by Anna Premoli
YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY
Anna Premoli
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About You Drive Me Crazy
What girl doesn’t dream of an amazing promotion working on the other side of the world?
This once in a lifetime opportunity is presented to 28-year-old investment banker, Maddison Johnson and instantly fills her with abject fear.
It isn't the New York transfer she had set her heart on… she's going to South Korea, instead.
To make things worse, her boss Mark Kim doesn’t go out of his way to make it easy for her to adapt to her new environment.
Plunged into a world she knows nothing about with a man she can't stand, Maddison finds herself forced to adapt and grow up quickly. Maybe in the process she will stumble over something wonderful and quite unexpected…
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
About You Drive Me Crazy
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About Anna Premoli
Also by Anna Premoli
Preview
Become an Aria Addict
Copyright
Chapter 1
If A Day Starts Off Bad, Rest Assured It’s Only Going to Get Worse
It’s pouring down, just for a change.
Not that it rains all the time in London. I mean, come on – it’s not Scotland.
It rains just the right amount. Which, objectively speaking, is quite a lot at the moment.
Ok, I give up – in early August it pours down every bloody day…
I really ought to stop wasting time staring at the water streaming down my windows, though, and get a move on – that nice watch that my parents gave me a few years ago when I got my degree is telling me mercilessly that I’m already way behind with my daily schedule, and from down the hall I can hear the threatening sound of the phone ringing.
At this time of the morning it can only be my mother, so fat chance that I’m going to answer – never start your day by letting your mum hassle you. A day that starts off like that can only get worse. My mother has spent her whole life being a housewife while dreaming about having a career. So why did she never get a job, then? you’ll be asking yourself. Don’t ask me. All I know is that she’s always been convinced that working her only daughter to death was a better idea than actually working herself – with obvious repercussions on my life. She calls me every day in the office to ask exactly the same question: “What are you doing, darling?” And every day, I reply, “I’m at work, Mum.”
She likes that phrase, it makes her feel proud.
The truth is that I’ve never been a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, and she’s never wanted to accept the fact. She still thinks she’s some bloody suffragette from the beginning of the twentieth century.
The only reason I ended up agreeing to study economics at university was for a quiet life, because Mum wanted me to work in a big investment bank. The only thing I liked about the women who worked in those places was their nice suits. I’ve always been very honest – at least with myself – and the truth is that I’ve never really had the willpower or desire to make my way in life or any of that kind of stuff.
But destiny would have it that, thanks to an incredible series of coincidences and bits of luck, I actually did end up working for an investment bank – which still seems weird, even all these years later. I remember that when I was at junior school, in a composition titled ‘What I Want To Do When I Grow Up’, I wrote that I wanted to be a seamstress. I loved being able to make clothes out of practically nothing and thought that actually creating something gave life meaning. Ah, the illusions of childhood! Well nowadays I don’t create anything – in fact, I often feel like I’m destroying things. That’s why I’m not entirely convinced about my job.
I only passed the entrance exam at the Economics Faculty because I managed to spot a brainy looking girl in the crowd, clung tightly to her and somehow managed to copy enough of her answers. The questions might as well have been in Farsi, as far as I was concerned. In my defence, I can only say that identifying the right swot to copy is an art that has never been given the recognition it deserves.
Jane not only helped me pass the exam, she also became a good friend, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. Two rather introverted girls who don’t really want to be noticed – that’s why we bonded immediately. She works at Goldman Sachs now (she was a genius then and she’s still a genius), but she helps me out when she can. If I managed to get myself into a prestigious investment bank, I owe it all to her: after uni, she spent a month helping me prepare for the selections. I have a sneaking suspicion that the only reason I worked so hard to get in was so as not to disappoint her. Well, not to mention that if I hadn’t, my mother would have killed me. Literally.
I’m part of the team that takes care of foreign mergers and acquisitions. Ten people, completely dedicated to their job. Or rather, nine of them are – I just pretend to be. But I’m really good at pretending. As far as I can tell, no one has yet had any doubts as to why I’m there.
The main problem with my job, apart from the fact that it involves the study of budgets and taxation (yawn) is our ridiculously long working day: we start pretty early, which is standard practice in these places, but in particularly busy periods we practically forget to go home. To carve myself out a couple of hours to do a bit of shopping I sometimes have to fake some sort of ailment, a really bad tummy ache or a headache of unprecedented violence. My colleagues are generally so wrapped up in their work that they don’t even notice I’m not there. It’s absolutely unimaginable that someone would actually want to get away from the office. I have a sneaking feeling that they’d come to work for free, while I can barely force myself to go even with the (admittedly decent) salary they pay me. And there are times when not even the pay is enough to cheer me up.
Once, during one of my little jaunts to the shops, I bumped into Theresa from the commodity derivatives office and we exchanged a complicit smile.
