After years of never taking any kind of lunch break, and doing things like rifling through my drawer in a desperate hunt for stale crackers because I had convinced myself I didn't have time to leave my desk; I have now become a highly practised Lady Who Lunches !
Towards the end of the week, I beetle off for my third lunch date of the week - this time with Life Coach Colleague, who has just been away to exotic climes and whose holiday photos I have asked to look at.
Life Coach Colleague? He inspires a kind of irrational hatred in certain people. Oh! Funnily enough he is also attractive, articulate, exceptionally well groomed and dressed, and highly proficient at his job.
Go figure.
Life Coach Colleague has given me much support over the past few months, for which I am very grateful. But what no-one knows - and never will - is that about a year ago I was the person he rang when the malicious behaviour of colleagues all got too much for him. (It's quite grim having to listen to a grown man struggling not to cry).
So we have a particular shared bond; but despite the vulnerability he revealed to me; he is far better at dealing with the Jackals than I am.
It is Life Coach Colleague who has trained me to adopt the DILLIC = "Do I Look Like I Care?" facial expression when the pointed bitchy comments start flying (DILLIC involves staring into the middle distance and smiling...)
It is Life Coach Colleague who openly proclaims his successes and triumphs because (as he puts it) "why should I modify my behaviour to satisfy these c***s?"
And it is Life Coach Colleague who absolutely refuses to make our relationship one of subterfuge, saying things like "oooh, I can't wait for our lunch this Friday" just when Politician's Daughter is walking past us.
We enjoy a particularly good meal today, while he tells me all about his rather adventurous two week sojourn in the Middle East. So it is only over the coffees that we finally get round to conversing about Life on Planet Zog aka our dear little department.
Life Coach Colleague tells me of a baffling conversation he had recently with Remora.
"She asked me if I was coming along to a pub lunch to commemorate Politician's Daughter's imminent disappearance on maternity leave. I said no, I wasn't coming because I had absolutely nothing in common with Politician's Daughter, and that none of the people who were going were friends of mine. And then..." (Life Coach Colleague takes a swig of strong Americano to fortify himself for the startling climax) "and then Remora said 'oh they aren't friends of mine, I have nothing in common with them either' !!".
I gaze back at Life Coach Colleague with a blank expression, wondering why this appears to have shocked him so much. He gazes back in bafflement.
"I mean, why would she hang about with these people all the time if she doesn't have anything in common with them???"
I forebear to supply him with the reason my pal Jo Inner Circle recently came up with (ie "because she's f***ing nuts?"). Instead I patiently try to explain, as calmly and rationally as I can, that Remora is a sociopath who doesn't like anyone, and indeed holds the entire human race in complete contempt.
Life Coach Colleague twitches like a computer on the verge of imminent breakdown. Indeed, I almost expect him to suddenly start mechanically repeating "cannot compute, cannot compute" before slumping to the carpet and requiring urgent rebooting.
"But she goes out with these people all the time!" he proffers, in an attempt to find some logic in the situation. "They all think she is their friend!?!"
"Mmmm," I respond, suggesting that if Life Coach Colleague studies the scenarios being played out before him a leeeetle more closely, he will realise that he is watching the most breathtakingly proficient displays of psychological manipulation I have ever seen (think Dale Carnegie crossed with Stalin and you will get the general idea....). Remora's chief tool is flattery which she lays on thickly with a trowel - and regrettably, most people are absolute suckers for flattery.
I also advise Life Coach Colleague that Remora's favourite motto is "Keep your Friends Close, and Your Enemies Even Closer" (oddly, this is diametrically opposed to my own favourite motto, which is "Avoid Your Enemies Like the F***ing Plague"...)
We swallow the last remnants of our coffee before heading back to the Town Hall, both slightly subdued at this latest example of Remora's weirdness and duplicity.
But there is something I haven't told Life Coach Colleague.
I haven't told him all the things Remora used to say to me and all our colleagues about him.
They cannot, however, be half as bad as the things she now says to co-workers about me.
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