When She Was Bad (8 page)

And he’d seemed right up for it.

That first day he’d made it his personal mission to show her where everything was, how to put paper in the printer without it being chewed up with a horrible grinding noise. He’d taken her out for a sandwich and given her the lowdown on who was who in the office. He’d warned her that Amira had a thing about the smell of Pot Noodle in the microwave and Paula got upset if anyone used her special mug.

At twenty-eight he was four years older than her, but over the days and weeks following her arrival he’d deliberately allied himself to her as the younger element. They developed a signal that meant ‘meet in the kitchen for coffee’ and went out for a quick drink after work at least once a week. And though he hadn’t made a pass at her – yet – he flirted relentlessly.

Yes, there were things she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. She’d grown up in a house where it was considered vulgar to talk about money but Ewan openly speculated about how much other people in the office were on, and how much he intended to be making by the time he was thirty. He drank too much and could be patronizing, like when he referred to Paula as an ‘old dear’ although she was younger than Chloe’s mum who would have been furious at that description. He was also cocky, insisting Charlie had the hots for him, although Chloe had never seen any indication of that. And he definitely had a chip on his shoulder about not going to university. ‘Come out owing £50K just so you can move back home with Mummy and Daddy and send CVs to people like me begging for a job? No, thank you.’

But despite these niggles, she was smitten. When he turned his green eyes on her, she felt as if the rest of the world was just sliding away like one of those special effects where the outside edges blur into soft focus. He was good-looking, he made her laugh uncontrollably, and unlike most of her other friends, he wasn’t living at home with his parents but in a flat share in Clacton, which seemed to her the height of glamour. All of which accounted for why, when Gill – to whom, anyway, she had difficulty saying no – called her into her office after a largely uneventful three-month internship and asked if she’d consider staying on as departmental assistant at a salary she later overheard her father describe as ‘borderline exploitation’, she’d jumped at the chance. And why Rachel Masters’s unaccountable but evident dislike of her was so unsettling.

‘She hates me,’ she moaned to Ewan as they followed the others back to the office after that departmental lunch with Rachel, taking their time on account of Ewan’s leg feeling stiff – an old footballing injury, he’d once told her, which only added to his allure.

‘No, she doesn’t. She’s just straight-talking, that’s all. I like that approach. Makes a welcome change. Can’t be doing with all this “Let’s not say what we think in case someone’s feelings get hurt” business.’ Ewan put on a high-pitched voice that grated.

‘You just fancy her, that’s all.’

Chloe kept her muscles tensed into a tight smile so he wouldn’t know how much it had cost her to say that. Her face ached from the effort of willing him to deny it.

‘Course I do. Every bloke in the building does. Well, apart from Charlie, and he doesn’t exactly count. She’s gorgeous . . .’

Chloe made a noise she hoped sounded like a giggle, but inside, the arteries and veins that led to her heart were being tightened like guitar strings.

‘. . . for an old bird.’

Ewan grinned, and it was like the sun coming out after a long grey winter. Everything inside had unfurled.

Thinking about that moment now, as she carefully felt-penned
Gill’s leaving present
on a large padded envelope, Chloe once again had that dissolving feeling she’d experienced when she sat down at her desk on that first day in the office in front of an unfamiliar computer, squinting nervously at the yellow Post-it on which the guy from IT had written down her new ID and password. She had been trying to get up the nerve to turn the computer on when Ewan had looked across at her from the next desk and smiled, and something somewhere had gone
ping
.

It was only 8.50 a.m., still a full ten minutes before the official start of the day, and the office had that eerie living-museum quality you find in stately homes where the rooms are empty but the family is still in residence, subtle traces of them everywhere. Rachel Masters had already been installed in her office when Chloe had arrived five minutes earlier. Did that woman even have a life outside work?

