In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

When Stella got back to her desk, her mother was calling on the mobile. This struck her as odd, as her mother never rang during working hours – she was of that generation that thought it was too expensive to ring before 6 p.m.

  She answered; it wasn’t her mother. It was her father.

  – Forgive me for calling you when I know you are busy, he said.

  Stella glanced at Rhys, who was standing in her office pretending to ask for advice on a report he was writing.

  – Hello Dad, she said. I’m not busy. It’s nice to hear you.

  – I thought you ought to know, he went on, that this morning your mother took a tumble down the stairs.

  – Oh my God, said Stella. Is she OK?

  – Well, it was fortunate that it was a cold morning, so she had put on a thick dressing gown that may have lessened the bruising to her body.

  – Bruising? How bad is she?

  – She’s in the Radcliffe. The doctors are quite positive.

  – She’s in hospital? Why the hell didn’t you call me this morning?

  – I didn’t want to disturb you. She fell. You couldn’t do anything about it. And as she was concussed I didn’t want to alarm you until we knew what the doctors said.

  – Well, I am alarmed. I’m coming now.

  – I wish you wouldn’t. There’s nothing you can do.

  – I’m coming now, Stella repeated.

  She put down the phone and looked at Rhys. The spell of lust had quite gone.

  – My mother has fallen downstairs and is in hospital. I’m going to Oxford now, she said.

  – I’ll take you.

  – No, I want to go on my own.

  – Can I at least come with you to Paddington?

  Stella agreed absently and got into a taxi with him. That morning she had been naked in his bed, but now he seemed to her like someone she did not know at all.

  She could not escape the thought that this was her punishment. If she had not gone to his flat that morning, her mother would never have fallen. At the very minute that she was being transported under the grey and black duvet in Rhys’s bedroom, her mother had been thudding down the oak stairs of their Oxford house. And – worst of all – she had told Nathalie that the reason she was late was that something had gone wrong with her parents.

  Stella put her hands over her face and Rhys put his arm around her. She shook him off.

  Nonsense, she told herself. Of course this wasn’t her punishment. She had had sex with someone who happened not to be her husband, and at around the same time her mother had fallen. The two things were quite unrelated; they were morally and causally independent from each other. Her mother, a passionate atheist and logician, would have been even more horrified at her daughter’s hokery-pokery reasoning than she would be about her adultery. Stella knew this was so, and yet she still knew that, bogus logic or not, this was a sign and a warning. Her mother was unconscious, and it was her fault.

  At Paddington she told Rhys to go straight back to the office. She allowed herself to be kissed lightly on the cheek, and as she watched him go, she made a deal with herself.

  If my mother is all right, I will give up Rhys.

  Bella

  Bella was sitting at her desk looking for images to jazz up a presentation that James was giving on AE’s safety record when the fire alarm sounded. Bella loved fire drills. They reminded her of school, and of the delight of missing lessons, and the double delight when you missed the end of the lesson and didn’t get any homework.

  But today even a fire alarm didn’t cheer her up. Usually so good at making the best of things, she had been feeling miserable at work the last few days. Even though she was enjoying the work, James had continued to be, if not cold, then cheerfully distant – which was possibly worse. She kept opening and rereading his long message to her, giving particular attention to the bit where he said she was in his thoughts all the time. But if that was so, why would he hardly look at her? Why did he leave no openings for them to chat as they used to? She knew that the present arrangement was in her long-term interest, that it would be mad to have an affair with him, even if he wanted such a thing, which he clearly didn’t. She knew too that what mattered most of all at the moment was her job. She must keep it, and she must make the best of this chance. She might never get another.

  Bella took her handbag and reached the stairs at precisely the same time as James, who was clutching a large green AE golfing umbrella. They walked past the lift, where Anthea was already stationed, wearing the fluorescent jacket with ‘Fire Warden’ written on its back which she always kept neatly hanging in the cupboard with her coat and kettle. She was sticking notices on to the lift doors telling people not to use them.

