When She Was Bad(7)

Idly, Amira’s gaze slid across from Paula to the glass box which she must now force herself to think of as Rachel’s office. With a start, her eyes locked with those of her new boss. The woman was leaning back in her desk chair staring straight out. Her face, clear of the practised smile she’d been wearing earlier, was set hard – and even from a few yards away, Amira could see how tightly she was clutching the pen whose end she was clicking in and out, in and out with an unnerving rhythmic intensity.

Amira found herself glancing away, feeling unaccountably guilty – why? Yet really, mightn’t it all turn out for the best? It was a shame Gill had to go, but they’d all known it was on the cards. The department’s poor performance had been highlighted in the company’s annual review and it was only a matter of time before someone was called to account – and Gill was the obvious candidate. So the change around wasn’t entirely unexpected. There and then, Amira decided to keep her head down and wait for things to settle.

But as she opened up a PDF file that pinged into her inbox from the still-sulking Chloe, Amira couldn’t quite shake off the memory of those metallic blue eyes burning like acid into her own.





5

Sarah



She was going to be late again. She’d had to wait for two tubes to go from the platform at Finsbury Park before she was finally able to squeeze into a carriage, where she ended up pressed into the armpit of a sweating young man in a shiny suit wearing too much aftershave and not enough deodorant. And then once she’d changed to a different line at King’s Cross, the train had sat in a tunnel just outside Liverpool Street for ages, with Sarah’s stress levels rising by the second. They were so close to her destination she could have practically jumped out and on to the platform, but instead she’d had to stand gripping the rail and trying to remember what that stress management leaflet they’d all been sent had said about finding your happy place in your mind. Bed – that would be her happy place.

Now she was running awkwardly up the stairs of the tube station and wishing she hadn’t worn the black skirt that had never really fitted her properly again after the second baby was born. The skirt hadn’t been her first choice. In honour of the new boss, she’d put on her best trousers, but then Sam had decided that his little brother Joe needed a nappy change, only Joe had got bored halfway through and gone toddling off to find his mum who’d just sat down to gulp her tea. Without thinking, she’d picked him up and plonked him on her knee, realizing too late why Sam had thought, in his three-year-old wisdom, that his brother needed his nappy changed. Off had come the trousers. She’d had to pull the skirt out from the wash-basket. ‘These trousers say Dry Clean Only,’ Oliver had called, squatting on his haunches by the washing machine, and if Sarah hadn’t been in such a rush she’d have laughed out loud. Two babies in three years and he still thought she owned anything, anything, that had to be taken to the dry cleaner.

On the streets of the City, she bowed her head against the persistent drizzle that seemed to have arrived out of the blue while she was underground. The shower at home had done the very same thing that morning, spurting arcs of water horizontally across the bathroom with no forewarning at all. The rain, she knew, would make her red hair frizz. Despite the arsenal of anti-frizz products that crowded their cramped bathroom shelves to Oliver’s endless frustration, Sarah’s hair only had to get a snifter of atmospheric moisture and up it sprang around her head like something you’d use to scour a pan.

She had an unwelcome flashback to Rachel Masters’s cool silk shirt and uncreased skirt. Pulling her phone out of her bag she glanced at the time. 9.10. Gill had always been very understanding about the occasional late start. She knew Sarah would more than make up for it by taking work home or staying late on Wednesdays when Oliver’s mum took the boys. Though she didn’t have children herself, she’d never made Sarah feel bad about it. Sarah remembered how nervous she’d been when she’d had to break it to Gill that she was pregnant again just months after returning to work from a year’s maternity leave with Sam, and how relieved when, after a deep sigh, her boss had simply said: ‘Congratulations.’

Sarah tried to remember whether Rachel had children or not, raking back through the bits and pieces of gossip that had floated across to them over the last twenty-four hours from acquaintances at other companies their new boss had worked for during her rapid rise through the ranks. She thought not. But that needn’t necessarily make any difference. Her sister worked in sales and had once had a boss with four children who was so desperate to prove that being a mother hadn’t softened her up that she was far harder on the parents among her staff than anyone else, refusing to make even the slightest of concessions. So you could never tell.