Bella
– Where’s James?
The CEO was standing looking down at Bella crossly as if her boss’s failure to be seated behind his desk was somehow her fault.
– He’s got a breakfast meeting with analysts from Merrill and Citi, and then he will be back here for a meeting with the trainees at 10.30. Would you like me to tell him to call you as soon as he’s back?
– Please, he said abruptly and turned tail.
When James reappeared he was looking cross.
– The CEO wants to see you, Anthea said.
– What about?
– He didn’t say, she said.
James disappeared down the corridor and returned ten minutes later looking even more bad-tempered than before.
– It’s some bloody crackpot scheme to have our share price and the oil price displayed in real time in reception on an old oil barrel. I can’t think of anything more stupid but he’s wedded to the idea. Would you mind looking into it, Bella?
He returned to his office, leaving Bella in silent contemplation of how on earth she was meant to go about getting a barrel into reception.
The office she shared with Anthea was positioned just outside a meeting room, and that morning she was distracted from her worries about the barrel by watching the trainees arrive for their 10.30 meeting with James.
At 10.29 she saw Rhys walk past, put his nose through the door of the meeting room, see it empty, about-turn and go into the men’s toilets. After a while, two others approached the room and then retreated to the corridor. At exactly 10.30 Beate went straight in and sat down. The other trainees started to circle, and by 10.34 enough of them seemed to be outside the door together, and they all went in at once. A few seconds later, Rhys sauntered in looking casual, followed by James himself, clutching the printouts that she had just photocopied for him.
Bella watched this charade with amusement. It was a game that she often observed her bosses playing: the aim being never to be kept waiting by anyone of your own rank or below. To see the trainees at it already impressed her. They learn quickly, she thought, and Rhys, by arriving later than his peers but just before his superior, was showing the greatest leadership potential of the bunch.
That day Bella had arranged to have lunch with Karen, her oldest friend. They had taken to seeing each other every month or two, which was nice; or rather it should have been nice, but in fact these meetings often left Bella feeling low afterwards for reasons she could never quite put her finger on.
Karen and Bella had been best friends in school. They had been the pretty ones and the clever ones and their friendship had been cemented by a fierce competitiveness. Until they were about sixteen, Bella had had the upper hand. But by the time they started A levels Karen had pulled ahead, and went on pulling ahead. She had got into Bristol, and Bella had gone to Bangor. Karen had gone out with a succession of glamorous men, and Bella had gone out with Xan. One path had led ever upwards towards a traineeship at the BBC, the other had dipped and fallen into nappies and the absorption and tedium of raising a child on your own.
As soon as Bella saw her friend swinging into Wagamama she noticed that she was shining. There could be only one reason for looking like that: Karen was in love.
There is, Bella realized, something horrible about seeing your girlfriends in love. It is a bereavement of sorts: they are floating off on a boat of happiness, you are standing with both feet on the hard shingle of the shore. They wave happily at you, not really caring whether you wave back or not.
Breathlessly, Karen told Bella about her new boyfriend, who was a music producer and totally fit and funny and a really nice guy and really into her. He’d arranged for her to have backstage passes at all the festivals that summer, and she was going to Glastonbury and Latitude and Sziget.
Karen continued in this vein for some time, with Bella smiling and nodding and saying ‘sounds great’ and ‘lucky you’ in all the right places. Eventually, when she had said all she had to say, Karen asked: How’s Millie?
– Fine, said Bella. She’s brave and lovely despite Xan’s heroic efforts to fuck her up. She’s doing really well at school –
– That’s great, said Karen, without conviction.
And then she asked: How’s your love life?
– Zero, said Bella.
– Can’t be zero. You aren’t trying.
– I am trying, said Bella. It’s just really hard. I never meet anyone, since all I do is work and look after Millie.
– That’s awful, said Karen. I really need to rack my brains for someone who I can fix you up with.
Bella did not enjoy being cast in the role of someone incapable of finding a boyfriend, and to silence her friend she said: There’s a guy I vaguely like at work.
– I knew there must be someone, said Karen. Is he gorgeous?
– Um, said Bella. Not really, no. He’s quite a lot older.
– Older guys can be sexy, Karen said. Remember that Irish scriptwriter I went out with – he was thirty-five. He was sex on legs.
Bella hadn’t remembered – as there had been so many of Karen’s boyfriends. She nodded, keeping to herself the fact that James was ten years older still.
– Mine isn’t sexy at all. At least not in an obvious way. I’m not sure if I fancy him – sometimes I think I do, and sometimes I’m not so sure. It’s more that he is really clever and there is something powerful about him …
The conversation was making Bella feel peculiar. To say something changes it. Until then, James had been a shadow in her mind, but telling Karen about it was making the shadow seem real.
– That sounds cool, Karen said encouragingly. So what’s the problem?
– Um, said Bella, he’s my boss. And he’s also married.
– What? Are you joking? I never would have thought you’d do the naff female cliché of PA shagging her boss. Unless you are doing it ironically, in a post-feminist sort of way?
– This isn’t about irony or feminism, Bella said crossly. It isn’t about anything. I’m not shagging him. All I’m saying is that I quite like him – or I like him more than I expected to.
