Barbara: Inseparable

I've thought of everything from A to Z
Oh, lonesome me

This is how it was for me:

It was the end of another fabulous busy day. One of those non-stop days when everything you do goes so well that, despite it making you feel so worn-out you could just curl up on the sofa and sleep for a couple of days, you wish it would never end.

We kicked off with a breakfast meeting at oh-six-thirty hours. Me, Lynn, Jacob, Henry and, once he'd shifted his sorry arse into gear, Simon. I so like to get started well ahead of time. It gets the whole day's work off to a flying start.

There were three jobs, all afternoons. I put Lynn in charge of the Culrose / Wargraves and assigned Jacob to the MacDonald / Trumans. I had planned to let Simon handle the Timms / Shakesby do but he didn't look very with-it that morning so I decided to look after it myself. Probably I'd always meant to, as the alternative was to do nothing - as if - or spend the afternoon in the office. Which is not my idea of fun at all. Simon looked a little pissed-off when I sent him back home. Too bad. You're either in play or on the bench. It was starting to look as if Simon might turn out not to be one of us after all.

So then Lynn and Jacob got on the phone and gathered their forces. I grabbed hold of Henry and briefed him on his duties. He'd only been with us six months and he wasn't ready yet to oversee a big job like the Timms / Shakesbys all by his little self. He scuttled off, checklist in one hand and phone in the other and got to work. Go on, I thought. Impress me.

All three operations started at fifteen hundred hours, but to say 'start' is misleading. In fact, I'd been working hard on these three jobs - and several others - for the past six months. This afternoon's work was the culmination of many hours' careful, painstaking preparation on the part of me and my team. It was also the point at which we earned the greatest share of our revenue. Not that we didn't bill earlier, of course, but most of that money went straight to our subs.

Once I was sure that Henry was on top of things I set off on my rounds. You simply cannot do too much oversight is my motto but, even more importantly, you must communicate. Everyone needs me. I'm needed on site - to reassure everyone while doing some discreet chasing-up. I'm needed back at base to nip logistical problems in the bud. Even now I'll happily get in a vehicle and shuttle stores if that's what it takes. Do the face-to-face work. And talk, talk, talk. Talking, persuading, getting to know people, earning their trust and respect. That's what I do best. People like me and I like them. That's what makes me happy. That's what's made me successful. That; and delivering on my promises. Word of mouth is the way you get on. It can make or break you.

The day passed in an organised whirl. Everything worked; or when it didn't one of my lieutenants or I dealt with it discreetly and invisibly. That's our motto, nearly. I'd put it on the letterhead if it didn't make us look like a dodgy escort agency.

And at oh-three-hundred hours the following morning I finally locked the office door, rattled the padlock on the loading-bay gate and set the alarm combination. We were done. Another fabulous, busy day.

I love my job. Nobody - nobody - does it as well as me.

- 0 -

George was fast asleep and snoring by the time I got home. No matter. I still needed to wind down, so I took a shower in my bathroom, wrapped myself in a nice fresh towel, grabbed a drink - first of the day - and watched some mindless telly in the upstairs study. It was oh-three-hundred by the time I slipped into bed. I dropped off straight away.

It was George's job to organise Sunday breakfast. He'd got quite good over the years at gauging the right time to bring the wake-up cuppa and when I was ready for grapefruit, or a fresh fig or a bowl of apricots and yogurt or whatever he guessed I'd like. He wasn't bad at guessing either. The main, the most important, rule was that I got to listen to the omnibus edition of The Archers over breakfast, so I had to be awake by ten.

The rest of Sunday was flexible. It was much too soon to make follow-up calls for the previous day's jobs, although it's not unknown for me to be rung up in the middle of the day - or the evening - with expressions of interest from guests. I prefer not to get too involved with business matters on Sunday, but work is work and a contract is a contract and there's nothing like a personal recommendation for bypassing that nasty old sales funnel, is there?

Normally I'd be spark-out after such a busy Saturday but this time, for whatever reason, I woke before George. Perhaps it was the voice that did it.

My first thought was that the radio alarm clock had come on by accident. Perhaps there'd been a power cut and the clock had got itself confused. But it didn't sound like a radio voice; it didn't have that radio way of speaking. It sounded like a real person talking to another real person. I say real; but it wasn't exactly. It had a peculiar timbre that I couldn't quite place.

The voice was speaking very softly and, so far as I could tell, it was coming from somewhere in the bed. The room was dim and I couldn't see anything so I reached for the bedside light. I was just about to flick it on when the voice stopped and another spoke in answer.

I had no trouble identifying it. I should know my own husband by now. The sound of his voice, indistinct but unmistakably male, gave me something of a shock. Although I hadn't considered it up until then I now realised that the first voice was undeniably female.

George stopped speaking and the first voice - the strange woman's voice - started again. That did it. Although I understood nothing of what was going on, unless I was hearing things and going gaga my husband was having a conversation with another woman and, to pile insult on injury, was doing it in our bed while I was still in it. I turned on the light.

'George! What are you up to?'

My husband sat up and rubbed his eyes. I looked at the indentation in the pillow where his head had been. No. No sign of a handset. He hadn't been enjoying a spot of telephone sex on the side, then.

'Sorry. What?' It's an annoying habit of George's that he begins every conversation with me by apologising. It's not at all necessary.

'You were talking to somebody.'

'In my sleep, you mean?' George ran his hand through his not unattractively tousled hair. 'I must have been dreaming.'

'Who were you talking to?'

'In my dream?'

'Yes.'

