When She Was Bad(33)

Oliver had tried to be supportive about all the crap going on at work, but that deep vertical groove in his forehead that she’d only recently noticed had got even more pronounced, and she’d ended up reassuring him that it wasn’t as bad as all that. She hated seeing him worried. He looked so old all of a sudden.

‘She’s a piece of work, isn’t she, Rachel?’ Charlie said. He was leaning against the work surface in the office kitchen while they waited for the kettle to boil. One of his legs was crossed in front of the other so he looked shorter than usual, and he was hardly the world’s tallest man to start with. Sarah had an urge to step forward and give him a hug but she held back. He was a forty-two-year-old man. Dealing with toddlers was now so ingrained in her psyche that she waged constant battle with herself not to greet friends and colleagues by kissing the tops of their heads or wiping the noses of perfect strangers on the tube.

‘I can’t believe she stayed right up until the bitter end on Friday night,’ he went on.

‘I know. Paula says it got so embarrassing, even Gill made an excuse to leave.’

‘Do you think there’s actually something wrong with her?’ he wondered. ‘Like some sort of mental illness where you can’t judge social situations properly?’

‘Don’t try to make excuses for her.’

‘No, really. Maybe it’s not her fault. Maybe she has Asperger’s or something. Or maybe she really is possessed by the Devil like that email said.’

Charlie was talking about a disturbing message that both he and Paula had received from a weird email address made up of seemingly random letters and numbers. Rachel Masters is an evil bitch. She destroys people. They’d discussed showing the email to HR or Mark Hamilton or even Rachel herself – but in the end Paula had decided they should delete it. Malicious gossip, she’d called it. Sarah knew she was probably right, but when Charlie had forwarded the email to her, it had left her shaken.

‘Anyway,’ Charlie went on, ‘no doubt we’ll find out soon enough what she’s really like. You’ve heard the latest plan, I take it?’

Sarah’s already leaden heart grew still heavier inside her.

‘Don’t tell me.’

But Charlie was already visibly perking up at the prospect of sharing whatever it was that was coming and he paid her protests no heed when he shrilled: ‘A team-bonding weekend!’

‘Oh dear God, please tell me you’re joking.’

‘No. It’s management’s grand new idea.’

‘I don’t believe it. Surely Rachel won’t agree to it?’

‘Don’t think she has much choice. We’re all going – edict from above. Come on, Sarah, it’ll be fun. Up at dawn to run five times around the grounds dressed as cartoon characters with our legs tied together, then back for room inspections and then all into the hall to reveal our innermost fears through the medium of interpretive dance. Can’t wait.’

Back at her desk, Sarah tried to dispel the dread that had crept over her at Charlie’s news by focusing on the day ahead. She had a whiteboard on her desk where she wrote down on a Friday afternoon all her appointments and important calls for the following week so that when she came in on Monday morning, she knew exactly what she had to do. She frowned at the cramped black writing. The anxiety over Gill’s leaving do had meant she’d been in a rush when drawing up the lists at the end of the last week and some of the entries were barely legible. Luckily this afternoon’s meeting with White & Co was clear – 3 p.m. – which was just as well because they’d changed the arrangements so many times she’d completely lost track of them. If they weren’t her biggest client she’d have made a fuss, but as it was she’d bent over backwards and rearranged her schedule to accommodate them each time they rang to say they couldn’t make it. Sarah was proud of the relationship she’d built up over the years with the biggest brewery in the country. The deputy director now asked for her by name. It would probably be her single biggest bargaining tool when it came to arguing her worth with Rachel Masters.

The brewery headquarters was in Milton Keynes so, as usual, the meeting was to be held in a private room in an upmarket gastropub in West London which was the flagship pub for the chain. Even allowing a full forty minutes for the journey, it still left her three hours to get on with the rest of today’s to-do list. She’d refuse to think about the team-building weekend, or that other thing that was like a cheesewire around the chest every time it flitted into her mind. Sarah worked through lunch, which wasn’t unusual these days. She’d already primed Paula that she would be out most of the afternoon, and she knew Paula had let Rachel know. After the débâcle of the shopping trip for Gill’s present on Friday, no one was taking any chances when it came to being considered late.