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‘Maybe because she was very good at her job and he recognised that. She’s had a lot of success stories attributed to her over the years, but funnily enough hardly anything since you became MD. Amazing what you unearth though when you do some deep digging.’
Jeremy uncrossed and recrossed his legs.
‘She had a few good ideas that were implemented but she was hardly the company cornerstone,’ he snapped.
‘Nutbush, Fish Fillies, the Gin Lot. They’ve got her stamp all over them. There’s a detailed paper trail of her research and suggestions, I’ve read the files. I’ve seeneverything. Let’s takeNutbush. No Limits.for instance. Why did Timon Cavendish take the credit for that tagline?’
‘Well… because…’
‘Be quiet, Jeremy, it was a rhetorical question. I already know the answer. Because Polly was discriminated against. And why was she discriminated against…? Because she is awoman.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Jeremy rebutted. ‘Is that what she’s said?’
‘No, she hasn’t. I haven’t spoken to Polly. Yet. But I have spoken to a lot of other people. Little people, you’d probably call them, the ones you breeze past every morning because they’re too insignificant to acknowledge, the people far below you who, amazingly, have eyes and ears. And I’ve also spoken to a few psychopaths,’ Marjorie then added with her tongue firmly jammed in her cheek. ‘You have no idea how many of them we employ in this company.’
That stupid test. Marjorie hadn’t interfered with that because she wanted to see what he’d do with the datacollected. She hadn’t imagined the mess she’d have to sort out when she was tasked with updating people’s records with ‘proven’ psychopathic diagnoses, other personality disorders also available. It wasn’t going to happen on her watch. Polly Potter was about as psychopathic as Basil Brush. She’d had to talk Len Champion from Maintenance out of forming a picket line.
She hadn’t wanted to interrupt Sheridan Savalas’s maternity leave, but she’d rung her hoping to fill in some missing gaps in her findings. Sheridan had been only too delighted to share some of Jeremy’s overloud and public comments, including how he wished the company wouldn’t keep employing temps who were fat and forty, and how she’d overheard him and Timon Cavendish laughing about her ‘very small tits being a decent size now she was up the duff’. And how Jeremy was renowned for talking to women’s breasts, how he denigrated Polly Potter, calling her Polly Kettle in front of others to embarrass her, while taking every credit for her triumphs… and more, much more, spilling her guts as if she’d been waiting a long time for such an opportunity. And Sheridan had let it drop that in a brainstorming session for Zingo lemonade, in which she was taking notes, Jeremy had suggested the tagline: ‘as bitter as Marjorie Wright’s minge’.
Polly had clearly been pushed to her limits. Sheridan said that she couldn’t get hold of her; neither could Marjorie, and she just hoped Polly hadn’t had a full-on nervous breakdown.
‘So here’s where we’re at, Jeremy,’ said Marjorie, smiling like a hungry hyena at him. ‘I’m going to send you on a workplace discrimination and equality course where you will be educated on conduct befitting the mission statement of Northern Eagles, which has been adopted, as you know, by’ – she couldn’t help but roll her eyes – ‘BS.’
‘I’m the bloody MD,’ said Jeremy, no longer trying to keep a lid on his chagrin. In fact, he’d ripped off that lid and hurled it across the room like Captain America’s shield.
‘Precisely. And unless you want to be an MD without a job, you’ll go on the course. Charles insists. Can’t really have its MD going against everything the company stands for, can we?’ She’d made it very clear to Charles that this needed to happen or they’d have some very unwelcome press, so he had to back her up. She’d had him by the balls for three years and she wasn’t ready to loosen her grip yet.
‘Is that all?’ said Jeremy, standing up.
‘No, it isn’t. You’ll personally write a letter to Polly Potter offering to reinstate her with no penalty nor break in her salary if she hasn’t already consulted a solicitor to pursue a claim of constructive dismissal.’
Jeremy was incandescent. ‘You’re bloody HR, you write it,’ he said.
Marjorie didn’t miss a beat. ‘Write the letter, Jeremy. It’s not a request. Oh, and one more thing: don’t ever malign the character of Alan Eagleton again. He was a professional; he didn’t cross boundaries. He was a man of principle and a gentleman and he didn’t talk to women’s breasts or liken their minges to bitter lemonade. And if he was here now, he would have kicked you out of this building with his own right foot up your arse and I’d have polished the shit off his shoe for him once he’d done it. Do close the door when you leave.’
Chapter 34
‘You okay, my lovely?’ said Sylvie, giving Marielle an affectionate nudge. ‘You’re quiet.’
Marielle cursed herself for being so transparent. Every time she met with her friends recently she’d been like a joy-killer. But she couldn’t tell them what was really troubling her this time because she’d get a proper earful of ‘I told you so’s and she couldn’t bear that. She’d learnt the lesson now and when Sabrina finally left, she would be letting no one stay in Little Moon unless they were people she knew inside out. She gave Sylvie an alternative believable reason why she wasn’t the life and soul of them today.
‘I had a bit of a… set-to with Cilla last week. The day we went to see Psychic Pat.’
Everyone seemed to lean forward then, as one, to hear more.
‘She stormed round to tell me that I was an idiot and the worst judge of character on the planet, more or less,’ said Marielle with a tired huff.
‘You aren’t at all,’ Bev said to that. ‘Look at who your best mates are.’
‘She meant those I’ve let stay in the flat.’
‘Well, we can all make mistakes,’ said Diana kindly.
‘I’m still married to mine,’ said Bev. ‘I don’t know why I’ve stayed with him. I don’t even like him. Do you know, we haven’t had it off for seven years.’
‘I haven’t had it off for overseventeenyears,’ said Marielle. ‘At least Cilla’s getting some good sex while she’s being duped.’
‘Oh Marielle, we need to find you someone nice. That’s too long to be sat on the shelf gathering dust. You’re still a young woman,’ said Jackie.
