talk later. Ex

She changed 'fantastic' to 'great'. Fantastic was over the top. Also inaccurate. She pressed 'send'.

It had been an error of judgement to take precious time out of her working day to come and listen to Clementine's talk. She'd only gone to be supportive, and because she wanted to get her own feelings about what had happened filed away in an orderly fashion. It was as though her memory of that afternoon was a strip of old-fashioned film and someone had taken a pair of scissors and removed certain frames. They weren't even whole frames. They were slivers. Thin slivers of time. She just wanted to fill in those slivers, without admitting to anyone, 'I don't quite remember it all.'

An image came to her of her own face reflected in her bathroom mirror, her hands shaking violently as she tried to break that little yellow pill in half with her thumbnail. She suspected the gaps in her memory were related to the tablet she'd taken that afternoon. But it was a prescription pill. It wasn't like she'd popped an Ecstasy tablet before going to a barbeque.

She remembered feeling odd, a little detached, before they went next door to the barbeque, but that still didn't account for the gaps. Too much to drink? Yes. Too much to drink. Face the facts, Erika. You were affected by alcohol. You were 'drunk'. Erika couldn't quite believe that word could apply to her but it seemed to be the case. She had been unequivocally drunk for the first time in her life. So, maybe the gaps were alcoholic blackouts? Like Oliver's mum and dad. 'They can't remember whole decades of their life,' Oliver said once in front of his parents, and they'd both laughed delightedly and raised their glasses even though Oliver wasn't smiling.

'So what do you do for a quid, if you don't mind me asking?' said the cabbie.

'I'm an accountant,' said Erika.

'Are you now?' said the cabbie with far too much interest. 'What a coincidence, because I was just thinking -'

Erika's phone rang and she startled, as she did without fail whenever her phone rang. ('It's a phone, Erika,' Oliver kept telling her. 'That's what it's meant to do.') She could see it was her mother, the very last person in the world she wanted to talk to right now, but the cab driver was shifting in his seat, his eyes on her instead of the road, virtually licking his lips in anticipation of all the free tax advice he was about to get. Cab drivers knew a little bit about everything. He'd want to tell her about an amazing loophole he'd heard about from one of his regular customers. Erika wasn't that kind of accountant. 'Loophole' wasn't a word she appreciated. Maybe her mother was the lesser of two evils.

'Hello, Mum.'

'Well, hello! I didn't expect you to answer!' Her mother sounded both nervous and defiant, which didn't bode well at all.

'I was all prepared to leave a voicemail message!' said Sylvia accusingly.

'Sorry I answered,' said Erika. She was sorry.

'Obviously you don't need to be sorry, I just need to recalibrate. Tell you what, why don't you just listen while I pretend to leave you the message I had all prepared?'

'Go ahead,' said Erika. She looked out at the rainy street where a woman battled with an umbrella that wanted to turn itself inside out. Erika watched as the woman suddenly, marvellously, lost her temper and jammed the umbrella into a rubbish bin without losing stride and continued walking in the rain. Good on you, thought Erika, exhilarated by this little tableau. Just throw it out. Throw the damned thing out.

Her mother's voice got louder in her ear as if she'd repositioned her phone. 'I was going to start like this: Erika, darling, I was going to say, Erika darling, I know you can't talk right now because you're at work, which is such a pity, being stuck in an office on this beautiful day, not that it is a beautiful day, I must admit, it's actually a terrible day, a horrendous day, but normally at this time of year we have such glorious days, and whenever I wake up and have a peek outside at the blue sky, I think, oh dear, oh what a pity, poor, poor old Erika, stuck in her office on this beautiful day!, that's what I think, but that's the price you pay for corporate success! If only you'd been a park ranger or some other outdoorsy job. I wasn't actually going to say the park ranger part, that just came to me then, and actually I know why it came to me, because Sally's son has just left school and he's going to be a park ranger, and when she was telling me, I just thought to myself, you know, what a marvellous job, what a clever idea, instead of being trapped in a little cubicle like you are.'

'I'm not trapped in a cubicle,' sighed Erika. Her office had harbour views and fresh flowers bought each Monday morning by her secretary. She loved her office. She loved her job.

'It was Sally's idea, you know. For her son to be a park ranger. So clever of her. She's not conventional, Sally, she thinks outside the box.'

'Sally?' said Erika.

'Sally! My new hairdresser!' said her mother impatiently, as if Sally had been in her life for years, not a couple of months. As if Sally were going to be a lifelong friend. Ha. Sally would go the way of all the other wonderful strangers in her mother's life.

'So what else was your message going to say?' said Erika.

'Let's see now ... then I was going to say, sort of casually, as if I'd only just thought of it: Oh, listen darling, by the way!'

Erika laughed. Her mother could always charm her, even at the worst times. Just when Erika thought she was done, that was it, she could take no more, her mother charmed her back into loving her.

Her mother laughed too, but it sounded hectic and high-pitched. 'I was going to say: Listen, darling, I was wondering if you and Oliver would like to come to lunch at my place on Sunday?'

'No,' said Erika. 'No.'

She breathed in like she was breathing in through a straw. Her lips felt wonky. 'No, thank you. We'll be at your place on the fifteenth. That's when we'll come, Mum. No other time. That's the deal.'

'But darling, I think you'd be so proud of me because -'

'No,' said Erika. 'I'll meet you anywhere else. We can go out to lunch this Sunday. To a nice restaurant. Or you can come to our place. Oliver and I don't have anything on. We can go anywhere else but we are not coming to your house.' She paused and said it again, louder and more clearly, as if she were speaking to someone without a good grasp of English. 'We are not coming to your house.'