Felix savoured his final half-glass of Merlot and weighed nurture against nature. He thought of studies of identical twins separated at birth. Nature was powerful. If it was Georgina’s nature to be uncommunicative, if her gender deficiency was actually biological, then opening a dialogue would be a waste of energy. If it was a secondary response to an infant trauma, the prognosis was not much better. Trying to repair traumatic lesions on the psyche was pointless. Tough but true. In reality, he had only two choices: he could accept her as she was, or not.
He decided to defer the decision, then finished the wine and went to take a shower. Alone in a bed, he always slept badly. In wakeful periods during the night, the vision of a small white rectangle floated above him. It was Flora’s card, inscribed ‘Pforza Pharmaceuticals’with a double P logo in clean clinical blue. He knew exactly where it was, tucked into a pocket in his computer case. It would be quite justifiable to ask her when the grant application had been made.
‘Shit!’ Dillon fumbled frantically for his mouse. The cursor, as if infected with his own panic, swooped around his screen. He tried to stop his hand shaking. The cursor was jumping like a flea. Furtively, Dillon looked left and right. There was a God. His colleagues were at lunch. The nearest person was at the end of the row. But looking his way. Getting up. Coming towards him. Shit, shit, shit! Only a man, but he couldn’t risk it. Dillon reached for the off switch and liquidated his morning’s work.
‘Bloody software,’ his colleague observed, holding out a rosy red apple. ‘D’you want my apple?’
‘Don’t you want it?’
‘I only like green ones.’
‘Cheers. Thanks.’ Dillon took the fruit and sank his teeth into it, praying that the man would go back to his own desk. Instead he parked his backside on a nearby chair and started a ramble around the Marmeduke Whiskers project. This was the price of success. Being the department’s official golden boy meant that all Dillon’s conversations had become extended. People had started to regard him with something like wonder. Quite often this made them so nervous that they chattered at him for precious minutes while he cranked up the courage to break off the encounter. Dillon found himself promoted to the level of departmental icon. It made him deeply uncomfortable.
‘Look, would you mind very much if I gave IT a call?’ he said at last. ‘I’ve got to get this problem sorted.’
‘Oh, sure. Sorry. Really sorry. I didn’t realise. I … well, I’ll get out of your way.’ And his benefactor stumbled back to his own chair, making him feel worse.
‘Thanks for the apple,’ he offered, trying to mitigate his own perceived superiority.
He picked up the phone and put it down again. Before he made an ass of himself with the anorak, it might be wise to make sure that things really were as bad as he feared.
Dillon turned on his terminal once more. The screen filled and refilled with technical messages, then cleared and asked for his password. He typed in ‘Flora xxx’.
The screen cleared, then his folders appeared. So far, so good. He opened the file he had been working on earlier. The autosave was programmed to work every five minutes. Some of the day’s work should still be there.
The screen filled with text. Dillon folded his arms and watched. The time window in the corner told him it was 13.27 p. m.
At 13.30, the trouble began.
A pink spotted drop-down-menu promised:
LICK FUCK TEEN PUSSY HOT BABES NAKED SUCK TONGUES
KLARA’S TEEN-CHAT! TONITE WET’N’WILD 10pm EST
The menu then disappeared, to be replaced by pictures of three breasts, two mouths, a hand and a red lollipop shaped like a spaceship. Or a penis, if your mind worked that way. In fact, it probably was a penis. Dillon’s mind was frozen with fright. The breast gave way to four buttocks, some legs ending in white ankle socks and a hairbrush. Terror splashed over his head like a drench of cold water. For an instant, he was convinced that he had pee’ed his pants and he found himself staring at the crotch of his trousers. No stain. It was just an illusion. He killed the power again and reached for the phone.
‘I’ve got a bit of a problem. Quite a serious problem, in fact,’ he mumbled into the anorak’s voicemail. ‘I’d really appreciate it if you gave me a call as soon as you could.’
