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“A latte would be lovely, thanks.” Rachel sat down, feeling decidedly uneasy. This was not like her boss at all. Rachel had not had a single meeting with her outside her corner office with its view of the Thames from two separate windows.
Danielle returned a few minutes later, setting the latte in front of Rachel with the same brisk manner before she took her own seat.
“So,” she said, the look in her eyes turning beady, and Rachel’s stomach cramped. She had a feeling this was not going to be good. “Tell me what’s going on,” Danielle continued. “Your father has had some health issues?”
“Yes, it seems so, although I haven’t been up there much to know. But a neighbour called because they were concerned, and I took my dad to an appointment at a memory clinic yesterday.” This was all feeling rather personal. As kind as Danielle was, their relationship was definitely in and of the workplace; Rachel hadn’t ever told her boss anything truly personal about herself. She hadn’t wanted to.
“And how did that go?” Danielle asked, taking a sip of her coffee.
Rachel shrugged. “He actually did okay on the memory bits, mostly, but the doctor is still recommending an MRI. I know I could come back and then just go up on the day, and I will do that if needed, but I…I kind of have the feeling that I need to be around, at least for a little while.” She glanced down at her latte; the barista had drawn a heart in the foam, and for some stupid reason it made Rachel almost want to cry. Good heavens, when had she become so emotional? She wasn’t like this. She was amachine. At least, she’d tried to be.
Danielle had not spoken, and Rachel forced herself to look up. Her boss seemed thoughtful, her lips pursed, her head cocked. “You know if you work remotely, you might miss some opportunities,” she said, more of a statement of fact than a warning. “That’s just the way it is.”
“I know.” Elise, one of the few other female employees at Wakeman and Wallace, had gone hybrid after her maternity leave, and most people acted as if she no longer existed; Rachel suspected that for them she genuinely didn’t. Out of sight, out of mind. Completely. If Rachel wanted to become a fund manager one day, or even a VP, this was not the way to do it. “It would only be for a few weeks,” she said, and then forced herself to add honestly, “Probably.”
“Right.” Danielle did not sound convinced by the veracity of that statement. She took another sip of her Americano, and then put it down suddenly. “Do you know how old I am?” she asked, her tone turning abrupt.
Rachel blinked at her. Howold? She realised she had no idea. Danielle looked fortyish, but in a groomed and glamorous sort of way—gel nails in a discreetly neutral colour, flawless make-up, her hair a perfect, gleaming chestnut bob. She had a trim, athletic figure and she wore classy separates that always looked very expensive and effortless. “Ah,” she said, and Danielle gave her a mirthless smile.
“I’m forty-nine. Too old to have children, maybe even too old to get married. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, as they say.”
What did this have to do with anything, Rachel wondered, and what did her boss want her to say to that? She had no clue, and so she simply stared, and Danielle smiled again, this time looking genuinely amused.
“I know, I know, you’re wondering why I’m telling you this. I gave my life to this job, Rachel, just like you’ve been doing—body and soul, energy and emotion, everything. I didn’t think I’d ever regret it, especially not when I got to where I have—fund manager, corner office, the works. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for you, because you reminded me so much of myself at the same age. Hungry. Determined. And so I trained you up, basically to be like me.” A sigh escaped her and her gaze flitted to the pavement outside the window; a stream of people hurried by, heads tucked low, eyes on their phones, on their way home from work. “But now that I’m about to hit fifty,” she continued, “my birthday is next month—I’m not sure that was such a good idea. I don’t know if you should try to be like me. If anyone should.”
Was her boss having a midlife crisis? Rachel struggled to think of something to say. “I’ve always appreciated what you’ve done for me, Danielle.”
“I know you have.” Daniel shook her head slowly. “When I was a little older than you are, maybe thirty-five, I was dating a guy. Nice guy, laid-back, not like me. He was an economics professor, and he got a job in Sheffield. Asked me to go with him. I practically laughed in his face.”
Rachel tried not to squirm; this really was getting personal, and if Danielle was expecting the same level of sharing from her, well…she wasn’t going to get it.
“I know, I know, it’s a pretty typical story. Romance versus ambition.” She rolled her eyes, smiling a little. “Whatever, right?” Rachel wasn’t sure her boss wanted her to answer, and so she didn’t. Danielle sighed before continuing, “That’s not even the point, though. The point is I didn’t let myself eventhinkabout it. It was an absolute no-brainer to me, until later, much later, and then I started to wonder. Sitting up in my corner office, looking out at that incredible view of the Thames and the Shard, I wondered if I might have been happy in Sheffield. And I came to the realisation that I probably wouldn’t have been. Not as I was then, anyway. So this isn’t that road-not-taken sort of nonsense, at least not exactly. Because what it really made me wonder…what sort of person would I have been, would I havebecome, if I’d moved to Sheffield and chosen to be happy there? Because happiness, I’ve come to realise, can be a choice.”
Wow, Rachel thought, this was getting quite deep. She tried to think of something to say.
Danielle leaned forward, intent now. “And more than that,” she continued, an uncharacteristic throb of emotion in her voice, “I wondered if I would have been happy if I’d said yes to a lot of other things. My niece’s baptism. My aunt’s funeral. The holiday with university friends in Crete. I said no to a lot of things, Rachel, so I could say yes to the job.”
“Right,” Rachel said after a moment, when it seemed as if Danielle was waiting for a response. She supposed she knew where her boss was going with this. Say yes to something other than the job. Well, she was doing that, wasn’t she? Even if it cost her. Lesson learned. Sort of.
“So what I’m saying is,” Danielle finished, “that I think you should go and stay with your dad. Make those memories. Be the one who shows up, who stays. Because ten or twenty years from now, when you’re sitting in your corner office—or even if you’re not—you’re going to wish you had done it. And you’re going to wonder what kind of person you might have been, if you’d made some different choices. You won’t regret the choices themselves, at least not entirely. But you’ll wonder, and that can be a very uncomfortable feeling.”
She lapsed into silence, her face drawn into thoughtful lines; for the first time, Rachel saw the weariness and age beneath the glossy, made-up veneer. She questioned whether Danielle didn’t just wonder, but actively regretted some choices, no matter what she’d just said. Was she seeing some sort of do-over in Rachel, her protégée?
“Thank you,” she said quietly. She felt sad for her boss; she hadn’t realised Danielle, who always seemed so accomplished and purposeful, felt that way, but maybe everyone did, at one point or another. Maybe questioning your choices was simply part of making some in the first place. You’d always wonder.
“So yes, you can work remotely,” Danielle said, straightening, back to her brisk self. “Check in every day, and I’ll try to send some interesting projects your way. I assume you’ve got good internet up there in Yorkshire?”
“Pretty good,” Rachel said, not quite honestly. It was patchy, at best, but it would have to do.
“We’ll say three months to start?”
“Three months!” It hadn’t, Rachel realised, actually been a question. Three months suddenly seemed like a very long time, longer than she’d ever actually been envisioning. “I don’t think—”
“Three months,” Danielle said firmly. “Excellent.” She rose from the table, smoothing down her skirt. “Good luck, Rachel, and I hope everything goes well with your dad.” She smiled in farewell as Rachel gulped and nodded, struggling to keep up. She had not expected it to be that easy, not at all. It unnerved her, that it had been. Had some part of her been hoping for Danielle to refuse, her get-out-of-jail-free card, or really, get-out-of-going-back-home?
Well, Danielle hadn’t given it to her. Instead, she’d told Rachel to go back home, and with her blessing, for three whole months.
Good luck? Yes, she was definitely going to need it.
