“Ring. Ring. Ring”
George took a deep breath. What seemed like minutes were, in fact, seconds as he contemplated what would happen if he never answered the call. The walls were a bare beige in this unused spare bedroom which had now become his workplace. He’d considered adorning the walls with posters, perhaps a fern in the corner, but had decided against it.
“No” he’d remembered thinking, “that’s silly, we’ll be back in the office before you know it” and the seasons had changed as they inevitably do, one leading back into another, before he realised it had been a whole year. One which seemed to scream that there was no end in sight without ever actually saying it.
“Ring. Ring. Ring” the phone continued.
He heard a brief mummer from behind the walls, realising his partner Louise was already conversing with someone else, another busy workday ahead. Louise had been working in the local shopping centre, but her store had been forced to close and she’d been let go. After a period of searching, she’d found a role which meant she too now needed to use a bedroom as an office. George considered himself lucky perhaps, there were no more unused bedrooms left by this point, and Louise was forced to place a desk next to their bed and for her sanctum to now become her workplace.
He imagined the other things his office might have been used for, if circumstance had been different, perhaps even the laughter of a child to fill the house with joy. But instead, just an eerie silence, a silence interrupted only by the ringing of a telephone.
He never cared for the politics of the workplace, the snide remarks colleagues would pass about each other, the constant popularity contests that seemed simply a continuation of his formal education. But with that said, he did often miss the chance to engage with others – with anyone – on a personal level. The most meaningful conversations he could now hope to achieve were with his clients, people who would struggle to remember his name as soon as he said it, who would fight against his every word – as he attempted to justify the advice, he gave with all the conviction of a man who didn’t truly care whether they followed it or not, but whose role depended on him confidently delivering it regardless.
Finally, as always, he’d considered what could have been. What he should have achieved. He’d worked hard, put in the hours, and gotten all those pieces of paper they tell you that you should have. And yet anytime he’d try to figure out why he was in his spare bedroom answering phone calls it just seemed like he was the bitter one, the ungrateful one, that he was the one with the problem and simply hadn’t made the effort.
He exhaled, leaned over to the phone and pressed the button to acknowledge the call.
“Hello?”