So, in the end, Sunday lunch was great, but I’m no better off and still don’t know what to do. Procrastination is a terrible thing, but I’m slowly becoming an expert at it.

Derek, one of the senior programmers, is waiting for me, chatting to Katie, when I arrive on Monday morning. “Have you a few minutes?” he asks without preamble.

“Sure, do we have a problem?” I ask, opening my office and letting him go in before me.

“Only if the rumours are true?”

“Rumours? What bloody rumours?”

“Well, I have it on reliable information that you’re buggering off for three months.”

“Then your informant isn’t as reliable as you might expect. I haven’t said yes to anything yet. I still can’t decide whether to go or not.”

“Oh, so the fact that you’ve been asked is true, then?” He asks. “I tried to get Julie to talk to me about it and she wouldn’t.”

“Yes. They need me in Nairobi for a complete support department setup. It’s just…”

“A long way away and well out of your comfort zone?” Derek finishes for me.

“Exactly. I have to give a decision by the end of the day. More importantly, what does this make you worry for?”

“Well, we’re finally about to roll out those big changes we have been talking about for months. Testing looks good, but you know how it is when a new system goes live.”

“If I go, I won’t exactly be off-grid, you know?” I ask Derek with a smile. “They have this thing called the internet and we all have these little devices, they’re called phones. They’re marvellous, you can talk to anyone, anywhere in the whole world.”

“Yeah, I know all that, smart arse.” Derek does manage to finally crack a smile, though. “It’s just that we’ve settled into a routine where you are here whenever we do a big roll-out. It’ll be odd if you’re thousands of kilometres away and in a different time-zone. We can, of course, postpone it until you get back, but your input is always valuable.”

“Well, like I said, I haven’t decided yet, one way or the other,” I tell him again honestly. This conversation, though, is pushing me a little towards staying. While I’m positive that Katie and the others can pull the data together and I can analyse it anywhere, he is right that I’ve been available for every major roll-out in the last five years or more.

We chat aimlessly for a few minutes, but I really have quite a lot of work to do, checking the weekend logs and working on a couple of reports. Once Derek has headed off to his department, I put my head down and get on with some of that work.

I’m not interrupted until Katie knocks on the door to remind me that it’s time for lunch. “Coming out for a sandwich?” she asks from the doorway. I close a couple of open documents and nod in agreement, getting up and following her out into the spring sunshine.

For once it isn’t raining and the sun really is beginning to get quite warm. We make our way down to the North Quay and grab our favourite sandwiches before finding an empty bench to sit and eat in the warm light. The tide is in and the boats in the marina are floating high in the sun, light glinting off the rippling water in the gentle, almost imperceptible breeze.

It's a great place to sit and eat in the sun, providing you protect your food from the rampaging gulls. I lost a couple of sandwiches before I learned to be more careful. Still, a couple of the birds wander along in front of us, eyeing our food greedily. It’s a wonder that the herring gull is becoming endangered, considering how opportunistic they always seem to be. Maybe that fearless abandon and bravado is what gets them into trouble. I’m not one to let that happen to me and that’s why I can’t make up my mind.

I hadn’t told Katie what was happening, not because I didn’t want her to know, but just because I became so engrossed in coding and keeping my head down over the weekend that I never had the chance to talk to her about it. She must have had an ear to the same grapevine as Derek, however, because she clearly knows all about it.

“So, what are you going to do?” she asks without preamble. “Go to Africa or stay here?”

“Sorry,” I manage after a moment. “I honestly don’t know. It all seems a bit forced and sudden.”

“You’ve never really been one for change, have you?”

“No,” I confess. “I think that’s even more true when we’re talking about forced change. I don’t like to be pushed into anything.”

“Not to be too harsh, but you do seem to prefer to run away.”

“It is a bit harsh. Harsh, but true,” I tell her with a smile. I know that she didn’t say it with any malice. She does just know me really well. “I can’t really run away from this one, though.”

“No. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, something like that. I just feel as if I need one more piece of the puzzle to make a decision both obvious and easy, but I’m running out of time,” I tell her as I stand and take our wrappers to the nearest bin.

Katie is quiet for a long while, clearly battling some inner conflict. I know her as well as she knows me and there’s something that she isn’t telling me.

“What is it?” I finally ask in exasperation. The sun has gone behind a cloud and I shiver involuntarily at the sudden chill.

“I don’t think I should tell you,” Katie finally mutters. “Make your decision about going to Africa first, then I’ll tell you what I know.”

For a moment, I’m at a loss. What can be so important that it’ll make a difference to whether I go on this assignment or not? I can’t think of anything, but I’m not letting this one go.

“Katie, just fucking tell me!” I whisper with a groan.

“I really don’t…”

“Katie!” this one is loud enough that I can’t help looking around to see if anyone is watching us. From a distance we must look like a couple having a fight.

Katie lets out one of her characteristically long sighs before finally answering. “Mike’s back on the island.”

“My Mike?” I say without thinking. It’s been more than eighteen months since I’ve seen him and I don’t actually think that he ever was mine.

“Yes, that Mike,” Katie agrees, catching my slip and smiling.

“When? Why? What?” I know I’m being barely coherent, but I’m really caught out by this. I haven’t even thought about him in more than a year and now I’m slipping into calling him mine?

“I don’t have any answers, Will,” Katie reassures me. “I saw him when I was out on Saturday, across a crowded bar. He didn’t see me, but he was with a guy and they seemed very close.”

“Were you going to tell me this, even if I wasn’t in a panic about this whole work thing?”

“Of course. I was tempted to message you right away, but, honestly, I knew you’d freak out a bit and didn’t want to do that to you over the weekend.”

“He hated the Isle of Man. What the fuck would he come back here for. Maybe it was just a weekend break with his boyfriend or whatever?”

“Maybe, but I know the guy that he was with and he’s local. They seemed awfully friendly.”

“What?”

“Tongues and everything. In a public bar. Disgusting. An older man, wealthy, too.”

The best that I can manage is to take another sip from my bottle of water and stare down at the pavement. I would probably be able to do this for the rest of the day, but that’s not on the cards right now. What a fucking shambles.

Eventually, Katie drags me to my feet and we begin to make our way back to the office.

“Well,” I tell her as we approach our building. “That makes my decision a whole lot easier.”