“She quit because you’re difficult to work with. Not because she’s not dedicated.”
I didn’t say a word. There weren’t many people in my life who spoke to me like that. Certainly no one who worked for me. They didn’t need to. I worked with a talented, dedicated team who got paid handsomely.
“I’ve got a thicker skin than her,” she continued, lifting her chin.
That sounded like a challenge. I didn’t deliberately try to run off my assistants, but they couldn’t handle the pressure. Since Joanna retired, they’d all been sacked or left before they hit the six-month mark. Some hadn’t even lasted six hours. They obviously wanted handholding and platitudes, while I just wanted to get on with my job. I wasn’t interested in office banter and chat about whatever watercooler show was on Netflix. But according to Joanna—who I’d called on average once a week to try to persuade her out of retirement—that’s what I needed to be doing.
She called it “soft skills.”
I called it bollocks.
“I’m way over-qualified for this job. I have an MBA from Columbia. I’m clever, organized, and not afraid of hard work. You’re lucky to have me.” She was speaking as if she already worked here.
“Then why do you want the job?” I asked, intrigued despite myself. Getting accosted outside my offices before six in the morning wasn’t new. I’d made a lot of cuts in my career, fired a lot of people. And although I’d done it so a business could survive and so not all employees lost their job, some people didn’t see it that way. Some people blamed me rather than the incompetent management who’d brought me to their door. All I did was clean up someone else’s mess. But I hadn’t ever been accosted in the street because someone wanted to work for me.
“I’ll be excellent at it. Just you see. If you disagree, you can fire me.” She hadn’t answered my question about why she wanted the job.
“How do you even know there’s a vacancy?” I’d not yet called the recruitment agency. I hadn’t even so much as thought about finding a new assistant.
“I’m Natalie’s roommate.”
They shared a room?
“I’m sleeping on her couch. She thinks you’re an asshole. I think I can handle you.”
It took a little effort not to laugh. At least the woman in front of me spoke her mind. It was an essential component of a good working relationship in my experience. Maybe she’d make a decent assistant after all.
If she had an MBA from Columbia, why on earth did she want to be my assistant? She must be bullshitting. “What was your favorite class at Columbia?”
“Favorite or most useful?”
“I said favorite. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“Globalization and Markets. Joseph Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald’s class.”
Okay, so she was either very prepared with her lie or she’d legitimately studied at Columbia. I’d read some stuff by Stiglitz and knew he taught there.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” she asked. “Give me a shot. You won’t be sorry.”
I supposed she was right. It wasn’t as if I had anyone on hand to replace Natalie, and finding someone else would take a few weeks at least. I didn’t have a lot to lose.
“Don’t talk so much. Don’t disturb me before noon, and make sure no one comes into my office unless my door is open. Which it never is.”
A grin unfurled on her face. “I’m Sofia,” she said.
I ignored her and sat back behind my desk.
“Is there anything you need?”
What I needed was for Bob Goode not to be such a dick. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. “Leave me alone.”
At least Sofia had the sense not to argue. She turned on her heel and left. I pulled out the latest copy of Verity, Inc. from the top drawer of my desk and felt the temperature of the blood in my veins rise as I read the headline asking, yet again, Is Tom Cruise an Alien? My grandmother would be turning in her grave at the sight of her once-respected publication talking about potential celebrity aliens. There was a time when the magazine she’d led had reported on women finally being allowed to have mortgages without a male guarantor at the beginning of the seventies, the coal strikes and gerrymandering in the eighties. Verity, Inc. used to be a magazine that cared about the rights of ordinary people, and keeping the people in power in check. Now it cared whether or not Tom Cruise was from outer space, and whether Taylor Swift was secretly also Nicki Minaj.
And now the magazine was losing subscribers and readers, which meant that it was losing money. The entire justification Bob Goode had given me when he started the spiral of ridiculous tattletale gossip stories was that he couldn’t make money covering “issues,” as he described it.
Well, he wasn’t making money now either. Why couldn’t he just take my advice? Let me and my team behind the wheel. I could get Verity back on track, and when she was healthy, I could put a new, better team in place.
Bob called me a meddler but I was just trying to help. He was just a stubborn old goat who didn’t like it that the two women before him—my mother and grandmother—had done a better job running the magazine than he had.
I stuffed the magazine back in the drawer and looked at what Sofia had put on my desk. Verity’s latest financials, which I’d already seen but no doubt Douglas wanted to make sure I didn’t miss. They were diabolical. Any other company, I’d be content to sit back and watch it burn, but I couldn’t do that with Verity. It would destroy my mother to lose my grandmother and the publication she founded within a few months of each other. I had to save Verity, Inc. I just didn’t know how yet.
Four
Sofia
I peeled off my coat and hung it on the hook, holding on to it a little longer than I should have. I was exhausted despite doing so little on my first day at Blake Enterprises.
Natalie hadn’t been exaggerating when she said that Andrew refused to speak to her, and his reticence was surprisingly tiring. There wasn’t even a curt nod or a “see ya’ later” when he’d left for his meeting at Canary Wharf. I’d ordered him a car but hadn’t had a chance to tell him before he was out the door. I had to run down the stairs after him, bellowing, but he acted like he couldn’t hear me. Then Douglas, who had finally introduced himself so I didn’t have to keep calling him Hat Man, told me that Andrew didn’t require a car. But when I asked whether or not he walked or got the tube, Douglas didn’t answer. Was it top secret how Andrew travelled? Did he teleport? Flush himself down a toilet?
Being ignored was irritating. I would certainly take the money for doing nothing, but I wanted to work. I enjoyed being productive and I wanted to get some experience under my belt to prove that I could do the things I already knew I was capable of.
At just past seven, when I’d read almost every file stored on my computer and I was about ready to start pulling out my fingernails to keep myself busy, Douglas put his head around the door to tell me that Andrew wouldn’t be back.
Had he called Douglas and not me? Did that mean that he was going to fire me? I couldn’t remember if he’d actually hired me or just stopped telling me to leave.