A Silver Lining (2 page)

‘Yes, but I don’t think you could possibly have anything to say can fit the category,’ the secretary said, still in the same faux pleasant voice. ‘Have a good day now.’

Dial tone. Mollie looked at the receiver in disbelief. She couldn’t wait until she had enough money to hire her own secretary, then she could get her to ring up that wench and hang up on
her.

But that wouldn’t help her right now. And she’d never earn enough to hire a secretary if she didn’t pay off her debts first. That meant finding a way out of this ridiculous situation. She couldn’t face the thought of going back into the office and telling her guys that they still had nothing. She walked over to the water cooler, filling the paper cup with water. Water was simply not enough to attempt to deal with this craziness. Put vodka in the cooler and then they might be able to talk.

‘Hey,’ a voice said behind her.

Mollie froze. She didn’t need to look around to see who it was. The rich timbre of his voice lifted downy hairs across the nape of her neck just like they’d always used to do when they’d been together. In bed. She tried to push the image to the back of her mind. It wouldn’t serve any purpose to dwell on it now. It was history.

‘Hey,’ she said, taking a sip of water and doing her best to seem calm and unflustered. ‘So you’ve moved to Empressario.’ As if that wasn’t completely obvious.

He didn’t seem perturbed by the question. ‘Yeah, I started working here last year.’

‘How are you finding it?’ she asked, trying to ignore how the pale lilac tie picked up the shades of indigo in his otherwise blue eyes. She’d always loved his eyes.

‘It’s ok,’ he said. ‘My direct boss is an idiot, but…’

She got it straight away. ‘You’re working on Calvin’s team?’ Maybe there was such a thing as karma after all.

His mouth quirked up at the corners. ‘The one and only.’

‘He’s insane, right?’

‘Oh, undoubtedly.’

‘So, with all that being equal, if we give him something that’s a little closer to Tim’s brief, what are the chances that he’ll just accept it.’

The smile vanished from James’ face. ‘Honestly?’

‘Honestly.’

‘He will go seven shades of mental,’ said James. ‘Calvin likes to control everything he’s involved with. He once humiliated a caterer, called them a philistine at this business breakfast thing because he used French cheese instead of Danish cheese.’

‘Right,’ said Mollie, running an agitated hand through her hair. ‘I should have guessed.’

‘Calvin reports to Tim,’ James explained, shoving his hands in his pockets. She tried not to notice how the muscles bunched as his forearms flexed. ‘Tim, being relatively sane, keeps most of his insane ideas under control. This irritates the hell out of Calvin, he’s not a man who likes to take no for an answer. I’m guessing he’s decided to use this project to showcase his creative vision, and capitalising on the fact that Tim is away. If it works out, he’ll take all the credit for it.’

‘And if it’s not a success?’ asked Mollie. ‘If everyone realises that it’s mental?’

James gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘Then you guys take the fall.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Mollie. ‘Just brilliant.’ Here she was hoping to use this contract as a launch pad for getting other big name clients, and the man in charge was determined to ensure it was an utter PR disaster. What was that she’d been saying about vodka?

The change that came over her face must have been evident, because James’ jocular tone disappeared, and his voice showed real concern. ‘Mollie? Are you ok?’

There it was again. The way he said her name evoked so many memories, memories that were better left dead and buried.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, taking a step away from him. Her day was getting complicated enough; she didn’t need all her issues with her ex coming back into the mix. ‘Just a bad day at the office.’

‘A bad day at my office,’ said James. ‘I’m sorry that I can’t be more helpful.’

‘It’s ok,’ said Mollie. ‘I’ll work something out.’ She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. James looked at her like he was going to say something, but obviously thought the better of it.

‘Well it was nice catching up with you, but I need to get back to work,’ said James.

‘Sure,’ said Mollie, annoyed that he was the one who had broken their conversation off first. She wanted him to know just how over him she was, and she wanted him to know that now.

‘I’d better be getting back too,’ she admitted. ‘I have lots of important stuff to do.’ Lots of important stuff to do? She cringed inwardly. She sounded like a child playing dress up at being a competent business woman. Come to think of it, that’s how she pretty much thought of herself all the time.

