Climbing the Ladder

by Amanda Radley

  Darcy’s smile was huge. Too big for someone who had just come from the marketing department on the day when the company was falling down around their ears.

  “You look suspiciously happy,” Kim said.

  “I’m happy for you,” Darcy claimed.

  “Try again,” Kim suggested.

  Darcy’s grin got impossibly wiser. “Celia knows who I am. Helen introduced me. And I said something smart, like, really smart.”

  Kim held her hand up in the air. “I request the highest of fives.”

  Darcy walked up to her and smacked her hand against Kim’s.

  “Way to go,” Kim congratulated her. “We need to celebrate after work. You, me, Lucy, and Rose. Drinks!”

  “What about Chloe?” Darcy asked.

  Kim laughed. “She’s out with Helen, saving the company. I’ll tell you all about it over drinks. Just be glad it’s not you!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Despite the loud rumbling of the train, Chloe held her breath. It was part of her new plan to sink into the train seat and vanish into nothing. If she held her breath and didn’t move a muscle, there was perhaps a chance that Helen wouldn’t notice her. Maybe, if she was very lucky, Helen would forget she existed and go hire a new digital assistant.

  Not that Chloe no longer wanted to work at Honey. She just didn’t want to be thought of as the troublemaker who brought the company to its knees. In her first week.

  She cast a glance at the woman sitting beside her. Helen hadn’t said much since they left the office.

  As they stepped onto the street, Helen had asked the address of where they were going. Chloe told her, and Helen quickly calculated the best route to get there. Following a confirmation of her travel plans with Chloe, she flagged a black cab down and instructed the driver to take them to Charing Cross Station, so they could get an over-ground train.

  Since then, Helen’s attention had been consumed by her phone. Which Chloe was eternally grateful for. She didn’t have much to say to Helen. She wanted to apologise more, but she knew it wouldn’t be well received. And she couldn’t exactly make small talk with the boss of the company, she had no idea what to say.

  Silence was best all round.

  “Sorry for having my nose in my phone,” Helen said without looking up.

  Jinxed it, Chloe thought.

  “It’s fine.” Her eyes snapped to the back of the seat in front of her. “You’re a busy person.”

  Helen chuckled bitterly. “I am.” She let out a breath and lowered her phone to her lap. She looked out of the window at the passing scenery. “That doesn’t stop my ex from trying to sue me for everything I have.”

  Chloe swallowed nervously. She’d known about Helen’s divorce from day one, it wasn’t exactly a secret within the office. But she still didn’t quite feel comfortable speaking about it.

  If she couldn’t make small talk with Helen without making herself sound like an idiot, then this was definitely beyond her area of expertise.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Helen distractedly waved her hand. “Don’t worry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It just frustrates me, we were so close and now—see, I’m doing again. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” Chloe said.

  It was a lie. She was deeply uncomfortable. If she had been holding her breath before, now she was practically turning blue. The very idea of having a conversation with Helen about her impending divorce filled her with dread.

  But Helen had brought it up. With someone she hardly knew, which probably meant she needed to talk about it. Chloe would have to put her discomfort to one side and do the right thing and be there for her. And try her best to not say something stupid, like telling her that her non-existent door was always open.

  “It’s fine,” Chloe added. “Feel free to… vent.”

  Helen leaned her head against the window of the train. Her hand clenched around the mobile phone resting on her lap.

  “You never think that divorce will happen to you,” she began. “You think it’s one of those things that happens to other people. People who probably weren’t well-suited to begin with. Relationships people set a stopwatch for at the beginning. We were never like that, we were close, we worked.” Helen sighed.

  Chloe knew she had two choices.

  Sadly, silence wasn’t one of them.

  She could either nod and agree and hope the conversation would be over as quickly humanly possible. Or she could actually engage in conversation, try to be of some use. The former was easier, the latter was more her style. Chloe was always there for her friends. While Helen certainly wasn’t her friend, more her tremendously impressive and beautiful boss, Chloe still felt a pull to try to help with the obvious emotional stress that she was going through.

