The I.T. Girl

by Pearse, Fiona

  He looked up. ‘Sure.’ He released his face from his hands leaving a red print across his forehead.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

  ‘That fucking stupid cunt,’ he said shakily.

  ‘Jesus. What did he do?’

  ‘I am so angry.’

  ‘Okay. Have some coffee. It’ll help calm you down,’ I joked, daring a smile.

  He croaked out a small laugh like it was making him ill and we both took a sip.

  ‘Remember he agreed to let Cameron help me with the Desktop requirements?’

  ‘On AsiaCap?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, he lied to Felix about it. Said I did it all myself.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘I ran into Stern down here the other day and he asked about the project. I said I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support from Analysis. Turns out Boris told Cameron not to book any time on my project.’

  ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘Then Boris calls me in to this meeting room and tells me he’s been accused of Grand Deception and tries having a go at me about talking to Stern. Says he’s not going to cover for me anymore. Fucking clown.’

  ‘Jesus. So, what does that mean? Grand Deception?’

  ‘It means he’ll be on more than a revision programme if he fucks up again.’

  ‘Ha. Boris should know how to play the game better than that,’ I jeered.

  ‘You sound just like him.’

  I lowered my eyes, remembering Boris was going to ask Sam to help me soon.

  ‘You know everything that’s going on here is Boris’s fault,’ Sam said.

  ‘It’s not all his fault,’ I gently protested.

  ‘It’s his job to tell management what we need,’ he insisted. ‘We should have proper software practices. Not this meaningless red-tape bullshit which just makes the job more difficult. And he just slopes his shoulders and says nothing, looking after his career. And then they go after you because it’s easier to do that than address the real problems. And all the time he’s laughing about it down the pub with us instead of fighting back. Makes me sick.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I had to agree.

  Cameron stood wide-eyed behind my chair early the following morning. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘What’s this about?’ Sam came around to the other side. ‘That clown sent a message I was to support you for the rest of the week.’

  ‘Oh yeah, finally he’s proactive,’ I scoffed. ‘BelOpt’s not pricing properly. Something’s wrong with the strategies.’

  ‘When you going live?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Friday.’ I breathed heavily.

  ‘Let’s see your strategy file,’ he said.

  I pointed to the XML on screen.

  ‘Well, what are the errors? Syntax? Functional?’ Sam asked pulling up a chair next to me.

  ‘I guess functional, the layout of the file is correct.’

  ‘Do you have the Exchange spec?’ Cameron asked.

  I gave him a copy and he flicked through the pages. ‘Where’s the stuff about the strategies?’

  ‘In a separate document. Here.’ I fished it out.

  ‘Did Phil take a look?’

  ‘At the main spec yeah, but not at the strategy spec. He said they’re standard and there were loads of examples I could just copy from.’

  I folded my arms and shifted out of the way while Cameron and Sam went through my XML. They ran the same tests that I had run and then compared the results with the Exchange example. ‘No syntax errors.’ Sam commented. ‘Desktop is displaying the data so she’s got the semantics of the file right but as she says those values are not correct.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘got to go to the toilet.’

  I came out of a cubicle and stared in the mirror. My face looks distorted, I thought. Like I’ve bitten into a lemon and can’t get rid of the taste. I took my time at the sink. They didn’t need me anyway.

  I jumped when the door opened and another woman came in.

  ‘Hello,’ I said to her.

  She smiled and went into a cubicle.

  HR or Marketing, I guessed. Sometimes they had to use our meeting rooms. Or maybe she was lost. I grabbed the towels with the CPR logo and scrunched them in my hands.

  ‘Orla,’ Cameron said into the papers he was holding. ‘Did you inform each group of the change in strategy legs?’ Sam and he were both standing, looking over the specs and then at me.

  ‘What change in strategy legs?’ I asked folding my arms across my chest.

