In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

  Bella had last been to New York in her gap year, when she had travelled around on a Greyhound bus and had slept on the floor of a friend of her sister’s in Queens and had a windswept picture taken at the top of the World Trade Center. In the nine years since then the world had changed and so had she.

  A porter took their cases and showed them to their rooms. Bella’s had a view over Central Park, and down below there were horses waiting to show tourists around. A white orchid stood in the window. The room contained two double beds, which she thought a terrible waste. She hung up her suit on the padded hanger in the wardrobe, and renewed her deal with herself. She was not going to make any more scenes. She was not going to worry about the future. She was going to enjoy herself.

  The phone in her room went and she picked it up.

  – Who’s that? said an English woman’s voice.

  – It’s Bella Chambers.

  – Oh. Where is my husband?

  – Hello, Hillary, said Bella stiffly. This isn’t his room. The switchboard must have made a mistake.

  – OK, Hillary said sharply, and hung up.

  Bella felt a mild dislike for this woman, which she knew was not fair. She felt a stronger dislike for herself, which she thought wasn’t really fair either. It was up to James to feel bad, not her.

  That evening there was a private dinner for investors at the Four Seasons. The table was set for twelve – six investors, three investment bankers, James, Philip and Bella. Apart from Bella there was only one other woman, an exceedingly thin blonde of about forty in a navy suit and flat pumps. Bella, who was in killer heels and a tight black dress, felt absurd, as if she had come to the wrong place.

  Fortunately, nobody was interested in talking to her and as there was just one conversation around the table it was easy for Bella to remain silent. She tried to compose her face to look as if she had plenty of wise and important things to say if she chose to say them, only as it happened she didn’t. The effort got harder as the evening wore on, as Bella, unlike everyone else around the table, was drinking every last drop of the five different wines that the waiters were assiduously pouring into large crystal goblets.

  At the end of the meal, the conversation fragmented and Bella found herself staring at the silver clip in front of her that held the menu.

  – Nasturtium, Heirloom Tomatoes and Mustard flowers, she read out loud.

  And then, to no one in particular, she said:

  – If the tomatoes are heirlooms, wouldn’t they be off by now?

  There was a brief silence around the table which James broke by giving an awkward laugh.

  – Sorry, she said later in his hotel room, as James peeled the dress off her.

  – It doesn’t matter, he said. You’re so funny.

  He insisted on kissing her all over her body until she no longer felt like a gawky, tarty ignoramus but the most desirable woman in Manhattan.

  Shortly before 3 a.m., James drifted off to sleep and Bella, too wired to contemplate sleep, felt a sudden urge to talk to Millie. For the last twelve hours she had not thought of her daughter once, and now she worried that the intensity of her private, separate happiness might have caused something bad to happen to her.

  She tiptoed into the bathroom and dialled the number. Her mother answered and said: Why aren’t you in bed? What time is it there?

  – It’s 3 a.m. but I’m jet-lagged. Is Millie OK?

  – Yes, of course she’s OK. Do you want to talk to her?

  And then to Millie Bella said: I’m going to bring you to New York one day, and we can go on a horse ride in Central Park and eat hot dogs.

  Millie seemed unmoved by this, but told her mother that she had not been allowed Coco Pops for breakfast.

  As she said goodbye there was a rumble of thunder, and James woke and called out to her to come back to bed. Bella slipped under the white duvet and he clung to her. He was sweating and his eyes were closed.

  There was another crack of thunder overhead. He groaned and buried his face in her neck.

  – What’s the matter? she whispered.

  – I can’t bear storms, he said, his voice muffled as his mouth was pressed to her.

  Bella had hated feeling responsible for Xan, but to find herself comforting the man who had just hosted a dinner at the most powerful restaurant in New York was a different thing entirely. She closed her eyes and pressed her body against his.

  – I’ll look after you, she whispered.

  At 6 a.m., James reached for the remote control and turned on CNN.

  London stock market opens 460 points down, it said on the ticker at the bottom of the screen.

  – Shit, said James.

  The cowering man of the night before had gone, and he was his efficient work self, sitting naked on the edge of his bed, staring at his BlackBerry.

  On the television the anchor was saying:

  – And over to London and our business commentator Nancy Silverman.

  Bella watched an American woman with a helmet of platinum hair standing in front of the Bank of England and saying that Gordon Brown’s rescue plan had failed to reassure the markets.

  – Don’t you think, Bella said to James, that it’s funny the way that people talk of the markets as if they were a person who needs calming?

  James looked at her as if he had no idea what she was saying.

  – Shh, he said sharply, and bent his body towards the television screen.

  – One of the heaviest losers is the oil giant AE, the woman was saying. Its common stock fell by £3.56 this morning on news that the Russian government is nationalizing its stake in its Siberian oilfield.

  – Shit, said James again. Shit, shit, shit.

  Stella

  Stella was staring at her screen. The markets were diving and the AE share price was in free fall. She couldn’t help feeling that this unravelling of the financial system, though shocking, felt right. Until then there had been two worlds, the private world she shared with Rhys – which was dangerous and out of control – and the public, professional world, in which things were safe and orderly. But now both worlds were being torn apart: there was general mayhem.

