The Man Who Lived at the End of the World by Davies Robert

Author:Davies, Robert [Davies, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-12-21T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Back in 1998, on the first day of my new job, I caught a reflection of myself in the curved, glass-lined front of the impressive six-storey building, and saw that the cool April wind had unpicked and retangled my hair back into its natural wild state. I had cut it short just a few days before, but it grew so fast that no barber could tame it. I paused and pressed it back down with both hands, then muttered silent curses as I looked down at the slime-trails of gel it had left behind on them. Impatiently wiping them on a piece of tissue from my suit pocket, I walked through the wide front doors into the minimalist reception room. My new shoes clicked loudly against the grey tiled floor, and I smiled and said hello to the woman behind the wooden semi-circle that was the reception desk. Confidently striding past to the back wall, I threw open the door next to the lift and jogged up five flights of stairs to the top floor.

The office building where I now worked sat in the small business park on Alvermere’s western edge, a short car journey away from where I lived. It was a growing company whose clients were national, and part of my job was to travel out and meet with those clients, making sales pitches and reviewing contracts, things that made me feel suddenly and overwhelmingly responsible. When I had applied for the job, a company who manufactured all manner of hardware parts and components seemed like something so unimportant that nothing I could do would ever have any noticeable impact, and the thought had given me a small sense of freedom. Just like the coffee shop, it could wink out of existence one day and its absence would barely be noticed outside this small town.

I was placed in a large and brightly-lit open-plan office that must have occupied around half of the top floor, its rough grey carpet underfoot matching the tiles in reception. The desks were all faux-pine flat-packs, evenly spaced around the plain walls and broad glass windows, and lined up in a rectangular block in the middle. Some were piled high with papers while others had a large and clumsy computer monitor taking up most of the space, each one spewing a tangle of wires to and from the machine tucked beneath the desk. Phones rang and were ignored or answered, screwed-up balls of paper were tossed toward waste bins only to miss, and my heart was lively with excitement at the prospect of settling into my first real job.

It was quickly tempered, however. During those first few days I felt like a hot-air balloon must feel when it is tied with heavy ropes to the ground and laden with weights, aching to soar. Every day I was to wear a smart suit and tie, and so much paperwork was generated that I found its words and figures regularly building up into a tangled dam that no other thoughts could pass.

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