  It may have been a ridiculous decision, but Chloe couldn’t help herself as she hurtled towards certain disaster.

  “I’m really sorry you’re getting a divorce. I don’t know much about it, but I can imagine it’s very emotionally draining and hard to deal with.”

  After offering up those words, she waited with baited breath.

  The ball was in Helen’s court now. She could brush off Chloe’s comments, quickly returning them to the boss/employee relationship. Or, just maybe, she might start a conversation. Chloe didn’t know which she’d prefer.

  “It is very emotionally draining,” Helen agreed. “I think the suddenness of it is what I struggle with most. I didn’t even know we were in trouble. Isn’t that strange?” She turned to face Chloe.

  Chloe could see sadness in her eyes. And for one brief, terrifying moment she wondered if Helen would cry.

  “It was sudden?” Chloe asked tentatively. She was reminded of her own relationship ending, though that had been anything but sudden. More a long, drawn-out death that she wished she had had the courage to euthanise sooner. Not that she had identified that at the time. At the time, she had thought she was happy. It was only when it had all fallen apart that she had finally realised how unhappy she had been.

  “Very,” Helen said. “Quite unknown to me, she was having an affair with a child.”

  Chloe couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her lips.

  “An affair?” She knew she sounded angry. She was angry. How could anyone do that to Helen? Okay, she didn’t know her that well, but she couldn’t imagine why anyone would do something like that in general—especially not to Helen, who seemed so amazing.

  If she was ever lucky enough to be in a relationship with someone as great her boss, she’d do everything to make it work. But she knew that there were sometimes things that went on behind closed doors. Even so, for some reason, she couldn’t see Helen as the villain of this story.

  A soft smile formed on Helen’s lips. She nodded. “Yes, an affair. I call my replacement the high schooler.”

  “Are they still together?” Chloe asked. Any notion of not engaging in the conversation had flown right out of the sealed train windows. She was now fully invested.

  “Oh yes, very much so. Blissfully happy if what I’m led to believe is correct.” Helen turned to look out of the window again. “And now they want everything. The house, most of the cash, the cottage, the car, of course, she always loved that car. And I’ll be left with, well, nothing. Well, my health. Because, apparently, I should be wildly grateful for the fact that I still have my health, if my mother is to be believed.”

  “That’s terrible,” Chloe said. “I mean… all of it. I can’t believe that your ex wants to take everything. And that your mother wasn’t more sympathetic. I mean, yes, it’s great that you have your health. But that doesn’t counteract everything else.”

  “Oh, my mother doesn’t do sympathy. She’s a very pragmatic woman,” Helen said.

  Pragmatic, Chloe thought. That isn’t my take on it.

  “It still sounds terrible,” she mumbled.

  Helen turned to her, a small smile on her face. She looked
at Chloe as if she thought she was naïve, innocent; basically, not in the real world. Chloe had seen the look before from many of her friends and even her family. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how the world worked, she just wanted to actively try to be different from it.

  “It is terrible,” Helen agreed. “But it’s life. And, of course, I’ll be taking her to court and attempting to keep everything.”

  “How can she even think she has a claim on those things?” Chloe asked. The moment the words passed her lips, she wondered if perhaps she had gone too far. She was so interested that she had forgot to put the stops on her rampant curiosity, the same trait that sometimes got her into trouble.

  But Helen casually shrugged a shoulder.

  “We’ve been together, I mean we had been together, a long time. She was with me long before any of this, before Honey, before I was anything. Her father is a divorce lawyer. Something I should have considered before marrying her. Anyone who grew up listening to tales of divorce, broken marriage, and the distribution of wealth is going to have a warped sense of right and wrong. Anyway, he is, of course, dealing with the case. And, of course, he has never liked me. I think he believes that I turned his sweet and innocent girl into a lesbian.”

