‘I’m fine,’ Rosie assured her, glowering at her computer. It was yet to boot up successfully, despite having been switched on several minutes ago.
‘Well, you won’t be when you check your emails,’ Ellie groaned. ‘Martin’s booking in one-to-ones with the whole team. He wants to discussefficient use of company time. I’ve got an appointment first thing tomorrow.’
‘Ugh,’ Rosie sighed. ‘What does that even mean? It’s not as if we’re sat here reading celebrity gossip or scrolling social media all day – half the websites on the internet are blocked. I couldn’t even check the weather forecast the other night … Who thinks MetOffice.gov.uk represents a major distraction, for god’s sake?’
‘Martin,’ Ellie said, grimacing. ‘He’s relentless. I think he was an evil Victorian in a former life – one of those blokes who sent terrified children up chimneys for profit. He stopped me one day last week and demanded to know how many times I’d been to the toilet.’
‘No way,’ Rosie said, trying not to laugh, all thoughts of her own problems receding as she imagined this tableau.
‘Yes, way,’ Ellie insisted with a smirk. ‘He regretted it, though. I asked him how many times he thought it was acceptable for me to change my tampon during an eight-hour shift.’
Rosie hooted.
‘ThenI innocently suggested we might want to seek HR advice,’ Ellie went on. ‘See if there was any kind of official guidance on loo breaks for menstruating women. At which point his face went a bit purple and he buggered off upstairs.’
‘Amazing,’ Rosie said. ‘Top-quality work.’
‘Wasn’t it just?’ Ellie smiled. ‘I’ll make us a brew,’ she told Rosie, standing up with a yawn. ‘At super high speed, obviously, for maximum, Martin-standard efficiency.’
As Rosie’s computer came slowly to life, she switched her mobile to silent and then absent-mindedly checked her social media feeds. Twitter, or whatever she was supposed to call it these days, was typically full of political screeds. She clicked away, on the basis that she was already angry enough.
Instagram offered her nothing of note – just several acquaintances’ weekend snaps, plus a reel of a cute kitten chasing a catnip toy. Facebook, it turned out, was the network she should have avoided – and if it hadn’t been for her ancient laptop’s struggle to load the CRM database, she would have.
Just moments ago, James had been tagged in a photograph at some outdoor sporting event. Based on the greyish sky and the mud spatter on his trainers, legs and shorts, Rosie thought it must have been held yesterday.
He was at what looked like a finish line, with his arm slung around a slender, dark-haired woman. Her taut, toned arms were tanned, exposed in a sleeveless, skintight running vest. Rosie recognised her as a member of James’s gym. She had one of those ‘hot girl’ names that Rosie had always admired, but which she felt too plain and ordinary for herself. Was it Dara? Delilah? No.Dylan.
With a jolt, Rosie remembered James had told her this. The woman in the photo had been named after Bob Dylan, her parents’ favourite singer-songwriter. Rosie recalled that James had said he thought it was cool – he’d explained that this woman somehow pulled off having a name that sounded as though it should belong to a man. Rosie had smiled at the time, nodding as she thought how nice it was that James had some new, like-minded friends to chat with about his health and fitness.
She felt the breakfast cereal she’d eaten earlier curdle in her stomach.No, no, no, she told herself.Calm down. You cannot throw up all over your own desk.
But the siren that had begun wailing inside her head wouldn’t shut up:he lied, he lied, he lied, it sang. Rosie couldn’t work out whether she felt devastated, livid or like the world’s biggest idiot for taking James at his word – for believing there was nobody else involved in their break-up.
Common sense told her this single image wasn’tabsolute proofhe’d cheated – but the adoring expression on his face, which was tilted in Dylan’s direction, said otherwise.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Ellie asked, back from the kitchen and now gazing down at Rosie with an anxious expression on her face. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
She placed a large mug of steaming tea on the desk beside her friend, clearly awaiting a response.
‘I’m all right, I promise,’ Rosie said, managing a shrug. ‘Just a bad case of the Mondays.’
Ellie didn’t look convinced. The claims line began to ring, and she pointed a finger at Rosie before she could pick up the call.
‘I’ll get this,’ Ellie said. ‘You look like you need some caffeine – or maybe a couple of uppers – before you’re expected to deal with members of the Great British public this morning.’
‘Thanks,’ Rosie said sincerely, trying and failing to resist having one last look at the picture of James and Dylan.
She swiped to unlock her phone, only to see a ‘sorry, that content no longer exists’ message in place of the offending image. Someone had untagged or deleted it within two minutes of it going online. Rosie felt sure she knew why.
Later that day, Rosie made her way upstairs to the first floor of Cover 4 U’s two-storey building. She’d been allotted an afternoon slot for her talk with Martin, which she’d accepted in lieu of having any reasonable excuse to avoid it.
The decor up here was no plusher than at ground level, but instead of a series of open-plan workspaces, it boasted several meeting rooms and a clutch of tiny offices. These belonged to team leaders and high-level administrative staff, with one set aside for the firm’s rarely seen managing director.
One of the doors bore a shiny nameplate with ‘Martin Bell’ written on it. Resisting the reflexive eye roll this inspired – Martin had surely bought and attached the thing himself, since none of the other offices had them – Rosie knocked and waited.
A moment later, his voice reached her from inside. ‘Enter.’
She shook her head in distaste, twisted the doorknob and went in.