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‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ I fired out.
His eyes had dropped to my lacy bra for less than a millisecond, a courtesy I didn’t think to acknowledge until much later. It was chivalrous in a way I doubted any of my exes would have been. Even so, it was enough to make me abandon my ablutions and cross my arms over my highly exposed chest. ‘Well, what are you doing?’ I repeated.
He cast a glance behind him, where the cistern was still gurgling as it refilled. ‘That’s rather a personal question, don’t you think?’
I blinked back at him, still too stunned to think straight. ‘In the Ladies’ toilets,’ I said pointedly, my voice so loud it was practically ricocheting off the tiled walls. ‘You are in the wrong room.’
‘Actually, the loos here are unisex,’ he said, shooting down my accusation as he strode to the basin adjacent to mine and calmly began to wash his hands.
‘But… but why didn’t they say so? They should say so,’ I blustered.
‘They do. There’s a sign on the door.’
This time, poor light or not, I could definitely see the amusement twinkling in his eyes. He could very well be right, I silently acknowledged. I’d been in such a hurry, I hadn’t stopped to examine the signage properly.
‘What I find more interesting,’ he continued, ‘is why you’re standing there, semi-naked, once again accusing me of being somewhere I have no right to be. Is that a thing with you?’
I had no words. None. I was sure that hours later, in the quiet solitude of my bed, I’d come up with at least a dozen pithy responses, but for now they were as elusive as my composure.
‘Are you done?’ I asked, nodding towards his hands, which he was washing with the diligence of a man about to perform surgery. ‘Because if you are, I’d really like you to leave so I can get dressed. I have an interview to attend.’
An expression flitted across his face that suddenly worried me more than anything else had done so far on this very strange morning. ‘Are you here for the feature writer position?’ he asked.
I felt the colour drain from my cheeks as all the dots suddenly began to join up. He had to be one of the people on the interview panel, my prospective employer, and I’d done nothing so far that day except yell at him. I might as well hand back my visitor’s pass and go home right away.
Five minutes later, and still rattled by the encounter, I slipped into the conference room. There were two female candidates sitting on opposite sides of a huge oval table. They both looked up from their phones at my arrival and we exchanged polite hellos, but there was a brittleness to their greetings that surprised me. Was it naive of me to have expected anything different? We were all going for the same job, after all.
I was good at reading people – their body language, and the expressions that they didn’t realise gave away their secrets. It was a skill that came in handy as a reporter, even if you did only work on a humble local newspaper. Those instincts now told me that my fellow candidates had almost instantly decided I posed no threat for this job. And they were probably right. Their clothes, their make-up, and their quiet air of confidence made them look the part in a way I simply didn’t, and more importantly they hadn’t also verbally abused a member of the interview panel on their way in.
In an atmosphere that reminded me of a public library, where even a discreet cough sounded like a klaxon, we sat and waited to be called for the first of our interviews. Both women were summoned before I was, and as soon as I had the room to myself, I leapt to my feet and began pacing up and down, hoping to expel my nervous energy.
I cleared my throat repeatedly, trying to dislodge the pond full of frogs that had taken up residence there. ‘Good morning,’ I practised out loud to the empty room. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you,’ I added, thrusting out my hand to shake that of an invisible interviewer. I was still pumping the hand of an imaginary person when the door behind me clicked open. A searingly hot blush was already on my cheeks as I turned to face whoever had come to collect me. Could there be any more ways to screw up my chances of getting this job, I wondered?
‘It’s good to meet you too,’ a deep voice replied. ‘Although technically you could argue that we’ve already met several times today.’
If I hadn’t already blown my chances of getting this job, surely being caught out in a pretend conversation must have hammered home the last nail in my career coffin.Unbalanced.I could practically see the word being vigorously rubber-stamped in red ink all over my application.
My gaze, which was fixed somewhere in the region of his feet, very slowly travelled upwards. He was much taller than I’d realised from our encounters in the car park and the toilets. It took quite a while for my eyes to journey up the length of his well-cut grey suit, before pausing somewhere in the region of his expertly knotted tie. With an effort, I forced my chin to lift a little higher until my eyes were on his face. There was a smile on it that some might have called a smirk. Now that I wasn’t preoccupied with yelling at him, I saw he was older than I’d first thought, maybe thirty or so, making him about four years my senior.
I blanked his smile with a look that said the loveable rogue act was wasted on me. Although none of his features were individually remarkable, combined they created something that had probably caused heads to turn his entire life. Unfortunately, I suspected he was perfectly aware of those charms, which made him far less appealing, at least as far as I was concerned.
Even so, it was impossible to ignore the way my body was reacting to him right then. My spine felt as though it was literally vibrating with tension, while my stomach had started to perform some impressive gymnastics with my breakfast. It was as though I was physically allergic to this total stranger, which I was fairly certain was impossible. Even so, I’d never had such a visceral reaction to anyone before.
‘You must be here for me,’ I said, forcing a totally fake smile on to my lips as I turned to collect my belongings for my interview.
‘Must I?’ the man replied, apparently determined not to make any of this easy for me. In natural light his eyes were probably very dark brown, but beneath the overhead fluorescents they appeared almost black. Like a shark’s, I thought uncharitably.
‘Before we get started, I believe I owe you an apology for the way I behaved earlier. I want to assure you that I’m not usually like that.’
‘That’s good to know.’ His onyx eyes were curiously mesmerising. Being interviewed by him was going to be more than a little intimidating and I definitely wouldn’t be trying the well-known advice to relax and ‘imagine your interviewer in their underwear’.
‘So how would you say you are… usually?’ he enquired, tilting his head to one side, causing the overhead lights to pick out strands of copper in his rich brown hair.
I glanced around uneasily. Had our interview started already? Would he be relaying my answer to his colleagues, after no doubt first filling them in on how erratically I’d behaved earlier, and how unsuitable I was for the job?
‘Well, I like to think I’m hard-working and diligent. I’m definitely not a clock-watcher, and I’m willing to work long hours to get the job done. I’m a team player and I get on really well with people,’ I added, aware that everything I’d done so far that day totally refuted that last statement. ‘I’d be an excellent feature writer,’ I concluded, which had sounded far more confident in the privacy of my bedroom than it did now.
He was quiet for a long moment and there was a decidedly perplexed expression on his face. It was still there when the conference room door swung open and the speed-walking assistant stood within its frame.