  Helen’s eyes sparkled with mischief. Chloe wondered for a brief second if it had been true. She was fairly convinced that Helen could make anyone rethink their sexuality. There was something so powerful, enigmatic, and attractive about her personality. And that was before you even got to the fact that she was drop-dead gorgeous.

  “I don’t think it’s right, that she thinks she can take everything,” Chloe said.

  “No, you’re right. It isn’t. And she shouldn’t be able to do that. But she can. Well, she’s going to try. She has the high schooler whispering in her ear, at least that’s what I tell myself. The alternative is that she hates me so much she would gladly see me destitute.” Helen shook her head and turned away. “As much as I hate her, I can’t believe that this is all her own will. I have to believe that someone else is trying to convince her that this is the best course of action.”

  Chloe’s heart clenched. When she had waded into the conversation, she had never considered how it would feel to hear Helen in so much pain. The stray smile, the odd chuckle, none of it amounted to much. Helen was clearly a woman in distress, her life falling down around her.

  It made Chloe want to do something to help. She wanted to take Helen into her arms and whisper into her hair that she would make it all better. She wanted to rush to the rescue and take all the pain away. Even though she knew she couldn’t. She was nothing to Helen. Just an employee. One who had badly messed up and was now adding more to Helen’s overfilled plate.

  “I’m really sorry,” Chloe said. “For everything. But mainly for causing so much stress with this stupid podcast. I didn’t mean to cause all this trouble. I wish I could turn back time and not do it. I know it triggered a lot of problems for Honey, but I’m mainly sorry about the extra stress that it caused you.”

  Helen continued to look out the window. Chloe wondered if she was hiding her face from her. She’d be devastated if she’d made her cry.

  “I, I know the end of relationships can be hard,” Chloe said. “I recently came out of a long-term relationship. Nothing like a divorce, I know. But we had been together for five years.”

  Helen turned to face her, an eyebrow raised in curiosity. “That is a long time.”

  “Yeah. It ended about six months ago, I’m still not properly over it. I mean, I don’t want her back, I wasn’t happy. But it’s hard when your life is turned upside down. I’m sure you feel the same way.”

  “I do,” Helen agreed. “Why did you break up, if you don’t mind me asking? Feel free to not tell me. I’m not asking as your boss.”

  I woke up, Chloe thought. She didn’t dare say that, she didn’t want Helen to think she was weak.

  “We… wanted different things. We’d been arguing a lot, for a long time.” Chloe blew out a breath. How did you summarise a twelve-month breakup in a few short sentences? “She gave me ultimatums, eventually I’d had enough. I didn’t want to live like that anymore.”

  “Sounds rough.”

  “It was,” Chloe agreed. “Very. And then after was bad for me as well. I had no money, so I had to move in with my parents. It was nice of them to take me in, but it was so embarrassing. I know people think I’m young, but I’m an independent adult and to have to go back to Mum and Dad… it was demeaning.”

  “I can imagine,” Helen commiserated. “On one hand, it’s nice to have the option. On the other, you don’t want to appear—”

  “Like you messed up your life,” Chloe finished.

  Helen opened her mouth. Her expression said that she was about to disagree.

  “No, it’s true. I got into a relationship that wasn’t healthy for me. I stayed too long. And I gave up a lot of my independence, and, because I did that, I lost all of it in the end.” Chloe shook her head at her behaviour. “My dad has always viewed me as his little girl. In some respects, he thinks I can run the world, in others he thinks I can’t cross the road by myself. This whole thing really didn’t help. He’s started treating me like I’m twelve again.”

  Helen chuckled. “Well, allow me to tell you that there’s no age limit on life-altering breakups. You can be eighteen or eighty, we all make the same mistakes at some point. I’m sure your parents care about you deeply and don’t want to see you hurt. I doubt they see you as any less of an adult now as a result of what happened.”