His luck was out. The anorak was getting vaccinations for his holiday and did not return to collect his messages until four in the afternoon. To fill in the intervening hours, Dillon called an unnecessary meeting of the focus group team; he told them that they needed to review the videotapes of the discussions they had held the day before. They sat in a claustrophobic little room, huddled over a blurry screen for two hours. The focus group team were all monthly contract workers, which meant that they were the only subordinates he could call away from their daily grind without the computer system detecting their absence. When the tape was finished, he moved them to a meeting room, squirming while he extemporised a second phase of research into small-pet ownership among the under-fives.
‘Never fear, I am here,’ the anorak told him.
‘This is delicate,’ Dillon began.
‘You gotta virus from one of them porn sites.’ The anorak smirked and assumed his seat. ‘Fuckin’clever, they are. Let’s hope it’s not one of the new ones. They’ve figured out this tamper mechanism that makes’em multiply through all your drives if anyone tries to get rid of’em …’
Dillon looked around, violently apprehensive. The office was now full. In fact, it was crowded. Every seat was occupied, every screen was bright, every keyboard was clattering. He tried to stand in front of his own screen. For a paranoid second, he imagined that all his colleagues were already busy composing integrity reports on him.
The door to the corner office opened and Donna appeared with the bright-eyed look which usually meant she was about to pay her underlings a visit for no specific purpose apart from general intimidation. It was not hard to intuit her pleasure as she progressed through the room, watching people cringe with fear as she approached them.
‘Can it wait a minute?’ pleaded Dillon.
‘D’you want this sorted or not?’ demanded the anorak.
‘I’m desperate to get it sorted but Donna’s coming this way.’
‘I’m outta here,’ the anorak responded fearfully, hitting the power switch as he leaped out of Dillon’s chair. ‘Call me when it’s all clear, yeah?’
‘Everything all right?’ Donna enquired as she surged past Dillon’s work station. He imagined that she stared directly at his screen as she passed. Paranoia again.
In a few more minutes, one of his phones rang. ‘Dillon, can you give me a moment?’ enquired Donna’s voice.
‘Of course, right away,’ he assured her, and set off for the corner office.
‘All you have on your plate right now is the Whiskers project?’ she said as he came through the door. He decided to leave it open. Strangely, he felt that he wanted the rest of the office to see whatever was about to happen.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. A new account, perhaps? His hopes budded in a small way.
‘Are you up to the deadlines with that?’ She was walking slowly up and down behind her desk. The paranoia convinced him that she was deliberately avoiding his gaze.
‘Well, yes,’ he assured her. ‘We’re still aiming for the beginning of next week, aren’t we?’
‘I’m asking because your work rate has been dropping. The on-line figures for the month just came in and it looks like you ran into the buffers a couple of days ago.’
‘I’ve been brainstorming Phase Two with the focus groups,’ he offered. Thank God he’d covered his back with this one.
‘Do I know about Phase Two?’
‘It was your suggestion. Marketing to the under-fives. It’s looking good.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. You’ve been brainstorming two days?’
‘Not the whole time. I’ve been working on the figures as well. There’s been a … a technical problem.’
�
�Are IT helping you with that?’
‘Oh yes. Actually, they sent someone down just now.’
‘Good. Get it fixed, Dillon. Your time is our money, don’t forget. And we’ve got a lot riding on the Whiskers thing. It’s got to be up and running on schedule.’
‘Absolutely,’ he promised, sliding crabwise out of the door.
Donna watched him leave with some irritation. Brainstorming. Phase Two. Technical problems. Fool! Didn’t he know he was already dead? His only real option was to lie down.
At his own terminal, the anorak wrestled with his conscience and let it slam him to the canvas. In situations like this, he liked to see himself as a cyber-outlaw, a Robin Hood riding to the defence of Direct Warranty’s oppressed peasants. But Robin Hood had the Merry Men to watch his back, and the anorak was only on a three-month rolling contract. It was only reasonable to cover himself. With jittery fingers, he picked out an integrity report on Dillon and mailed it to Human Resources.
