When She Was Bad(40)

Rachel had been listening to Mark’s speech with her strange flat smile. After he finished and repaired back upstairs, she approached Charlie. His mouth became suddenly dry.

‘Could you come with me for a moment, Charlie?’

Reluctantly he got to his feet. He could see Sarah darting hollow-eyed glances at him from her desk and felt unaccountably guilty.

‘Have you had a chance to think?’

‘What about?’

Rachel frowned. She was leaning against her desk with her arms crossed across her chest, and her posture stiffened with disapproval.

‘About the deputy position. I do hope you’re taking it seriously, Charlie. I had a good feeling about you. I hope it wasn’t misplaced.’

‘No. Of course not.’

Charlie cursed himself for sounding so obsequious. What he should do was tell her to stuff her job. He was conscious of Paula sitting outside in the office, just feet away. She wasn’t exactly the kind of deputy that set the world on fire. They all knew that. But that didn’t mean to say Rachel could just get rid of her.

‘You’re not getting any younger, Charlie.’

That stung. Charlie wasn’t vain though he had minded when his hair started to thin and spent a chunk of his monthly pay on a hormonal treatment that was supposed to stimulate new hair growth. But being with Stefan had made him sensitive to the lines around his eyes and the way the skin puckered around his belly button. It was as if Rachel Masters was tapping into the thing that lay at the very heart of his self-doubt.

‘Is this enough for you? Really?’ She gestured at the desks in the office outside and the bent heads, and Charlie mentally added in the strange new deadened atmosphere that had descended since she arrived.

‘I’m talking about you giving yourself the chance to get ahead and start building a career, before it’s too late. Do you want to still be out there in ten years’ time, plodding along? “Good old Charlie,” the bosses will say. “He’s got no ambition but at least he’s reliable.”’

‘But Paula . . .’

Rachel made a pff sound with her mouth, as if she was blowing a small fly off her lower lip.

‘Paula is my concern. Obviously we’ll make sure she’s well provided for. All you have to think about is whether you’ve got the guts to lift yourself out of the rut you’re in. I need somebody with a bit of get up and go as my right-hand person. If it’s not you, I’ll have to bring in someone new. And obviously there’s no guarantee you’re going to like them. What are you afraid of, Charlie? What’s stopping you from stepping up?’

Normally Charlie hated that whole Californian thing about stepping up and making the grade and going the extra mile, but something in Rachel’s little speech resonated. He saw himself through Stefan’s eyes, a mid-ranking worker in a not particularly exciting sector, treading water until retirement. But if he was deputy, he could be running his own department within a year or two. Charlie had no illusions about the glamour, or lack of it, of the industry he’d somehow ended up in, but if he made manager it would in theory be easier to shift across into another managerial role in a different, perhaps more stimulating working environment.

‘If I was interested what would I have to do?’

Afterwards, he felt grubby. Passing Paula’s desk, he pretended not to see her thin, almost non-existent eyebrows raised in question. The spurt of adrenaline he’d felt in Rachel’s office when he’d seen a more dynamic version of himself materializing in front of him had died away, leaving a sour aftertaste.

Clicking open his computer screen, he noticed he’d had two emails while he’d been in with Rachel. The first was a dull round-robin from Security about how they all needed to get updated passes. Yawn. The second looked like spam and he was just about to bin it when something about the address – a random selection of numbers and letters – struck a chord in his mind. He double-clicked.

Have you asked her yet? Have you asked Rachel what she did?

A chill ran through him as if he was swallowing ice. He called up the anonymous email he’d received before, the one calling Rachel a bitch who destroyed people. Same address. Someone really had a grievance against his new boss. He could understand how Rachel’s abrasive management style might have ruffled a few feathers, but to go to the effort of creating a fake account just to send these creepy messages . . . Should he contact HR or even Rachel herself? He forwarded the email to Sarah with a line saying, Look what I just got. Should I report it?

Seconds later, he had a reply.

Shit. That’s a bit OTT, isn’t it? Not surprised R has enemies though. Bitter ex-employee perchance? I would bin it.