  Stella had got into the office early, having cancelled a planned visit to Rhys’s flat. She had called him the night before from home, crouching in the bathroom and talking in a whisper, to say that as the markets were so volatile she could not risk skiving and neither should he. He had said fine, in a tone of voice that meant the reverse, and hung up.

  The next morning he came and stood in her office.

  – What upsets me, he said, isn’t the fact that you did not come round this morning. It’s that we’ll never have any normal time together, to do the things that normal couples do – we can’t go to the movies, let alone walk on a beach, or hold hands in public, or even talk on the fucking telephone.

  The idea that he thought they were a couple gave her a thrill. She had wondered what was the right word to describe the two of them; language didn’t stretch to their situation. They weren’t a couple. She wasn’t his girlfriend. And not his mistress. Possibly she was his lover, though that word sounded too grown up. But whatever they were, or weren’t, he wanted to walk on a beach with her and that fact made her feel quite light-headed.

  As a result of the market turmoil, Stella’s three o’clock meeting had been cancelled and she found she had two and a half blank hours in her diary. She called Rhys.

  – Will you come to the movies with me?

  – When?

  – Now.

  – Are you asking me out?

  Stella laughed.

  – I am.

  Kissing Rhys in the taxi, Stella no longer felt any embarrassment about the driver; he could think what he liked. Instead she was transported by the audacity of their skiving; bunking off in the middle of the afternoon to hold hands in the darkness of the Renoir cinema while the markets were imploding felt even more forbidden than going to Rhys’s flat for sex.

  Of the thre
e screens, one was showing a film that had already started, another an obscure French comedy about an Algerian documentary maker and the third a revival of Brokeback Mountain, which they had both seen already but decided to see again. They got their tickets and went into the semi-darkness of the cinema, which was quite empty apart from two women, each sitting on her own.

  Rhys bought a bag of popcorn and steered Stella towards the back row – which was no longer up against a wall as it had been the last time she went to the cinema to kiss a boy – which was probably before Rhys was born. Now it had a corridor behind it and the seats were too wide to allow much intimacy. When Rhys put his arm around her, Stella had to lean her entire body towards him, giving herself a crick in the neck.

  The first time she had seen Brokeback Mountain had been with Charles. She had thought it overrated, but he had been impressed by the cinematography, about which he had given her a lecture on the way home.

  This time she saw a different film. The two young cowboys were her and Rhys, locked in a mutual and passionate love that was impossible and that was destroying the rest of their lives.

  Her eyes filled with tears, and Rhys, who had been watching the side of her face more assiduously than he had been watching the film, put out his hand and brushed a tear away with his finger and then put his finger in his mouth.

  – Don’t be sad, he whispered. Be happy. I adore you.

  Stella moved as close to him as the generous arm of the cinema seats would permit, and wanted to stay in the darkness for ever.

  As they emerged into the daylight, Stella saw from her BlackBerry that the stock markets had lost another 4 per cent of their value, that the oil price was down another $15 and that $4bn had been wiped from the company’s market value.

  There were six missed calls from James’s assistant in New York. Stella’s happiness, which had been so intense a few minutes earlier, was now gone. She must not let her job unravel along with everything else.

  Bella

  James, Bella and Philip were on the fifty-fourth floor of the offices of First America Bank. The presentation to investors was due to start in ten minutes, and James was pacing up and down talking on the phone to Stephen, who had been tracked down in Moscow.

  – I’ve no idea where the leak came from, James was saying. But there will clearly be questions about it, and so we are going to need to say something … I would like to give them something else to think about that they can make into a positive story … Well, yes, but Stella’s slides are not exactly upbeat …

  James hung up, and said to Bella: Can you get Stella on the phone for me urgently?

  Bella called her, but there was no reply. She emailed, and then sent a text, but got nothing back. Then she called Nathalie.

  – Where is she? she asked.

  – I have no idea, Nathalie said grumpily. I’ve been trying to get hold of her myself.

  Bella thought this odd. Why, she thought, on a day when the markets were in meltdown, would Stella turn her BlackBerry off?

  When Stella did call back, some three hours later, James was busy talking to analysts and had told Bella to instruct Stella to send some more optimistic slides for the afternoon’s presentations. Bella wasn’t looking forward to having to tell someone senior to do something that she didn’t want to do, and wasn’t at all sure that she would be able to hold her ground.

  Yet far from being prickly, Stella was charm itself. She apologized for having been hard to track down and, when told that she needed to rewrite her conclusions about sustainable petrol and about the medium-term prospects in the oil market, simply said: I’m just returning to the office now from a meeting, but I’ll do it as soon as I’m back. Tell James he’ll have it in half an hour.

  And then, as if talking to an equal, she asked: What’s the mood like there?

  – Everyone is so shell-shocked, I don’t know if they’ll give a stuff about our long-term projections, Bella said. I think they are worried about the next five minutes.