14. April 28
Flora was reaching the end of the week in bad shape. The day began badly; she overslept and had to cut down her morning meditation time, so she left Donna’s without getting a proper connection to the source at the beginning of the day. Two client visits were in the diary, both initial consultations, and it always drained her spirit to confront people’s cynicism.
The first client had a sense of scarcity about money and the second client was locked into an ego thing about the colour of her carpet, all of which created a sensation of tightness around Flora’s heart chakra. The stress of having to travel across town at midday in a period of high humidity and ionisation created a stuffed-up feeling in her sinuses which she hadn’t noticed since she gave up eating dairy. Three of her fingernails broke, meaning that she wasn’t getting enough chromium. Her intuition felt faint, her energy was blocked and she was sure that her aura was murky.
Relief was elusive. Her favourite masseur was already chilling on some mountain in Scotland for the weekend. Her reflexologist was booked solid. The acupressure practitioner was on holiday. The flotation tank had sprung a leak and was closed for maintenance. All she could do was make an appointment to see her nutritionist the following week and, against her better judgement, drove back across town to the home of a fellow shiatsu student to offer herself for a practice session. The clumsy cow decided to walk her spine and stumbled over the solar plexus, leaving Flora with a menacing twinge around her left ovary.
Shivering with negativity, she went back to 17A, put some rose and frankincense in her personal Environmental Aroma Harmoniser, plugged it in and blew the fuses. Or blew something electrical. A blue flash came out of the socket, there was a smell of scorching and all the machines in the house turned themselves off. At least the universe was giving her some signs. Probably the electro-magnetic field in the house was causing all the problems. Flora found a lotus incense stick, a tea-light and a match folder from the Bit Bar which had two matches remaining. She lit the incense with one and the tea-light with the other, then sat down to do a flame meditation.
Her telephone rang. It was in her bag by her desk.
Flora allowed her mind to notice the ringing. Her phone was set to announce a call with a little snatch of Bach. She encouraged the sounds to float away like blossom petals which had fallen into a stream.
The ringing stopped.
Flora welcomed the energy of the flame and directed it to the pain in her back. There still was a pain in her back. Also a twinge in one of her ankles. She decided to count her breaths.
At the fifteenth breath, her telephone rang again.
Flora allowed her mind to notice the ringing, which it was eager to do. Fifteen. Sixteen. The petal thing wasn’t working so she decided to welcome the energy of the music. Seventeen. Bach was quite stimulating. Eighteen. Wasn’t there something about classical music being the same tempo as alpha brain waves? Nineteen. Or was it beta brain waves? No, twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-three. No, twenty-two. It was only Dillon calling. He really ought to get a grip on his neediness. Twenty-five. It was so disruptive to get calls from him all the time. Like now, for instance. Had she done thirty yet? Her whole meditation was spoiled. Typical. She might as well answer the phone.
As soon as Flora got her phone out of her bag the ringing stopped.
After that, she realised that her spiritual condition was quite serious. Emergency therapy was needed to cleanse her mind of its negative thoughts, replace them with a positive visualisation and do some affirmations to alter her focus before her whole being was overwhelmed by bad vibrations. Flora took the candle into the bedroom where she kept her affirmation book on the night table. The text for the day was, ‘I am surrounded by love.’ She found the love affirmations troubling, they always seemed to be invoking more problems rather than helping her with what she had already. She flicked forward to the next season and picked, ‘I am a whole, perfect being. I have everything I need.’
‘I am a whole, perfect being. I have everything I need,’ she said aloud, sitting on the bed. ‘I am a whole—’
Her telephone rang again.
‘You have TWO new messages,’ it informed her.
The first message said, ‘HiFlorathisisGeorgieBitBar ateight yeah? Onlycallmeifthere’saproblem. Love ya.’
The second message said, ‘This is Felix. Any news on our funding application?’
