Page 30 of The Taskmaster
Chapter Twenty-Two
ABIGAIL
Bringing a shop bought baguette into work for lunch felt like a special day for me. I usually had cheap noodles or a homemade sandwich on boring sliced bread, but after finding that money under my table this morning, I wanted to treat myself. I hadn’t bothered with an expensive coffee, though. I wasn’t that extravagant. We had free coffee at work, why would I waste precious pennies on a fancy one? Mind you, it would’ve been nice. I did like a fancy latte every now and then.
I was poor as fuck, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t let it get me down. There was a reason I’d spent money over the last few years, and it was a good fucking reason. Some things were more important than having money in the bank.
I strolled into the office and sat down at my desk, placing the paper bag with my baguette into my bottom drawer, and then I switched my computer on. I had a busy day today. Back-to-back meetings this morning, followed by a wedding I was officiating this afternoon, and I let out a long sigh.
“That bad, huh?” Jess, my work bestie who shared the office with me, asked.
“I just have a lot of meetings, but it’s fine. It’s not the worst day.”
“Are you sure about that?” She cocked her head and gave me the look that told me she didn’t buy my fake, breezy, nonchalant air. Not so fake then.
“I’m sure,” I said to reassure her. “I have a wedding later. You know how much they cheer me up.”
“That reminds me, Simon from IT came in earlier to tell me the systems might be down at some point today. They’re doing work on them. Some upgrade or whatever. I wasn’t really listening.”
“Does that mean we get to go home early?” I smirked, giving her a cheeky, wishful thinking kind of wink, and she laughed.
“Doubtful. When do we ever get perks like that?”
I heard my phone ring in my bag, and I reached down to get it. When I saw the name on the screen, I stood up.
“I have to take this,” I said, rushing for the door to leave the office. “Sorry, it’s important.”
Jess didn’t care, she just shrugged and carried on with her work. I let it ring as I speed-walked away from the office, down the hallway, then clicked to accept the call as I stepped out onto the stairwell where no one could overhear me.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you again,” I said with my heart in my mouth.
“I didn’t expect to be calling you again, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Know what?”
I gripped the phone tightly, waiting for his response.
“We found another one. We were gonna take care of it ourselves, but...” He paused then sighed. “I figured I’d let you know first. I dunno, it felt like the right thing to do.”
“That’s because it was,” I replied. “Can you send me the details?”
“Sure. I’ll email them over now.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate you letting me know.”
I went to hang up, but stopped when he said, “If anything goes wrong, you will call me, won’t you? I still don’t know how I feel about this.”
“I’ll call, but don’t worry. I will take care of it. You did the right thing.”
“I hope so,” he said, then the line went dead.
I stayed in the stairwell for a few minutes to compose myself, and then I clicked on my emails and saw his name in my inbox. I opened the message, read the details, then deleted them, permanently.
“Time to get to work,” I sighed, and pulled the door to the hallway open and headed to my office.
“Is everything okay?” Jess asked, still giving me the look of concern that’d been on her face when I first walked in this morning. “You look pale.”
“I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
