Humbug (2 page)

I began turning away, but he wasn’t having it.

“Oh, go on,” he wheedled, “it’s Christmas. Treat yourself. My missus made ’em. They’re gorgeous.”

I could see I would be quicker taking one than arguing further, so, suppressing a sigh, I paced back to the desk. “Okay, I’ll take one to have with my coffee.”

The mince pies crowding the Tupperware container on the desk weren’t in little foil cases like the ones from Waitrose we’d been serving in client meetings for the last couple of weeks. They didn’t look as tidy as those ones either. In fact they looked pretty crumbly and uneven and had been so heavily dredged with icing sugar that they were a uniform white.

I searched for the smallest one and gingerly lifted it out, grimacing when my fingertips breached the pastry walls, sinking in to the sticky, fruity interior.

“Damn.” I glanced at the guard and said, unhopefully, “I don’t suppose you have any napkins?”

He looked at me blankly. “What?”

“Napkins?” I lifted the hand holding the pie to eye level to demonstrate my predicament, only for the fragile structure to give completely under my fingers. Cursing, I cupped my other hand below to catch the crumbling pastry and sticky filling before it fell to the floor.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I demanded.

The guard looked at me like I was nuts. “Why don’t you just eat it? It’s only a little pie. Most people have finished by the time they reach the lifts.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I muttered, more to myself than to him, then gave an impatient huff. “Have you got a bin back there?”

“A bin?”

“Yes,” I said with exaggerated patience. “A bin.”

“Um, yeah.”

“Can I see it?”

Slowly, still looking puzzled, he bent. When he stood straight again, he was holding a metal wastepaper basket in one hand.

“Thanks,” I said and dropped the remains of the mince pie into it. While he gaped at me, I pulled out a tissue out of my coat pocket, wiped my hands quickly and dropped that in too.

“Maybe next time bring some napkins.”

And with that, I turned on my heel and strode towards the lifts, the incident already forgotten, my thoughts on the day ahead.

Q
uick & Blacks occupied just one half of the fifth floor of Sterling House. Our main UK branch office, which was huge and state-of-the-art, was in London. The Manchester regional office was, well, compact and bijou. Very much an outpost of the main operation. That was why the cornerstone of my five-year plan was to relocate to London, where the real action was. It didn’t matter how hard I worked if nobody noticed. Out of sight was out of mind.

The Manchester office had opened five years ago, when Quicks had acquired Marlene Joseph Associates, a small independent management consultancy started by my boss, Marley.

Marley was a force of nature. Small, petite and belligerent, she was notorious for her “scorched earth” approach. She’d shock potential clients by announcing, with every appearance of pride, that she’d fired tens of thousands of workers over the course of her career, then she’d follow that shocking pronouncement up with a conscience-soothing sales pitch about sometimes needing to burn the deadwood away before the new green shoots could rise.

In truth, she did the dirty work that the clients didn’t want to do themselves.

If a company was thinking about slashing a department or closing a whole office, Marley would make it easy for them. She’d go in, observe the business for a few weeks, write a report to the board recommending the necessary brutal changes, and then, once the board had approved the plan, she’d implement the whole thing as an outsourced project. The board wouldn’t have to do a thing, not even select who was being fired. No choices, no responsibility. No need to look anyone in the eye and tell them the bad news.

Or as Marley said to me privately, in her snarky way:
We’re the big boy who did it and ran away.

I’d started working with Marley shortly before Quicks bought her out. At first, I’d only intended to do the job for a year. The salary was good and Ben and I had decided to save up to go travelling. But somehow a year had become two, then three. There was always one more project I wanted to finish before we booked our tickets.

The thing was, I was good at the job. I had an eye for detail, an agile brain that could absorb and organise large amounts of information, and a confident manner that went down well with clients. It hadn’t taken long for Marley to notice me and start singling me out to lead on key parts of her projects. And I’d thrived on that trust.

When Ben finally snapped, announcing that he was going travelling with or without me, I’d been determined to hand in my notice. But when I told Marley my decision, she’d asked me to reconsider.

