Reply all

On Monday we got an email from Graham in accounts. Graham died the Thursday before. We'd all signed the card.

The subject line was "Quick catch up" and it went to the whole office. Room 4, 3pm. Please don't be late, it's important.

IT said the account had been closed. They couldn't find the message on the server, even though it was sitting in forty inboxes. Someone made a joke about a scheduled send. Nobody laughed.

Our building doesn't have a Room 4. The meeting rooms go 1, 2, 3, 5. I'd never noticed that before. Nobody had.

At ten to three I went looking. Facilities had the original plans in a folder in the basement. There it was on the second floor, between the stairwell and the kitchen: Room 4, about the size of a large cupboard. Someone had written across it in red pen: Sealed 1987. Do not reopen.

The wall where it should be is just a wall. Plaster and a fire extinguisher.

At three o'clock exactly, every phone in the office rang at once. I picked mine up. There was no one on the line, only a room's worth of quiet, and then the sound of a chair being pulled back.

Then Graham's voice, very close: "Ah. You're all here. Good. Let's begin."

Eleven people have stopped coming to work since. HR says they've resigned. They all sat closest to that wall.

I sit closest now.