‘I’m sure you do,’ said James giving her an easy smile. She got the impression that he was laughing at her. She swivelled on her heel and stalked down the corridor, trying to project as much attitude as she could. I’m working it, she said to herself, feeling James’ eyes on her as she walked. She got a couple of admiring glances as she stalked down the hall. That would have been great if she hadn’t caught her heel in the edge of the carpet. She stumbled, struggling to right herself in her ridiculously high heels, and barrelled straight into a man coming the other way with a cardboard tray of Starbucks Coffee. The coffee slopped all over his front, causing him to howl in anguish and pain. Every Empressario employee on the open plan fourth floor swivelled and peered over the office dividers to find out what was happening.

‘Are you crazy?!’ screeched the man, at her. ‘I’m scalded!’ He dumped the empty containers into her open arms, and strode off into the bathroom, leaving her open mouthed, crimson faced, and with coffee dripping onto her beautiful cream Karen Millen shoes. Not that it made much difference; she was never going to wear them again after their treachery. She turned around in slow motion, hoping that James might have gone back to his desk, but the gods were not smiling on her today. He was standing there with his arms crossed across his chest, a smirk playing around those lips that she’d used to love to kiss.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is certainly one way to make an impression.’

Later that day she was in the lobby with her team, getting preliminary shots of the Empressario logo behind the reception desk. It was part of setting the scene for the piece, and it was amazing how time consuming these kinds of shots were. She tried to keep her shoes out of view, but there was no point really. Some hotshot had managed to get the aftermath on his camera phone, and it had gone around the building like wildfire. Huh. It was one of the most prestigious companies in the land, yet their staff still acted like a bunch of overgrown school kids.

Calvin walked into the lobby, flanked by Victoria, his personal assistant who had the patience of a saint in Mollie’s opinion. Victoria looked at the mess she was in, but managed not to smirk. Victoria didn’t have much of a sense of humour, which made it doubly miraculous that she managed to work with someone like him. He walked across the hall, his expensive Italian shoes clicking elegantly off the marble floor. He walked straight across the shot, causing Kim to mutter an expletive under her breath.

‘Where do you want me?’ Calvin asked Mollie.

‘I’m sorry?’ she asked. She had handed him a treatment for the video around an hour ago. Her team had agreed that a professional voice over would suffice, as well as a couple of interviews with last year’s intake and some of the more senior members of staff, just for sound bites. They were scheduled to interview Calvin the next day, so she had no idea why he was here.

‘Where do you want me?’ he repeated. ‘For the introduction.’

‘If you look at our treatment you’ll see that we don’t actually need you until tomorrow,’ said Mollie politely.

Calvin waved her words away as if they were wind. ‘I’ve looked at it and I still think it needs something. Some punch. Some pizzazz. So I thought I’d come down and help you all out.’

This was a nightmare, said Mollie. She’d love to wake up in her bed and discover that it had all been a horrible dream and she wasn’t in fact working with a madman.

‘Look, I know you’re a busy man. While we’d love to make use of your expertise, we know we can’t monopolise you,’ she said as genuinely as she could manage. ‘You have much more important stuff to do. Why don’t you just give us a few pointers and leave us to it?’

‘Mollie, you’re a sweetheart to think of it,’ said Calvin. ‘But there’s no need to be shy about asking for a little help when it’s needed. In fact, being able to ask for help is one of the things we look for from new employees!’

‘But,’ said Mollie desperately, ‘Surely you’re too busy.’

‘Here’s the thing, kid,’ he began. Again Mollie got the feeling that he had been overdosing on Turner’s Classic Movies. ‘There’s this fallacy that when you’ve climbed to the top of the greasy pole you’re somehow above the little people. I like
my
little people to know that they’re just as important to me as the clever guys. Once you start neglecting the little people in your corporation, the little jobs, then everything falls apart. Do you get me?’

She sighed. There was no way that she was going to be able to cut him off now he was in full flow.

