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Polly hadn’t a clue what to say to that. She could feel various responsive expressions tweak at her facial muscles, pulling first this way, then that. What won through was a laugh, a hoot.
‘I am serious,’ said Jeremy, wearing his best serious face. The one he used when he said things like, ‘I think we need to hand over Nutbush to Timon. He’ll look after the client from here on.’
Now Polly was serious. ‘Jeremy, what are you talking about?’
‘I’ve checked the results. They clearly show that… well, basically… basically, you show signs of being… mentally unbalanced… with possible psychopathic traits. And I will have to record this on your HR file. I thought you should hear it from me in person.’ He turned over his hands, looking from the elbows down like Christ at the Last Supper, and above them like a sneery, pompous twat.
There followed long seconds of silence, then a voice in Polly’s head said,Girl, how much more of this are you going to take? It was actually a line she’d written for Sabrina in her novel, delivered to her boss, Dick Germany, in a worm-turning moment. The worlds of fiction and fact suddenly blended into one as Polly felt a spiral of fire rising insideher, just as she’d imagined rose inside Sabrina when she was writing the scene.
‘So, let me get this right, Jeremy. You’ve been on some sort of amateur day course and decided to subject everyone in the company to a cobbled-together personality test where the results are recorded in indelible ink on our records. And can I ask for what purpose?’
Jeremy’s jaw tightened, not expecting to be questioned by the meek and mild Polly, and also not liking that ‘amateur’ word.
‘It’s an established test,’ he answered. ‘I have just added my own guided variations.’
‘Am I the only psychopath in the company?’ Polly asked.
‘Actually no. There are a few with—’
Polly cut him off. ‘Oh you don’t say. There are a few of us. A group. Maybe amurderof psychopaths because I’m not sure what our collective noun would be. Aderangement? Aninstability?Ananger, perchance?’
Anger would fit. She felt very angry but also his twitching face was amusing her in a situation where she shouldn’t be amused. Maybe shewasderanged. Who wouldn’t be, putting up with this sort of crap day in, day out.
‘Your results were by far the most positive. Off the scale,’ said Jeremy.
‘Really?’ She leaned forward and noticed Jeremy jerk back.
‘Alas, yes.’
‘You really are a tosser, aren’t you, Jeremy?’
Jeremy’s mouth dropped into a long O. And so did Polly’s. She couldn’t believe she’d said that. It was all very well unleashing her inner Sabrina, but Sabrina could afford to walk out of her job and Polly couldn’t. She needed it more than ever. She should pull that back, apologise, offer tomake some tea and roll out the best biscuits, say absolutely yes to working with Brock on Auntie Marian’s Bread, but something inside her was popping like corn kernels and she couldn’t keep it in.
‘You have systematically sidelined and undermined me since your backside hit that chair, haven’t you, Jeremy? You have promoted people above me, you have sent me out to muster up refreshments like a skivvy, but when you want to turn around a business, you’ll harvest every idea I have and pass it off as your own, won’t you, you inadequate little shit?’
Even her inner Sabrina was now standing back in wonder.
‘Whaa—’ Jeremy spluttered, but Polly wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to speak yet.
‘Let’s take Nutbush as one of many examples. Remember, the shop you were going to shift entirely online. The shop now quadrupling its profits because I told you to do the exact opposite. The project you and your so-called managers took the credit for when not one of you could come up with a single idea that would stop them from going under.’
‘Nutb—’
Nope, she still wouldn’t give him room to talk.
‘And now you’re revving up to do it all again withhimout there, the nephew of the man whose colon you inhabit. You’re going to train him up to tell me to stick a kettle on every time he feels like washing down his custard creams and prod him to plunder every idea I have to turn Auntie Marian’s Bread around and repackage it as his own. I can’t believe I’ve let you get away with this for so long. You’d have sunk and drowned if it wasn’t for me. Nutbush, Fish Fillies, The Gin Lot, Planet, Knock Doors all down toME… need I go on?’
Give it to him, Pol. It was a voice that knew she’d been pushed too much, too far, someone who could see what she’dbeen through in her life, the past heartache, the wrongs she’d endured and ahead of her only the uncertain path she had been forced to take. And now this insult to add to all the injury: that she was to be not only a certified psychopath, but one that had to let the office junior handle her account because he was male and not female.
‘Well,’ Jeremy said, when he took advantage of the tiny gap she’d finally left him while she took a breath. ‘Well, well.’
‘Then you have the cheek to tell me I’m apsychopath,’ Polly went on. ‘The fact that you are still sitting there in a chair with a head on your shoulders, Jeremy, should quite clearly prove to you that I’m not. As for putting that on my record, I don’t think so.’
Jeremy’s eyeballs were now in danger of pinging out of his skull and rolling across the desk.
Polly grabbed the papers from his hand.
‘That is what I think about your test, Jeremy,’ she said. There was no point in restraining herself now. She was done here; there was no coming back from this, so she might as well let rip – literally. She tore at it savagely, letting all the pieces tumble to the floor like giant confetti even though she quickly realised she was playing into his hands. He’d tell everyone she registered as a psychopath on his test and then protested about the results by going psycho in his office and so he had to get rid. How they’d all laugh.