'Lord. I don't know.' He swung his legs over the side of the bed. 'Cup of tea, love?'

And that was where I left it. I'm not a madwoman.

- 0 -

Linda, Michael and the boys came round for Sunday dinner. After that I put in an hour or two on the web and made some social calls. There was an alumni get-together in a week or two and it was one of my jobs to round up the troops. Then over to the other side of the village for drinks at Jeremy's. I chatted to Rikki and swapped a recipe or two with her, we watched a DVD of their holiday in Moscow (again!) and got home just before eleven. A typical Sunday, then, and no more funny voices. George must have taken the hint.

On Monday morning I was first into the office, as usual. The beginning of the working week is usually a bit quieter and I like to take advantage of the lull to do some strategic thinking. You see, although the firm's called Epithalamion (For your Day of Days) we do much more than just organising society weddings. Or, at least, we plan to. It's always the same in business, I find. You get a great idea, you market and execute it well and you make money. Great. But then all the me-too boys come along and start undercutting you and the next thing you know your nice cash cow is buckling at the knees and foaming at the mouth. So what do you do? You franchise out your good idea and think up another one. That's what Mondays are for. I'd already had one or two stonking good ideas (which I'm certainly not going to tell you about) that previous week. All I had to do now was work out how to monetise them. Oh all right, one of them was to launch a mid-market version of Epithalamion called, say, Nuptial Delights. That would look good in the Daily Mail, I thought. Just so long as there was margin in it we'd clean up - people have so little time these days. It's nice to able to help them out.

Later on I had the underperforming Simon in and challenged him to amaze me with his achievements over the next month. He got the message that his job was on the line and ran off to be a busy little bunny-rabbit. At least, I think he did. It was hard to tell as he still seemed rather... detached.

The rest of the day was marketing meetings, client calls and some retail therapy. By the time I got home around twenty-hundred I was ready to put my feet up, have something nice to eat and drink, and unwind on the sofa with George.

That was the plan. But George didn't respond to my cry of 'Hi honey, I'm home!' and when I finally tracked him down to his lair in the downstairs study he was talking to somebody.

That was enough. I slept in the guest suite.

- 0 -

Over the next week it seemed the whole world was drifting off to la-la-land. Nobody could concentrate any more. They all walked about in a dream-state with foolish smiles on their faces or with their lips moving as if they were on their Bluetooths or chewing gum. It's very bad management practice to lose your temper with staff but I came as close as makes nearly no difference that week. The worst thing about it was the way they looked at me; as if they were offering me their sympathy. Anyway, everything went completely to pot. And just to make it worse, it wasn't just my staff who'd been carried off by the fairies. My clients were just as bad. Nobody returned my calls, invoices didn't get paid, nobody wanted to talk to me. That really hurt. I'm a people person, you know? But wherever I looked, whoever I spoke to, everyone was completely self-absorbed and, mostly, their lips were moving. Sometimes you could hear them speak; often it was silent, like a slow reader using his finger to follow the words across the page.

Of course now we all know - you know - what was happening. But back then it was as if Christmas had come early and there were presents for everybody. A sword for Peter, a horn for Susan and a bow for Lucy.

But nothing for me. Nothing at all.

- 0 -

And then, once everything had settled down and we were getting used to the new way of things, the awful realisation that I was different to over 99 of my fellow human beings came near to crushing the life out of me. I still couldn't bear to move back into our bedroom. 'I am not sharing our bed with that… thing!' I told George and he looked hurt and replied that he and his Clarinda were still the same old George; and that his familiar was the same part of him that she had always been. It was just that now she was physically incorporate. I knew he was right, but it made no difference to me. Not to the way I felt.

I looked inside myself - of course I did. I sought that presence within me - that part of myself that should by rights have taken an external form; but he was not there. Or, if he was, he was so much a part of me that he could not be split off. That's what one counsellor told me, anyway. It was, I think, supposed to make me feel better - this idea that I had such a well-integrated personality that my familiar was physically inseparable from me.

But George still pitied me, I could see that in his eyes and the way they couldn't help looking away from me. It was quite unbearable - to have my own husband feeling sorry for me. I went to a man who ran group sessions, hoping to find others like myself, but it turned out that he was mainly interested in helping people who couldn't get along with their familiar's forms. His familiar was, I must say, remarkably ugly. I let him take my £250 and say he was sorry, but he probably wasn't going to be able to do much for me.

- 0 -

So to all of you my friends on the forum, that's my story. Thank heavens for the Internet, that's all I can say. I'm not going to carry a pet or a doll and pretend he's my familiar as one of you - Notawitch, I think - suggested. Firstly, I think that would be cheating and secondly I honestly don't think it would work. If my fellow humans didn't spot the masquerade, their familiars would.

Perhaps - just perhaps - he will appear one day. Maybe he's just being a little slow (although as it's been almost a year since most people got their familiars I'm starting to wonder). In the meantime, work and life go on and it's not turned out quite as badly as I thought it would. The kids still talk to me; my people still do what I tell them. I use the phone rather more than I used to and I tend to avoid face-to-face meetings. I remember the way I used to look - or not look - at disabled people and I feel ashamed of myself. For that is what I am now; disabled. No doubt I'll get as used to it - or not used to it - as someone who is blind or deaf or in a wheelchair.

No, that's going too far. I shouldn't be such a drama queen. I've not been changed or harmed in any way. I'm no different from the way I was a year ago. It's the world that's been shaken up, not me. But please God, or whoever it was made me this way, would it really be too much to ask for me to get a familiar of my very own? Just so I can rejoin the human race?

Please?