by Tina Clough
Her choice of words was pure ad-hoc inspiration, but it could not have come out better if she had practised it in front of the mirror. If she had ripped off her clothes and danced on the table, their surprise could not have been greater. All three stared in silent anticipation, and then Mandy said uncertainly: “You sent her packing? You mean you told her to leave?”
Mia tried to adopt a reasonable and calm tone of voice, though inside she was fizzing with nerves. “Well, I hadn’t seen her you see, since Greg’s accident, because she’d been away on some work exchange thing in England. She left just before it happened. And she didn’t know that I’d known since before the accident that she was having an affair with Greg. In fact, I’d decided to talk to them about it, but I left it too late, and Barb went off for her trip and then Greg had his accident.”
She stopped. Their faces registered a range of reactions. Mandy looked guilty and surprised and greedy for more at the same time and Callum was gob-smacked. Tex, neutral and mildly curious but looking serious, was the first to speak.
“You were going to talk to them about it? That seems very laid back? I would have thought you’d be furious?”
Mia looked at him and thought ‘Perfect!’ Now she had a great opening and could elaborate in a natural way.
“Well of course I was! I was devastated! I mean she was my best friend from school! At first I thought it might have been a one-off fling and in that case I figured that if it might save my marriage it was worth trying to live with it and not saying anything, which I tried to do. But then I found out that it had gone on for quite a while, and I wanted to talk to them together, because I felt absolutely sure that Greg would drop her, right there in front of me and her, if I confronted them together. I really wanted her to experience that with me there – my so-called best friend.”
Mandy broke in, unable to contain herself. “So what stopped you? Was it too hard to do?”
Mia looked sad. “The right opportunity simply didn’t come up before Barb went off to England. So I decided to talk to Greg on his own, and then he was killed and I never got to do it!” Her voice trailed off, and to her surprise she was close to crying. She could feel tears pooling in her eyes. It was as if the story she had told them was new and true, the effect on her fresh and immediate. How strange and disturbing!
Callum found his voice and his opinions and made no bones about it. “What a treacherous bitch! Unbelievable! Sorry Mia, but what a bastard Greg was too. That’s the worst kind of betrayal, when it’s with your best friend.”
Mandy was amazed and avid for more detail. “And you had it out with her at a party at Sarah’s, in front of everyone?” She wanted it all, gory details and blood on the floor.
Mia took a deep breath; this was it. “Yes I did. I hadn’t seen her since she came back, she’d only just returned the day before, and it all got too much. She walked in, as if she’d done nothing wrong, all smiles. I could tell she was going to hug me and it was more than I could take. So I took my courage in both hands and confronted her. There was nothing she could say - she admitted it and I told her I never wanted to see her again. So she left, just walked out.”
By this time she had drunk her coffee. More detail might spoil the effect, so she got up with a casual remark about having to be on time for a meeting, and left.
Mandy looked at Tex without even pretending to include Callum. “God, that’s ghastly! Poor Mia, what a pig of a thing to have to deal with. I think she’s so together and strong, it’s just amazing. To have that on her mind and not talk about it, that’s really something. I would never in a million years have guessed she could be like that. She always seemed like such a timid little thing.”
Tex said nothing, but Callum nodded in agreement. “I met Greg once or twice, you know. He seemed like a nice guy at the time.”
Tex said quietly: “I knew about it. I don’t know Barb from a bar of soap, but I’ve got a mate, whose sister works for the brewery where Greg worked. And she’d seen him more than once with someone who wasn’t Mia and said it was obvious they were having a relationship. And if one person knew, then lots more would have, and I bet you some of Mia’s friends knew too!”
The other two were quiet and they all went back to work subdued and thoughtful. Mia’s situation was cutting close to the bone – losing her husband twice, you could say, and coping alone and effectively. Callum’s mind was full of admiration for Mia’s gutsy behaviour. Mandy was weighing up the pros and cons of spreading such tasty news, when some knew about her and Tex, but she knew that temptation to shock and surprise would get the better of her.
The staff room filled up early for the afternoon meeting. People came in without much talking and quietly took their seats. The large room had been cleared of café tables and someone had lined up extra plastic chairs in rows, but even so a lot of people stood along the walls and in groups at the back of the room. David Wilson, a man Mia had only said hello to in the lift a few times, sat at a table at the front of the room with the department managers lined up beside him. As the latecomers trickled in, he leaned forward, tapped the microphone and the low buzz of voices died down.
Mia listened and watched with great interest. This was another test of This Time compared to That Time - she remembered this meeting very clearly, because it had been a momentous occasion and she knew what David Wilson was going to say, or rather what he had said the first time round. If some things in This Time were going to have a different spin she’d be able to pinpoint changes. But gradually it became clear that this was exactly the same speech. There were no surprises - the merger was going ahead. A media release would go out at the end of the day, the stock exchange might or might not react, but any changes to the share price were expected to be temporary only, and business would go on as usual.
