Chapter Three

       Now

      I expected a grilling. I deserve it too. Yet it’s still shocking to look around at all the stony faces and realise every single person in this room hates me.

      It’s like when you’ve run, panting, onto an aeroplane. As the last passenger on board, you’ve caused its delay and now it’s missed its departure slot. Instead of jetting off to Lanzarote you now have to sit on the tarmac for two and a half hours. Everyone knows it’s your fault and they are radiating hatred.

      Only this is worse – far worse. It’s not the start of their holidays that’s been ruined, but their livelihoods. I feel sick with shame.

      ‘Erm, if I could please just say something,’ I call out, shakily, then wait for the hubbub to die down. We are all crammed into the wood-panelled reception area of the distillery. It was sunny half an hour ago but now rain is battering at the windows.

      The dozen employees are all sitting on plastic chairs and staring at me with disdain. I inhale fully, trying to give the impression that I am calm and in control. ‘I’ve tried to explain things as honestly as I can,’ I start. ‘That’s why I’m here, so you’d all know the full picture and that I’m doing my best to try and sort things out.’ My voice wobbles as I scan the room again. ‘Please believe me when I say I’m deeply sorry about everything that’s happened,’ I continue. ‘If there’s anything at all that I can—’

      ‘Sorry?’ calls out a sturdy man in a lumberjack shirt. ‘You think saying sorry makes things any better for us?’

      ‘No, of course not,’ I bluster. ‘I just want you to know that—’

      ‘Sorry’s not going to put food on my table,’ cries out a woman with a beanie hat pulled low down on her head.

      ‘I realise that,’ I start, ‘and I wish things were different—’

      ‘We deserve a full explanation,’ thunders a ruddy-faced man in overalls, ‘as to why it’s been allowed to get into this state.’

      ‘That’s what I’m trying to give you,’ I say, sensing my own cheeks flaming. I look down at the smart charcoal linen dress and glossy black heels that I borrowed from my friend Dee to wear today, in the hope that they would make me seem professional and calm; reassuring, even. But now I suspect the businesslike outfit is just alienating me even more – if that were possible – from everyone else in their jeans, thick sweaters and flat boots.

      It’s-Margaret-fucking-Thatcher, a man muttered under his breath as I walked in. He looked about twenty-five. I was amazed that she was even in his frame of reference at all.

      ‘No idea what you were doing,’ the lumberjack shirt man barks from the front row. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace!’

      ‘You bought it on a whim,’ snaps the beanie hat woman.

      ‘A vanity project!’ cries someone else.

      ‘Thought it’d be fun to have it—’

      ‘With no thought of what it’d involve …’

      ‘Bloody idiots, the pair of them!’

      I’ve lost track of who’s saying what, and even if I could come up with something helpful to say – something to calm the simmering fury – I wouldn’t be able to get a word in. The only person remaining silent is Harry, one of the few employees I know by name, and whom I hadn’t expected to be here today. He’s just sitting there, staring ahead, in faded jeans and a big grey fisherman’s sweater. I can hardly bear to look at him.

      ‘You didn’t consider the responsibility of what you’d taken on,’ announces a woman with spectacles perched low on her nose – and it strikes me now that it could be an animal she’s talking about: a dog bought for Christmas with no thought as to who would be walking it and bagging up its poos. And now, as I stand here being shouted at, I’m transported back to a time when my daughter had begged for a dog.

      She was almost ten, so it was over a decade ago. I’d explained that, as I was working out of the house all day, it wouldn’t be fair to leave one all alone.

      ‘We could get a dog walker,’ Frieda suggested.

      ‘Honey, I’m not getting a dog and then employing someone else to walk it.’

      ‘What about you, then? You could come home for lunch—’

      ‘Could I?’ I laughed. I was working in the centre of York at the recruitment consultancy. ‘It’s too far from the office,’ I added.

      ‘You could run. It’d do you good, Mum. You were saying you need to exercise!’

      ‘I’m not running back and forth to our house every lunchtime …’

      ‘You could take him to work then!’ So this dog was already a ‘he’ and not some imaginary, gender-less pet.

      ‘I very much doubt it,’ I replied, truthfully.

      ‘Why not?’

      I should add that this was long before the entire western world had become obsessed with dogs and started taking them to their offices and lying around on beanbags cuddling them. ‘He might pee on the carpet,’ I replied.

      ‘Please, Mum,’ Frieda begged. ‘He wouldn’t. We’d train him!’

      I knew I was a soft touch. From what I’d gathered, I allowed far more impromptu sleepovers than any of the other mums. However, I refused to give in, and I think I made the right decision in opting for guinea pigs instead. I was still married to Tony then – our children’s father – and he’d grudgingly agreed, adding, ‘I hope they don’t get tired of them, Suzy. You know how fickle kids are.’

      We got two, partly so Frieda and Isaac could have one each; plus, I’d read that solo guinea pigs can get lonely. They named them Millie and Maisie (I suspect Frieda over-rode Isaac on that score) and loved