In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

  They shouted inanities at each other over the music, until Bella realized she had lost sight of Millie. She was just wondering whether to go and find her, when she saw James coming towards her. Her heart leapt, and then leapt again to see that he was holding Millie by the arm. He’s found Millie and he’s using her as a way of talking to me, Bella thought.

  But then James looked up and Bella saw from the expression on his face that things were not that way, not at all.

  Stella

  Stella dreaded the children’s party, which was invariably tawdry and noisy. Attendance was not compulsory, but she felt obliged to go because people noticed if their seniors didn’t turn up.

  She had told Finn that as penance for his school disgrace he must go with her, and when they arrived at the office at 3.30 on Saturday afternoon he seemed to be in almost as low spirits as she was. Stella looked around for anyone she knew, and wondered at the fact that despite having worked at the company for over twenty years, she had never seen most of these people before, or else didn’t recognize them in their weekend clothes. She had a brief conversation with the Group Treasurer and his wife, who had twin six-year-old daughters. The sight of him made Stella think of the day when she and Rhys had kissed in the lift and he had been waiting with his cardboard cup of coffee as they had got out. She thought about the elation she had felt that day. And then she wondered: could this man have been the whistleblower? But if so he was doing a good job of hiding it, with a spectacularly dull discourse on the pros and cons of the two girls being in the same class at school.

  From the other side of the room Stella saw James standing with his sons, the elder of whom was about the same age as Finn. Her son was wearing a hoodie, with trousers slung so low that most of his skinny twelve-year-old behind was on display; James’s boy, meanwhile, was wearing a neat checked shirt tucked into his trousers. He and his younger brother were standing awkwardly at their father’s side.

  Stella went up and kissed James. She usually didn’t kiss colleagues but she felt comforted to see him. He was looking quite wretched too, she thought.

  – Enjoyable party, he said grimly.

  – Is Hilly here? she asked.

  – No, he said. I’m giving her an afternoon off so that she can do some Christmas shopping. She’s been under a lot of pressure and needs a break.

  Stella nodded understandingly, though she wondered why a woman who had nothing to do but shop all day would need a break to do more shopping at the weekend?

  A girl of seven or eight who had been swaying her hips on the dance floor with a fierce determination stopped swaying and approached them. She was wearing a shaggy sheepskin jacket and platform boots, giving her a Lolita-ish air that Stella thought slightly grotesque. She marched up to James and stared at him with inexplicable hostility.

  – Where’s my mum? she demanded.

  – Hello, Millie, he said. I haven’t seen your mummy. Sorry. This, he said turning to Stella, is Millie, the daughter of my researcher, Bella Chambers.

  – Cool jacket, said Stella, and you’re a great dancer.

  Other people’s children did not really interest her, and no matter how hard she tried to be nice it never came out sounding right. Millie blanked her, stared at James and said, loudly enough to be heard over Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’:

  – You left your dirty socks at my house.

  James closed his eyes for rather longer than it takes to blink, took Millie by the arm, and said:

  – I’ll help you find your mother.

  James’s older son looked on with mild surprise.

  Bella

  On the Monday after the party, James called Bella into his office. He closed the door and they sat facing each other on the red leather sofas.

  – I have been thinking about this all weekend, he said. Of course I’m not blaming Millie for what happened. But it was most unfortunate.

  What was most unfortunate, thought Bella, was that I ever met you.

  – I don’t know what my sons made of it. Probably nothing. They are both innocent for their age.

  As opposed to Millie, Bella thought, who is anything but.

  – Unfortunately, Stella overheard her remark and could see its import. This puts me in a difficult situation. In my experience once one person knows about it, the truth is out.

  – Anthea has known for months, Bella said quietly.

  – What? he said. She can’t know, we were so careful and I never used my public email to you.

  – She does know. She worked it out for herself ages ago. She confronted me with it before we went to New York.

  – Why, he said, why didn’t you tell me?

  – Because I thought you would react exactly as you are reacting now.

  James put his head in his hands.

  – This is so difficult, he said. It is going to look so bad for me. I promoted you, remember.

  – Are you saying, Bella asked bitterly, that you promoted me because you wanted to shag me?

  – No, I’m not. You deserved it. But it is my reputation that will suffer most.

  – That’s crap, she said. You will now be shown to be a serial shagger, which will make you an object of envy. I will simply look pathetic. And then, I imagine, I’ll get fired. I can’t imagine why I expected a man who is terrified by a rumble of thunder to have any strength of character at all.

  He put up his hand to make her stop, but she took no notice.

  – That’s enough, he said.

  At that point Anthea put her head around the door.

  – Sorry to interrupt, she said brightly. But your visitors are here.

  – Thank you, said James stiffly.

  Bella sat at her computer feeling sick.

  She could not leave things like that. It was not that she was afraid of the sack that would now most definitely follow. It was that if this really was the end she needed to make it a nicer one.

  Sorry. I was upset because I hoped you’d say that you didn’t mind who knew. I wanted you to say that you were proud of being associated with me, and the thing that makes you miserable is that you can’t bear losing me. Instead you just banged on about your precious reputation.