  Within half an hour Stella’s new slides – which now claimed that petrol made from algae could transform the company within five years and also showed how the company was strongly profitable at almost any oil price – arrived and were added to the presentations.

  James greeted their arrival with a smile. He was standing in front of a screen in a long meeting-room, being introduced by one of the bankers who had attended the dinner the night before.

  – In the last few hours we have witnessed a perfect storm, the banker was saying. We have seen the tectonic plates of the global markets shift and we are moving into uncharted territory. But it is my pleasure to introduce James Staunton of Atlantic Energy to update you on the seismic shifts within the oil industry …

  Bella listened to this talk of extreme weather conditions and marvelled at the smooth appearance of the speaker. His hair looked as if it had been painted on, his suit was immaculate, and his teeth were unnaturally white. There was a gleam in his eye, though whether this was excitement or fear she did not know.

  James, by contrast, was looking dishevelled. His shirt was crumpled, his tie knot wasn’t quite straight and his hair looked wild. But there was a straightness to how he talked that Bella admired.

  – We are entering a new future, he said. We don’t know what it is going to be like. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend I know what will happen. I don’t.

  As he said this, he caught Bella’s eye, as if speaking straight to her.

  No, she thought, neither do I.

  Stella

  Stella rewrote her forecasts as quickly as she could, not merely because there was an urgent need for them, but because she found doing it so distasteful that she wanted it over quickly.

  This was the first time in her working life that she had produced figures that she believed to be wrong. Often in the past she had put a spin on the facts, but this time she was implying that something was exciting and viable when it wasn’t.

  She finished the work, sent it and tried not to think about it. She wasn’t deceiving investors – that was too strong a word. She was misleading them. None of the facts she had used was wrong exactly; she had simply been selective in the facts she had chosen. She told herself that she had been given no choice in the matter. Stephen and James, both of whom were mainly decent and trustworthy, had told her to do this, and so if she hadn’t, they would have written the forecasts themselves probably even less cautiously than her revised effort. And in any case, she reasoned, this was what it was like being senior in a company. You had to do distasteful things sometimes. So long as you stayed the right side of a line. Stella knew that what she had just done was borderline, but that she would go no further.

  She couldn’t avoid making a comparison with the daily deception in her private life. She wasn’t merely misleading Charles. She was lying to him. She was lying to her children. She was also lying to herself – by telling herself that she was managing and that the strength of her feeling made it all right.

  But then she reasoned that even though she was indeed deceiving Charles and the children, they were not going to find out. They wouldn’t get hurt; she would make sure of it. Stella was pretty sure that she would be hurt, and hurt horribly, but she didn’t want to think about that now.

  It was odd, she thought, that in all this moral decay the only person in her life who she was not deceiving was Rhys. And because her relationship with him was the only one with any honesty in it, it was this relationship – which was so very wrong – that was the only one that felt right.

  When she had sat with Rhys that afternoon in the cinema she had felt in a state of grace towards him. There had been no lies. There had just been her and him, and his hand on her wet cheek. But outside everything was complicated and awry.

  Nathalie put her head around the door and asked: Where were you this afternoon? Lots of people were trying to get hold of you.

  And Stella said: Didn’t I tell you? I was at a conference at the International Energy Agency. I th
ought I’d put it in the diary?

  Nathalie, said: Oh, right.

  But her tone of voice left Stella feeling uneasy. She was going to have to be more careful. She was a cat with nine lives and this was one life lost. She had eight more left, and she was going to stop this before she got down to the last one.

  Bella

  On Bella’s last night in New York, she and Philip and James had had dinner together and the two men had talked to each other about the market meltdown and then about golf, and Bella had felt as if she might as well not have been there at all. She drank too much wine and ate all her vast T-bone steak, and had a large, babyish ice cream sundae for pudding and so was feeling quite sick by the time they got to his hotel room. They got undressed in silence, and James had said that he was so tired after the previous thirty-six hours that he had to sleep. Bella was left lying in the dark on the smooth white sheets feeling hollow and lonely and wishing that she had never come to New York.

  But then, at about five, James had woken and made love to her with passion and said these had been two of the most memorable nights of his life.

  And then he had said, as they lay side by side: I’m frightened.

  And Bella had replied: But the storm passed last night.

  – I’m frightened of another storm. It’s not just the markets, though it’s partly that. I’m frightened of what is happening between us.

  The immigration queue was slow, and they stood in it in silence. There was no trace of the intimacy of the night before. It was as if James were already mentally back at home with his family and Bella was in the way. James announced that he was going to get a taxi from the airport but he could drop her off anywhere on the route. Bella said no, it’d be quicker to get the train to Victoria. He nodded agreement, and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

  – I’ll see you tomorrow. Hope you get back safely.

  Bella had just missed a train, and sat on the platform too tired to want to think about what had happened to her. All she wanted was to see Millie again. But when she arrived at her mother’s, Millie barely said hello, and when Bella asked: Did you miss me, her daughter shrugged.