  There was a crush of people snaking down the stairs, and Bella found herself pushed against James – her shoulder touched his upper arm, giving her a thrilling jolt.

  – I remember one time, she said to him, when we had a fire drill and the teacher forgot to bring out the register and so we bunked off and spent the rest of the day in the park and I ended up snogging the head boy.

  James gave an awkward laugh and the people who were descending the stairs in front of them turned to see who had used the word ‘snog’.

  The 2,300 London employees of AE were spewing out of the building into the cold day, chatting in clusters and laughing. They looked to Bella like guests at an enormous drinks party, though without any drink. In the crowd she could see Rhys standing on his own, jabbing at his BlackBerry.

  – I don’t want to hang about here, said James. Let’s go and find some coffee.

  There was a Pret a Manger on the corner of Moorgate and they went inside. James queued for coffee and brought the cardboard cups to the table where she had stationed herself.

  – Bella, he said. I don’t think I managed to say to you how very glad I am that you are staying in the department.

  – I’m glad, too.

  Then, after a brief pause during which he looked at her intently, he said: Would you mind very much if I were to hold your hand under the table?

  Bella wanted to laugh with pleasure and relief. She quite liked the subjunctive; more than that, she liked the invitation. She reached under the table and found his fingers, which felt warm and dry and smooth.

  To make contact both of them had to lower their shoulders and sit in an uncomfortably lopsided way, drawing considerably more attention to themselves than had they held hands normally. She pointed this out to him and he laughed and said: Bella, there is no one like you.

  – There is no one like you, either, she said. You send me a 10,000-word treatise on why it was a big mistake to shag me and ten days later you’re holding my hand under the table in Pret.

  – Ah, yes, he said, smiling. I do see a little inconsistency there. But on the other hand, or rather on this one – giving the palm of hers a stroke with his thumb – I am finding being in the office with you terribly difficult, and I’m trying so hard to be good, but I think a fire alarm means that ordinary rules are suspended, don’t you?

  Bella nodded, dumbly. She was so surprised at the turn of events she did not know what to say. But mainly she felt steeped in unexpected happiness and, even though her shoulder was now aching from bending it towards the table, she did not want him to let go of her hand. The sensible edifice of argument that she had built over the last few days collapsed as easily as a house of cards.

  – I am not terribly good at this sort of thing, he said. But shall we go for a walk for a bit until it’s time to go back?

  Neither of them had finished their coffee, and as it was raining outside James opened his umbrella and pulled her close to him under it, and led her briskly through the dismal streets tucked in behind the City Road. He didn’t say where they were going and she didn’t ask.

  After walking for quite a long time they passed a desolate pub and beyond it a children’s playground tucked in between two tower blocks. There was a bench with a slat missing, a vandalized slide and a sandpit that
had a large dog turd lying in the grubby sand.

  James got out a large linen handkerchief and wiped the bench so that they had somewhere dry to sit. He took her in his arms and kissed her with a ferocity that quite surprised her.

  – Bella, he whispered. Beautiful Bella. I’m sorry to be so confused. You are in my mind all the time, but it’s so complicated.

  He kissed her again, and then said: Though at the moment it doesn’t seem complicated at all.

  With one hand he held the umbrella over their heads. With the other he touched the skin on her back underneath her sweater.

  Bella looked at his face, made green by the light coming through the pea-green AE golfing umbrella. He did not seem plain to her any more. A face changes depending on how far away you are from it, and at a distance of barely a centimetre, he looked almost handsome. She closed her eyes and surrendered herself to this feeling of happiness, the feeling of his hands on her skin, banishing all idea of what she was doing or where it might lead.

  A movement distracted Bella and she looked away from James to see a small pair of Nike trainers and pink sweat pants with ‘Just Do It’ written on the leg.

  James tilted the umbrella upwards and there was a fat black child of about five or six staring at them. She might well have been there for quite some time.

  – You aren’t allowed to do that, she said, her stare unbroken.

