Now my part, and there is no honest version of this without it.
When I picked that envelope up off the desk in 1108, I stood there for about forty seconds.
I opened it. I counted it. Three hundred, in twenties, nothing written on it.
And I thought about the nursery bill, which was due on the Friday, and which was two hundred and eighty.
I thought about it properly. Not as a joke I told myself. I stood in a hotel room with my hand on a cleaning trolley and I did the arithmetic, and for a few seconds the arithmetic was very appealing.
Then I took it downstairs and handed it in.
But I have never told anybody about those forty seconds. Not Marlon. Not Jocelyn. Not the lawyer.
And I have worked out why it matters to me.
It is because everybody has spent five months telling me I am the honest one, as though it is a personality trait, like being tall.
It is not. It is a thing I did once, on a Tuesday, after about forty seconds of thinking.
I got my job back in the November. There was a meeting and an apology from somebody I had never met, from head office, who used the word unacceptable four times.
And there was an offer.
Eleven thousand four hundred dollars, and a settlement agreement with a confidentiality clause in it.
I had it on my kitchen table for nine days.
Eleven thousand four hundred clears the card and most of the smaller hospital account and puts about four months in front of us, which we have never had.
I picked up the pen twice.
What stopped me was Yusra.