A few members of the sales team whose desks were hidden behind a grey padded partition were already in, and Chloe decided to begin her collection there, slipping discreetly behind the screen with her envelope to a welcome of mock groans. By the time she emerged a few minutes later, her envelope clinking reassuringly, the office had filled up. Sarah was there, looking flustered as usual. Amira was clutching a large cardboard takeout cup – it always took her at least two strong filter coffees before she could function properly. Disappointment twanged at the sight of Ewan’s still empty desk but then she heard a familiar roar of laughter and followed the sound to the boss’s office where the object of her affection was standing in the open doorway, leaning casually against the frame.

‘Wonder if he brought an apple in,’ whispered Charlie as he dug around in his pocket for some change to chuck into the envelope.

‘Apple?’

‘You know, for the teacher.’

Charlie was looking at her as though she was being particularly dense. After a rocky start, Chloe had come to like Charlie, but she wished she didn’t always feel so stupid around him.

Amira pulled a ten-pound note out of her wallet.

‘Really hate to be tight, but can I ask for a fiver back?’ She looked embarrassed and kept her voice low. ‘It’s just that we’re so skint at the moment and Tom keeps making me account for every single bloody penny.’

‘Sure. No prob.’

Chloe felt for Amira. She didn’t know how much she was earning, but even though she knew it had to be way more than her, it was never going to be enough to pay mortgages and gas bills and Council Tax and God knows what else. Chloe’s dad had once sat her down and gone through his bank statement to show her how much he paid out each month. ‘You’re an adult now, it’s about time you realized just how much things cost,’ he’d said, but her eyes had glazed over before they’d even gone through the first page of figures. Still, she knew it added up to many times more than the paltry sum that went into her bank account each month.

‘Chloe!’ That distinctive high-pitched voice cut like a knife through her thoughts. ‘I’m curious. Care to tell me what you’re doing?’

Rachel Masters was standing outside her office with her hands on her hips. Ewan was back at his seat and turned to see what was going on, along with everyone else. A horrible hush fell over the office.

‘I’m just taking a collection for Gill.’

‘What time is it?’

Chloe swallowed and glanced over to the clock on the far wall.

‘Five past nine.’

‘Actually it’s seven minutes past nine, which means you’ve been doing that for seven minutes since the working day officially began. I take it that means you’re up to date on all your stuff, like that mailing list you’re doing for me.’

Chloe stood frozen as if her legs had grown roots and dug down into the floor. Her face was on fire and she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to speak.

‘No, but . . .’

‘Actually I asked Chloe to do the collection.’

Paula’s voice sounded strange and unusually gravelly in the tense air. Chloe felt weak with gratitude as Rachel Masters’s attention shifted suddenly to her deputy.

‘And you specifically asked her to do it on company time?’

Paula’s cheeks flushed a vivid fuchsia at odds with her burgundy-coloured top.

‘No, of course not. I assumed she’d have the sense to do it at lunchtime.’

Chloe felt a stinging in the back of her eyes at Paula’s uncharacteristic unkindness. Please God, don’t let me be about to cry, she thought.

‘Right, Chloe. I suggest you take your envelope and go back to your desk and get on with what you’re actually being paid to do.’

Rachel turned on her heel and Chloe’s feet finally recovered their function enough to allow her to slink back to her desk. She could feel eyes on her as she moved but refused to look at anyone for fear a sympathetic glance would unleash the tears she was only just managing to hold back.

Her computer pinged with an email. The name Ewan Johnson appeared in her inbox in bold.

Bit harsh that. U ok?

She bit her lip and typed back,
No. She is a total bitch. Am going to start looking for new job.

Seconds later came the response.
Shes tough but thats what shes here for

No
please don’t do that
. No
I’ll miss you if you go
.

Chloe minimised her inbox and called up the mailing list she was in the middle of putting together for Rachel Masters. She stared at the names until the letters became random black dots on the page.

Her eyes burned.

14
Paula

Paula had once tried to describe anxiety to Ian – when they were still married and he was still obliged to feign an interest.

‘It’s like my nerves are made up of tiny ants and most of the time they’re all asleep but then they’ll wake up and start crawling around and as they crawl they bump into each other and more wake up and they start crawling faster and faster and suddenly there are masses of them swarming around like crazy until it feels like my insides are on fire and I just want to rip open my ribcage and claw great big holes in myself.’

