When Bernice got back to the editorial office, still mystified by Martin's behaviour, but assuming that it was down to stress and jet-lag, she found all of her team waiting for her - except for Chris, she noted with some bitterness. They had finished their Exit Interviews, which had not taken long, and now sat around chatting.
When Bernice arrived, a silence suddenly fell. Kate got up with some difficulty and said:
"Look, I'm not very good at speeches. We all just wanted to say that you've been the greatest, Bernice. We've really loved working for you, it's been fun all the way - well, nearly all the way - and we look forward to meeting up with you again soon. And just so that you don't forget us in a hurry" - Terence passed her a bag from which she extracted a wrapped gift and a card - "we've got you a little something."
Bernice felt near to tears: these good people, their kindness, their friendship. For things to be ending now like this was almost unbearably sad. But she forced herself to concentrate on the job in hand, and unwrapped the gift. It was a simple black hard-cover book in which had been pasted all of the items about The Business that had appeared in the nationals - starting with that fateful first multiple job advertisement - Media Messenger and elsewhere; hundreds of cuttings from the magazine itself - for example, classic lines from Bernice's editorials, those ringing conclusions that had the certainty of faith; pictures, some taken by the company photographers they used, some snapped by unidentified persons at the Christmas parties, others taken at Achilles' - before it was burnt down - and the Dog and Duck, even at the typesetters and printers. Right at the end of the book - and for Bernice this was perhaps the most important part of the gift - there were mugshots of her team, evidently taken in one of the photo booths down Southdon High Street. It was a complete, personalised record of her life with them during the last year which somehow they had put together secretly in one of the many empty and abandoned offices to be found around the building that day, finishing it off after lunch - hence their absence then. On the title page was written: Doing The Bernice.
And now she was crying with gratitude and happiness as she went round embracing everyone, thanking them all for everything, wishing them luck in their new lives, making them promise that they would all keep in touch. Which they all did, though some were to prove better at making promises than keeping them.
Finally, it was time to leave. With yet more farewells she ushered them out of the office so that she could look around at it just one more time, staying there until the last moment, like the captain on the bridge of a sinking ship. She gazed out of the window for the last time, saw a huge sun low in the sky, and saw next to it a pale twin, its doubly reflected image: once off the mirrored windows of Wright's and its wall of glass, and then once again off the similarly mirrored windows of the office block opposite. She managed to pick out in that reflected image of Wright's twin towers her own window, but behind its mirrored glass could see nothing except darkness.
She left the office and closed the door behind her definitively.
As she was moving towards the lifts, she saw the old man the office had rather cruelly named The Slug shambling along the corridor as she had the first day she had joined. This time though, instead of passing by her, he stopped and looked at her through his thick glasses, peering up at her as if he were some strange timid animal.
"Man and boy I've worked for this company," he said suddenly in reedy, smoke-clogged little voice, "given it my all, and now they give me the boot." He coughed and wheezed as if exhausted by this outburst. Bernice wondered why he had picked on her for this harangue. She was about to explain that she was nothing to do with Wright's now, when he said: "First my son - but you knew that - now me."
"Your son?" she said, not understanding.
"Yes, young David. He's a good lad - came in the other day to help sort out me pension. Good lad, he is. But they got rid of him too. Bloody company. Wright's? Not here, no one's bloody got them here..." And with that he shuffled off, coughing again.
David...his son? And Bernice thought with horror of how once they had made fun of The Slug, this poor man, in the office, with Dave there, who had said nothing, tacitly disavowing his own father in front of his workmates. Poor Dave, she thought, poor us....
As she left the building she was suddenly struck by how light it was. She had forgotten what sunlight was like, almost, that trees were not just for pulping, how fresh air smelled. She had been so wrapped up with magazines that the real outside world was simply something that existed for odd moments when she went to Achilles' or the Dog and Duck.
And then suddenly she saw him: Chris, standing there, rather bashful, with a huge bunch of red roses.
"I - I - wanted to give you these," he said.
"Thanks, Chris, they're lovely," she said simply, still too numb from that day's events to know quite how she felt about this.
They stood silently for a moment, and then Chris said:
"So what are you going to do now - I mean workwise?"
"Oh, I don't really know what I want to do," she said, thinking how true this platitude was for her.
"Perhaps I'll travel like" - she was about to say Yasmeen, but thought better of it - "like I've always wanted to - Egypt sounds nice," she said weakly.
"I would have thought that you've had enough of pyramidal structures..." Chris replied.
"Or perhaps I'll go and work in New York..." she said as if debating the matter with herself.
"Ah, yes," said Chris with mock seriousness, "from the Manhattan of Surrey to the Southdon of America..."
"Who knows? Perhaps I'll write a book - "
"To throw at me, I suppose," he said, smiling with a rather attractive melancholy air.
"Who knows?" Bernice said again, feeling strangely without volition, as if drained of the ability to act, to desire, by the demands that had been made on her for the last year when she had done little else.
"Well," said Chris, breathing in deeply as if steeling himself, "if you're not quite sure, perhaps I could make a suggestion: how about forgiving me, and letting me prove that I am not as weak, as vain, as conceited, as childish, as selfish, as bad as I have behaved."
It was a good pitch, she thought, but said nothing, just looking at him, trying to see him as she saw him that first day when of the interview, before their lives became hopelessly entangled and complicated.
Noting that she was not rejecting this proposal totally, Chris went on:
"I realise that you could never love a bad journalist - and I also now realise that I will never be anything but bad as a journalist - but what about a good PR?"
He looked so appealing as he stood there with this new, modest air. He had changed, she thought. And if his success as a journalist had been limited, so had hers as his manager.
"Who knows?" he said, the smile growing as he saw her begin to smile despite herself, "after so many failures perhaps it will be fifth time lucky...?" He stood mutely before her, his smile still fragile: he feared that the right words had come too late, missing the ultimate deadline for her respect and affection.
"I think the problem has been that I never managed to decide what I truly wanted.... Now, I have..." she said simply, and moved towards him, really smiling now. And then they kissed as if it were the first time they had ever kissed, putting all of those failures, of whatever kind, whether of will or deed, behind them once and for all.
"This time," she said as she pulled gently away to look deeply into his eyes, holding him still, suddenly filled with a sense of peace and happiness, "I have a feeling that we will really do the business...."
And this time, they did.
