Siren Call

Down

I made my way into my office, freshly showered and dressed for work, my black shirt tucked into black pants, the sleeves rolled up to my forearms and the top few buttons undone. I lifted the take out mug to my lips, inhaling the rich scent of fresh coffee and taking a welcome sip, holding a sugared jam doughnut in my other hand, my stomach already eagerly awaiting the moment I would take a bite of it.

"You know I could have won right?" Jamie said, following me through the door, and lingering just inside.

He had been pouty about losing the race all the way up from the lobby. I laughed and rounded my desk, standing the coffee on the surface and biting into the doughnut as I reached over to check my list of messages, and flicked through them.

"Whatever you say J." I replied absentmindedly, licking the stray sugar from my bottom lip and sighing internally as I read the top note. "Looks like I've got to head on over to the Wesbon Street building, Davis needs me to go over some checks before continuing with the new plans."

The Wesbon Street project was a large building across town, I shook my head,irritably. The time it would take to complete those checks, and then get back to the office to start on the rest of my workload was going to definitely set me back a few hours.

"Why don't I come with you? I haven't got too much on, and with both of us, it'll take half the time." Jamie offered taking another mouthful of coffee and shrugging, dusting stray sugar from his white shirt.

I glanced at my planner, practically spilling over with other tasks I had to get on with, there was no way that I was about to turn down any offer to help get this job over with.

"Sure, thanks mate." I took off my jacket and threw it over the back of my chair. I wouldn't need that there.

"No problem. Just gotta shoot off an email, I'll meet you down by your car?"

Nodding, he left, walking along the corridor towards his office. I pulled my car keys from my pocket along with my phone, unlocking my screen, I quickly tapped out a message to Rox, to cancel lunch. There's no way I'd have the time now.

I turned the wheel to the right, pulling up in front of the familiar large building. It's predominantly glass exterior reflected the fluffy white clouds like mirrors, and the sunlight hit the top floors with bold beams of light. Scaffolding was attached at various places and heavy machinery was parked up in the deserted parking lot. Various people in luminous orange, high visibility jackets and hard hats were scurrying around hard at work and moving various materials around the site. I spotted an empty space at the far end of the parking lot, and steered into it. Switching off the engine, myself and Jamie climbed out of the car, and moved to the boot. We each grabbed a high vis jacket and a hard hat, putting them on and gathering the blueprints and planning sheets. I slammed thee boot down and locked the car and we headed towards the front doors, stopping to speak to the site manager on the way in.

The interior of the building was still bare. Instead of desks, chairs, or anything to specify what the building would be used for, there was just ladders, loose cables, unattached wires and piles of wood tied back with ropes. Jamie and I split up, him taking the top floors and working his way down, whilst I took the bottom ones and worked my way up. Blowing out a breath, I stood at a work table and unrolled the plans for the floor, after scanning them for a few moments, I moved around the room, getting to work. The welcome part of this particular job, was that it was something I couldn't afford to be distracted whilst doing. I had no time to think about Kat, no time to ponder the conversation with Jamie in the park this morning. I couldn't let my mind wander from the task in hand. It was a welcome relief to not have my mind racing through all of the thoughts that had sent me for a spin lately. Just me working my way from floor to floor, concentrating solely on what I was doing, ticking the boxes and making the notes. The only sounds around me were the shouts of the workers and the banging and drilling of their tools. The smell of fresh paint grew stronger as I worked up through the floors, clearly the upper floors had got further along the road to completion.