He hadn’t asked again.

Normally she kept the worst of it at bay with pills she got from the doctor that sometimes made her feel like she was looking at the world from behind a thick pane of glass, and that reduced her to fits of mid-afternoon yawns. Recent hormonal fluctuations had reduced their effectiveness, however. Either that or her anxiety levels had outstripped the medication. Whatever the reason, she was once again waking in the night with her heart racing, her tormented brain forcing her through the litany of catastrophes awaiting her – bankruptcy, illness, death.

Six years ago, when Ian had left his job in IT to set up an eBay shop buying and selling vinyl, she’d generally been supportive. She knew he was miserable at work and she reasoned he’d either make a go of things with the new business or, more likely, grow tired of it when it proved harder than he’d imagined and get another full-time job. What she hadn’t bargained on was his doing neither option. The vinyl business had been sluggish at best, even with him travelling the length and breadth of the country trawling through charity shops and car-boot sales, but when he tried, reluctantly, to find a new job, his fifty-something age counted against him. Gradually he stopped the excursions out, buying and selling exclusively online, with increasing apathy. In the two years since they’d split up, he spent most of his life holed up in the back bedroom in which he now both slept and worked, but his contributions to the household budget were minimal and unpredictable. They’d already remortgaged once to release equity, with the result that they now owed more than ever on their South London Victorian terrace – just at the time they’d envisaged being mortgage free. Such pension as he’d accrued, Ian had already spent establishing the business, so the future they’d once planned of long-haul travel, hikes along the Inca Trail and Nile cruises evaporated. Not that they’d be doing any of that now they weren’t together any more. And anyway, with the kids still at home, the empty nest they’d pictured themselves coming home to after their long sojourns away was as much a figment of the imagination as the financial security she’d once taken for granted.

No wonder she tossed and turned wide-eyed in the dead hours of the night while her ex-husband snored through the wall and her son and his friends dragged kitchen chairs outside and sat on the patio smoking spliffs and giggling and her body alternately heated itself to boiling point then cooled suddenly, turning the sweat on her skin to ice. No wonder she arrived at work in the mornings half crazed with tiredness and struggling to think of anything except the low-level nausea that had been an internal fixture ever since Rachel Masters came on the scene.

Today, though, that low-level nausea had switched up a gear. Several gears. She should never have got involved with organizing Gill’s leaving do. Even though she’d worked so closely with Gill these last years that people assumed she’d sort it out, she still ought to have said no. Someone else would have done it. Someone with less to lose.

‘I just hope everyone is being discreet about it,’ she told Amira when she ran across her in the toilets. ‘I deliberately kept it low-key.’

‘I don’t know why you’re being so paranoid,’ Amira replied. ‘It’s not in work time. It’s not on work property. There’s absolutely nothing anyone can object to.’

Paula found it odd that Amira, with whom she’d always got on so well, wasn’t meeting her eyes. Was something going on? Maybe she was getting paranoid, after all. All day she carried around a heavy nugget of dread in her heart. Despite paying her lip-service at the start, Rachel had since made no secret of her scorn for the way Gill had run the department and her suspicion of anything connected with the Gill era. By organizing Gill’s leaving do, even though it was just drinks at the pub a few doors down from the office, Paula couldn’t help feeling she was allying herself too closely with her former boss.

‘Can you get down there early to make sure everything is sorted and we’ve got an area cordoned off?’ she asked Chloe at lunchtime when they bumped into each other in the kitchen.

‘Not really. I’ve got mountains of work to do.’

Chloe had been noticeably off with her since the previous morning when Rachel had taken her to task in front of everyone for doing Gill’s collection in work time and Paula hadn’t backed her up. Afterwards she’d regretted not standing up for her younger colleague. Not that she felt guilty exactly, but she could see that Chloe had taken it as a public slap-down, which she’d never intended. It was just that Rachel Masters had put her on the spot, trying to make her appear unprofessional – just for collecting a bit of money for a woman who’d worked hard for the company for eight years.