Page 72 of Little Miss Fortune

As if preparing for a dive, my breathing has now stopped, only willing to resume if I see a fluffy head of hair or a tweed blazer or reach my destination—Steven and Adzo. But Toby is nowhere to be seen.

‘Fuko.’ Steven clasps his hands and tilts his head in a friendly gesture, making him look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. ‘So good to see you.’

His smile is too wide, tone too genuine. He pronounced my name right. Something is wrong.

Steven leads us to Adzo’s office. He closes the door behind us, as Adzo is finishing up her call.

‘Sorry, have to run,’ she says to the person on the other end. ‘Fuko, good to see you.’

That’s exactly what Steven said. Exactly the way Steven said it. What’s happening?

I sit down on the chair she is pointing to, close to the edge of the seat, as if I am ready to run away if I see even a slight sign that they might be possessed.

‘This is going to be quite a difficult talk.’ Steven props a chair next to me.

He looks at me over his glasses. Really looks at me. It feels as if he is one thought away from holding my hand to announce some bad news. I hear my nervous heartbeat in my ears. They are about to fire me in the most sadistic way. Or maybe they’ll rip into me like hyenas.

Adzo starts, ‘Fuko, we are sorry’—and I might faint in front of her like two months ago—‘that we put you on temporary leave without knowing the full story.’

Huh?

‘Pardon?’ Huh?

‘Fawzia told us,’ Steven explains with a solemn expression.

Huh?

The confusion on my face is being misconstrued right in front of me. They think my rounded eyes are from horror and fear finally alleviating. I know this because Adzo actually does reach out and squeeze my hand. She had to half stand, half sit, but fully stretch over her desk to reach me.

‘Sorry, I am not sure’—I glance at them, scratching under my knee with the free hand—‘what you mean?’

Adzo lets go of me and returns to a more natural-for-humans sitting position. My back is currently unbelievably straight.

‘It came to our attention that we may have, perhaps, accidentally put you on leave without knowing the full story.’ She shakes her head in managerial pain.

‘Right,’ I say.

‘We didn’t know... the extent.’ Steven uses his hands as if he is juggling words in the air to find the right one.

‘Right,’ I repeat.

‘If we had known that Toby, Mr. Lewis, Toby Lewis,’ Adzo says, finding the right way to address Toby, ‘was displaying some inappropriate behaviours at work... We wouldn’t have gone about it the way we did. We take concerns of power harassment very seriously at SIMPO. Please do accept our deepest and sincerest apology.’

Translation: Please do not sue us.

Oh my god. They think that Toby was sexually harassing me. They can’t fire the person that they assume was sexually harassed—that’s a lawsuit waiting to be lost. I could get my job back because of the company’s policy.

‘I am sorry, I think there is a big misunderstanding.’ I shake my head furiously, shooing away the selfish thoughts. ‘There hasn’t been any sexual harassment.’

‘Even if there wasn’t, until HR have done a proper investigation, Toby is suspended.’

‘Suspended?’ Like in school? This is not right. ‘I kissed him. He didn’t do anything wrong!’

‘Fuko,’ Steven says, dropping the mawkish sweetness, ‘it doesn’t matter. He is your supervisor, and until we know for sure what happened, he is off work. If what you say is true, there is nothing for either of you to be concerned about. We will get it sorted. We promise.’

This is the first time Steven has appeared to be a person and not a money calculation machine, and it works wonders at calming me down. The rest of the meeting is about me returning to work next week, as the IT team uncovered that the woman who tried to log into my phone was a bar worker who thought my phone was hers and put it back. No corporate espionage has taken place, which is mildly disappointing—can you imagine me being involved in anything spying related?

The steps I take out of the office are slow and frazzled. Fawzia pssts at me from her computer.