Since then, every time we meet in the lift we give each other a look. Discovering that I wasn’t the only one skiving off was reassuring, and I started feeling less guilty about it.
Sometimes I still think about those beautiful girls clad in their gorgeous suits that I used to see running around the City when I was a kid – when the hell did they manage to buy the damn clothes if they had to work all day, and often Saturdays and Sundays too? You couldn’t even shop on line back then!
According to my mother, women don’t need a husband. Let me just repeat that: my mother, who got married at the age of twenty-two, is totally convinced that men are unnecessary and that every woman should seek gratification exclusively through success at work. But she only thinks that because she’s never worked a day in her life: if she had, she’d have rushed off to get married the following one. My father puts up with it all patiently and in silence, and when the atmosphere in the house gets too overwhelming he goes off to play golf.
Obviously, a feminist like her can’t waste time with housework, so she employs other people to do it for her: over the years, legions of girls with more or less unpronounceable names have ironed, washed, cleaned and cooked for my family, while I – who work an average of twelve hours a day – do my housekeeping myself.
Today got off to a terrible start: I’m super late, wearing uncomfortable shoes, I think I’ve laddered my tights and the beautiful black umbrella with white polka dots. which I bought for a few quid last week is broken. Let that be a lesson to me: if something’s cheap, there’s probably a reason.
So half soaked and already exhausted from jumping puddles, I’m on my way into the lift when I meet Tom from the legal department. He smirks as he presses the elevator button and tells me with a certain arrogance, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but from next month I’ll be in New York!”
The smarmy bastard knows full well that I’d asked to be transferred to the New York office, and it’s more than obvious that if he’s going there then I’m not, since I have it from reliable inside sources – I bribed them with coffee and snacks – that there’s only one position going.
To be honest, the idea of moving abroad to discover the world and further my career was not entirely my own. John, my fantastic boss – who is one of the main reasons I’ve never been fired – had strongly recommended a few months ago that I ask to be allocated to some foreign office, saying it was an indispensable condition for professional growth. I, who had no intention of leaving London, hadn’t taken him seriously, so he applied on my behalf, ignoring all my protests. What John never really seems to get is that my ambitions don’t actually include having a brilliant career. I just couldn’t give a monkey’s. All I need is a job that pays the rent while I work out what I want to do when I grow up. And I will admit that if tomorrow some Prince Charming with a large bank account or an inexhaustible trust fund were to ask me to marry him, I wouldn’t think twice about handing in my notice. To the immense horror of my mother, who perhaps suspects something but at least has the good taste not to ask.
“Never ask questions with answers you don’t want to hear,” is one of her wise rules. I must admit that even in her madness she always displays a certain wisdom – certainly more than her daughter, the non-feminist, does.
Despite what you might have heard, the world of finance isn’t particularly sexist: my colleagues don’t really care if I’m a man or a woman – they only care that I’m able to do my job.
When I walked into this bank six years ago, John immediately took a liking to me. He said I was ‘out of the ordinary’. Ha! Well, no, I don’t actually have much in common with those who think that work ennobles the soul. No one will ever convince me of that. Work will never be better than sleeping. Never.
John is approaching fifty, has a beautiful wife who stays at home to look after the garden and the dog and cooks for their beloved eighteen year old son who wants nothing more out of life than to play the guitar. I guess he sees me as a sort of daughter he can hand his trade down to. If only the daughter were a tad more willing…
In any case, I’d be completely lost without him. Moreover, my colleagues know that I am his favourite so they leave me in peace and you might even say that I enjoy a certain position of privilege in the office. Leave here after having worked so hard to attain peace? Forget it.
But after he got in touch with them, the HR office contacted me for an interview. They pretended that it was all very informal, while actually making notes about even how often I blinked, and asked vaguely where in the world I would like to work. I’ve never been any good at beating around the bush, so I just said straight out that I wanted to go to New York. There or nowhere. Call me extreme: I prefer to think I’ve got clear ideas. Everyone knows that there’s no better place for shopping than the Big Apple, not to mention that it’s somewhere where there’s a very strong chance that I might come across some rich potential husband.
And now Tom, who knows all about my request, is here standing next to me boasting about his transfer. He’s probably been going up and down in this bloody lift for the last hour in the hope of meeting me and being able to rub my nose in it. I am very obviously late, and he certainly hasn’t just arrived. Brown-noser that he is, he’s always one of the first to get here in the morning. With a hint of irritation I have to admit that his strategy has paid off.
Striving to appear unruffled, I press the button for my floor, turning away from him and waiting patiently for the lift to begin its ascent. But Tom is unhappy with my reaction and goes all out to make me lose my temper.
“The best news is about your destination though, because you see, Maddison, a little bird told me that you’re going to be leaving too…” he almost giggles. Seeing him chortling away is really more than I can endure this early in the morning, so I reluctantly turn towards him with my seraphic expression beginning to crack.
