Men at Work [Quick Read] by Mike Gayle Page B

For a long moment the two men stood looking at each other blankly.
    “Are you all right?” asked Douglas. “You look a bit funny.”
    “As it happens, Douglas, I’m not the slightest bit all right,” said Ian. “And I haven’t been all right since Emma left.”
    “Not again,” said Douglas. “I thought we’d moved on from all that.”
    “You might have,” said Ian, “but I haven’t. The thing is, Douglas, you shouldn’t have sacked her.”
    “Come on, Ian,” replied Douglas. “You know as well as I do that I had no choice.”
    “But you sacked the wrong person.”
    “What are you saying? Has new evidence come to light?”
    Ian shook his head. “I did it, Doug. It was me. I sent the email from Emma’s computer. I wanted her to get sacked because I was sick of her messing things up for me at work.”
    There was a silence.
    “You do know that I’ll have to check out what you’ve said and, if it’s true, I’ll have no choice but to sack you?”
    Ian nodded. “That’s fine. It is all true. But it doesn’t matter any more because I quit. Doug, I thought this job was the best thing in my life but it turns out that I was wrong. The best thing in my life is a beautiful, bright, funny girl called Emma Richards and the only thing in the world that matters to me is to get her to come back to me.”

Chapter 18
    Ian left the office unsure where to go next. He had to talk to Emma but first he had to find her. It was just after four. Would she be at home or might she already have found herself a new job and be out at work? Ian decided to try her mobile and hope that she would answer the call, but the phone rang out before directing him to her voicemail. Ian had to make a decision. To leave a message or not? He took a deep breath and started. “Emma, it’s me. I know you asked me not to call you. I know you need time to sort out your head. It’s just . . . it’s just . . .” Ian struggled to finish his sentence. “It’s just that . . . well . . . I need to speak to you. Things have changed and I need to speak to you right away. Okay, I’ll leave it at that. I just want you to know, Em, I really do love you. I love you with my whole heart. And there isn’t anything, and I do mean anything at all , that I wouldn’t do if we could be together again.”
    Ian looked up at the grey sky. It looked like rain and he only had a few minutes before he got soaked to the skin, so he decided to make his way home and wait for Emma there. He pulled up his jacket collar and tried to walk as quickly as he could up the hill towards Five Ways. In fact he was so busy walking as quickly as he could that he failed to see someone walking just as fast in the opposite direction. Both he and the other person came to a sudden halt. Ian was about to apologise but he found he couldn’t speak because standing there right in front of him was Emma.
    “I just . . . I just . . . I just called you,” said Ian. “How did you get here so quickly?”
    Emma rolled her eyes. “I’ve got a time machine. You must have noticed it in the house? It’s big and blue and shaped like an old-fashioned police box.”
    “So what are you saying? This was an accident?”
    Emma nodded. “They do happen, you know.”
    “Yeah . . . but . . .” Ian’s voice trailed off. If it wasn’t an accident and Emma had been on her way to see him, then the last thing he wanted was to make a big deal about it in case she changed her mind.
    “It’s fine,” said Emma. “You can relax, I’m not stalking you. I was only coming this way because I got a call from HR this morning to say that I could pick up my final pay cheque. I’m meeting up with Rukmani in an hour for coffee and then I’ll be out of your way.”
    “But that’s not what I want,” said Ian.
    Emma shrugged. “Well we can’t always get what we want, can we?”
    Ian looked into her eyes and saw that she was still hurting as much as when he had first told her about