  As for me, I don’t give a shit about my reputation. I care about Millie. I care about losing you. That’s it. What Anthea or Stella or Nathalie is saying about me doesn’t bother me at all.

  Bella

  This time Bella did not have to wait long for a reply.

  Dear Bella

  I want you to know that of course I care about losing you, too. Of course you matter to me enormously. Of course under other circumstances I would be proud to be with you. However, this is very difficult. I don’t just have myself to think about. I have my family and my job. I can’t make them disappear.

  I feel terribly unhappy about the situation, too. But I simply don’t know what to do.

  James

  Stella

  When her affair with Rhys had just started, Stella had dreaded the weekends. They were two long days of estrangement during which she sleepwalked through domestic tasks, waiting to come back to life on Monday.

  Now the weekends were a relief. They were flat and colourless, but at least there was a kind of peace in knowing that she would not see Rhys for two days. It was not a cessation of pain exactly, more a break from the source of it. Now it was Monday to Friday that Stella found unbearable. The simple sight of him sitting at his desk, jacket off and sleeves rolled up so that she could see the hairs on his arms, was excruciating to her. Talking to him was painful. So was not talking to him.

  His presence drained all interest from everything around him, leaving her agitated, excited, miserable, shot through – still – with tiny pricks of hope if he looked her way and smiled. Sometimes, Stella fancied he looked miserable: sullen and introverted. When he was like that she could cope with the day. If, on the other hand, she heard his laugh from across the room, she felt an electric shock, a stab of pain that went on hurting long after the laug
hter had stopped.

  At one point she even tried listening to her iPod as she sat at her desk, to block out any chance of hearing him. But that was useless, as most of the songs on it he had given her. And music had a way of attacking one’s heart. When at lunchtime she had walked into Pret and was queuing to buy a sandwich, the Coldplay track was playing, the one she thought of as their song. She had had to put down the sandwich and walk out of the shop.

  In short, Stella was barely coping. She was behind at work, inattentive in meetings, forgetful and bad-tempered. She knew she was in danger of screwing up something important at work, but the thought didn’t bother her unduly. Without Rhys, nothing mattered.

  She clicked off the paper she was meant to be reading about possible participation in a Saudi gas project, opened her Hotmail and started to write down the message that she had been composing in her head for the last two weeks.

  My darling Rhys

  We have exchanged so many words. We’ve said things we didn’t mean. We’ve said goodbye and not meant it. Words don’t have any value between us any more. But pain works in a way that words do not. To be apart from you means a level of pain that I can’t bear. I can see you now as I type this. Your head is bent over your keyboard. What are you doing, my darling? I want to touch your funny face. I want to kiss you and to be kissed back. But more than that, what I want is to have you back in my life. I know this is unfair on you and I understand that you want to get on with your life. You say that I have nothing to offer you, as I’m already taken. But what you don’t understand is that I can offer you my heart for now, and hope you might find it enough to go on with, just for a while.

  When I broke it off two weeks ago, I thought we could go back to how things were 9 months ago when you used to pop in and see me all the time. But that was fantasy: we can’t go back. Too much has happened between us, and in any case I’m a different person now. The person who I am includes you. As Frank Sinatra put it – I’ve got you under my skin. And so trying to cut you out means making deep surgical incisions and I feel as if I am bleeding to death. Please come with a bandage.

  Your very own Stella

  She looked through it. It wasn’t dignified. She had never sent a less dignified message in her life. But what use was dignity when the pain was so bad? She pressed ‘send’, and across the room, she could see Rhys take the mouse in his hand and click on his email. She could see the back of his head. She saw him glance at the message and then switch to another screen. Someone came over to his desk. He was talking to them calmly. But when they had gone he went back to his email and typed something quickly. Stella could see the plain blue screen that says: ‘message sent’. In the gap of a few seconds that it took for his words to travel from his computer, Stella felt her future happiness in the balance. She opened the message.

  I need to think. Rx

  Her first sensation was relief. Last time he had said no. Now he said he needed to think, which must mean he was going to say yes. But as the day progressed she felt more and more uncertain. What was there to think about? He was in pain too, she knew it from the stoop of his back. And here was a way of making it stop. How much more thought was needed for that? She waited for a message and there was none. And then at five minutes to four, it came.

  Dear Stella

  I have thought about it. I can’t do it. We would be in the same place a year from now, and my life is draining away. I love you. But to go on would kill both of us. Sorry. And you are not my own Stella, and you never were.

  Rhys

  Stella looked at the message. She could feel her body recoiling from the screen. She shut it down, and then opened it up again. No, no. It couldn’t be.

  Nathalie put her head around the door.

  – Your visitors have arrived in reception, she said. I’ll go and get them.

  – Give me a minute, said Stella.

  At home that evening Stella had – for the first time – surrendered her whole self to misery. She had gone straight into bed, claiming that she felt too sick for supper and had a thumping headache. Clemmie, having never seen her mother ill before and worried by the way she seemed unable to speak, got into bed next to her. Finn brought her a cup of hot chocolate.

