Someone Else's Shoes(33)
It took her two months to realize that he never did it to the men. He would chat with them, his face wreathed in smiles, any suggestion that there was a problem covered with matey caveats, a suggestion that they go for a drink later and sort it out. He would stand too close to the younger women, his hands half submerged at angles in his pockets as if he were perennially pointing to his genitals, and smile and stare at their chests. Some—like Dee—would smile back and flirt with him, then bitch about him in the Ladies: “That slimeball. He gives me the ick.” But aside from Betty in Accounts, who never spoke to anyone but had a mathematical brain that could work faster than a desk calculator, and Marina, who didn’t give a monkey’s what anybody thought about her, and would say as much without prompting, Sam was now the oldest woman in the office and, Simon had apparently decided, not worthy of any attention that wasn’t entirely negative in tone. It was exhausting.
Once, she could have confided all this to Phil, and he would have calmed her, commiserated, offered strategies to help deal with it. She had mentioned it one evening after a particularly bad day but instead of sitting her down and pouring her a glass of wine he had put his head into his hands and told her he was sorry, he couldn’t deal with anything else. She had been so alarmed at his apparent fragility that she had immediately reassured him it was nothing, nothing at all. Just a bad day. And never mentioned it again.
Ted, Joel and Marina kept her going, day to day, but nobody ever stepped in, or stood up to Simon when he was haranguing her. Of course, Simon would save his most negative comments for when they were alone, or murmur them as he passed her cubicle—Jesus, I don’t know how you get any work done with a desk like that. Most of the time, if there was an audience, he would simply ignore her. But what could she do? With Phil out of work, and their savings depleted, they were reliant on her salary. She kept her head down, did her best, ignored the ever-present knot in her stomach, and hoped that at some point he would grow bored and decide to pick on someone else.
* * *
? ? ?
“Simon’s headed your way.” Marina puts a coffee on her desk furtively, like she’s imparting classified information, and her expression as she turns away fills Sam with dread.
“What now?” she says, but Marina has already gone.
She slides the kitbag under her desk and hangs her handbag on the back of the chair, sits down and logs on to her screen.
He is there within seconds, wearing a pair of slightly too tight suit trousers and a belt with a high shine. His demeanor is that of a headmaster who has been dragged out of an important meeting to deal with a recalcitrant child.
“Why did you not warn Fishers about the look of the colors on the uncoated paper?”
“I’m sorry?”
She turns too quickly, and almost knocks her coffee from the table with her elbow.
“Four thousand copies of their new property brochure and they’re on the phone yelling because of the color quality on the uncoated paper.”
“They said they wanted uncoated paper. They were keeping costs down. Ted and I did warn them it would look different from what they were used to.”
Simon pulls a face, as if there is no way this could be true. “Mark Fisher says you didn’t tell them anything. Now he wants us to redo the whole job at cost. They say nobody is going to buy houses with everything looking so flat and colorless on the page.”
“I sat down with Mr. Fisher specifically at our last meeting and told him it would be a very different look. I showed him examples of the Clearsills catalog. He dismissed it and said that would be fine.”
“So Mr. Fisher is lying, is he?” Simon’s voice is scornful.
“He—he might be misremembering. But I remember it clearly. I even took notes. He said cutting costs was their main concern. It’s not our fault, Simon, if he’s changed his mind. Besides, it’s the designer’s job to communicate these things to the client. I—I only stepped in because I wasn’t convinced they understood what they were asking for.”
“Well, Samantha, you stepping in has been pretty unhelpful because they are now convinced it’s all Uberprint’s responsibility. And you need to work out how you’re going to put this mess right before it has very serious ramifications indeed.”
He spins on his heel and is gone before she can protest. She has not even had time to take her coat off. She lets out a long sigh and slumps slightly in her chair.
An email pings as she slides her left arm out of the sleeve, and she leans forward to open it.
Chin up, babe. Don’t let him get you down x
She looks up and over at Joel, whose face has appeared above the side of the Logistics cubicle ten feet away. When he smiles at her she can’t work out whether she wants to blush or burst into tears.
* * *
? ? ?
At lunchtime the builder who has ignored Sam’s increasingly frantic messages for the best part of four months calls without warning and announces they will be starting work the following week on rebuilding the front wall, which had been irrevocably damaged in June by a pensioner no longer able to see their reversing mirrors. It’s an insurance job, for which Sam breathes a sigh of relief: who knew a small wall could be so expensive?
She calls home while sitting in the staff eating area, one of the few places Simon never visits (he seems to see it as beneath him, with its carefully demarcated coffee-mug ownership and microwave oven). She is eating a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich made with two-day-old bread. It is claggy in her mouth, or maybe today’s altercation with Simon is making it feel like that.