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Through the office window, Mr. Jones looks out at the rain.  It’s dribbling down the glass, with no enthusiasm or power. Thin, grey streaks only, its movement barely discernible save for the slight splash it makes as it pools at the bottom of the window’s old, metal frame.

Before he can leave this Thursday night, he has a couple of reports to write up, a spreadsheet to complete and forward, and at least twenty emails to answer.  If the truth be told, he feels about as enthusiastic as the rain.  But faint heart doesn’t pay the bills, as his father used to tell him, so he sets to work. 

Besides, what’s waiting at home for him is hardly reason to rush.  Yes, the cat will be happy to see him – in that feed me, fake affection cats do so well.  He has the final episode of three, different TV serials to catch up on, but he’s guessed the murderer, who ends up with who and the surprising, happy ending respectively; so beyond the satisfaction of finding out if he’s right, he’s not very interested.  Maybe, he wonders, this is what you get when you’ve spent your whole life in the orderly, small way he has done.  You know what’s waiting for you at home, even if it’s not what you ever really want.

Mr. Jones isn’t the only person left in the office.  At ten past seven, he’s the second to last.  Philip Leary is there too - talking on his mobile, laughing too loudly, clicking the top of his biro in the rhythm of a cha-cha-cha.  He has little idea what Philip actually does day to day, but he knows he’s keen to get on and not shy about voicing his opinions, or relaying what a great job he’s done on this account or that.  If Philip’s working late, Mr. Jones knows he’ll have engineered it so all those in head office know about it and that he’ll be thanked, even remunerated, for his pains.  Mr. Jones won’t be.  If head office notice at all that he’s stayed late, they’ll assume he’s behind on something and playing catch-up.  And really, they wouldn’t be very wrong to assume this.

Philip has put on his mac and he approaches Mr. Jones’ desk on his way to the exit.  “Don’t stay too much longer”, he says.  “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”  Mr. Jones barely looks up from his computer screen, but he does wish Philip a goodnight.  He follows this with a “prick”, muttered under his breath, that he thinks Philip may have heard judging by the quick turn round he makes to look at Mr. Jones as he reaches the door.  Mr. Jones continues staring at this screen, his spine hunched and stiff.  Expectant, as if he feels Philip will return and hit him on the back of the neck. Instead, in the screen’s glare, he sees Philip smile and shake his head before going out of the door.  In the now empty office, Mr. Jones whispers to himself.  “Even God doesn’t trust his servants.” And, “We are crouched in everlasting despair”.

The black and white cells of the spreadsheet he’s working on are dancing in front of him, fluid and tricky.  There’s something about their movement that reminds him of the action of horses on the carousel he used to be taken to in town every Christmas as a child.  It was a real treat, he remembers, as both his mother and father would be there.  At least, his father was there in body, if not in active approval of the outing.  After about the age of six, he would turn to the boy Mr. Jones had been and challenge him with, “Don’t you think you’re a bit old for this kind of thing now?  Really, don’t you?”  His mother would put her finger to her lips and hush his father’s nonsense away.  And the little boy would ride the gold and black horses with their red reins and wild eyes, long into the cold, December air.

A shadow crosses the office and Mr. Jones can only assume the change in light is caused by the thick formation of cloud that seems to be coming in from the northern reach of the sky.  Despite the barbed wire coils to prevent them, the pigeons are roosting on the windowsills, bedraggled but tenacious.  The office strip-lights have begun to buzz.

He suddenly feels so tired and sad.  There’s an ache in his heart, an actual pain, and he misses his mother and yes, his father too, with the force of a physical weight on his chest.  He realises he’s now at least fifteen years older than when they died, and his feeling of tiredness spreads.

The office is so hot, even though he knows the heating would have gone off at least two hours ago.  He wishes he’d already made the move from his wool into his linen suit, even though (orderly man that he is), he knows this isn’t scheduled to happen for another three weeks.  Instead, he gets up to collect a ream of paper for the printer and he opens the window to allow fresh air and the cooling, scent of rain into the room.

Despite the lights, the office seems darker, full of shadows and ghosts.  He’s sure he can see his father, sitting upright on one of the meeting chairs, emphatically mouthing silent, futile words.  By the microwave in the kitchen alcove, his mother leans on the counter, sketching in the book covered in butterflies she’d always had with her.  He got his skill and love of art from her and what’s in his mind now is the carousel he drew when he was fourteen to display in his bedroom.  It was part painted, part pastel-crayoned.  The carousel itself was black, with silver and copper poles and metallic, fiery horses.  He’d used the pastels to colour the sky behind the carousel a pink and orange dusk.

When he’d put the picture up in his room, on the small expanse of wall to the right of his bed, he’d asked his father to come and look at it.  His father had surveyed it closely and said to him, “It’s nice, but you do know it’s not technically accurate, don’t you?”  The softness of his mother’s lips on his cheek had helped to brush away both his father’s words and his own sense of uselessness.

The tiredness and pain in his chest is so intense now, Mr. Jones puts his head down on his computer keyboard.  The spreadsheet’s formulae can wait until tomorrow, if tomorrow comes.  Where his forehead is pressed against it, the letter ‘U’ runs away into infinity.  Through his closed eyelids, the office’s dirty brown light now looks muted and golden.  He’s not sure either that in the red pulse of the smoke alarm, he can’t see his mother’s small hands outstretched.

On the floor around him, the sheets of plain paper drift like well-ordered snowflakes.  They hit the carpet tiles with the sound of a child’s whisper.  Or the flutter of wings.

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