The Consultant - NaNoWriMo2021

Chapter 2

The waiting room was freezing. It wasn't really a waiting room, more of an ante-chamber, attached to the room being used for interviews but who uses the term ante-chamber these days? This was it; the final interview. The end of a long year of disclosure forms, questionnaires, elliptical conversations and endless interminable wondering. Did I say the right thing? Will they think I'm too shallow, or too serious? Will they find out something that I should have disclosed but forgot about?

As had become customary during this process, I was the only one in the room, waiting to be called in. I had been ushered in from the front door by a security man incongruously sporting a black uniform cap, like an aged policeman in long forgotten colonial Hong Kong. The shiny peak bore a sheen that could only come from regular polishing, but the actual hat was covered in cat hair, as were his trousers below the knee. He looked close to retirement and as he wheezed his way up to the first floor, I briefly pictured a huge white cat purring contentedly, sprawled across the hat, with the man complaining indulgently as he rubbed boot polish into his imitation leather shoes.

Finally, the waiting was over and the door opened.

'Finley, do come in. Please, take a seat.'

The room was set out as had been painstakingly detailed in the invitation letter; three people, all sat along a mahogany table, with a single chair placed on the opposite side. The window behind them sported a view of the Thames that would have cured any self-respecting property developer's performance anxiety. I sat, placing my briefcase, containing only a copy of The Guardian, on the floor beside me.

The woman I'd followed in took her place on the left. The man in the centre cleared his throat and looked at his papers for a moment before fixing his gaze on me.

'Welcome Finley, to the final interview stage, and of course, congrats for getting this far. Whatever happens today, try to relax, be yourself and don't worry about trying to gauge what we may or may not want to hear. We already know a great deal about you, and you about us, so this is really to make a final evaluation, on both sides, about whether or not we might be a good fit. Think of it as being like the start of a potential relationship. You like us, we like you; the question is do we want to get married?' He smiled at his own wit, and the others smiled with him, despite the fact that this was probably the tenth time today they had heard this preamble.

'I'm not big on marriage,' I suddenly blurted. 'I think I'd rather live in sin!'

Time momentarily ceased, and all three faces stared in bewilderment before bowing their heads and scribbling silently with a trio of Montblancs .

Fuck. Why did I say that? What does that even mean in this context? Days later, I would reflect on my opening sentence and rue my idiotic utterance. But that was in the future. For now, I grinned at them with what probably resembled a psychotic leer, rather than the winning smile conveying professional fraternity that I was going for, and battled through the rest of the interview.

A few days later, I was installed in a booth in the Bodleian, attempting to get my head around an ancient Babylonian manuscript that may or may not indicate a potential revolt brewing in the outer reaches of the empire. As I strained to decipher the cuneiform, I heard approaching footsteps but before I could register their direction, I felt a kiss on the crown of my head. It was like a spark from a faulty plug zapping my spine and I sprang round to confront the offender.

'Relax Fin, it's only me. Sorry, I forgot you don't like to be surprised.'

I took a breath and waited as my heart rate reduced. I had gotten a lot better in the past decade, but I still hated to be touched, in fact if I knew that I couldn't avoid say, a dental appointment or an evening with a boyfriend, I made sure to take a sedative in advance, to take the edge off of the anxiety and dull my senses when the dreaded contact occurred. I had learned to my surprise, that it's actually not so difficult to avoid physical contact; after my father's name had been cleared, people were understandably wary and generally avoided me. It took a couple of years before I was finally diagnosed with haphephobia; an ill-chosen name given that haphe is Greek for connection. I don't struggle to connect with people, or at least no more than anyone else, it's just the touching that completely freaks me out. Despite this, even people who know me well seem to believe if they do it little and often, I will become desensitised to it, as if I were a labrador being trained to tolerate shotguns.