He emphasised that he wanted them all to know that, as far as anyone could tell at this point all jobs were secure “apart from possibly my own” – Mia knew that joke was coming, second time round it was still limp and people smiled mechanically.
“I want to assure you that we’ll keep you informed of further developments. This is a wonderful opportunity for us all – merged with AMCL we will be a force to be reckoned with in the global arena and I for one look forward to it with excitement and confidence!”
The man beside Mia muttered dourly: “Well, he might well be excited, I’ll bet his future’s guaranteed.”
A bland and reassuring speech, with no hard facts and no outright promises; it was probably the standard merger-speech. And David Wilson had a reputation as a hard-nosed CEO so he was not likely to make any promises he could not keep. Some clapped in a half-hearted way, many stood up and left, some stayed talking in small groups or headed for their department heads at the front of the room to ask questions.
Mia followed the stream of people slowly heading for the doors. She avoided being drawn into conversation – this was not the moment for her to contribute; that could come later. Soon it would be time to go home to another evening of planning and reconstructing, but first she had to arrange for her advertisement in the paper. She had written the text yesterday but when she had another look at it before lunch she was undecided over the choice of words, so had decided that Wednesday’s paper would be fine; she would rather fine-tune the words and get it right than rush it.
Sarah rang about seven that night and wanted to gossip, just as Mia had turned on the washing machine, but she had too much on her mind to have a long casual conversation. She blamed her disinclination to talk on the news from work about the merger and said she needed to sit down and do some thinking.
“It’s one of those things you hear of others going through, but you don’t think you’re going to have to make decisions like that yourself,” she explained. “Do I jump ship now and get another job, just to pre-empt being laid off later, when dozens of others could be looking for new jobs too? Or shall I stay on, hoping I won’t be made redundant and take my chances? I might not get it right either way, but
I want to feel I made a reasoned choice.”
She moved away from the noise of the washing machine, walked through to the kitchen and started looking in the fridge, while talking. Sarah understood her point. “I know - that’s how I would reason too. James and I have been though this once already, when his brother-in-law lost his job in that big meat company merger a couple of years ago.”
She was more than willing to use this experience to take the discussion further, while she pottered around her own kitchen preparing dinner. Mia let it go on for another few minutes before making an excuse to put the phone down. “Sorry, sis – my dinner’s nearly ready. I’ll ring you tomorrow!”
Being back at work had raised a new crop of questions and what she really needed to do now was to sit down and do some quiet thinking. She got a can of potato and leek soup out of the pantry and tipped it into a bowl to heat. I wish I understood it better. I might be in my own past – in which case what I change here should change the future compared to what it was. Which would be good, if I get fast forwarded again. But if I’m in a parallel time line, only a bit behind or slower, then probably I have to go forward as if it was my first life. Everything I do here will influence the future in this strand. But seeing that I woke up in 2006 in my 2006 body, how did my 2007 memories get moved over to sit in my 2006 head? Perhaps I’m an anomaly, the only person who can remember being moved around in time?
She groaned as she put a slice of wholemeal bread in the toaster and got a plate out. How can I try to use logic, when I don’t know if logic really applies? There must be some logic, but how do I know what the rules are? I must find someone else, who’s been through this or I’ll have nothing to go by. Or if that fails, I must find sensible people to discuss it with, but then I have to convince them first that I’m not mad. Maybe this never happened to anybody else.
On the whole she felt more comfortable with the concept of innumerable parallel lives, with slightly different twists and turns and running at different speeds. Parallel lives made more sense and made her feel safe.
She poured a glass of wine and carried it to the table and turned the news on before returning for her soup and toast. Once again she marvelled at her own composure in this bizarre situation. Obviously I’m far more pragmatic and balanced than I ever thought. It was really only first thing Friday morning that I totally panicked and since then I’ve been pretty good.
As she ate and watched the news with half-hearted attention her thoughts seemed to gel and reach a conclusion. The only thing she could do was to regard it as a gamble. It would either turn her future into a much better place or she would end up where she had started. There was nothing she could do to change that and it was probably a win-win situation. She returned her dishes to the kitchen, tidied up the minimal mess and went to put her laundry in the dryer, before going back to her research and plans.
Two hours later Mia stretched and yawned. She had read the work emails and the documents that she had sent home to herself, and had a comprehensive picture of the situation at work. She was stiff from sitting in the same position and concentrating. The first consideration now was to not miss the opportunity to put a spanner in Josh’s works before he destroyed her again. She needed a good solid plan for this and must be alert for certain things to happen.
Unable to switch off and go to bed she prowled round the apartment, conducting a running discussion with herself. She poured another glass of wine, turned the living area lights off and sat for a while in her favourite armchair looking at the view through the large window across the room. She loved the night view, lights and buildings and glimpsed sections of streets with moving vehicles. She stood up and moved closer to the balcony door – the Sky Tower looked like the top of a delicate perfume bottle, floodlit against the sky. How I wish I’ll be able to find someone else who’s experienced this. Imagine if there’s only one other person in the world who has?
