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After a few minutes, my breathing levels out and some of the crushing weight of self-loathing has disappeared from my chest. I sit up and reach for my tea, taking a long sip and letting it settle my nerves. There’s a solid chance it’s just a placebo, but I don’t care. It does the job either way.
Then I notice the file on the floor.
It’s one of those soft, plastic-y covered ones full of poly pockets, vaguely familiar but I can’t think why. It’s hefty, thick with papers and marked up with neon-coloured tabs.
Someone must have left it from a meeting earlier, or it fell out of a bag.
I pick it up and take a look – in case I can tell whose it is, so I can leave it on their desk. I’d be beyond stressed if I thought I’d lost some important document. It’s probably some contracts from Nadja’s team, judging by the weight of it and all those sticky tabs.
There’s nothing on the cover to indicate what it is, or who it belongs to. Inside, it’s even more confusing. Leafing through it gently, so I don’t disturb any of the neon tabs, I find sections on all kinds of Arrowmile projects. There are some with labels stuck to the poly pocket marking them up asRETIREDor something similar, and a few with names I vaguely recognize – old development projects from the last few years. There’s one for the Vane engine, one for each of the Phoebus car models. There’s an entire section dedicated to the new coolant that’s being developed in the labs. Near the back, in what seems to be a more recent addition, there’s a label markedJONES X ARROWMILE COLLAB– the project Mum’s working on with them. There are only a couple of sheets of paperin that one; in contrast, most of the other poly pockets are so full the papers have started to curl.
What is this?
It’s like a catalogue of everything going on at Arrowmile. I peek at the section for the Vane engine, wiggling the papers halfway out to sift through them.
Objectively, I know this is absolutely not something I should be doing.Thisis definitely snooping, not just a polite stumbling-across situation. This could be confidential information, not the sort of thing an intern should be looking at.
But then I recognize some of the papers are print-outs of emails from me.Sincerely Yours, Anna Sherwood, they read.
Hi Lloyd, they start.
Oh my God.
Oh, my God.
This is Lloyd’s file. That’s why it looks familiar – he had it with him the first time I ran into him after-hours at the office, was weirdly protective of it. He must’ve left in such a rush after our argument that he didn’t notice it under the coffee table.
This is what he’s been working on – whatever he works on, all mysterious and vague, using his name and his smile to find out anything and everythingthat’s going on at Arrowmile. This isn’t just a few reports or slide decks – this is an entire dossier, and mostly made up of handwritten notes, or print-outs of emails and diagrams and budget sheets that he’s marked up in different pens. There are costs and profits he’s highlighted and commented on, schematics he’s stapled tracing paper over to annotate.
How long has he spent putting all this together? What’s it even for?
I don’t completely understand what I’m looking at, but it feels … significant, somehow. Like this isn’t the sort of thing that should be left for people to stumble across. How much sensitive, confidential information about the company is in this thing? I suddenly imagine some kind of criminal mastermind stumbling across it, a Bond villain or the evil scientist guy in a Marvel film, using all this stuff for some outrageous, scandalous plan.
MaybeLloydis the evil scientist villain in a Marvel film.
No, that doesn’t seem likely. But hecouldbe the Hallmark movie foil to that – the warm-hearted, noble hero who investigates a notorious corporation and discovers that they’re committing some kind of fraud or money-laundering or stealing from charities or whatever it is the bad guy does to get rich, and thenthe hero guy gets to uncover the whole sham and save the day.
That sounds more like Lloyd.
But I can’t quite imagine Arrowmile being one of those kinds of companies. They’re always celebrated for their push to be greener and more eco-friendly. Plus, everybody only has good things to say about Topher Fletcher – it’s hard to picture him embezzling their pension funds or something.
So whatisLloyd up to?
My brain is fried from the long day and the argument; I can’t even begin to fathom the answer to that question right now.
With a pang of guilt, I tuck all the papers neatly back into their pocket and take it back downstairs with me. I’ll take it home to keep it safe over the weekend, and return it to Lloyd when I see him next week. When I text him to apologize, I’ll let him know I found it, in case he notices it missing and panics.
And I definitely do need to apologize.
Seeing all the work he’s put into this thing, even if I don’t understand it, makes me regret every time I made a snide remark about him swanning around the office and sticking his nose in, throwing his weight around and enjoying the luxury of having a job without having to do anyworkfor it.
I sit back down at my laptop to make sure everything is saved before I shut it down for the weekend, setting Lloyd’s file down beside me. It lands with a heavy, mutedthunkon the desk, echoing the sensation in my heart.
How do I keep underestimating him? Every time I think I’ve figured out who Lloyd is and respect him a little more, hestillkeeps on surprising me.
It’s so unfair, especially when he’s been so generously overestimating me all this time.
NEW EMAIL DRAFT