‘My father was the most famed bullock farmer in west Monaghan,’ he began, his eyes misted up as he focused on a fixed point in the middle distance. ‘A lot of people thought that it was down to luck, or that he’d used his family connections to get good animals. And yeah, that was part of it. But he also made a point of getting to know everyone. From the people who shovelled the manure to the veterinarians to the men who made up the feed.

There was certainly a smell of shit anyway.

Mollie wasn’t exactly sure which of these Calvin saw her as.

‘When Bart the bull won the rosette for best stud animal, it was because my father never underestimated the fact that he wasn’t just a bullock farmer, he was a team leader.’

What precisely this had to do with shooting a publicity video Mollie had no idea. She was trying to work out a way out of this situation when she saw a familiar face at the back of the melee. Fuck.

Not only was she having the worst day possible, and being lectured on bovine behaviour as applied to business practice from a lunatic, but James was witnessing the entire thing.

James had been her junior momentarily when they’d started off at a small media business years ago. He’d been promoted quickly, and had it hadn’t taken long before their relationship had developed from a purely business one to something more. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one to see the potential in him. Glenda was the boss’ daughter, and her main responsibility seemed to be sitting in on meetings in her immaculately cut Italian suits and planning company parties. She flirted with all men, but soon started to single him out as her target. At first Mollie hadn’t minded. Her over the top attempts to flirt with him had seemed more laughable than anything else. But over time it got embarrassing. James had been afraid to rebuff Glenda too much – he was an ambitious young man and angering the boss’s only daughter was not the way to advance his career. Mollie understood this, but Glenda’s attempts at flirting got more blatant. Mollie became the laughing stock of the office, the whole thing made her look foolish. After a particularly fraught summer barbecue Mollie had gotten drunk on a few too many dirty martinis and handed in her notice, talking up the new company she was setting up with confidence born of strong liquor and a dinner of cocktail sausages on sticks. She’d gone home, eaten a family size bag of Doritos, changed her number and never looked back. Well, not much.

And now she was here. She wasn’t sure what part hurt the most, seeing his face and remembering what they’d had or the fact that he was witnessing this omnishambles. She’d left her previous job on a high, blithely convincing anyone who wanted to listen (and many who didn’t) that a bright new future lay before her. And here he was now, witnessing the shambolic mess that was her professional life. She was just glad that he didn’t know about the financial mess she was also in. That would be truly humiliating.

Still, she was sure she could see something of a smirk around his lips that she didn’t like. She was in charge of this show – such as it was – it was time she started to look like it.

‘Calvin, we’ve actually decided that as Tim’s away, the best thing is to mesh your two visions together,’ said Mollie. ‘We think having a ‘presenter’, as such, isn’t the best way to go. We’d like to interview you tomorrow, for some talking head pieces.’

There was silence in the foyer. Even the receptionist had stopped to look at what was happening. Mollie suddenly felt a dart of trepidation. Maybe arguing with a man who could bully bulls into submission wasn’t the greatest idea in the world.

Calvin’s eyes were hard as ice. He might be a buffoon of the highest order but he was also a senior person in this company. He wasn’t to be messed with. She could see Greg shaking his head slowly behind Calvin’s back. She knew what he was thinking. If they didn’t complete this job, it didn’t matter about their reputation – they were sunk. The cash this would bring in would pay the rest of the crew and, if they couldn’t pay their crew, then they couldn’t provide a service. It would be game over, simple as that.

‘Maybe your way is best,’ she conceded reluctantly, pulling out her clipboard and biro. ‘What other ideas do you have?’

The beaming smile sprung back onto his face so quickly that it took Mollie by surprise. ‘You are going to love this!’

Greg set up the camera to get the intro to the scene. Mollie looked over the pages and pages of notes that she’d taken as the questionable genius that was Calvin had dictated his vision.

‘Are you ready for this?’ asked James behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She hadn’t heard him creeping up behind her.

‘You never know,’ she said, keeping her voice carefully measured. ‘He might be a natural in front of the camera, some people are.’

‘What, you’re hoping he’ll magically morph into a charismatic businessman straight from central casting?’ he scoffed.