Mr Angus took off his glasses, and squeezed a finger and thumb across his screwed-tight eyelids, as though utterly fed up with this nonsense. Mandy looked down at her court shoes.
‘Miss Imrie—’ he began, with a weary tone.
Mirren pressed on regardless. ‘I hope now you can see how awkward this makes things…’
‘MissImrie.’ This was delivered sharp and loud, cutting Mirren off. Mr Angus raised his hand in the space between himself and Mirren, spreading his fingers wide like a police officer stopping traffic. ‘James Wallace is harmless.’
‘Uhh… What?’
‘He’sharmless.’
She felt an invisible punch at her breastbone and the air forced from her lungs. No words would come out. Her mind churned and the feelings circulated: disbelief, indignation, anger, all rising up, followed by something worse, and far more dangerous; the buried-deep childhood feeling of having been disciplined for bad behaviour, for overreacting, and the accompanying feelings of guilt and shame and humiliation. They settled in the pit of her stomach, heavy and nauseating.
‘Miss Imrie, you’ve been a good magistrates’ reporter, but it doesn’t do to be over-sensitive in this business. We’re dealing with the cut and thrust of a busy newsroom here; tempers will fray, words spoken in jest will be taken the wrong way, and, Mirren, if you cannot cope with these realities, you need to ask yourself if you’re really cut out for a career in journalism.’
Mirren blinked, her neck stiffening as her boss’s voice rose. Wasshebeing disciplined? ‘That’s not entirely fair, Mr An—’
‘Mirren. Let me speak plainly. You need to be robust to get along in this business, and you must assume a certain level of professionalism, which right now I’m wondering if you have let slip?’
Mirren’s mouth worked, gaping and gasping. What was she supposed to say in response to this? Mr Angus wasn’t done yet. He was smiling a little now as though giving fatherly advice.
‘I feel it’s my place to warn you that although I don’t knowpreciselywhat’s passed between you and Mr Wallace, if you’re allowing your overactive love life to spill over into the workplace, perhaps it is you who needs to modify their behaviour.’ With that, Mr Angus nodded once, set his mouth into a firm, straight line and watched her from behind folded arms, waiting for her to leave.
That’s when it happened.
She hadn’t meant to but it all came rushing in a great tsunami of sadness: every single unwanted hand resting on the small of her back and her bottom; every whistle in the street as she walked by in school uniform; every boozy, whispered ‘slut’; every unseen grope on every dancefloor; every pair of eyes running their way over her body as she rode on crowded trains, or ate lunch hunched on a bench in the town’s gardens, or read on the bus; every single person who had ever silenced her, chosen not to believe her, or taken the wrong side. They all came flooding back and She Was Livid.
Mirren returned her boss’s stare, surveying the dandruffy, grey man in the rumpled suit who prided himself on running his news empire like the tightest ship, whose paper espoused its belief in justice and freedom and peace at every given opportunity. The hypocrite.
She let him have it, and this time, even though she was shaking from the top of her head to her toes in her boots and her heart was trying to punch its way out of her chest, she wasn’t going to cry. She was going to deliver the resignation speech of the millennium and do it with weapons-grade self-righteousness, the kind that comes when you know you’ve lost and there’s nothing more to lose but there’s still hope of gaining just one ounce of dignity and pride.
Mandy saw the great intake of breath Mirren took, her eyes widening into astonished circles as she reached for the Human Resources tablet on the table and swiped off the dictation function which would have recorded every word Mirren was about to say. Mandy nodded sharply at her colleague, silently willing her to sock him one for her as well.
Mirren flattened her palms on the desk and spoke loud and clear.
‘With all due respect, Mr Angus – which in this instance iszerorespect – you’re wrong, and you know it. But you’d rather not see it because it would be too awkward for you to discipline your golden boy, your golf caddy, your drinking buddy.
‘You’re worried what would happen if he took a dressing-down from you and the other managers, aren’t you? What if it hurt his pride, or his career, or his reputation, if you were seen to be taking the word of the daft wee woman who’s causing trouble in the newsroom?
‘And you’re worried reprimanding him will set off all the other trouble-makers, and soon we’llallbe complaining about the whole pack of you, and then where would you be?
‘I’ll tell you where. You’d be shitting yourselves and running for cover, trying to pass off that arse-grab, or that knee-fondle, or that filthy comment at the Christmas party as locker-room banter, and sayingafter all lads will be lads, won’t theyandcan’t you say anything to your female colleagues nowadays without them accusing you of harassment?
‘Or maybe you’re thinking back to how long it’s actually been going on for, and how soon you’ll all be preparing statements about how you don’t remember it happening, and even if itdidhappen it was years ago when you were all so much younger, before you knew any better.Hmm? Is that what you’re thinking, Mr Angus?
‘Or maybe you’re hoping it’ll be enough to say,well, if they didn’t complain at the time, why bring it up now?What kind of grudges have these mad bitches got against us?Can’t we go to work and ogle girls and belittle them and undermine them and refuse to promote them without them kicking off and dredging up things we’d rather forget? Things we don’t want our wives and our daughters to hear about?Aye! I know you’re worried aboutallof that.
‘And that’s why you want to sweep me under the carpet and pretend it didn’t happen, and I have to be a good wee girl and keep my mouth shut so you can all carry on like before.
‘Well, I tell you what, Mr Angus, I amdonebeing quiet. And you needn’t worry about me any longer, because I’ve had enough of this rotten place. You can shove your boys’ club up your tweedy, hypocritical arses. Put a kilt onthat, Mr Angus.’
If she’d had a mic she would have dropped it.
The breath she needed to get her standing straight and heading for the door was immense. As her lungs filled she felt herself expanding to great proportions, her shoulders and back straightening in a way she hadn’t stood up tall and proud for years, not since she first encountered Jamesey and the rest of them; since she’d learned to make herself as small as possible, to compact herself into the least offensive, most sweetly packaged shape she could fit into; since before she’d practised both lowering her voice in meetings so she couldn’t be called shrill and raising her voice at events so she wouldn’t be ignored.
She felt her spine clicking into place, one vertebra after another and she towered over Mr Angus who seemed to be cowering at his ridiculously oversized desk. Flicking her hair back, she walked out the room, down the corridor and into the lift, where she finally exhaled and cried her heart out, shaking and screaming her way down in the lift to street level.
When the doors opened to the chilly October air and she slipped her sunglasses on, nobody who saw her would be able to tell what had just happened in the offices of theEdinburgh Broadsheetor suspect that she was utterly drained and listless; they just saw a pale, elegant woman with a thin, fixed smile walking tall and stately into the afternoon crowds on Princes Street.