The lowlife has dropped his bombshell and can see that I’m feeling the effects. On the one hand I’d like to ignore him, but on the other I have to find out more.
“What are you talking about? Everyone knows that I was only willing to go to New York – and since they’ve decided that yours was the profile best suited to being sent overseas, I’ll obviously be staying here. But it doesn’t matter – I like living in London and not moving away might have its advantages,” I say, trying to sound like I mean it. I don’t like showing weakness in front of idiots like him.
Tom, though, just smiles more and more mockingly. I don’t like the annoying gleam of his thirty-two perfectly whitened teeth at all.
“Then you’ll find that your day will be full of surprises,” he whispers in a voice that makes it sound like a threat.
Finally the lift stops at my floor and I march towards the door without even bothering to say goodbye. To hell with him!
As the doors close again he adds, “We could have a joint farewell party! Think about it and let me know!”
I freeze for a moment with irritation, looking at my distorted reflection in the elevator doors. Ok, I’m not going to New York, that looks pretty certain, unfortunately – but someone upstairs must have decided in any case to give me this ‘enviable formative experience abroad’. If I’d really wanted to experience the thrill of the unknown, I could have spent a year of university in some other country. It was no coincidence that I clung to Britain like a castaway to a lifebuoy all those years.
And anyway, where could they be sending me? I wouldn’t mind Paris, though my French isn’t great, so making myself understood would be a job in itself.
Never mind, I’ll just sign up for a language course! The one my mother insisted on making me attend for ten years in a row never had the desired effect, because I wasn’t motivated. Although the teacher did say a hundred years of lessons wouldn’t have sufficed to turn me into a person able to utter two intelligible sentences in a language that I’d never liked anyway.
Not a big problem, though, come on: everyone everywhere speaks English nowadays. They can’t not speak my language, right? The shopping in Paris isn’t bad, and the food is divine. Yes, now that I think about it, Paris would be even better than New York! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it in the first place…
Or maybe they’re sending me to Rome: Italians are so charming and warm, and I love their clothes and their way of life. And you don’t even need to learn the language: everyone knows that Italians speak with gestures. As a child I was very good at mime, so I have every reason to think that I’d do brilliantly at it.
When I get to my desk I’m really happy that everything’s going to go smoothly and that John’s going to send me somewhere beautiful. Somewhere much, much better than New York. Everyone goes to the Big Apple, why follow the crowd?
My eye falls on the messages that my colleague Jess has left for me. My mother must have called at least ten times: she knows that the transfers are being announced today, and I would imagine she hasn’t slept from all the excitement. Just as I’m about to call her, I notice from the corner of my eye that from the other side of the office John is gesticulating to me strangely: he gestures several times at the door of his room and then races inside to take refuge. If I didn’t know him so well I’d say he was agitated. That’s never usually a good sign.
Meanwhile, Jess has returned to her desk with a steaming cup of coffee in hand. “What the hell’s going on this morning?” I ask worriedly.
She looks at me with a strange expression, as though deciding whether to let me in on the secret.
“I don’t know exactly. I saw a man go into John’s office half an hour ago. Not long afterwards, the boss came looking for you. We even tried calling you at home and then on your mobile, but it was off,” she tells me between sips. “I think he needs to talk to you urgently.”
This means that for once in history it wasn’t my mother at the other end of the line, then. Well, hooray for mum! And, for the record, I always forget to turn on my phone – too many emails that I’d rather ignore and that might stress me on my way to work – if I was actually aware of the hassle awaiting me at work, there’s every chance that I’d do a runner! I’ve dreamed so many times of just walking right past the main door without entering, and if the opportunity presented itself I might actually decide to take it.
“I’d better go and see what he wants immediately,” I mutter. No point pretending to be calm when my voice betrays me.
I start walking timidly towards the office of the big chief with my stomach doing somersaults. As I go in, I have a strange feeling: I know that it’s not going to be anything good – in fact, I feel with absolute certainty that there’s trouble ahead. I’ve always been able to sense when some misfortune was on the way. I remember that sometimes at school I was even able to tell when the teacher was going to single me out for an oral test. Some might call me psychic, but I just call it a survival instinct. And now it’s telling me to scarper, without even opening the door. If only I could just skive off like at school.
For a moment I’m actually tempted to make a run for it, and I’m not ashamed. If only John hadn’t seen me arriving… Trying to not think too much I force myself to knock, and when the boss’s voice invites me to come in I summon up all the courage I have, or at least what little I have left, and decide to throw open the door. Across the room, John sits regally behind his large black desk: he raises his eyes to my face, staring at me with a hint of embarrassment, before turning to the person in front of him, whose face is hidden by the back of the shiny leather chair.