5

brENDA

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I’ve spent all week internally debating what to do based on what I saw on the street during my lunch break. Michael and Nat are having an affair, and I assume Mariah doesn’t know anything about it.

But I have the evidence. That’s because I didn’t just watch them enter that hotel in an intimate manner. I actually followed them inside and saw them checking-in at reception for a room together, him with his hand draped over her shoulder and her with her hand wrapped around his waist. They were so brazen about it, but that’s only because they thought they were in a safe space, away from prying eyes.

They didn’t know I was there watching them.

They certainly didn’t know that I was taking photos of them on my phone.

What to do with those photos has been playing on my mind ever since I took them. This evidence I possess is damaging to so many people.

To Michael and his marriage.

To Nat and her future career.

And more importantly, to Mariah and her heart.

Telling her that her husband is cheating on her with one of their employees could destroy my boss. Does she deserve to have her feelings hurt? Maybe not, but is it fair to allow her to keep living oblivious to what is really going on?

I’ve thought long and hard about this.

And I’ve come to my decision.

It’s now Friday lunchtime, and the time has come for us all to gather around the Christmas tree and open our Secret Santa gifts. I don’t just need the clock on my computer to tell me that because Mariah is doing a good enough job of communicating it to us all.

‘Let’s go everybody. Time to open some presents!’ she calls, making everybody rise up from their desks and head for the elevators, some more energetically than others. But I stay in my seat, at least until somebody notices.

‘Hey, are you coming?’ Kirsty asks me.

‘Yeah, I’ll be down in one minute,’ I say. ‘I just need to send this email.’

‘Okay, but don’t be too long. The boss is waiting,’ Kirsty tells me with an ominous smile before she follows everybody else out, and within minutes, I’m the only person left on this floor.

I quickly get out of my seat and head for the desk I need access to. It’s a desk I doubt I’ll ever sit at myself because of all the hard work, and luck, it takes to earn a seat there.

It’s the boss’s desk.

It’s Mariah’s.

Aware that she, her husband and everybody else is currently gathering around the Christmas tree downstairs, I am safe to enter here and do what I need to do without risk of getting caught. But I can’t take too long in case Mariah notices I’m not with them all, so I hurry up.

Taking the envelope with Mariah’s name on it from my pocket, I place it down on her desk beside her laptop and then leave quickly, hurrying to the elevator before taking it down to the ground floor.

As the doors slide open, I see the backs of all my colleagues as they stand in front of the tree, but nobody turns to look at me joining them because they’re all too busy watching Mariah and Michael handing out the presents. They look so good as a couple standing side by side, yet I know the truth. I notice Nat standing to the left of them, looking like just another member of the team, but she is so much more than that, or at least she is to Michael.

It’s weird being the only one who knows the biggest secret in the office.

And now it’s time to play Secret Santa.

We were all told to write the name of the person the gift is for on the wrapping paper, so it’s easy for them to be distributed, and as everyone impatiently waits to open their gift, it’s all still a mystery as to who purchased it for them.

‘Brenda, this one is for you,’ Mariah says, and I step forward to receive my present.

‘Thank you,’ I say, taking the wrapped box from her, and she still has no idea I just snuck into her office and left behind something meant for her only a few moments ago.

It only takes a few more minutes for everyone to be handed their presents and with that, Michael triumphantly declares we can now open them.

I am still feeling anxious about what I have done but need to fit in with the crowd, so I open my present and when I do, I get a touching surprise. My gift is something that means a lot to me and as I stare at it, I feel more than a little emotional. It’s a snow globe with the New York City skyline inside it – the place Paul and I went to last year at Christmas shortly before he died. It is something that Paul would have bought for me if he was still alive. But he’s not, which means somebody else bought this for me, somebody who knows that New York at Christmas will always hold a special place in my heart. I have a good idea who that might be because there’s only one person in this office who I told about my Christmas trip to NYC.

It’s Kirsty, the person I’ve talked about Paul so much with during brief breaks from work, in times before losing him and afterwards. She’s been somebody I have confided in a lot, beyond our desks, in wine bars after-hours, including on some of the loneliest nights when I was missing my man and couldn’t bear to go back to my apartment alone. Not only was she so supportive but she could understand my pain because she had lost her own partner a few years earlier. He had died suddenly while home alone and she had discovered him, which must have been awful. But she had somehow got through it, and she told me that I would somehow get through my loss too.

I look over at Kirsty, wanting to thank her for this gift, but she is occupied opening her own, so I decide to wait until we are back upstairs. As I think about the time when we’ll all go back to our desks, I feel my stomach churning because I know what is waiting for Mariah on her desk when she returns to it.

Is it too late for me to rush back up there and remove it?

It’s too risky. A few colleagues are already drifting back to the elevators, their Secret Santa gifts in hand, so I can’t do it now. They’ll see me. I’ll get caught. Mariah will know it was me who left the gift for her. So all I can do is stand and watch her open the other gift I got her, the harmless one, the one that is her ‘official’ Secret Santa present. It’s a box of chocolates. I figured she could do with the calories and the comfort when she sees the other present waiting for her.

The unofficial one.

The one that is going to blow up her marriage and potentially the lives of everybody who works here.