The voice was almost angry. It was a tone Flora knew well and she enjoyed hearing it. It was the sound of a man in need who hated the way he was so much that he was acting offensively to kid himself that he didn’t need anything, or anyone, not at all, not ever. Hah!
Flora’s spirit soared like a skylark. The blood in her veins felt as gassy as Diet Coke. She was empowered. It was a beautiful evening. Thrilling events were about to cram themselves into the empty space of her weekend. Donna was right, she was an über-babe and brilliant with it. World domination might be a laugh. She swooped into the kitchen and made herself some hibiscus tea.
In the normal way, Flora would have allowed Felix to leave at least two more messages and then found herself able to answer his fourth call in person. With a bet to win, Georgie to beat, Donna to impress and fun to be had, the action parameters were unusual. And there would be a special bonus in calling back now. She knew that the peripheral traffic circulation of London was completely clogged every Friday afternoon, and that a man was never so suggestible as when trapped in tedium behind ten thousand fellow commuters on an ugly overpass at least an hour from any civilised amusement.
‘I’ve been meaning to call you,’ she assured Felix, her voice lush with insincerity. ‘Very positive response from the board. Just a few tiny details we need to clarify before the next meeting. I’ve been so busy, I’ve let you slip out of my schedule for a few days. We really should get this wrapped up by Monday. Where are you now?’
‘Shepherd’s Bush,’ was the unhappy reply. Flora could not remember Shepherd’s Bush but it sounded like a traffic nightmare.
Felix instantly understood that the most practical arrangement would be for her to call by his flat the next morning, though he was correctly embarrassed to make the suggestion. The effort it cost him to keep the eagerness out of his voice was really rather sweet. Much more appealing than all the gibbering and fretting she would have got from Dillon.
‘I assure you, Donna, no one out there will recognise me. When I go undercover in an organisation it is a completely professional exercise. If you decide that you need my services, I will make absolutely sure that no one in your organisation becomes aware that I am an investigator. The assignment I’ve just completed, at the London office of an offshore bank, took months of preparation for the office culture, as well as learning how to do the job that was my cover.’
Donna wished that everyone who worked for her would be so professionally eager to please. All the same, she was cautious with anyone who was trying to tell her what she wanted to hear. She sat back in her chair and frowned at the tiny woman poised on the edge of t
he largest chair in the room, ‘What was that, exactly?’
‘I was a risk assessor.’ She gave a husky laugh. Her voice was surprisingly deep for such a pixie.
‘Wasn’t that difficult to sustain as a cover? I mean, what happened when you actually had to assess a lending risk?’
The sparrow-like blonde pursed her lips. From the depth of the wrinkles that appeared around her mouth, Donna judged her to be much older than she looked when her face was blank. ‘Normally, my work is confidential, of course. But in this case I was retained by the United States Federal Fraud Agency. They picked up on the situation and worked with the Fraud Squad here. You may have heard about it, the case is going through the courts. The National Bank of New Caledonia. They never actually made any loans. Their clients were all fake. I found a whole room full of files on companies which did nothing registered to addresses that didn’t exist. But not a lot of people were ready to get the street map of New Caledonia to check them out. The risk assessor’s job was just to go through the motions. The challenge for me was to create a character with a CV which would put them in a position where they would be credible going along with that.’
Donna was momentarily crucified by indecision. Should she be happy that the CEO of New Caledonia, the fuckwit she had shagged in a moment of deep boredom, had finally got his just deserts? Or should it concern her that even at a moment of deep boredom her judgement had been so far off that she’d shagged such a fuckwit at all? Knowing that she’d got so close to a big-time loser made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
Swiftly, Donna elected to congratulate herself for creating the Heartswap thing to stop her sense of humour getting her into any more trouble. Ever since Heartswap, fancying mad, bad and totally inappropriate men had not been a problem. It was so much more amusing to screw around with other people’s lives than to screw up your own.
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