  Chloe hummed noncommittally. Helen hadn’t met Chloe’s parents. Thank goodness.

  “I’m just relieved I never had kids,” Helen said. “That would be another horrible complication in this mess. Well, we didn’t birth any kids. She obviously has one now, what with high schooler.”

  Chloe grinned. “How old is the interloper?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Chloe’s eyebrows shot up. She let out a low whistle. “And your ex is?”

  “Thirty-six. I thought our age gap was rather large, but she almost doubled it.”

  Chloe knew there was a clue in there to working out Helen’s age. She’d already ascertained that Helen was in her mid-forties. Her brain swam with the information, but she was too exhausted to figure out the puzzle.

  “I’m sorry for your breakup,” Helen said earnestly.

  “And I’m sorry for yours,” Chloe replied. “And the whole podcast thing. Really, if I could take it back, I would.”

  Helen let go of her phone and placed a hand on Chloe’s thigh, close to her knee. She gave the briefest of pats before removing her hand again. It was an innocent gesture, but one that sent Chloe’s temperature is skyrocketing.

  “Don’t worry,” Helen commanded softly. “I’ll fix it. I always do.”

  The conversation was over. Chloe didn’t know how she felt about it. On the one hand, she was back to wanting to disappear into the cushion seat, vanish from existence to eradicate the awkwardness she felt. On the other, she’d just had a deep and meaningful conversation with Helen.

  Which of course meant that her crush was now fully out of control. She wished it wasn’t the case, but Chloe rarely had any say in how her crushes developed. What Helen Featherstone didn’t know was that she was slowly becoming an important component to Chloe’s world. And the fact that she had personally caused her trouble and pain made her feel worse than the potential collapse of Honey Magazine.

  I’m doomed, Chloe thought.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The country’s biggest lesbian culture podcast was operated out of a shed in Donna Hayward’s parents’ back garden. Chloe had seen it the day before, but Helen hadn’t been aware. She looked bemused as she was let down the garden path, nodding politely at Donna’s parents before entering the shed.

  Chloe was hoping to be able to stay away from the whole thing, but Helen had other ideas, wanting her to be close by. Chloe had agreed but had decided to stay far, f
ar away from the microphones. She didn’t want a repeat of the day before. If Pippa wanted her blood now, she’d also add a pound of flesh to her shopping list if Chloe was allowed to speak on air again.

  Chloe sat in the corner of the admittedly large shed. She watched as Donna conducted her various soundtracks, clearly excited to have someone like Helen on the show.

  Helen sat primly at the desk, her hands folded neatly on her lap as she waited for Donna to be ready.

  Chloe couldn’t believe how calm she appeared. It had just been twenty minutes earlier that they had been discussing the horrors of her divorce. She guessed that was why Helen was the boss: professionalism. The ability to compartmentalise the failure of her relationship and focus on the recovery of her business. However she intended to do that. Chloe still had no idea what Helen’s plans were. No clue what she intended to say to the listening public, how she going to fix Chloe’s terrible mess.

  Donna finished the final sound check. She swung the microphone into position above her head and pinned Helen with a smile.

  Jealousy shot straight through Chloe like lightning rolling over a countryside. She hated that Donna had the opportunity to even lay her deceiving eyes on someone as pure as Helen.

  She had spent most of the day trying to ignore the whole podcast debacle, but the silence of the office had made it impossible. There was no distraction, nothing to think about other than what she had heard on the playback of the show. During the course of the day, she’d become painfully aware of the fact that Donna had shafted her. And the worst thing, she had no idea why.

  “Right,” Donna said. “I’m ready if you are?”

  Helen leaned forward, reached up, and pulled her microphone towards her.

  “I’m ready. I would just like to insist going in that I have final say on any edits.” Helen smiled politely. Her tone sounded neutral enough, but it was clear that she was issuing a command, showing her authority over Donna.

  “The show goes out tonight. I don’t know if I would have time,” Donna said.