CAMILLA: Okay, thanks. We’re waiting for the Dr, can we chat later?
ME: Of course. Send her my love and make sure you and your mum look after yourselves too. Xx
CAMILLA: Will do. Xx
“I feel so bad.” I dropped my forehead onto my arm, groaning.
“Well, to be fair, she’s put you in a pretty dreadful situation.”
I peered up at her.
“She waited until the very last minute to dump this on you and apparently didn’t do her due diligence in making sure everyone knew you aren’t her. Because of that, you’re in an almost impossible situation where if something is wrong you don’t know about it because you’ve never spoken to anyone.”
I blew out a long breath and reached for my glass. “That’s about it.”
“Right. So don’t be so hard on yourself if you mess something up. It’s like asking a toddler to load the dishwasher and being mad if they smash a glass.”
I didn’t know whether to agree with the analogy or be offended she’d compared me to a toddler.
Either way… It was right.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I was in an impossible situation, trying to be someone I wasn’t, trying to navigate the seas of mistakes, trying to please several people all at once.
It wouldn’t hurt to give myself some grace.
Even though I knew I wouldn’t and would kick myself for every single little thing, it was a nice thought.
“You wanna order some food? It’s almost five. I can get yours in first,” Cait offered, giving me a sympathetic smile.
“Yeah, sure.” I opened the menu she must have put in front of me at some point and scanned through it. “The chilli, please.”
She wrote it down and glanced at me one more time before she disappeared through the swinging door into the kitchen.
I looked down at the bar once again and took a deep breath. I was lying to more people at once time than I ever had in my life, and I was asking other people to lie for me.
The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got with Camilla.
Of course her grandma being unwell wasn’t her fault. Neither was the storm nor the fact that flights had been cancelled, and I knew I’d been the one to convince her that she could do this job, but that was just it.
She was the one who was supposed to do this job.
Not me.
Cait was right when she said she’d dropped me into it at the very last minute. Storms didn’t come out of nowhere, usually. They were forecast, and she had enough family in Norway who could have told her about this one.
Cam hadn’t been prepared for the worst-case scenario, and now I was in trouble.
Her grandma had been ill for a while, and her needing a ventilator didn’t sound good to me. Could Cam justify leaving her potentially dying grandmother to come back to work? What if her grandma didn’t make it?
Would she be able to come back at all then?
Jesus, I was a terrible person.
Her grandmother could be dying and all I was thinking about was myself. Or, rather, pretending to be her for longer than necessary.
The problem with lying was that it always caught up with you, especially when you weren’t the only one keeping a secret.
Now, I couldn’t help but wonder how long I’d have before my lie did the same to me.