  Stella allowed her hair to be stroked by her fourteen-year-old daughter and watched the steam rise from the cup by her bed. Her children loved her and needed her and trusted her, and she had betrayed them.

  The thought distressed her doubly. She knew exactly how deeply in the wrong she was – but she could not feel it.

  She sent the children downstairs to watch TV and said that she needed to rest. This, at least, was not a lie. She drank half a bottle of Night Nurse and hoped that sleep would come.

  I am in an intensive care ward, she thought, as she lay in the dark. There has been a crash on the motorway, and I am wounded, but I will live. Rhys is in the men’s ward nearby and he is wounded too, though I don’t know how badly. I hope he is OK. No, I hope he is suffering at least as badly as I am. There would be comfort in that. But he can’t be suffering as much as me, or else he would not have sent that message. She started to cry again.

  There had been no lives lost, she tried to tell herself. The crash had not resulted in a pile-up, maiming her children. In fact, they had not been in the accident at all.

  Stella must have slept, as she was woken by Charles getting into bed by her side. She opened her eyes and saw the clock said 2 a.m.

  – Are you OK? he asked, absently kissing her shoulder.

  – I’m fine, she whispered into her pillow.

  The following morning as she got dressed she repeated a mantra to herself.

  This pain is a punishment. I was wrong, and now I am paying for it. I will march through my days, and one day I will feel better.

  She went on muttering this to herself as she went to the tube. Her phone bleeped with a text message. That won’t be Rhys, she said to herself. Don’t hope. Hope is your enemy. It is over, he won’t be texting you.

  As she repeated this to herself she was simultaneously reaching for her phone. It was him.

  We need to talk? x

  Stella’s heart skipped. Her solemn pledge to dedicate her life from now on to being a good mother, a good wife and a good person vanished in a second.

  Yes, of course. Am on my way in. Starbucks in 35 minutes? xx

  Rhys was sitting at a table at the back of the murky brown interior when Stella arrived.

  – Let me get you something.

  She watched his familiar hands counting out his change and bringing the drink and setting it down.

  – I’m sorry about yesterday. I was so upset, she started saying.

  – Yes, he said. I felt really dreadful too.

  Stella smiled at him in relief but he did not smile back.

  – I just need to get out for a bit and I want to go and spend some time away. I might even go back home.

  – Yes, that’s fine, said Stella. A good idea to think it over …

  – No, Stella, he said. I don’t need to think it over. I am not changing my mind, but I just need to get out for a bit.

  – Are you sure? Stella looked at him, feeling panic rising in her throat.

  He nodded.

  And then she suddenly said: You can’t go on working for me.

  His face hardened.

  – What?

  – You can’t go on as my EA.

  – That’s fucking great. So the new deal is that if I’m not shagging you any more, you fire me?

  – No it isn’t. But we can’t work together any more.

  – Are you telling me to resign?

  – No, but –

  – I … I don’t believe this. You can be a hard bitch.

  – Shh, she said. Not so loud.

  Over by the counter one of the marketing associates was paying for a coffee and looked up at them curiously.

  – I think you’ll find that you have done very well out of this, Stella said. If you hadn’t met me you wo
uld have done a brief assignment with James who, by the way, doesn’t rate you, and now you’d be toiling away in Alaska.

  – Great, he said, eyes bulging with fury, so you throw it in my face that you have promoted me more than I deserved. So all that stuff about me being brilliant was just a trap?

  – And so is that what it comes down to in the end? It’s just your career? I couldn’t give a shit about whether I promoted you more or less than you deserved. I said you were brilliant because you are. But so what? That’s career stuff, and it doesn’t interest me in the slightest. What interests me is love. And I thought we had that. But now I sit here and watch you calmly tearing it into little pieces while you flap about your job.

  Stella was not crying. She was looking at him with a fury so intense that it was exhilarating.

  – It’s all very well you saying that, he said. You have totally made it. You are the first fucking woman on the fucking board. You have nowhere further to go in your own career, and so you simply fuck up the careers of others.

  Stella stood up in the middle of this and, with as much self-possession as she could manage, picked up her cardboard cup of coffee and walked out on to the street, almost colliding with Beate, who was on her way to get her morning cappuccino.

  Bella

  Bella had decided not to go to James’s party. She was not obliged to go, as it was outside work time. Pretending to be professional between nine and six was so hard that she didn’t want to have to go on doing it in the evening as well. Neither did she want to have to see his beautiful family house again, or his weirdo wife, or the children with their expensive little shirts that she had once seen him buying online from the Harrods website.

  That morning James had said to her as he walked past her desk: I do hope you are going to come tonight.

  And Bella, not looking at him, had said she would try, but it depended on babysitters.

  In the middle of the afternoon her phone went and it was Rhys, whom she hadn’t seen for a couple of days.

  – Where are you? she asked.

  – I’m at home. I’ve been in Wales for a few days at my mum’s, and I’m suicidal with boredom. I’m not sure whether to go to the party tonight, but I thought if you were going I might be persuadable. Shall we go and get hammered first? I’m feeling like total shit.