AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘You must realise by now that I had no idea!’ I exclaim.
‘I’m sorry, but that’s not enough,’ she replies, and I realise the door of the trap is about to be slammed shut. ‘We’ve revoked your access and asked Ian to go through your laptop with the same intensity. Jonathan will accompany you back to your desk and supervise you handing in both machines. Obviously, we don’t want you to touch the keyboard or anything, please.’
‘But how am I going to work without my laptop?’
‘You aren’t. You’re going to hand over to Jonathan, and then we’re suspending you on full pay until the results of our inquiry are available. Needless to say, if we find any evidence of misconduct on your part, summary dismissal will be the least of your problems.’
5
I’m numb with shock as Jonathan asks me to talk him through the status of my current projects and then accompanies me back to my desk, relieving me of both my laptop and Lee’s. I can feel the eyes of everyone in the office on me; they’re obviously desperate to know what’s going on, but I can’t look at any of them. I keep my eyes firmly on the floor. At least I’m not crying, although I’m sure the tears will come once the shock wears off. The final indignity is being escorted to the lobby, where Jonathan takes my pass off me, checks to make sure they have my mobile phone number and personal email address recorded correctly, and promises to be in touch as soon as the investigation is complete.
Suddenly, without quite knowing how I got here, I’m back out on the street. I glance at my watch; it’s not even ten o’clock. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, so I make my way to the bus stop pretty much on autopilot and catch the bus home. During my normal commute, it’s always busy and I usually have to stand, but now it’s eerily quiet. There’s just me and a few older people who look like they’re probably of pension age, clutching bags with the logos of some of the discount stores in the city centre. My mind is stuck on a single loop – what the bloody hell just happened?
A noise from my bag distracts me. It’s my phone, pinging with a message. Wondering if Lee has decided to explain what he’s done, I fish it out and unlock it. It’s not Lee, it’s Ruth.
Saw you leave the office. RU OK?
I have no idea how to respond to that, so I shove the phone back in my bag and resume staring out of the window. I can’t get my head around it at all. Lee never breathed a word of what he was planning to do. Why would he keep secret something this important which, let’s face it, affects both of us?
As the bus nears my stop, I can feel the initial shock starting to fade and something else taking its place. It’s amazing how much energy being truly furious gives you. Once I’ve let myself into the building, I hurry over to the lift and stab the call button several times. The lift is near the top of the building, and seems to be taking an age to come down, stopping at every floor. With a growl of frustration, I make for the stairs, taking them two at a time. I’m sweaty and out of breath by the time I reach the top floor, but I don’t care. My hands are shaking with anger as I push the key into the lock and, once I’m inside, I lean against the door for a moment, aware that my whole body is now trembling.
I’m not sure what I’m looking for as I march into the second bedroom, but I feel like there should be some evidence of his duplicity somewhere. I rifle through all the pieces of paper on the desk, looking for anything with a Harmony logo on it, but it’s all just bills neatly annotated with the date they were paid, as well as other meaningless documents. Like a woman possessed, I yank the drawers right out of their sockets so that I can check there isn’t anything incriminating sellotaped to the bottom or the back of them. By the time I’ve finished, there are pieces of paper everywhere, but I haven’t found anything at all.
I reach for my phone and check the message I sent Lee this morning; there are now two blue ticks, so he’s read it, but there’s no reply. Of course there isn’t. He must know that I’ll have found out by now what he’s done. Even if HR hadn’t worked out that we were seeing each other, the office is incredibly leaky and everyone would be talking about his sudden resignation. He’ll also know that I’m going to be mad as hell at him, so I imagine he’s trying to buy time by ignoring me until I’ve calmed down a bit. I don’t think so. I start typing another message, only to delete it after a few words. This is too big for WhatsApp.
I dial his number, but it goes straight to voicemail, so I hang up. What to do? He’ll have no excuse not to call me this evening, but I can’t wait until then. I stab the redial button and wait for the tone to tell me to start leaving my message.
‘Hi, darling,’ I begin, my voice almost saccharine in its sweetness. ‘I know it must be very exciting and everything on the first day of your secret new job, but I wonder if you could give me a call when you’re free. You see, Orchestra unsurprisingly have a bit of a problem about you jumping ship the way that you did, and they’ve worked out that we’re not just flatmates, so I’m very slightly in the shit.’ I’m aware that my voice is hardening, but I press on. ‘In fact, they’ve suspended me because they think I’m probably in cahoots with whatever stunt you’ve pulled here, and I’m frankly a little surprised and pissed off that you didn’t think to talk to me about any of this before you did it.’ There is no sweetness any more, my voice is coldly furious. ‘So give me a call and talk me through it, would you, youfucking bastard!’
