The door to the toilet slams open and I turn to the noise. Two men in suits, one tall, one small, barrel across the tiles and pin me to the wall. The tall one is grinning like a cat on speed and he grabs my arm, spins me around to connect with the fist of the short one and I go into stun mode.
They are strong and the tall one kicks my feet from under me and they haul me out of the toilet and onto the fire escape. I try to resist and receive a slap to the head for every word I utter. Seven slaps - I’m a slow learner.
We hit the roof at full speed and I’m lifted clean off my feet and hurled over the edge.
Falling: Chapter One
‘Get your own tea’
God I could spit. You wear a skirt, sit next to a computer and some male tosser thinks you’re the office slave. Why the hell would I want to make tea? When was the last time someone made tea for me? It’s not in my bloody job description. I know - I looked. Bad day already and it’s not even past ten. Time to take a cigarette break.
Even a ciggie break is a pain in the rear end. When I started work, smoking was almost compulsory. By mid morning the fug in the office was so thick that it blurred the edges of the people, my wonderful work colleagues, who sat at the far end of the office. Crashing fags was a given. It was an unwritten offence to come to work with less than a twenty pack and you were in the mire if you came back from foreign climes with anything less than a box of two hundred.
How it’s all changed for us lepers. First we were banished to a hell hole of a room in the basement. Just an awful place! No windows. No decoration and rock hard chairs. Like a secret meeting of some perverse society we sat, drawing in, in turn, your own cigarette smoke and then someone else’s. But at least it was a place to go and, crappy or not, you could escape from work for ten minutes.
Then we were relegated to the street. Correction, relegated to a spot in the lane round the corner from our front door. There we would huddle rain, shine, snow, wind. Backs to the elements - drawing sustenance and complaining. Complaining, complaining and complaining. Complaining about our bosses, our work colleagues, our staff, our spouses, our neighbours, the newsreader on BBC1, the girl in reception with the worst dress sense on the planet, the security guard with the breath of Satan, the pay, the conditions, the weather, the lack of toilet rolls last Tuesday, the smell of urine in the lane, the size of Mars Bars (yes they were bigger in the past), the price of a cup of coffee in Starbucks, the taste of a cup of coffee in Starbucks, the unisex toilet in Starbucks (but we still go to Starbucks), the cost of petrol, the cost of living, the cost of smoking. Complaining is what we do best and the time to do it is during a fag break. And now in another clampdown by the cigarette police we are to be banished from the lane.
It seems our mounting doubts (the ciggy kind not the mental kind) and the sheer number of addicts that congregate to partake have caused other people to complain - ironic or what! We have been told to find a spot away from our building.
As a group we are fairly sure this is illegal but it gives us something else to complain about and has, to be fair, given birth to an unforeseen opportunity. An opportunity spotted by yours truly.
I had been talking to Satan Breath about the ban on smoking in the lane and to my surprise he informed me he was also a smoker. Since I hadn’t seen him in the leper colony I asked where he smoked. ‘The roof’ he informed me. And so was born the mile high club.
Smoking on the roof is strictly against company policy and no doubt it is against safety regulations, local bye laws and the civil liberties of the pigeons that now have to inhale our waste products. But for a short window it is also glorious.
The roof could have been custom designed for smoking. Stunning views, plenty of shelter, easy access and the world’s largest dustbin - just chuck the ciggies over the edge. Satan Breath has assured us that the twenty storey fall will put out the burning stub well before it hits the ground. Just to be on the safe side we sling them into the lane. This will no doubt confuse the hell out of the office manager. No smokers in the lane but lots of used cigarettes. It won’t last. Can’t last. Someone will blab and we will be ejected. But while the going is good, let’s smoke.
It’s just warming up on the roof today and there is no one else around. Unusual for this time of day! Maybe we’ve been found out and I’m the last to know and, any moment now, someone will burst from the fire escape to arrest me.
I think I’ll enjoy my moment of solitude on the west wing today. Not the best view. A forty storey office block sits just across the lane but there is a small sun trap and a vent that can be used as a seat. An uncomfortable seat - but a seat none the less.
I light up, look up and nearly throw up. Above me on the block opposite there is a man falling from the roof. One foot on the roof - the rest of him hanging out in space.
Mother!
