15
ALICE
There was a part of Alice that had worried the roundtable would be – what? An ambush, a hostile conversation: who are you / how dare you / what do you think you’re doing? Which was delusional, she knew, and yet she couldn’t imagine why else she’d been invited. All week she’d fretted over the event, how to prepare, what to say. The stress of it all compounded the morning of by Tara, who enforced a much-hated ‘open calendars’ policy among her staff and had thus spotted the roundtable on Alice’s schedule:
‘How’d you get on the list?’ Tara asked, appearing right as Alice was about to depart for a breakfast croissant, sorely needed for her nerves. ‘I thought the roundtables were paused.’
‘Yeah.’ Alice cast around in case Sam or even Larry might be able to help. ‘Uh. I don’t know.’