OK, so I’m shouting now, but I’m so angry, it’s not surprising. Every part of my body is humming with fury; I don’t think I’ve ever been this mad with Lee before. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve missed something, a clue or a conversation, but the more I think about it, the more typical of Lee this is. He wanted something, so he went and got it and sod the consequences for anyone else.
I throw the phone down on the sofa as the tears finally come. I’m so full of emotions, I’m amazed it’s taken them this long. I’m terrified that I’ll somehow lose the job that I love even though I know I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m furious with Lee for putting me in this position, and I’m overwhelmed by the shame of being escorted out of the office in front of everyone, like a criminal. I can just imagine the rumour mill going into overdrive; perhaps there’s been a meeting where the HR woman has tried to gloss over what’s happened. That will really fan the gossip flames. As if on cue, my phone pings from the sofa. My eyes are blurry from crying, but I can still read the message clearly enough. It’s Ruth again.
You and Lee are an item???? IT guy says you’re both working for Harmony now. WTAF Ella????
I stare at the message in disbelief. I know she’s going to be hurt and feel betrayed because I never confided in her about Lee and me, but how do I convince her that the rest of it is wildly off the mark, given my current circumstances? It’s certainly too complex to solve by text, but I’m not ready to talk to her. She’ll want to know everything, and I don’t feel like I know anything at the moment. I force myself to try to think rationally. A glance at my watch shows it’s just after eleven. There’s the faintest chance that Lee might call at lunchtime, but my guess is still that he’ll save it for the evening, especially after the tirade I’ve just left on his voicemail. My phone pings again. Another message from Ruth.
I thought you were my friend, but right now I feel like I don’t know you at all. :’-(
‘Oh,fuck off, Ruth, for God’s sake!’ I snap at the phone. ‘Can’t you see I’ve got bigger things to deal with than your bloody feelings right now? I’m in the middle of a shit storm, honey, so you’ll just have to wait your turn.’ A wave of guilt washes over me. Ruth has always been an open book about her life, and she is right that I haven’t been a very good friend by hiding something this big from her. It was also Ruth who filled me in on the juicy details behind the ‘incident’ that led to Orchestra putting the ban on office relationships in place. I can still see her eyes glittering over the rim of her glass when I asked about it at one of our first after-work drinks.
‘It was a huge scandal,’ she’d stage-whispered. ‘One of the directors was having an affair with the receptionist. It was an open secret in as much as everyone in the office knew what was going on but nobody said anything.’
‘What happened?’ I’d asked.
‘The receptionist wanted him to leave his wife. He said no, so she tipped off the wife anonymously to up the ante. All hell broke loose. They both ended up having to resign, which was particularly tricky with him being a director. After that, it was made clear that we were expected to keep our private and professional lives strictly separate.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I’d told her and, at the time, I’d meant it. She has every right to be royally pissed off with me, but I can’t deal with her right now.
The strangest thought comes to me. While it’s true that I am in the middle of a shit storm, possibly the biggest one of my life to date, I’m completely powerless to do anything about it. My boyfriend has gone rogue, my job is hanging by a thread, but there is no action I can take, no email I can write; I am literally in the eye of the storm and all I can do is wait. That thought terrifies me most of all. What on earth am I going to do while I’m suspended?
One thing is for certain: I’m not going to sit around here in my work clothes all day waiting for the phone to ring. I need to do something, otherwise I’m going to go mad worrying about whether there’s anything on my laptop that they might think is suspicious. I know there isn’t, but it’s like when you go out somewhere and start to worry that maybe you didn’t lock the door properly or you left a ring on the hob on. Even if you’re sure you locked the door and everything was off, you worry about it until you get back. Was I rigorous enough about checking how many hours the consultants were booking? Did I build too much contingency into a plan, or maybe not enough? Did I say something in an email that could be misconstrued?
‘Enough, Ella,’ I tell myself out loud. ‘Do what you’re good at. Make a plan.’
After getting changed into a pair of jeans and a comfortable hoodie, I make myself a cup of coffee and carry it through into the bomb site that is now the study. I tidy up the mess and, in the absence of a laptop with project-planning software, settle myself at the desk with a blank piece of paper. I write the days of the week across the top and draw column lines between them. Then I write ‘AM’ and ‘PM’ on the left-hand side and draw a line across. I have no idea how long my suspension will last, but I reckon it’s got to be at least a week.
Half an hour later, I’m still sitting there with a mug of cold coffee and I haven’t managed to fill in a single box on the grid. It’s not as if there are even any menial tasks that need doing. The laundry is up to date, we have a cleaner who comes every Thursday so the flat is spotless, and we do the shopping at the weekend because it’s easier to bring it home in Lee’s car than on the bus.