  ‘Up ‘till now,’ Cameron said patiently, ‘we’ve only had a maximum of twelve legs in a strategy. As in twelve markets belonging to one strategy.’ He explained. ‘This has up to twenty-four.’ He held up the BelOpt strategy document. ‘So the highest and lowest price should be calculated from 24 markets, not just 12.’

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know there was a limit,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus.’ Sam let out his breath. ‘This will probably require a hard-coded change for every team involved. There’s no way this is going out at the end of the week.’

  It was as if everything was moving far away from me. I watched Sam and Cameron access the BelOpt website to inform everyone the project would be delayed. A few rows down, Jerome Ross glided by, filming as he walked. At the end of the row he held the camera away from his face and frowned into the mini screen.

  ‘No,’ I said, jerking back to life.

  ‘What?’ Sam turned around. ‘Orla, you have to get an extension. Desktop, us, and probably the trading floor, are going to have to modify their software and then re-test all their components.’

  ‘Orla, I’m just updating the website to explain the situation,’ Cameron said like a doctor with bad news.

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘This is my decision.’ I yanked out my chair making them both move back from my desk and sat down protecting my keyboard. I finished dialling the call that Cameron was making and explained to Desktop why they had to change the amount of legs they allowed in a strategy, adding there was no option of an extension because it was tied to the CPR Data Centre opening. Trading Floor protested the request too. There was only one way I could get both teams to make the change at such late notice – I had to take full responsibility if anything went wrong.

  When I hung up I started going through our code infrastructure to see where I’d have to make changes.

  ‘Cameron,’ I said, without looking away from my screen. ‘Can you think about what tests we’d need to do, in terms of business functionality, in order to cover this change from our point of view?’

  He looked at Sam and then back at me. ‘Sure. I’ll take a look.’ He ducked his head and walked away.

  ‘What about regression testing?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I’ll do as much as I can,’ I said into my screen.

  ‘Orla, you have got to get an extension.’ He was slicing the air with his hand.

  ‘Look. I am going to roll out this project on Friday morning. If you want to help me, pull up a seat.’

  Sam hovered behind me for a moment and then turned to find the discarded chair. ‘I’ll help you look.’

  We ran a search on all the areas of code where strategies were handled and then identified the ones that relied on a fixed strategy leg size.

  ‘I can work through lunch and late tonight to get the code changes finished today,’ I said, still hitting keys. ‘That way I can concentrate on testing tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you trying to get fired or something?’ Sam asked.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ I turned to him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell someone that something was wrong? I mean, we’ve got three teams all making last minute changes just because you refuse to ask for help.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get help for weeks.’ I exploded. ‘You know Sam, its okay for you. You just refuse to do whatever is asked of you and somehow you get away with it. Meanwhile I’m the idiot who goes with the rules and gets totally fucked.’

  Sam jumped up,
knocking over his chair and then awkwardly rescued it before walking away.

  Chapter Ten

  I spent the next thirty-six hours fluctuating between panic and calm as if a valve was shutting off my adrenalin every time it got too much. I finished my testing on BelOpt but couldn’t get to any regression testing. So, if my attempts to fix it did break something else, I wouldn’t know until after the code went live. The other groups came back with the same result – they’d made the changes but with the minimal amount of testing. I reminded them if this rollout did fail it would look bad for all of us. Their code was obviously inflexible and none of us had good documentation.

  I went through my usual end of project steps – integration tests and then move requests to get the code on to a live server. Finally I set up the start/stop times to activate the feed for the following morning. The project was out of my hands now but my usual end-of-project-high was replaced with dread.

  On the way home I tried not to think about the following morning. I closed the door of my apartment to the outside world, walked around the furniture still to be unpacked and went straight to the fridge for a bottle of wine.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said to my family photos lying on the floor. ‘There’s no place like home.’ Their holiday smiles came slanting back. A noise escaped my mouth as I sat down and I wiggled my toes when my heels came off. I flicked through the T.V. channels. ‘Pointless,’ I said out loud. There was never anything good on. I sat back and swirled a round glass with its stem through my fingers. I was spent but I knew sleep would only lie beneath an intoxicated layer. My phone beeped from my handbag. It was a message from Deelie.

