When She Was Bad (16 page)

‘Someone I know had to rap all the things she thought were great about her company,’ claimed Amira.

‘We is the kings/Of spreadsheets and tings,’ improvised Charlie.

‘That’s genius right there,’ said Amira, approving. ‘Make that man the boss immediately.’

‘Well, I heard of one company that dropped the entire sales team in the middle of a wood in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and they had to find their way back to the hotel,’ Charlie said. ‘But because it was sales they were all über competitive and instead of working together they were trying to trick each other, and all of them ended up lost on their own and the police helicopter had to go and find them with heat-seeking equipment. Some of them had lost half their bodyweight and they’d actually started eating each other to survive.’

‘I think you might be exaggerating just a wee bit there, Charlie,’ said Sarah, but still something snagged at her chest at the thought of scrambling around the countryside in the dark. She couldn’t remember a time Joe and Sam had both slept through the night and she’d been pinning her hopes on at least getting a proper night’s sleep out of this hellish weekend away. The idea that they might be expected to stay up all night trekking through fields in the cold made her want to burst into tears.

‘Do you think we’re going to see a different side of Rachel?’ she asked. ‘I mean, maybe she feels that for whatever reason she has to put on this really hard act at work, play the big boss, and this is the point at which she unveils herself as a total pussycat.’

Amira snorted.

‘Yeah, her interests are knitting little jumpers for penguins and meditating for world peace. Oh, and biting the heads off live babies.’

Sarah’s stomach lurched and she fought back a wave of nausea.

They took a taxi to the hotel. Obviously they’d all Googled it before so Sarah had a rough idea what to expect, but it was like internet dating – hotels inevitably used misleading photographs of the sun dappling the honey-stoned entrance, or the chandelier over the beautiful sweeping staircase in the main hall, while neglecting to show the ugly modern extension on the side or the fact that it was actually situated in a layby off the A40.

In this case, the hotel itself was pretty close to how it had appeared online – a sprawling redbrick building set in parkland, accessed by a long driveway. As the taxi turned in through the iron gates and made its way towards the front entrance, Sarah felt a sense of foreboding. She tried not to look at the lawn to the side of the hotel where an awkward-looking group of people wearing matching yellow T-shirts bearing a company logo were doing some sort of line dancing at the behest of an energetic young woman in Lycra shorts, bellowing instructions into a megaphone.

‘Oh God, please make her go away,’ muttered Charlie under his breath.

Inside the lobby, a man wearing a dark suit and a smile that seemed sprayed on allocated them their rooms.

‘You have a nice day,’ he called after them as they headed to the lifts.

‘Hear that?’ hissed Charlie. ‘He’s mocking us. He knows what’s in store for us and he’s mocking us.’

Inside her room, Sarah took one look around at the double bed with its dark wood headboard and crisp white pillows, and sheets tucked in smoothly beneath a claret-red bedspread, the dark-green walls with matching curtains and deep, plush patterned carpet, the russet velvet armchair by the window with the view out over the parkland at the back of the hotel, the ensuite with its fluffy white robe and towels and miniature toiletries . . . and she burst into tears. It was so peaceful. She could select a teabag from the basket on the tray over there on the desk and make a cup of tea using the kettle next to it, and drink the whole thing with one of those individually wrapped shortbread biscuits, without someone wanting something from her – a particular toy, a drink, to tell his brother off for bending his favourite Top Trumps card, a cuddle, a wee. She could lie down on that perfectly made bed that wasn’t covered with children’s books and changing mats, and climb inside sheets that weren’t sandy with crumbs and close her eyes . . . and no one would prod her awake to tell her there was a child crying or insist it was getting-up time even though it was pitch black outside the window. She could run a bath in a tub that wasn’t ringed with grime because neither she nor Oliver had the energy to do more than the most perfunctory wipe around the rim with a damp sponge, and lie back without spearing the back of her head on a plastic soldier, his plastic gun raised in front of his face. Instead she sank down on to the velvet armchair and sobbed, missing her babies with an intensity that made her heart hurt.

She called Oliver. His ‘hello’ was flustered and she could hear a high-pitched reedy cry in the background.

‘Who’s that crying? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened. Everything’s fine.’

‘But I can hear someone crying.’

‘It’s nothing. Just a stupid argument.’

‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Sarah. They were perfectly OK until just a second ago. It’ll be forgotten in a minute. I can manage, you know. The world doesn’t fall apart just because you’ve gone away for a night.’

‘Sorry. I know you can manage. I’m just jittery, that’s all. I’m dreading what’s going to happen next. We’ve all been summoned to the lobby in half an hour’s time in exercise gear.’

‘I did say—’

‘And please don’t say you told me not to come because I don’t think I can bear it.’

‘All right.’ His voice was gentler now. Conciliatory. ‘I know you’re having a tough time. Just grit your teeth and keep remembering it’s only one night. I’d kill for a night in a hotel. Uninterrupted sleep, big telly to watch whatever you want on. Room service. And isn’t there a pool and a spa in the basement?’

‘Yes, but we won’t have time to do that.’

Even as she was saying it, Sarah was remembering with misgiving the email that had gone around the department from Rachel listing what they would need to bring with them for the weekend. The words ‘swimming cossies’ had been slipped in far enough down that Sarah had been able to gloss over it. There was no way she was getting into a swimming costume in front of her workmates.

After she’d put the phone down to Oliver, Sarah lifted her case on to her bed and stared at the contents. They’d been told to bring ‘active wear’, everything in her weeping at the phrase. She extracted the faded blue sweatpants she wore around the house. Oliver loathed them, but that didn’t stop her slipping into them the minute she came home from work at night. They were so comfortable. But in the setting of this grown-up, almost luxurious hotel room, the sweatpants looked cheap and shabby. She’d brought one of Oliver’s T-shirts to wear with them and, modelling the mismatched ensemble in front of the full-length mirror on the wardrobe, she knew it had been a mistake.

She bumped into Amira by the lifts. The younger woman was wearing a zip-up black top over black Lycra leggings. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She didn’t exactly exude glamour but at least she didn’t look like someone who last exercised when the Beatles topped the charts.

‘I feel like I’m in some reality TV show,’ said Amira. ‘Like
The Apprentice
. I’m expecting Alan Sugar to pop up any moment and tell us we’re all fired.’

‘Do you know, I’d welcome being fired right at this moment. At least then I wouldn’t have to go through with this.’

In the lobby, some members of Sales and Marketing appeared to be doing warm-up exercises in a joky way that definitely wasn’t a joke. At first Sarah had been encouraged by the fact that other staff members were going on the dreaded weekend, thinking their presence might defuse the Rachel Effect – until she’d found out they were forming a separate team, to be ‘hosted’ by someone else.

‘My God, this is like one of those Iron John male-bonding weekends, isn’t it?’ whispered Charlie, who was waiting on a sofa wearing a pair of long baggy shorts that were clearly from a different era in his life and an ironic 1D T-shirt. ‘We’re all going to have to go into the forest and daub ourselves with wode and hunt each other with spears.’

The lift doors pinged and Chloe and Paula stepped out, both walking in that stiff way of people trying desperately not to appear self-conscious.

‘I look like such a dork,’ said Chloe, gesturing down at her endless bare legs in their Lycra shorts. She took off the elastic band holding her hair back and shook it out before putting it back up again.

‘Er, hello?’ said Paula flatly, standing still to model her outfit, one foot extended in front, arms bent out to the sides. It had to be said, it was not the most flattering look. The trousers were an indeterminate brown colour and rolled up at the ankle and they were teamed with a maroon-coloured hoodie that, judging by the size of it, probably belonged to Ian or her son. What was his name – Cameron? Sarah still found it impossible to believe her own sons would one day become big man-boys, lurching out of bedrooms in their boxers at midday. She was shocked at how much older Paula was looking suddenly. Paula had always seemed older than her years, because of the way she dressed and her air of quiet resignation, but now it was as if she’d aged ten years in the last weeks; her face was leached of colour, her eyes disappearing into swollen puffy cushions of skin.

The ‘host’ for the sales and marketing team had arrived – a stern-faced young woman in a purple tracksuit who wore a whistle around her neck – and instantly had them all running on the spot in the lobby. Sarah and the others looked on in silence.

‘I can’t even . . .’ said Amira, before tailing off.

The door to the emergency stairs burst open and out came Rachel closely followed by Ewan. Sarah swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

‘Hello, troops,’ called Rachel, with that strange smile that wasn’t really a smile. ‘Hope you’re all warmed up and ready to go.’

