To a tiny extent, it is a relief to get back into work. The chat when I get in is of the world cup and the weather and wasted weekends. But it’s there, just below the surface and it doesn’t take long for someone to reach under the waves of meaningless, lolling words and prick its skin. Then it seeps out black and heavy. someone asks. The sighs and the platitutes are no barrier to it. It seeps through the smiles and blackens the black black humour, and at least the shabby veneer of normality I had to paper up all weekend is stained for what it is. Flimsy and brittle and pointless.
I log on to my shared calendar and see that my boss has a new appointment at 11 with the other senior managers. Oily sweat starts to pour out of me; it doesn’t take a genius to work out what item 1 of a hastily called SMT meeting will be. My guts feel loose and black. I laugh grim in the bogs, my wife was wrong. There is a need to worry. The fear is seeping over the floor and staining all that it touches.