  ‘You coming tonight?’ The text said. I had forgotten about the club social. I looked around my sanctuary and at my new clock, ticking loudly, pinching away the time. ‘Definitely’ I replied. ‘c u on the boat!’ Deelie texted back.

  I stood at the top of the ramp looking down over black water lapping seaweed against the pier and missed my couch. Small windows from the ferry flashed with disco light. A door opened and girls in high heels totted along the bobbing deck, giggling, spilling their glasses. ‘It’s worse out here,’ I heard one say as they disappeared back in another door. It seemed like ages since I’d been in a normal social situation. I had forgotten how to do it. What if I made a fool of myself? I wouldn’t be able to get away. A flutter of panic rose in my stomach. What if they asked about my job? Well, I’ll just lie or be vague, I thought, annoyed with myself. I stepped on to the mossy slope and slid a bit on the way down until a flat bridge rescued me across the water. Straight away we started moving and the ground rose to meet my feet. I went through a narrow passageway vibrating with a rhythmic thud and a wall of dance music hit me when I slid back the light door. Low chandeliers trembled over the crowded room and I could make out a semi-circle bar at each end. It was like a luxury cruise liner shrunken into a fish bowl.

  I walked over a slow swell, in and out of chatting groups, in search of the familiar face. The women were wearing cocktail dresses and the men were in suits with spiked hair. I removed the shawl that had quickly replaced my work jacket before I left home. Looking around, I wished I had bothered to change properly. I ran a hand down the shirt I was wearing; it didn’t really match my trousers; clothes were the last thing on my mind in recent mornings. We began to pick up pace. Outside the window, the water was dancing. Well, there was no going back now.

  ‘Orla!’ Deelie was coming towards me, waving. ‘You made it.’ She was wearing a dark-green dress with patterned stockings beneath. Her hair was down in waves and she had silver eye-shadow, giving her a disco look.

  ‘Have some champagne.’ She snapped up a glass from a passing tray.

  ‘Thanks. Cheers.’ I knocked the glass back.

  ‘Hey, take it easy. You’re not walking the plank,’ she laughed. ‘This is Alex. Alex, this is Orla.’

  ‘Orla,’ Alex raised an eyebrow, ‘Yes, I think I recognise you.’ I recognised her too. ‘Everyone looks different with their makeup on,’ she said with a grin. She was wearing a crisp white shirt, tied in a knot at the waist over a dark a-line skirt. I guessed she had come straight from work too.

  ‘Alex and I joined the club on the same day,’ Deelie said, ‘and now she goes bombing ahead with the serious runners. I only see her for the warm-down.’

  Alex laughed. ‘So, is Orla your new recruit?’

  ‘Recruit?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Here, let me introduce you to some men,’ Deelie replied quickly.

  ‘Oh no, that’s okay,’ I protested.

  ‘C’mon, quality men in suits, baby. James, this is Orla.’ She grabbed a subject and pushed him in front of me.

  ‘Hi Orla,’ he said, extending his hand.

  ‘Hi James,’ I said, trying to keep up with his handshake. He stooped over me with large teeth and flicks of receding blond hair.

  ‘Is that an Irish accent?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Dublin.’

  ‘And what are you doing over here?’

  ‘I’m a software developer. Work in finance.’

  ‘You write software? There aren’t too many women in that business.’

  ‘Ha. No. Programming. It’s not for girls.’

  ‘Pardon me?’ He looked puzzled.

  ‘You know, the expression, it’s not for girls – like a Yorkie bar.’ I heard myself say.

  James turned, distracted by a circle of people spilling off the dance floor. ‘He’s not going to do that again!’ His head bobbed in annoyance.

  Inside the circle a man with dark curly hair and a neat beard poured a small glass into his mouth and followed it with a lit match. A golden flame burst from his lips.

  ‘He’s going to start a fire and we’ll all have to jump overboard.’ James declared, over the cheering.

