“Yes,” I say with more confidence than I feel. The anger that sustained me through the call with Harriet and the confrontation with Piotr has evaporated. Now, I’m left drained.
“You should have consulted us,” Ramesh says, drawing himself up to his full five foot seven inches.
Maybe. He has a point. There’s a management team for a reason. But there’s a reason I didn’t; I didn’t want one of them warning Piotr. I can’t tell them that without causing offence. In this case, silence seems the best play.
“Anders did leave her in charge,” Marnie points out. Then she turns her sharp eyes on me, and I remember she is not only loved in her department, she is also respected. “Did you talk to him?” she asks.
“No,” I admit. “I had to move quickly.”
“Why?” Marnie asks, quick as ever.
“Because he was leaking our secrets to Wobbegong Interactive.”
Marnie gasps, her gloved hand flying to her chest.
“No,” Ramesh says firmly. “He would not do that. None of us would.”
“I thought that too. But trust me, he did.” Even without hard evidence, I’m sure of it. It all falls into place too neatly. Even dumping Ginny makes sense now. He had to get rid of her in case she happened across something or someone. He couldn’t be certain Ginny would play along.
But it’s not just him meeting with Wobbegong. He claimed he didn’t know about the influencer slots. It was Scarlett who brought it up first. But he should have known. Marketing was his remit. It was either incompetence or malfeasance, and Piotr didn’t make a habit of the former.
“If you’re wrong,” Ramesh says, “you’ve just opened Cerium up to a massive wrongful dismissal case.”
“Athertons were at the meeting,” I tell them.
“Good,” says Marnie. She seems reconciled to my actions.
“But we are down a head of marketing and publishing,” Ramesh points out. “And only weeks until launch.”
They don’t know the half of it, but if I tell them now, I won’t get out of my office until tomorrow evening. And I need to go home. I need to be with my daughter and not be Cora, acting CEO, for the rest of the weekend.
“I’ve asked Scarlett to step into the role. She’s confident she can take over.”
“Scarlett?” His dislike and his doubt are combined in a single word. But then again, he clearly rated Piotr so maybe his people radar is awry.
“Anders rates her. And we don’t have time to go to the job market. There’s no one else internally who could do the job.” Believe me, if there was, I would have offered it to them.
Marnie considers what I’ve said, her head tilted. Then she nods. She’s on side.
Ramesh looks unconvinced.
“We are already running without a CEO,” I point out, “and none of us know when Anders will return. We can’t run without a head of publishing as well. I’ve got no more bandwidth. Have you?”
He frowns, but he doesn’t say anything. Of course he hasn’t. His engineering teams are the most under-pressure.
I move away from them and start collecting my belongings. Glancing at my phone to check the time, I see I have a message from Ahmed. I’ll deal with that later.
“I’ll set up a meeting for Monday morning,” I say to reassure them. “We can go through it all then. But I’ve got to pick up my daughter now, and you two need to go home as well.”
Finally, they get the message and leave. I’m fretting about the state Effie will be in when I get to her after-school club. The worry has been sitting there in my head since I called her childcare. But in the quiet brought by their departure, it’s become a clamour. She will know I’m late and her anxiety will be climbing. It would just top off today if she melted down in the car park again.
“How is she?” I say when I finally burst through the door of the after-school club. I’m expecting sulks and accusations.
But the playworker greets me with the biggest smile ever and nods her head to the corner. Effie is sitting on a beanbag, reading a story to a little girl.
“She’s made a new friend,” the play worker says. I press my lips together to suppress my joy, but my heart is singing.
The playworker’s hand lands on my arm. “I know,” she says and gives a quick squeeze. We stand together, just watching my daughter.