  Bella was inclined to laugh – it struck her as delightful to be told off by such an unlikely authority figure. But James, evidently, did not think it funny; he seemed upset by the small girl. He stood up hastily, and the expression of intensity about him was all gone.

  – She’s right, of course, he said to Bella as they hurried out of the playground. We aren’t allowed to do that.

  They walked back to the office in silence, to find the drill long over and everyone else back at work.

  Stella

  On the train to Oxford Stella had stared out of the window and repeated the deal that she had struck with herself.

  – If Mother is OK, she said to the smoking chimneys at Didcot, I am going to stop this with Rhys. If Mum is all right, she said as the train pulled into Oxford and she caught sight of honey stone spires, I’m giving up Rhys.

  In the cab taking her from the station to the hospital she received a message from him that said:

  Dearest Ferret

  Have been turfed out of office due to fire alarm, and am standing in rain outside. Am thinking of you and your poor mum. Hope she’s ok. I’m not going to pester you, and no need to reply to this, but I want you to know I adore you. Rxx

  Stella read it quickly and deleted it.

  Her mother was lying in a public ward at the John Radcliffe Hospital. She looked twenty years older than when Stella had seen her six weeks earlier at her parents’ golden wedding party. Her pelvis was broken and she had a large dressing on the side of her head.

  But she greeted Stella with a smile and gave her hand a surprisingly firm squeeze.

  – You are so silly, she said, to disrupt your busy day for my stupid little tumble.

  Stella returned her mother’s squeeze, and found that her eyes had filled with tears.

  Her mother, seeing her only child weeping, said briskly: Really Stella, don’t be so silly. I’m fine.

  But Stella, having started to cry, found that she could not stop.

  She was crying out of relief that her mother was going to be OK, but also for how frail she looked in the yellow hospital gown with its bows up the back. She was crying out of exhaustion, but mostly, far more than the rest, she was crying because she was in love with someone whom she was giving up. She blew her nose noisily.

  – Sorry, Mum. I’m so relieved that you’re OK. Tell me exactly what happened.

  – I’m a stupid old fool who tripped and fell – and that’s all there is to say about it.

  Stella’s mother batted away further questions and instead enquired after her grandchildren. Then she asked: How is Charles getting on with his documentary about the working classes?

  – He’s been away filming a lot, and I think he has seen the first rushes and thinks they are promising. Everyone is very excited about it.

  She was improvising; she didn’t know how it was going, as she hadn’t asked for information recently and Charles hadn’t volunteered any.

  – That’s wonderful, her mother said. It really hasn’t been good for him being so creatively unstimulated. He is capable of doing such wonderful work – the last programme, Devil Wife –

  – Wife from Hell, Stella corrected her.

  – It was awful for him to be involved with such a dreary programme. This new one sounds like something he can put his intelligence into. He has such a talent for communicating social truths to a mass audience.

  Stella listened to her mother praise her husband, and entertained the old thought that her mother liked her son-in-law more than she liked her daughter.

  The thought was unfair: Stella’s mother was loving in her own way, and had always been supportive. Even though she had never really understood why Stella wanted to go into business (she viewed commerce as a curious thing for a person of intelligence to want to engage in), she nevertheless admired her daughter’s success and was proud of her in her way.

  But what her mother prized above all else was integrity, and whenever she read in the papers that the oil companies were behaving badly she would ring Stella to remonstrate with her. The thing that she could not tolerate, either from organizations or from people, was lying or dissembling of any sort. When Stella, as a teenager, had stolen a bottle of her father’s wine and got drunk and been sick, what got her into trouble at home was not the theft of the wine or the drunkenness – which her mother took in her stride – but her attempt to cover it up.

  But now Stella, sitting by her mother’s bed and holding her hand, had something bigger that she was keeping from her. Stella imagined what she would say if she knew that her daughter, who was now going through the motions of her hospital visit so amiably, had that very morning been in the bed of a young subordinate. If she knew how she was deceiving her husband and her children. If she knew that the good daughter she believed in and was proud of was really a sham.