I’ve got my eye on you for partnership, Quin. If that’s what you want, you’ll be making a mistake if you leave now. A big one.

The funny thing was, up until that minute, I
hadn’t
wanted partnership. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. But as soon as she put it in my mind, as soon as it was a real possibility, I
did
want it. I’d always been like that, even as a little kid. Single-minded and competitive. And my desire to succeed at Quicks had been bigger than my desire to give Ben what he wanted.

So Ben had flown to the States, and I’d stayed in England. We’d decided on a trial break, one that became permanent six months later when Ben met Leon, another British backpacker, while surfing in California. And now, eighteen months later, they were back home and moving in together.

And that was just fine by me.

It wasn’t as if I gave a damn about what Ben was doing these days.

The lift doors swished open at the fifth floor and I strode out, flashing my pass at the little black box fixed to the wall outside Quicks’ glass doors.

Holly was on reception. She was pretty new, having replaced Lena, who had recently gone on maternity leave. I found her a bit irritating, with her endless questions and attempts at mindless chitchat.

“Morning, Quin,” she said now, smiling. “Not long till Christmas!”

“Yeah,” I replied shortly “Listen, could you organise a triple-shot latte for me? I’ll come get it once I’ve logged on.”

Marley had had a Krug coffee machine brought into the office, and all our receptionists were given professional barista training. It was one of those little touches Marley thought was important:
Do you know how many productive hours are lost by employees leaving the office to buy coffee, Quin?

Lena knew everyone’s coffee preferences by heart. She’d have had my latte on the way before I’d even walked through the door—it irritated the hell out of me that I was having to ask Holly for it.

Holly’s gaze took in my unimpressed expression and her smile dipped. “Oh, yes. Of course. Right away. I’ll buzz you when it’s ready.”

I turned away with a grunt and headed for the office area, flashing my card again to get through the electronic doors that led to the open plan area occupied by the team. This area took up half of our total space. The rest of the office comprised a suite of rooms where we met with clients.

The working area was spacious and bright, with pods of desks arranged in threes. The furniture was modern and ergonomic and there were “breakout” spaces dotted around where we could gather to chat and brainstorm without disturbing each other. A large fruit platter sat in one of the breakout areas. Marley insisted on food and snacks being provided throughout the day as it encouraged staff to work through their breaks. We used to have pastries in the morning but I’d had them switched to fruit. The effect on productivity had been marked.

Marley shared one of the pods of desks with Brian, her PA. She used the third desk in her pod as her personal storage area. The chair was draped with clothes and the surface of the desk was littered with makeup, crumpled magazines and other paraphernalia. The rest of us occupied the remaining pods, with two consultants and an admin person to each pod.

This morning, the place was remarkably empty, pretty much deserted in fact. Half the team were on leave and the rest were finishing up a job in Liverpool. Christmas was a shitty time to make people redundant but, on the plus side, it gave management a buffer period over the festive holidays to regroup. I noticed only two people at their desks as I strolled in: Brian, who sat with headphones on, typing furiously, and Rob Paget, my pod neighbour. I hadn’t expected to see Rob this early. It wasn’t yet nine and he’d been late more often than not recently. Although he made up the time, it was something I’d been intending to take up with him.

Despite being a couple of years older than me, Rob was junior to me in the team. I’d first come across him earlier in the year, working in the accounts department of a company Quicks had been appointed to downsize. I’d actually had to make him redundant—he’d been unlucky enough to be the accounts manager for the unprofitable division we were slashing. During our observation period, though, he’d impressed me with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the company’s procedures, processes and accounting functions, and I’d put in a word for him with Marley. Since we’d recently lost a couple of juniors, she’d agreed to interview him and had ended up offering him a trial position as a junior associate.

Although it had been a bit of a step down for him, Rob had been grateful for the opportunity and, sure enough, he’d proven to be quick, smart and thorough, but his recent and persistent timekeeping issues bothered me.