When she turned back to face the room again she did what she had done nearly every day since July 2006, which paradoxically was both thirteen months ago and one month ago: She consciously looked at the two large paintings and revelled in the thrill they gave her. Until she went to that huge art sale at Eden Park, she hadn’t known that art could create a sensation that touched her soul. One work was by David Thompson; an abstract painting, which made her think of a city glimpsed through thick fog, tantalising fragments of tall buildings in a near white-out. She had been amazed, nearly outraged when Sarah had brought her friend Gretchen to see what Mia had bought and Gretchen said, “Well, I don’t understand that kind of art; it looks like a bunch of pepper grinders to me.” Sarah had winked at Mia and said seriously, “Mia likes pepper grinders.”
The other painting was a very large, dark oil painting, of a man sitting inside a window, partially revealed among the reflections in the glass. His stance and look of abstraction evoked something in Mia that gave her goose bumps. As she stood there contemplating the paintings she realised that she had in fact reached some conclusions somewhere in the depths of her brain. I’ll write it all down so it’s easier to stay on track. Some of the things I’ll have to do at work are really a bit scary and I have to get the timing right. I have to keep my focus and not miss a beat, if I’m to carry this off. She returned to her desk and covered half a sheet on her pad with notes before finally calling it quits for the day. It was after midnight when she turned her bedside light off and her last conscious thought was that she hoped she’d be able to sleep.
Over the next couple of days Mia repeatedly thanked her lucky star that she had been shunted back in time to this particular week in This Time. So many work related things were tagged “pre merger” or “post merger” in her mind; it made it a lot easier to place key events. Everyone speculated about the merger. Mia observed and remembered the exact numbers who lost jobs in three waves up to March 2007. Could she change anything? Should she warn some to start looking for jobs elsewhere, before the axe fell and the competition grew in the job market? Though it might actually increase their chances of getting good jobs it would also favour some at the expense of others.
On Tuesday afternoon she started her research into the Josh debacle. She stayed an extra hour after work looking up documents and dates relating to the work she had done for Josh’s big promotion idea. He had hatched a very ambitious plan, which he hoped to sell to a large IT and home appliance chain store. It involved issuing ‘smart cards’ to repeat customers; purchases would register on the customers’ cards and they would get rewards proportional to their spending. But they could also have special offers loaded on their cards simply by using them at retail outlets. The master plan involved the possibility of offering other chain stores the opportunity to ‘buy into’ the system and for several retailers to share the same card and to attract customers as a group. The advertising campaign would be extensive and across all media - it would play on the hi-tech aspect of the card and the chance for opportunistic ‘treat’ bargains limited to only some customer groups.
Alan had used Mia to do research on intelligent cards, website-based databases, mass-texting one-day special offers and many other aspects. She had worked on the costing with some help from Buster from finance and created a timeline to support the business case.
She knew that she had completed her part of the brief and passed it on to Josh, just a week or so before the merger announcement. She made notes, copied a couple of files to other locations and was just turning her computer off, when Alan came in to see why she was working late. He looked at her with a concerned frown. “You aren’t getting nervous about your job, are you, because there’s no need for that. I’m determined to keep you here and I’m sure you know how pleased I am with your work! You may have been one of the last to be hired, but you won’t be laid off if I have anything to say about it.”
“Thanks, Alan, that’s kind of you. I just had some bits and pieces I wanted to tidy up, so I can start with a clean slate tomorrow, nothing major.”
Alan looked at
her and thought that it was striking how she much brighter and more decisive she seemed. And she looked different too, whatever it was she had changed. ‘I must ask the others, wonder what happened to her since last week, must have been something good. This is much more like the lovely Mia from before Greg’s death, but it’s as if she’s gained some extra quality she didn’t have before.’
Mia spent the evening plotting the most accurate timeline she could, based on her memory of events and what she had found in her searches. The facts of the Josh saga were pretty clear now; she tried to identify the danger points and decide on strategies to stop disaster repeating itself. In that other life she had spent a couple of weeks doing research on varied topics and learning about smart-card technology. She remembered using all the resources she could muster to work out the projections and costs for Josh’s concept. Because so much of it was highly technical she had had to rely on ‘best advice’ from outside experts. Most of the crucial work was in an Excel file where the background data and the final costing were displayed in several large spreadsheets. She had saved the file in a project folder on the server’s shared document drive, where Josh or Alan could access it. At some stage just before the merger announcement she had told Josh that she had finished, but that the project carried an unacceptably high risk. She had gone to talk to him, but he was on his way out and they had stood talking in the doorway.
“Sorry Josh! But it won’t work – the viability is so marginal - it would be insane to try it! Particularly with something where so much development work must be done at a cost that can’t be accurately predicted.”
Josh was instantly furious. His face seemed to swell and redden and his was leaning towards her. She took an involuntary step back.
“You can’t be serious! It just can’t be that bad, you must have got some of the costs wrong. You’ll have to try and eliminate some of the expenses and make it viable.”