  I can’t bear this, Stella thought. I am giving up Rhys. Not for some stupid superstitious bargain, but for my mother. I will give him up so I can be the daughter that she thinks she has.

  Bella

  Bella returned from the fire drill intoxicated. She definitely wanted this; she wanted him; she didn’t care if it was unwise. She didn’t care that he was her boss, or that he was married, or even that his wife was mentally ill. That was his responsibility.

  As she sat at her desk, her phone went and Bella snatched it up, seeing his name on the display.

  – Er, hello, he said, his voice low and hesitant.

  – Hello, said Bella, feeling happy and tongue-tied and inclined to laugh.

  He cleared his throat and paused.

  – Look, he said. I had an idea. And before you tell me that my idea is inconsistent with the email I sent you, let me get in first and agree with you.

  Bella laughed again.

  – Tomorrow afternoon, he went on, speaking more confidently now, I am supposed to be visiting some investors but I thought I might cancel. I wondered if you might like to meet me somewhere private –?

  – Yes, she said, glancing around the office to see if anyone was taking an interest in the way she was blushing and whispering into the phone.

  – I’ll sort something out and text you details.

  Within ten minutes she received a text that said:

  Great Eastern Hotel. Liverpool Street. 1.30pm

  She stared at this, and felt such a pressing need to see him that she got up and walked past his office, but he wasn’t there. Instead she bumped into Anthea, who looked at Bella’s high colour and shining eyes and asked if she was OK.

  In a rush, Bella said she had a tooth that was playing up, a fiction that
Anthea appeared to swallow as she took it upon herself to describe the root canal she had had done, and how much it had cost, and the crown that went on top, and how the root broke and so she was going to have an implant …

  The next day, Bella got up early, had a shower and put on a matching set of polka-dotted bra and pants that she had bought a couple of years before but had never worn, as the special occasion she was saving them for had never come. At breakfast with Millie she chatted and laughed and didn’t care that Millie had not practised her recorder, and her daughter said, almost plaintively: Mum, why are you laughing? You never laugh.

  Bella felt slighted by this, and wondered if it were true.

  In the office Bella dispatched a full day’s work in three hours, marvelling at the elasticity of work, and at exactly 12.45 got up from her desk, took her bag and left the office without saying a word to anyone. She propelled herself through Finsbury Circus and down Broadgate to Liverpool Street. The City was full of workers going out to get a sandwich, people for whom it was another humdrum day.

  A footman in brown and gold uniform held open the door of the Great Eastern, and the Victorian red-brick exterior gave way to a sleek, modern interior. Bella stood in the vast shining reception space trying to look casual, as if waiting to have sex with her boss were the most natural thing in the world. There was no sign of James. She was sure that the woman at the desk was eyeing her with suspicion. She moved away and sat on a low suede sofa, seeing as she sat that her tights had a hole in them. What am I doing here, she thought. This is mad, she thought. For a minute she was considering getting up and walking back past the footman, when there was James, coming through the door looking anxiously at his watch. He was lugging a suitcase, which Bella could see, when he turned his back on her to sign the piece of paper that the woman at reception politely offered him, had a label stuck to its side that said ‘SALE’, with £69.99 crossed out and £49.99 written in instead.

  Bella watched him take the plastic room key and decline the offer of a porter to carry his case. He walked over to the lift and she went and stood by him, on the other side of a spherical orange tree that was growing from a silver pot. They got into the lift with a pair of German tourists and she looked at him with a feeling close to dread. What was she doing with her boss in a hotel in the middle of the afternoon? If she had been able to leave at that point she might have; instead they got out together at the fourth floor and he led her down miles of corridor painted dark purple and opened the door on to a sunny room with white bedcovers and red cushions. And only then, and only after he had carefully hung a sign on the outside of the door saying ‘Do Not Disturb’, did he kiss her. He let out a small groan.