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*~*~**~*~*
My darling office tyrant had not promised too much. He had a wonderful surprise waiting for me when I entered his office: the checking of the balance of all his accounts. All of them. In one day. Apparently, he didn’t particularly trust his accountants - no great surprise, since he didn’t trust God, the saints, himself, the Queen or Father Christmas - and was determined to discover any who might be cheating him and squash them like bugs. And guess what? I had been declared his assistant bug-squasher. That was why I, Miss Lilly Linton, sat on a perfectly good Friday afternoon, going through balance sheet after balance sheet.
If I had been working for a normal man, going through a few balance sheets might not have been so bad. But I was working for Mr Rikkard Ambrose, a man who had to continually keep opening new banks because the old ones got stuffed full with his money so quickly. The day wore on and on. The numbers piled up in endless rows and columns, and soon, my brain was a labyrinth of zeroes, fives and sevens. Where the rest of the numbers went I had no idea. I wasn’t a born mathematician.
When the sun began to set, Mr Ambrose threw down his ledger.
‘This isn’t going the way it ought to. At this rate, we’ll never be finished today. How far are you, Mr Linton?’
‘Seven plus seven makes…hm…fifteen, minus twelve, makes-’
‘Mr Linton!’
‘Hm…? What?’
‘How far along are you?’
‘Two thirds of the way to Limbo, Sir.’
‘With the accounts, Mr Linton!’
‘Oh. Um, well, I think about halfway through.’
The noise Mr Ambrose made in the back of his throat then was pure disapproval. An old lady who held her teacup with her little finger jutting out couldn’t have done it better if a dog had peed on her carpet.
‘This won’t do. We’ll have to postpone the remainder of the work until tomorrow.’
I sat up, my face brightening. ‘We will?’
‘Yes. We’ll have to work on something else this evening.’
The brightened expression drained from my face. ‘Oh. We will, will we?’
‘Yes! Get out my calendar. Take down my schedule for next week.’
‘Yes, Sir. As you wish, Sir.’
I dug the calendar out of my pocket and started to flip through it on the lookout for the appropriate page.
‘We’ll start with Friday, Mr Linton, and work our way back through the week, understood?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Adequate. On Friday, at eight o’clock…’
He started to rattle off dates at a machine gun pace, and I tried my best to take all of them down in a script I would later be able to decipher. But, sooner rather than later, my eyes strayed away from the calendar in my hand to the window, beyond which lay a stunning view of the City of London, bathed in fiery evening sunlight. I could be doing anything right now! Instead, I was stuck in this office with a cold, stone-hearted tyrant who couldn’t even appreciate subtle jokes about indecent exposure.
I sighed. I could be out riding on my new bicycle right now! Or choosing a nice suit to wear for the Royal Wedding on Monday - or a dress, if I was in a girlish mood. But no, what I had told Eve had been the truth: none of us had the power or the pre
stige necessary to get good seats, or indeed any kind of seats.
‘Mr Linton!’
‘Hm?’
‘Mr Linton, I don’t pay you to daydream!’
‘What a pity.’