Rob looked up as I approached our pod. He leaned back in his chair, rolling his broad shoulders in a way that suggested he’d been hunched over the spreadsheet he was marking up for some time. He was, I thought grumpily, looking as stupidly handsome as ever.

This morning he wore a form-fitting burgundy V-neck over an open-collared shirt. The fine knit of his sweater clung lovingly to his broad shoulders and lean torso, and his shiny chestnut hair flopped over his forehead in a curiously boyish way.

It pissed me off, how attractive I found him.

“Morning,” he said as I dumped my phone and headphones on my desk and switched on my computer.

I hid my faint self-consciousness behind an indifferent expression and grunted at him, turning away to hang up my coat.

“Good morning, Rob,” he said behind me in a singsong voice. “And how are you today? Any plans for Christmas or are you just staying at home?” A change of tone then, back to his own voice. “Oh, just at home with family thanks, Quin. You?”

When I turned back to my desk, I sent him a dark glare. “I had a hellish night’s sleep last night and I’m bloody exhausted.” I dropped into my chair and tapped in my login details, adding with a yawn, “I won’t be up to conversation until I’ve had coffee.”

Rob chuckled. “No doubt you’ve got Holly running around making you one as we speak.” He didn’t seem to expect an answer to that, just switched his attention back to his PC.

That was another thing that annoyed me about him—the fact that he seemed to find the way I acted in the office so amusing. I’d started aping Marley’s demanding manner years ago, after noticing that the majority of people tended to rush to do whatever she asked, just to appease her. I found it worked surprisingly well, even when I was a junior associate. But Rob didn’t play along. He laughed at me when I behaved like that, and it fucked me off no end, even though I had to grudgingly respect him for it.

I scowled at him, annoyed by his easy dismissal of my complaints. “I hope that’s the billing spreadsheet for Project Charlie you’re working on?” I said. “I’m going to need it this morning.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I took a perverse pleasure in asking him for something I knew he’d probably be unable to deliver.

He looked up, his expression pleasant. “No, it’s not.” I felt a stab of satisfaction and opened my mouth to say more, but before I could get a word out he added, “I finished that one earlier. Let me just print it for you.”

I watched mutely as he tapped at his keyboard, then smoothly rose from his seat to cross the room to the printer bay.

By the time he was back, I’d opened my inbox and was running through my emails. He leaned over the partition between our desks to hand me the document, which looked to be a couple of hundred pages long. I honestly hadn’t expected it to be ready even by the end of today, and I wondered how long he’d been working on it. I knew for a fact he couldn’t have started it till yesterday.

“Thanks.” I leafed through a few immaculate pages, then tossed it down on the desk and levered myself out of my chair, yawning again. “I’m definitely going to need my coffee before I start going through it though.”

I turned to walk off to reception to collect my coffee, but he stopped me.

“Quin, wait—”

I glanced back. Rob wore a grim expression on his face and his jaw was tight with tension. It was an odd look for him—he was usually such a sunny, smiley guy.

“Yes?”

“I need to ask you something.”

I eyed him for a moment, curious. Whatever it was, he clearly didn’t like asking me. There was a wary expression on his handsome face and his dark gaze was guarded.

“Sure,” I said. “Fire away.”

He ran his fingers through his thick hair in an uncomfortable gesture. I couldn’t help noticing how it fell back over his forehead, chestnut lights glinting. Would it feel as silky as it looked?

“…early today?”

I suddenly realised he’d been talking and blinked, embarrassed. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said, I know we’re a bit low on staff this week, but would you mind if I left early today? I’ve already made up the time—I worked on that billing spreadsheet late last night at home and I came in early to finish it.”

I opened my mouth to agree then shut it again, thinking. Marley had always taught me that when someone asked you for something, you should never give it to them too easily.

Make them earn it. Better for them, better for you.

And there was that timekeeping thing I’d been meaning to raise with him…

I sighed. “Listen, Rob. You’ve had some attendance issues recently that I think we need to address before we talk about you taking time off. I’ve noticed…”