She was all in skin-tight Lycra, a silver and pale-blue vest and matching leggings. On her head was a pale-blue baseball cap, through the back of which her black hair was pulled in a sleek ponytail.

Ewan, walking a few steps behind in his Arsenal kit, was like an oversized puppy in her wake. Even through her own twisted-up nerves, Sarah felt a twinge of pity for Chloe. The first experience of rejection was never easy.

A large shape came bounding in through the main hotel doors like a force of energy.

‘Howdy, folks.’ The shape skidded to a halt.

Through her misery, Sarah registered that the man attached to the greeting was handsome. The kind of handsome you don’t normally see outside a TV or cinema screen. He had floppy blond hair, close-set blue eyes and darkish, well-defined eyebrows that lifted when he smiled – as he was doing now. A way of appraising you that wasn’t assessing so much as appreciating, as if you were both sharing a marvellous joke.

The effect on the rest of the group was instant. Amira, who’d been sprawling in a chair texting furiously, zipped her phone into her jacket pocket and sat up straight. Charlie peeled himself off the wall where he’d been leaning. Sarah was pretty sure he was holding in his stomach. Chloe reddened as the new arrival glanced her way and a pink flush bloomed like a sudden flower on her chest. Paula seemed to stand up straighter, hoiking up the elasticated waist of her trousers. Even Rachel wasn’t immune.

‘So you’re the one in charge of whipping us all into shape,’ she said, giving a smile in his direction that was quite different to the one she normally used. ‘How frightened should we be on a scale of one to ten?’

‘That’d be an eleven, ma’am.’

Rachel laughed, revealing a tiny dimple in her cheek Sarah didn’t think she’d ever noticed before. Behind her, Ewan’s face set hard. This would be interesting. Ewan was so used to thinking himself the alpha male of the group.

‘I’m Will your personal trainer – or torturer if you prefer. Haha, just kidding. So, we’re going to be doing an activity outside this afternoon where we take on the other team over there. Just look at them. It’ll be a walk in the park.’ He gestured towards the sales and marketing group who were executing a complicated stretching manoeuvre in pairs: this involved one person arching backwards with their arms behind them, while the other stood behind them and linked their own arms through their elbows before lifting. There was an awful lot of grunting.

‘It hardly seems fair to pit them against us,’ said the new, jolly Rachel. ‘Like taking candy from a baby. Look at them, they’re quaking in their boots.’

They weren’t the only ones. Sarah was afraid, with the kind of low-level fear that winds itself around your internal organs like bindweed. She tried to get herself in check. She just needed to make it through the next twenty-four hours and then tomorrow she’d be home again. She should relax. But all the time she was conscious of the thing she wasn’t saying like an abscess inside her waiting to burst.

Outside on the lawn an obstacle course had been laid out in two matching lines. The tightness in Sarah’s chest intensified as her eyes took in the long tunnel made of netting and the hoops laid out in formation and what looked horribly like items of fancy dress.

The sales and marketing team were already running laps in preparation.

‘I feel like I’ve died and woken up in student rag week hell,’ said Charlie. ‘Please tell me we’re not going to have to put those hideous clothes on. Surely there’s some clause in our contract that prohibits the public humiliation of employees by being forced to wear outfits from Stag ’n’ Hen Warehouse? Those things don’t look very hygienic.’

Will clapped his hands.

‘Your attention, please, ladies and gents. Before the games commence, and just in case it wasn’t exciting enough for you already, we have a special guest star joining us. It’s your very own CEO, Mark Hamilton. Don’t say we don’t spoil you.’

A slight figure stepped out from behind an outbuilding, where presumably he’d been lurking all this time. Sarah couldn’t remember ever seeing the company boss outside of the office, and had never spoken to him directly. He had thinning sandy hair the same colour as his eyelashes, and today he was wearing expensive-looking Italian shoes and grey trousers that certainly didn’t look like ‘active wear’ – though as a concession to informality he’d teamed them with a navy-blue polo shirt that still bore the creases from the shop shelf. Beneath his golf-course tan he wore an expression that could either have been a painful smile or a look of grim resignation. Sarah thought about the disciplinary warning and the thing she hadn’t yet told anyone. This was the man who’d be making the ultimate decision about what happened to her. And now she was expected to crawl on her stomach in front of him, wearing a nylon Afro wig.