‘She’s not that bad.’
Paula looked at Amira sharply, not sure she could have heard her right, but Amira had her head bent, her glossy black hair covering her face.
‘She seems to be nicer to some people than others,’ Paula told Gill. ‘She favours a divide and rule style of management. For instance, Amira and Sarah were both late back from lunch but only Sarah got a bollocking. How come you escaped, Amira?’
Amira shrugged. Then asked: ‘How do you know – that Sarah got a bollocking, I mean?’
‘She emailed me about a disciplinary letter.’
The others gasped.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Gill. ‘I haven’t even been gone a week.’ Her expression was one of concern, but there was an edge of excitement in her voice. ‘Actually, it doesn’t completely surprise me. I wasn’t going to say anything, but . . .’
‘What? What?’ Chloe, who’d already downed her first glass of wine, was impatient.
‘Well, a good friend of mine met someone who’d worked at Rachel’s last company. He wasn’t in her department but apparently it was not a happy ship.’
‘But I thought she was the golden girl there,’ said Amira. ‘I thought she’d turned the place around?’
Gill made a dismissive gesture.
‘Her results were good but she upset a lot of people and something happened that got her into trouble with her bosses but he didn’t know exactly what.’
Paula got the distinct impression Gill was relishing dishing the dirt on her successor. It made Paula’s muscles clench uncomfortably. Somewhere inside her, those armies of little ants were on the move again.
Charlie appeared by the table clutching a fresh bottle of wine. Sarah was just behind him, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed.
‘Come back, Gill. We need you,’ he said, sinking to his knees in mock supplication.
‘You OK?’ Paula asked Sarah in a low voice as the others laughed.
She shook her head. ‘Not really. I’m not going to stay long. I only really came to say hi to Gill. I need to get back to the boys.’
‘I don’t understand though. Why you and not Amira?’
‘Wish I knew. Although Rachel had already had a go at me for being late, don’t forget. And maybe she just doesn’t like me.’
‘I’m sure that’s not—’ Paula broke off to stare open-mouthed at the door.
‘Oh my God!’ came Chloe’s high clear voice to her right.
‘What?’
Sarah, who’d been facing Paula, now turned around to see what they were all looking at, just as Ewan approached the table, closely followed by Rachel Masters.
15
Ewan
‘She asked me where I was off to. I couldn’t lie, could I? And then she said it sounded like fun and stared at me. I felt sorry for her. It’s not easy being new.’
Ewan was getting annoyed. Why were they all making such a big deal of it? So Rachel wasn’t the most popular person in the office. She was having to make difficult decisions. That’s why she’d been brought in. And at least she was being upfront about it, instead of saying one thing to their faces and something completely different behind their backs like everyone else seemed to do.
When Ewan first joined the company, he’d been excited about working in a department that was almost exclusively female. He liked women, plus he imagined he had a better chance of rising through the ranks more quickly in a female environment. He’d reckoned without the culture of passive-aggressiveness that ruled the office. While Gill and Paula appeared calm and mild-mannered and reasonable, he soon learned they were also totally intractable. When Ewan came up with suggestions for ways to improve some of the frankly archaic systems in place in the office, they’d thanked him and made encouraging noises and then never mentioned any of them again. And when he’d pressed them, they smiled and said how pleased they were he was coming up with ideas . . . and then added something that made it clear his idea was dead in the water. The office politics were a minefield – no one saying what they really meant, no one allowed to raise their voices. Having to preface every sentence with ‘I understand where you’re coming from’ or ‘I respect your opinion’ and always you knew there was that great big BUT coming. At least Rachel just came out and said it.
‘You didn’t have to invite her. Didn’t you think about what it would be like for Gill? The woman took her job. Her seat was still warm.’
Ewan had rarely known Sarah get angry. Her face was blotchy and her red hair around her face was stringy with sweat as if her skin was overheating.