  ‘Can we see your bum,’ Deelie said to James, cocking her head.

  ‘No, I’m afraid you cannot.’

  ‘C’mon. Just lift up your jacket. Orla’s an ass woman.’

  ‘Is she joking?’ he turned to me.

  ‘I suspect she’s never joking,’ I said.

  ‘Er, excuse me. Just have to check our drinks supply.’ He crossed to the other side of the room and stopped to lean into a group, putting his arms around shoulders. They laughed at his punch line.

  ‘He’s not in charge, is he?’ I asked, feeling a quiver of the panic again.

  ‘Yeah. He’s one of the club organisers.’ Deelie laughed.

  ‘How do I get outside? I think I need to get some fresh air.’

  ‘The exit’s over there. You want company?’

  ‘No thanks, Deelie. Just going to get my sea legs.’

  We sailed along black water under a bridge. London landmarks passed by in fairy lights. I nodded at two women, stepping around them. ‘Just a little more encouragement should do the trick.’ One was saying close to her friend’s ear. They looked at me without recognition and then turned back to their conversation. Not knowing where I fitted in reminded me of my school days. Until we started computer club – then I found something I excelled at. Ironically, in being the nerd I found acceptance. Maybe something is only right for a while, or some place is only right for a while, and then it’s time to move on. I leaned heavily over the bow of the boat pressing my stomach into the wooden curve and watched the waves replace each other. Something I did as a child, to stop sea-sickness.

  ‘Hey, you okay?’ Deelie’s voice was sharp over the music when I came back in.

  ‘I’m fine thanks.’ I made an effort to smile.

  ‘C’mon. We’re over here.’ She led me to her friends gathered at the top of a short winding staircase.

  ‘Pressure at work?’ Deelie clucked like a mother hen.

  ‘It’s fine, really,’ I shook my head but for a moment I thought I was going to cry.

  ‘Hello Sailor,’ she said to George as he joined us.

  ‘Howdy Ma’am. How’re y’all enjoying the party?’ he said, imitating an American drawl.
<
br />   ‘It’s great,’ Deelie said to him, ‘didn’t know there’d be fire-eating. I’m impressed.’ She smiled encouragingly, ‘This is Orla. She’s new.’

  ‘Hi,’ he shook my hand, ‘I suppose you work in finance too?’

  ‘Orla’s a pioneer,’ Deelie said.

  ‘Really? What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a stunt woman,’ I said.

  ‘No way. What kind of stunts?’

  ‘You know Cat Woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mostly me.’

  He eyed me up and down. ‘Well, it’s a good thing you’ve joined our club then. You really need to keep your fitness up.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I laughed.

  ‘Has Deelie tried to set you up with anyone yet?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘She’s given up on me,’ Alex joined in, ‘Are you single?’

  ‘Yes,’ I caught my breath, ‘Was sort of seeing someone. But it was casual. We had to end sometime.’

  ‘I’m looking for someone suitable.’ Deelie put a finger to her lips and scanned the room.

  ‘Smile!’ A camera with a flash box waited for us to move our faces together for a website photo.

  ‘Better take them now while everyone can still see straight,’ Alex said.

  We smiled and put our arms around each other.

  The champagne ran out and we switched to vodka lemonades. Alcohol blurred the lines between the familiar and the strange and I bopped in the corner with Deelie’s friends, watching Deelie coordinate the dance floor.

  ‘Can I have everyone’s attention please?’ James called over a microphone, clinking his glass. ‘Welcome.’ He tried again as the music died down. ‘Hope you’re having a good time? Just want to welcome you all and tell you quickly about the highlights of the season. Then George will do the prizes.’ The crowd cheered. ‘Yes, George gets the fun stuff.’

  ‘Look,’ Deelie joined us and stared over at the side of the platform next to James, ‘Jenna is finally making her move on George.’

  One of the women I had stepped around outside was leaning up to George’s ear with a hand on his arm. It took me a moment to recognise her. Her hair, usually in a high ponytail was poker-straight, fanned about her shoulders.