– You’ve always been a crap picker. But with Xan, at least he was gorgeous. This man isn’t sexy and as he’s your boss and married if you do anything with him you’d be putting your job on the line.
– You’re not listening, said Bella, who was much regretting having said anything. I’m not going to have an affair with him, for lots of reasons. It’s just a fantasy that makes the days drag a bit less. He’s not perfect, but then who is? Honestly, Karen, I can’t explain it. It is about how he makes me feel.
– What is it, a sort of father thing? That you can rely on him the way that you couldn’t on your own father? Your father had a thing for younger women too, didn’t he?
Bella didn’t want to hear Karen attacking her father. She was quite happy to attack him herself, but that was her right as his daughter.
– Not being reliable wasn’t the problem with Dad, as you well know. The attraction of James is, I think, how he looks at me. When I’m with him I’m not a PA with big tits. He makes me feel like I’m the person that I’d like to be, rather than the person I am. Do you know what I mean?
Karen frowned, indicating that she did not know what her friend meant at all.
– When I’m with him – when he’s really talking to me, I’m clever. He makes me feel that I’ve got something to offer, as if I’ve got promise. He also laughs at my jokes – it’s lovely having the power to make someone laugh. He’s not particularly funny himself – in fact he’s quite serious. But he seems to think I’m funny.
– Hmm. Well, it sounds pretty dodgy as far as I can see, said Karen. I hope you know what you’re doing.
– I’ve already told you. I’m not doing anything.
Stella
Rhys arrived on the doorstep on the stroke of 7.30. Stella was upstairs getting out of her work suit and into jeans. She had been trying on various tops, but
all of them looked wrong. At the moment the doorbell went she was getting out of an orange satin blouse, and even though it looked even less right than the others she had tried, there was no time to change it.
Clemmie opened the door and then, seeing her mother appear at the top of the stairs, looked her up and down and said disparagingly: Very rock chick.
– You see what I have to put up with at home, Stella said to Rhys, who laughed uneasily.
Clemmie scowled. Rhys stood in the middle of the sitting-room, looking around at the high ceiling and ornate overmantel mirror as if he were being shown it by an estate agent. Stella poured him some wine, which he took, and sat on the very edge of the deep cream sofa, his usual ease quite gone.
– Rosa should be here soon, he said, and at that moment there was a knock at the door.
But it wasn’t Rosa, it was Beate and her management consultant boyfriend, Friedrich.
Stella accepted the large bunch of pink and white flowers that Beate was bearing and showed them into the sitting-room. Rhys got up and the four of them stood, marooned on the kilim rug, while Stella talked, rather too loudly and too fast, about Charles’s passion for cooking, about the house, about the time she invited the Abu Dhabi deputy oil minister over. She could not remember ever feeling quite so awkward in her own house.
Rhys’s girlfriend was the last to arrive. She was not at all as Stella had expected. She must have been nearly six foot, a good inch taller than Rhys, and with a mad tangle of black hair.
– Fab house, she said, coming in and kissing Stella on both cheeks, with the easy physical intimacy of her generation.
She blew Rhys a kiss and he smiled and waved from the other side of the room and did not move from his spot. Rosa’s arrival allowed Stella to slip away into the kitchen, where Charles was removing some guinea fowl from the oven.
– Go and talk to everyone, she hissed. They see me all day – they’re fed up with me. I’ll bring the food in.
But Charles didn’t like his wife interfering with his food, as he thought – with some justification – that she would spoil it.
– Why did you ask them if you don’t want to talk to them? he asked.
– I don’t know, she said. I suppose I was trying to be friendly. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
At dinner Rosa sat next to Charles, and turned her wide smiling face towards him as he held forth about filming in Wales. Stella always enjoyed hearing Charles talking to others – he was still so good at being charming when he put his mind to it. At the other end of the table Rhys was chatting to the children. He had been asking Clemmie which clubs she went to, and even though at fourteen she was too young to go to any, she was enjoying being knowledgeable about which the cool ones were.
Stella herself was left in the middle of the table to make conversation with Beate and Friedrich. She asked him about his work, and listened to a deadpan discourse on the pro-bono work he was doing for charities in the US. He said that it was terribly unfair that consultants got a bad name when they were so interested in making a difference.
Tiring of this, Stella asked them about their long-distance relationship and how they were liking working 3,000 miles away from each other. She told them that she and Charles had lived apart when he was filming in the US when she was pregnant with Clemmie, and how it had been one of the most successful times in their marriage.
Just as she was saying this, the conversation around the table died and Stella was aware of both her husband and Rhys looking at her.
– What are you saying about our successful marriage? Charles asked.
– That it worked best when we didn’t see each other, Stella replied.
He laughed and looked at her fondly and then turned back to Rosa. Stella was aware of Rhys’s appraising glance.
– The place where we’ve been filming is the ugliest place on earth – but we’ve got great shots of grimy shops all boarded up. Even the pubs were mainly empty. We’ve captured a cinematic beauty in the bleakness.
Rhys had run out of anything further to say to Clemmie and so asked Charles where they were filming.
– In the armpit of the earth – a small place called Merthyr Tydfil.
