Off the Ledger

The open-plan office smelled the way it always did on a Friday afternoon: reheated pasta from someone's Tupperware, printer toner, and the faint sweetness of the air freshener they sprayed in the toilets after lunch. Sarah sat at her cluttered desk with a mug of tea that had gone lukewarm an hour ago, staring at the clock in the corner of her screen. Half past two. Purchase ledger. Mark Davies.

She pushed her glasses up her nose and clicked through the spreadsheet again, though she already knew which lines didn't match. Invoice 402, three miscellaneous charges that the client's system had dumped into the wrong cost centre. The same dance every week. She used to get it done in five clipped minutes. Confirm the codes, say thanks, hang up. Somewhere along the line the calls had stretched, first to ten minutes, then twenty, and lately they drifted past the point where anyone in accounts would have noticed if they were paying attention.

Sarah glanced towards the glass partition. The partners were in a meeting. The rest of the floor was half-empty, people sloping off early or hiding in the kitchenette. She picked up the headset, hesitated, then dialled.

He answered on the second ring, that unhurried Midlands voice she had started looking forward to more than she liked to admit.

"Sarah. Right on time. You've got 402 for me, have you?"

"I've got 402, and three lines that look like they've been allocated by a blindfolded intern. Afternoon, Mark."

He laughed, low and dry. "That intern's been with us six years. Don't tell him. Go on then, what's he done this time?"

They went through the numbers. She read the descriptions, he muttered about the stores department and how nobody ever coded consumables properly. It should have been finished. Instead he asked if her office still had that flickering light above the photocopier, and she told him about the intern in purchase ledger who had set fire to a bagel in the toaster that morning. Mark said his lot had a vending machine that only took the old pound coins and someone kept leaving notes of apology taped to it.

Sarah found herself smiling at the screen. The fluorescent tubes hummed. Her tea was cold.

"You sound far too lively for a woman who spends Friday afternoons ticking off VAT numbers," Mark said. "Most people on this call sound like they're being slowly buried under paper."

"I am being slowly buried under paper. I'm just better at hiding it." She heard herself add, without quite meaning to, "Someone's got to keep you entertained. Otherwise you'd start allocating everything to general expenses and we'd both be in bother."

There was a pause, the sort that used to make her rush back to the codes. He didn't fill it. When he spoke again there was a smile in it.

"Entertained, is it? I'll have to up my game. What are you doing this weekend then, besides hiding from spreadsheets?"

She told him nothing much. Stephen wanted to watch the match. She might hoover. Mark said he was meant to be taking the kids somewhere involving a National Trust car park and a lot of complaining. The call ticked past thirty minutes. Sarah looked at the three unmatched lines she had left deliberately unlogged and felt a small, private flush of guilt that was not entirely unpleasant.

"I should let you go," she said, not quite meaning it.

"You should. Before someone on your end wonders why purchase order 402 needs a seminar." Another soft laugh. "Same time next week, Sarah. Don't let the intern near the toaster."

"I'll do my best."

She hung up and sat for a moment with the headset still on, the office noise rushing back in. Then she logged two of the lines and left the third for Monday. Just in case.

In the kitchenette she rinsed her mug and waited for the kettle. A girl from payroll was complaining about the car park. Sarah nodded in the right places and thought about the way Mark said her name, unhurried, as if he had nowhere else to be.

The house smelled of the Chinese Stephen had already ordered by the time she got in. He was slouched on the sofa in his weekend jeans, remote in one hand, takeaway menu still on the cushion beside him though the food was on the coffee table. Football highlights murmured from the telly. He looked up when she came through, kind hazel eyes, the same slight beer softness at the waist she had stopped noticing years ago.

"You all right, love? Late one?"

"Just the usual Friday call. Invoices. Nothing exciting." She hung her coat, kicked off her flat boots, and sat at the other end of the sofa. The spring dipped in the familiar place. "You order the crispy chilli beef?"

"Course. And the prawn crackers you never finish." He passed her a carton without looking away from the screen. "Good day?"

"Ordinary. Tired."

He made a small sound of agreement and asked something about whether they needed milk in the morning. Sarah said she'd check. She ate a piece of beef that had gone a bit soggy and watched the replay of a goal she didn't care about. Stephen's hand found her knee in that absent, fond way of his, warm and heavy, and she left it there.

In her head she was still on the line. She had been cheeky. Shielded by the headset and the miles of cable, it had felt easy, almost like a different woman speaking.

Stephen laughed at something on the telly. Sarah smiled automatically, balancing the warm cardboard carton on her knees and snapping a prawn cracker she didn't want between her fingers. The sofa cushion gave way beneath her in the exact hollow her body had worn into it over five years, soft and inescapable, smelling faintly of old upholstery and fabric conditioner. The heating ticked. This was the life they had built, comfortable and decent, and she was ashamed of how small and suffocating it suddenly felt sitting here, hemmed in by takeaway cartons and the hollow of the cushions, with a man's laugh she couldn't quite shake still ringing in her ear.

She told herself it was only talk. A long, boring call that had got a bit friendly because Fridays did that to people. Tomorrow she would hoover and watch whatever match he put on and it would all settle back into place.

On the screen a commentator shouted. Stephen squeezed her knee. Sarah stared at the carton in her lap and replayed the exact moment Mark had said she was too lively for VAT numbers, and the way she had answered without thinking, and the third invoice line still sitting unmatched on her system like a secret she had decided, for now, to keep.