Epitaph Read Free Page A

desolation turned to anger. There were others he knew of who were less competent than him. Others who deserved to lose their jobs.
    He’d been at Meyer and Banks advertising agency for close to fifteen years. He’d done a bit of everything there in his time. Market research at the beginning, then design, direct marketing and finally copy writing. There’d never been any complaints about his input, commitment or dedication. Customers had always liked him. Some of the agency’s most successful campaigns over the years had been because of him. The quality of his work had been consist -ently high. Unlike some he could think of even now as he sat helplessly at his kitchen table.
    He wanted to smash something. To pick up the glass and hurl it at the nearest wall and bellow his rage and frustration.
    He wanted to know why it had to be him. Why did he have to be the one who lost his job?
    Of course the subject had been mentioned briefly during the course of the afternoon but, upon hearing the news of his release (dismissal made it sound as if he’d been removed because of some inadequacy) he had been too shocked to probe his bosses about the reasons for his removal from the position he enjoyed so much. They had spoken of things like redundancy payments and working until the end of the month but all of those subjects had floated past him. As if they’d been spoken while he was asleep. After the initial news that he was being released, very little had penetrated his consciousness. He wondered if this was what it was like hearing you had a terminal disease. Once the word terminal had been uttered, everything else was subordinate and unnecessary.
    Had this happened a year or two earlier then he would not have received the news with such despair, but to be laid off in the middle of such a deep and seemingly endless recession offered little hope of salvation. A year or two earlier there would have been other firms willing to employ him. Other companies only too willing to take on his expertise. He would have looked upon his redundancy as a chance to take a holiday. A hiatus from the daily grind. He would have used that time between jobs to relax and enjoy some of the life that his handsome salary brought him.
    But not now.
    Paul poured himself another drink and slumped back in his chair, the anger he’d felt now replaced once again by that same creeping despair he had grown so accustomed to since leaving his office earlier in the day.
    The sensible side of him said that he should get up early in the morning and scour every available outlet for a job to replace the one he’d lost. But sense didn’t feature too strongly in his mindset at this precise moment. It was hard to think logically and begin formulating plans when you felt so much distress and helplessness. Anyone who thought otherwise had never been in this position.
    The other side of him had already decided that there was nothing to do at present but wallow in self-pity and that no amount of enthusiasm, drive or desire was going to get him a comparable position in a firm of equal or better standing. It was a matter of logic. It was nothing to do with trying to work out some kind of strategy for moving on. His position was intolerable and, right now, there seemed nothing that could be done about it. More to the point, the mortgage would need paying. A reasonable redundancy payment might keep him solvent for a few more months but it wouldn’t last for ever.
    Words like repossession began to circulate inside his already overcrowded brain and he finally sucked in a deep breath and got to his feet, his hands shaking slightly.
    He shrugged off his jacket, hung it on the back of the chair and walked through into the sitting room, switching on the lights as he did so. He looked around the immaculately decorated room for a second then glanced in the direction of the polished wood table close to the wall to his left.
    The red indicator on his answering machine was flashing a