Someone Else's Shoes(55)

“Well, I don’t receive complaints about anyone else.” He sits down, not meeting her eye, and begins to click his stainless-steel ballpoint pen. She notices his initials are engraved on the side of it. Who the hell engraves a ballpoint pen? “Plus we need energetic people here. Dynamic. You give off a depressed vibe. You need to sharpen up your act.”

“Simon—I just brought in two hundred and ten thousand pounds’ worth of business.”

“Your team did. And lost us a valued client in the process.”

“He told us when he got there that he was already going to go with someone else. Nothing we did would have made any difference—”

“I’m not interested in excuses, Sam. I’m interested in results.”

Mortifyingly, she feels tears spring to her eyes. The unfairness of it. She feels like she did when she was ten and a teacher had unfairly blamed her for writing graffiti on the toilet doors. She hadn’t even known how to spell “bollocks.” “Simon—I’ve been here twelve years. I never had a complaint about my work before you came. Never.”

He looks briefly sad, and shakes his head. “Well, perhaps at Uberprint we simply hold higher standards. I’m trying to help you out here, Sam. I’m trying to let you know that you need to up your game.”

She stares at him. “Is there an ‘or’ in this conversation?”

“Well, that’s up to you. But I have to tell you that we’re looking to streamline the organization, to make cuts. And if that happens we will, of course, be looking to retain the more effective members of staff.”

There is a short, weighty silence.

She stares at him. “Are you telling me I’m about to lose my job?”

He smiles. It is not really a smile at all. “I would think of it more as an incentive to sort things out. A spur to improve. And if you really can’t, Sam, well . . .” he runs his hand through his gelled hair “. . . it will probably be the best thing for both of us if you seek pastures new.”



* * *



? ? ?

There is a peculiar quality to the silence that greets you when you emerge from your boss’s office and everyone knows you’ve basically been told you’re for the chop. The faintest of lulls and then a quiet hum of industry as if everyone has magically remembered what they were meant to be doing. Sam walks past the backs of people’s heads, slides into her cubicle and sits at her chair, her back straight, conscious of the attention of the thirty-odd people who are pretending not to notice her.

She stares at her screen, her mind buzzing, seeing nothing, clicking the mouse purposelessly. What will they do if he sacks her? He is clearly making her out to be useless so that he doesn’t have to pay her redundancy. They will lose their house. They will lose everything. She looks up to see Simon motioning Franklin into his office. They sit down opposite each other, Simon’s feet up on the desk, and start laughing about something she cannot hear. You don’t have to be John le Carré to work out maneuverings are going on.

Her email pings and she looks at her screen.

    joel: You okay?

sam: Not really.

joel: Want to go out for a sandwich at lunchtime?

sam: I don’t think I dare. He’ll probably make that a sackable offense too.

joel: Quick drink after work?



She thinks about the camper-van that she will probably have to move herself.

    sam: I don’t think I can.

sam: But thank you.

sam: Sorry.

joel: The offer’s there, babe. Chin up and tits out as Ted would say.

joel: And probably shouldn’t.

sam (her eyes filling with tears again): Thank you x

joel: Always here for you x



She is not sure how she gets through the rest of the day. She hears her voice as if from afar, checking on print schedules and laminated pages. She calls up clients, conscious that her voice sounds weirdly strangled. There is a lump in her throat that never quite goes away. She does not look at Simon’s office. When she is conscious of someone glancing over at her she makes sure her face is a perfect blank.



* * *



? ? ?

She leaves at six thirty. She walks out through Transport so that she doesn’t have to pass his office, and Joel is there going over the week’s tachographs with one of the drivers. He looks up as she passes and she tries to smile but she suspects it doesn’t reach her eyes. It is raining. Of course it is. She climbs into her car and finally lets out a long shuddering breath. As she starts to drive, tears are sliding unchecked down her cheeks and she hopes that nobody can see through her rain-spattered windscreen. She drives the twenty minutes home, pulls up in the street and stares at the camper-van, which Phil has failed to move so the builders have had to start work round it. The light is on in the living room and the television flickers. She knows she has to tell Phil what has happened but she doesn’t know if she can cope with his anxiety on top of hers. Sam sits in her car, not hearing the radio burbling quietly. And she slowly brings her head down to rest on the steering wheel and leaves it there for a while, just trying to remember how to breathe.



* * *



? ? ?

Her phone pings.

    joel: Hope you’re okay. Here adding anti-freeze for another half-hour if you change your mind x