Читать книгу Roar: Uplifting. Intriguing. Thirty short stories from the Sunday Times bestselling author - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 17

It was all because of the work presentation. She hated presentations, always had since she was at school and the two idiots at the back of her classroom would hiss ‘sssss’ at her flaming red face. They hurled abuse at everybody but she was an easy target – her face would burn up, blazing red, as soon as she heard the sound of her own voice and felt the layers-peeling power of eyes on her.

With age, the flaming redness had lessened, but her nerves channelled themselves through her body and manifested as a severe knee tremble. She wasn’t sure which was worse. The red face that didn’t affect her speech or the knee quiver that caused her entire body to vibrate, shuddering as if she was out in the cold, despite her sweaty armpits. Her skirts would shake so that she resembled a cartoon character; she could almost hear the bone-clattering sound, like a bag of bones being shaken. She’d have to hide her hands too, or close her fingers to make fists. It was worse if she had to hold paper because the paper never lied. Always best to place the sheet on the table, hands closed to fists, or wrapped around a pen. Sit if possible, trousers preferable to skirts, and best to wear pants with narrowly tailored legs because the less loose fabric there was to tremble, the better; how-ever the waist needed to be loose to aid deep breathing. Better to be as casual as possible, coffee or tea to be drunk in a take-out cup to avoid cup and saucer rattling in trembling hands.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t know her stuff. She damn well did. She strode around her apartment as if giving a TED Talk. In her apartment she was the most competent, inspiring deliverer of quarterly sales figures that the world had ever seen. She was Sheryl Sandberg giving her TED Talk, she was Michelle Obama saying anything, she was a woman warrior spilling facts and figures, so self-assured in her own home, at night, alone.

The presentation was going fine, perhaps not as inspiring and earth-shattering as the rehearsal the previous night, with fewer insightful glimpses into her personal life and absolutely no humour, unlike the comedic ad-libbing she’d busted out to her ghost audience. It was definitely safer and more to the point, as perfect as she could hope for, apart from her annoying repetition of the phrase ‘per se’, which she had never used in her life regarding anything, but there it was now, a part of almost every sentence. She was already looking ahead to drinks later with her friends where they would giggle over her critical yet hilarious self-roasting. They’d toast to ‘Per Se!’ and spend the night using it in every sentence, creating a challenge perhaps, even a drinking game.

‘Excuse me, Mr Bartender,’ she imagined a friend leaning across the bar, with an arched eyebrow. ‘Could I get another Cosmo, per se?’

And they would all dissolve in laughter.

But she had gotten too far ahead of herself in her thoughts, she had gotten too cocky. All had been going well in her presentation until she’d disappeared into a daydream and taken her eye off the ball. She’d left the moment. She was surrounded by her dozen-strong team, those relieved to have finished their part of the presentation, others eager to have their moment in the light, when the door opened and in walked Jasper Godfries. The CEO. The new CEO who’d never sat in a sales meeting before in his life. Her heartbeat hastened. Cue knee tremble, cue shaking fingers. Hot skin, short breath. Her entire body, suddenly in flight mode.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Jasper announces to the surprised room. ‘I was stuck on a call with India.’

There are no free chairs because nobody is expecting him. People shift around, making room, and she finds herself standing, facing them all and her new CEO. Knees knocking, heart pounding.

Her colleagues look at the papers in her hand, some with amusement, some in pity, pretending they don’t notice how they violently shake. Jasper Godfries’ eyes remain on hers. She tries to relax her body, control her breathing, calm her mind, but she can’t think clearly. All she can think is the CEO, the CEO, the CEO. She hadn’t planned for this in any one of her one hundred possible scenario run-throughs all week.

Think, think, she tells herself as all eyes are trained on her.

‘Why don’t you take it from the top,’ her boss, Claire, says.

Fucking Claire.

The voice inside her head shrieks with panic but instead she smiles, ‘Thank you, Claire.’

She looks down at her notes, flicks back to page one and everything blurs. She can’t see, she can’t think, she can only feel. Her anxiety is physical. It’s all going on in her body. She feels trembling in her knees, her legs, her fingers. A heart that beats too fast, they must be able to see it vibrating through her blouse. A cramp in her stomach that tightens. Nothing, nothing in her mind.

Claire says something to urge her along. They all turn the pages. They go back to the start. Back to the start. She can’t do it. Not all over again. She hadn’t prepared to do this twice.

Her throat tightens, stomach loosens. Panic. She feels a bubble of air, slowly, quietly release from her bottom. She’s thankful it’s quiet but it doesn’t take long for the hot, thick smell of her panic to circulate the room. She sees it hit Colin first. She sees how he jerks and moves his hand closer to his nose. He knows it was her. It will soon reach Claire. It does. Her eyes widen and her hand goes to her nose and mouth, subtly.

She looks down at the paper, shaking violently, worse than ever before, and for the first time in twenty-five years she feels the hot red blaze return to her cheeks where it burns, burns, burns her skin.

And she hears the words, ‘per se’, leave her lips, followed by a nervous giggle. They all look up from their notes to stare at her. Every single surprised, amused, irritated pair of eyes studies her. Judges her. It’s an awful, quiet, long, loaded silence, and all she wants to do is run out of the room or wish for the ground to open up and swallow her.

And that’s when it happens. A beautiful inviting black hole opens up between her and the boardroom table. Dark and promising, deep, welcoming. She barely thinks about it. She would rather be anywhere but here.

She jumps in.

She falls through darkness and lands in darkness.

‘Ow,’ she rubs her buttocks. Then she remembers what happened and she covers her face with her hands. ‘Oh fuck.’

‘You too, huh?’

She looks up and sees a woman beside her, wearing a wedding dress, with a name badge that reads Anna. She doesn’t want to know what Anna did, she doesn’t want to think of anything but analyse her own stupid mistake over and over again.

‘Where are we?’ the woman asks.

‘Cringeville,’ Anna moans. ‘Oh God, I am such an idiot.’ She looks up, face contorted in pain. ‘I called him Benjamin. I called him Benjamin,’ Anna says, freaking out, looking at the woman as though she can understand the gravitas of her mistake.

‘His name isn’t Benjamin?’ the woman asks.

‘No!’ Anna barks, causing her to jump. ‘It’s Peter. Peter.’

‘Oh, well, that’s not even close to Benjamin,’ the woman agrees.

‘No it’s not. Benjamin was my first husband,’ she wipes her eyes. ‘Right in the middle of my wedding speech, I call my new husband the wrong name