‘Nice to meet you, Kim. So, who is Sophia?’
‘For fuck’s sake, WHAT DO YOU WANT, KIM? I haven’t even had my coffee yet!’
I glance through the office window to see a woman with poker-straight black hair, manically waving us in.
Opening the door, Kim smirks. ‘Sophia, this is Nick, Rachel’s maternity replacement. I’ll be at my desk.’
I enter and take a seat in front of a woman in her late forties who clearly has no idea who I am and would prefer to keep it that way.
‘Christ, I didn’t even know Rachel was pregnant, never mind on maternity leave.’ She picks up her phone and angry-dials an extension. ‘What agency are you from?’
‘GL Recruitment. Greta arranged everything with—’
She holds up a hand to shush me. Her fingers are very long, with unnervingly sharp nails emerging from them like a manicured shiv. ‘Kim, can you come back in here and just deal with this?’
Sophia places the receiver back, opens a drawer and takes out a tub of coffee sweeteners, while Kim enters the room again.
‘I’ll leave it to Kim to run through everything with you, but we don’t hand-hold here. Everything we deal with is business critical, so we expect you to hit the ground running.’
‘No problem.’
‘Good.’ She opens her laptop and begins typing, while Kim subtly motions for me to follow her. I feel a little stunned; not quite the welcome I had hoped for. At Kensington Fox, they’d have taken me to lunch.
Kim expertly throws some files on to a desk to her right while I tag along behind her like a lost puppy. I draw looks from the rest of the staff who try to size me up as I pass.
‘I’m sure you’ve done your research,’ she begins, ‘but to recap, we deal with four main areas here: Corporate, Commercial, Property – all on this floor – and of course, our lovely Personal Injury lawyers, who are all based on the first floor when they’re not out chasing ambulances during their lunch breaks. Ground floor has eight client meeting rooms – book those through me. The coffee machine here sucks and the Nespresso machine is for partners only, but there’s a Starbucks on the corner.’
‘Who’s on the floors above us?’
‘An advertising agency has the top three; above them, some tech company. If you smoke, you’ll no doubt bump into most of them in the back courtyard. I try to avoid that area, it’s like a fucking meat market for the morally challenged.’
We reach the far end of the office where she opens a door into a large room filled with endless boxes of files and cabinets. She bangs the side of a stalled printer which whirrs back into action.
‘Closed cases from the past three years are stored here; anything older is off-site but can be brought over within the hour. Everything must be signed out.’
She closes the door and leads me back to my desk, lifting paperwork from completed filing trays as she goes. I’m exhausted just watching her. She sees my slightly uneasy look.
‘You worked at KF, right?’
‘Yeah, five years.’
She nods. ‘I used to work at Clifford Allen. . . damn, I miss their canteen. Look, this place is like karma for whatever sins you committed in your past employment, and God knows, most of us have. My advice? Buckle down, put the hours in anddon’tpiss off Sophia.’
I look over at her office and see Sophia standing at her window watching the floor. I wonder if she can hear us.
‘Got it. Thanks.’
Kim grunts and hands me a key to the locked drawer on my desk. ‘So, now that’s out of the way, I want you to go to Starbucks and grab a strong coffee for yourself and a Diet Coke for me, while I set up your logins and email. When you get back, I have a breach of contract case for you to get started on.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ I reply, grabbing my coat from my chair. ‘Won’t be long.’
She walks me to the lift, and I step inside, pressing the ground floor button. I hate this place already.
‘Jesus, I thought you’d run off,’ Matt says from the kitchen as I enter the living room and throw myself down on to the couch face first. ‘You want a beer?’
I give him a muffledyes,pleasein response, my entire body beyond grateful to be home. It’s gone 11pm and I haven’t even had dinner.
The clink of the beer bottles makes me pull myself up into a slouching position which I intend to stay in for as long as possible.
