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Uh-oh. She went for her wallet and her phone chimed. Text from Nat: Want 2 talk abt Walter. Call me.
Walter had a new issue to champion. Off leash dog parks. He wanted more of them. Adro stood in front of her desk, a bored expression on his face. He’d been enthusiastically unenthusiastic about work since losing out on the Opera House job. She texted back: Dog Parks. Not happening. Talk 2 Gab.
Adro said, “Coffee, coffee, coffee. Need it nooow.”
She picked up her wallet and slipped her phone in her pocket. Gabriella was on a call but she’d see them leaving the office together. The polite thing would be to ask if she wanted a coffee brought back. Yeah.
The office front door had barely shushed closed and Adro said, “I quit.” He kept walking and let out a big sigh. “Oh, I’m so happy I said it.” He had to turn back. Foley hadn’t followed him. “Hey.”
She caught up and they fell into step together. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. But I can’t stand it anymore. I have to get out.”
“You want to quit without a job to go to, don’t be daft.”
“I’ll get a job. I’m going to travel first. I can move in with my sister for a while, no rent. It’ll be fine. Anyway, I thought you were going to quit, you’ve been so strange lately.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Because she hadn’t mustered the energy to look for something new yet and that was all tied up with abandoning Hugh somehow and the dent her confidence had taken after Drum. “I thought I was doing better?” She asked that without any illusion Adro was going to agree, but she’d been making a huge effort not to cause any ripples. That wasn’t the same as making a huge effort to get along with Gabriella, but it was better than the subtle guerilla warfare they’d had going on.
He made a hmm sound, and that was the best she was going to get.
“Are you leaving because of me?” She had to know.
He stopped walking. “Of course not. I don’t like the way Gab runs the team. She micromanages and she plays favourites. And I’m not one of them. I’m not happy anymore. You can’t change that.”
Hugh could. “What about a transfer to another department?”
“We talked about this. About going to Hugh and honestly, if I thought there was something else I wanted to do, I’d go to him.”
So this was really it. “Oh my God,” she bopped her forehead on his bicep. “I’m going to miss you.”
She made Adro shout the coffee and got another text from Nat: Walter Lam is a creation of council. Y/N? She put her phone back in her pocket and pretended she hadn’t seen that. It would be so easy to text Y and watch what happened. Gabriella uncovered, cautioned, asked to leave and paid out, which was another version of sacking her. Foley would put her hand up for the job and offer Adro hers and her professional planetary realignment would be complete.
Y would be bliss.
It was giving her smile muscles a workout. She took the phone out of her pocket and opened the text message. It was one letter. It would never come back at her. Nat already knew the question, it was a good bet she knew the answer as well and only needed confirmation. That’s all it would be, not so much informing as confirming.
“Here.” Adro held her coffee out. She needed a third hand. She closed the text and slipped the phone back into her pocket. Adro had a two week notice per
iod. She could think about this at, least overnight.
“I know I have to resign to Gab officially. But I wanted to tell you first. I’ll tell her tomorrow,” he said.
They talked travel destinations the rest of the journey back to the office and found Hugh standing in the department. “Here they are.” He clapped his hands for attention. “Just wanted to let you know Roger had a call from the premier’s office.”
The hush got deeper and no one moved.
“There’ll be no amalgamation.”
Foley whooped and there was embarrassed laughter.
Hugh grinned at her and went on. “Premier and cabinet have taken the strategy off the table, for the life of this government at least.”
There was a smatter of clapping and Foley looked at Gabriella, whose arms were resolutely crossed. Her texting finger twitched. Pressing Y felt like the right thing to do now. With the amalgamation off the agenda, any supposedly special experience Gabriella had was redundant.
As if the walls of her brain had their own ears and those ears were connected to Nat’s fingers, there was another text; it simply said: Answer?
Should she bring this to Hugh? By rights she should bring it to Gabriella, but insubordination felt like so much more fun.