There was a pause.
– I grew up there, Rhys said.
– Really? said Charles.
He didn’t seem at all embarrassed. And Rhys didn’t seem terribly put out either: in fact he agreed what a dump it was. Stella seemed to be the only person finding the conversation awkward, and watched as Rhys wrote down his mother’s phone number on a piece of paper, saying that he was sure she would love to be in the documentary, as she was always longing to get on to reality TV shows.
Beate, meanwhile, was asking Rosa why she wanted to go to film school, as if it were quite beyond her why anyone would want to do such a thing. Rosa smiled wanly, and said that she always followed her heart; the nine to five had no appeal. Beate, failing to see that she had been slighted, asked a follow-up question about the employment prospects on graduation from film school.
Rosa had had enough, and moved around to where Rhys was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder.
– We’ve got to go now, she said.
Stella found she did not enjoy the sight of Rosa’s possessive touch and got up to find their coats and show them to the door.
– Thanks so much for a great evening. Really enjoyed it. Amazing food, said Rosa, kissing her again on both cheeks.
– Thanks, said Rhys gruffly.
He was holding back, wondering whether to kiss her, and Stella was wondering the same thing. She had decided not, just as Rhys had reached the opposite decision and moved towards her. In her embarrassment she moved her head the wrong way and he landed a kiss by the corner of her mouth.
– He’s an odd guy, isn’t he? Charles said as the two of them got into bed. A bit ingratiating and chippy. Gorgeous girlfriend, though.
He turned the light out and went straight to sleep.
Stella lay by his side wide awake and running through the evening again in her mind. She could not dislodge the sensation of Rhys’s lips, warm and smooth, touching her face.
Bella
Through the glass wall Bella could see Anthea settling herself on James’s sofa, legs neatly crossed, looking garish in a turquoise wraparound dress. This was her annual performance review and she was holding forth and James was nodding and laughing. Surely, Bella thought, he could not possibly be finding all that moronic drivel about sandwiches and stationery interesting, let alone amusing.
After about half an hour, Anthea emerged with the sort of straight face that meant things had gone entirely to her liking.
– You can go through to the boardroom, Sir James will see you now.
Bella smiled thinly at the imitation of the PA on The Apprentice.
– Right, she said.
– Sit down, Bella, said James. I don’t like playing games so I am going to tell you this straight. I’m afraid you can’t go on being my PA. The bean counters say I’m only allowed one, and that one has to be Anthea.
– Yes, said Bella. I know.
She looked at his face, which seemed perfectly normal. In fact he was smiling at her in a way that she had thought was just for her. But now she saw what a pathetic, deluded fool she’d been. There was not a trace of regret in his voice. If anything he seemed pleased, almost excited. I thought you minded about me, she thought. I told Karen that you made me feel wonderful. Scrap that: you make me feel worthless – and miserable.
– I’m afraid that we still need to go through the charade of this report, or else I’ll have to endure the wrath of HR.
He smiled at his own pleasantry. Bella looked at his white teeth and did not smile back. She was putting all her energy into not looking upset.
– First, we need to write down your three objectives for the current year.
– Well, she said. To have kept this job would have been nice.
– Yes, obviously. But I don’t think we can wri
te that. What else?
– Do you really want to know my objectives?
He ignored the bitterness in her tone, and simply nodded.
– My objective is to bring up my daughter, Bella said slowly, as if talking to someone very stupid. And to pay my mortgage. The rest I’m not that bothered about. I’d rather do something not entirely brainless and I’d rather work with people who treat me with respect. But at the minute I guess I’d just settle for a job.
James looked at her in a way that Bella could not read: it might have been embarrassment, or it might have been sympathy.
– How old is your daughter? he asked in a softer tone of voice.
– She’s seven, said Bella.
– Is she? Well, I don’t want you to worry about your daughter. You have no need. You are bright and I will make sure that something good is found for you that uses your skills.
– Thank you, said Bella flatly.
– In fact, I have a little plan, James went on. I’m not meant to tell you this now, as Finance hasn’t signed off on it. I’ve greatly enjoyed having you on the team and I don’t want to let you go. You’ve got terrific promise, much more than I think you are aware of yourself. I can see you doing all sorts of things at AE one day, but for now I’m planning to keep you in this department as a junior researcher.
– Oh, Bella said uncertainly.
The rush of pleasure she felt was instantly swamped by anxiety. He does want me, she thought, exultantly. But then she thought: I won’t be able to do the job, it’ll be too hard and I’ll fall flat on my face and what about the hours?
She couldn’t possibly work the sorts of hours she saw Rhys working – he boasted to her that he was now getting in at 7.30 most mornings. In fact it wasn’t going to work at all.
– I need to think about it, she said.
James, who had got up and moved towards his computer, said nothing. Then he said: Fuck!
Bella stared at him. She knew his precise use of language sometimes gave way to bouts of swearing, which she liked, being somewhat foul-mouthed herself. Yet to respond with such rage to her hesitation over the job struck Bella as extreme. But then she saw it wasn’t about her at all. He was staring at a message on his screen and started to read out loud.
In Office Hours Page 10