The Accidental Mother (11 page)

“Is now a good time to tell you I lied about being gay?” Cal said. Sophie ignored him, but Lisa’s cheeks burned brightly as she pulled the stained T-shirt over her head. Perhaps she had a secret crush on Cal too. Otherwise he’d be the only man on the planet on whom she had not focused her attention at one time or another.

Buttoning Lisa’s slightly too tight shirt up, Sophie untied her hair, combed her fingers through it, and twisted it into a tightly knotted bun at the back of her head before securing it with a pen. Cal handed her her emergency mascara, which she applied somewhat haphazardly in the ghostly reflection of the office window. She took out of her jeans pocket the remnants of one of her lip glosses that she had just about managed to salvage from Izzy and rubbed a little onto her lips.

“Right,” she said, pulling the shirt down over the top of her jeans. “How do I look?”

“You look like a slightly pudgy Amazon preparing for battle,” Cal said, giving her the thumbs-up.

Sophie gritted her teeth and headed for the door. “Right,” she said. “I’m going to sort this whole mess out. All you two have to do is keep the kids under control and out of Gillian’s sight. Do you think you can you do that?” she asked them.

“Of course we can,” said Lisa, smiling down at the busily drawing girls. “Easy-peasy.”

Somehow, Sophie did not feel reassured.

As Sophie opened Eve’s office door, she was confronted with her colleague’s frankly bony arse. Eve was in the midst of committing two cardinal sins. Not only had she opened her office window, thus threatening to send the carefully controlled climate into total disarray, but she was hanging out of it smoking. Sophie watched Eve for a moment kneeling on the seat of her chair, her elbow resting on its back, trying her best to send the smoke out of the window but failing as a passing gust of window blew every puff back in her face. Of course, Sophie could just have pushed her out the window and claimed it was an accident, solving all of her problems in one fell swoop. But it had been almost twenty-four hours since her last cigarette, and Eve was holding her packet in one hand. At that moment, Sophie could have happily murdered Eve, but she just couldn’t bear to let the cigarettes suffer too. She contented herself with slamming the door behind her and watching Eve jump before pulling herself in through the window, flicking her cigarette onto the street below as she slid back into her chair, her face a picture of innocence.

“Sophie!” she said, reaching behind her to pull the window shut. “What a nice surprise.”

“You’re not supposed to do that,” Sophie said, nodding at the door and sounding a lot more like a school prefect than she wanted to.

“You’re not supposed to do
that,
” Eve said breezily, looking Sophie up and down. “Never wear a shirt that gapes in the bra area, Sophie. I thought you knew better.”

Sophie knew Eve’s tactic better than anyone, but she was not going to be thrown. She sat down with a thud, and one of the buttons pinged off Lisa’s shirt. Sophie did her best to ignore it. “What are you playing at, Eve?” she asked bluntly.

Eve shrugged. “How do your mean?” she said, casually.

“What are you doing in my office, taking my Rolodex, my leads book, and my client account info?”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Oh, that. You’ve raced all the way down here over that, have you?” she said, picking up a pen from her desk and swinging it by its tip. “Gillian asked me to keep on top of your stuff. So I did. What’s the problem?” Eve looked genuinely mystified.

Sophie bristled, her inner fury stoked even more by the fact that she wasn’t exactly sure what the problem was herself. Cal had rung her, Lisa had cried, and before she knew it she was charging down here like fury. Perhaps there
had
been a slight overreaction.

“Lisa is handling everything,” Sophie said, carefully moderating her accusatory tone. “I’ll be back in the office soon enough. Just give me back my stuff, okay? You don’t need it.”

Eve sighed and dropped her chin. “Look, Sophie, really I’m quite disappointed in you. I thought we were supposed to be on the same team. I don’t know what you think I was up to, but—”

At that moment Eve’s assistant walked in with a pile of photocopying and Sophie’s Rolodex. “I’ve photocopied this, like you said. I’m just about to do the book now, okay?” she said, catching sight of Sophie. “Oh, hi, Sophie. I didn’t know you were back in today. Enjoyed your holiday?” Eve gave the poor girl a look sufficiently evil enough to send her scuttling out of the room without waiting for a reply. She was probably off to pick up her severance papers at that very moment.

“I knew it!” Sophie exclaimed, scooping the pile of photocopying off Eve’s desk and plonking her Rolodex on top of it. “You’re poaching my contacts, my accounts, and my prospective clients.” She stared at Eve, who still appeared unfazed, even when caught in the act. “Come on, Eve, don’t jerk me around. I know you too well to buy this butter-wouldn’t-melt act. Gillian
might
have asked you to check up on Lisa, but she certainly didn’t ask you to go through my drawers and do this!” Sophie brandished the pile of photocopying as Exhibit A.

“Okay, Miss Marple,” Eve said, holding her palms out. “I was. It’s a fair accusation.” Eve smirked like a schoolgirl who’d just got caught snogging behind the bike shed.

Sophie was taken aback. She hadn’t expected such an easy confession. “Well…right,” Sophie said. She found the wind suddenly taken out of her sails. “Just don’t do it again, okay?” As she turned to the door, she realized that this was exactly what Eve wanted her to do. To leave without making a fuss. She sat down again, and still clutching the papers to her chest, she pulled the chair closer. Eve’s face was perfectly devoid of expression.

“It’s pretty shit behavior, isn’t it? To try to get one over on me when I’m not here to do anything about it?”

Eve raised her eyebrows and twiddled her pen. “The best time to do it, I’d’ve thought,” she said glibly, suddenly switching on her death’s-head smile. “Come on, Sophie—you’d have done the same thing.”

“Actually,” Sophie said with conviction, “I wouldn’t have. Let’s cut the crap here, okay? We both know that if…when Gillian steps back from the office, we want her job. We both know that only one of us is going to get it. We both know that the other one would rather slit her wrists and wear flip-flops than endure the ignominy of staying here and reporting to the other one. I understand that, I accept it. I don’t have a problem with competition, as long as it’s a fair competition. And shafting me while I’m looking after my dead friend’s kids—It’s not fair, Eve. It’s evil. Seriously evil.” Sophie paused for effect. “Gillian would be horrified,” she said with the hint of a threat.

“Oh, yes, the dead friend’s kids,” Eve said bitterly. “How very convenient.”

Sophie opened her mouth and then closed it again. Where was the usual poor little mites, oh, how terrible routine that she had become used to? “I beg you pardon?” she said.

“Well, it’s all very well going on about it being a fair competition and all that bullshit. But it’s
not
fair, is it? It hasn’t been fair since you waltzed off to do your Mother Teresa bit. Gillian
loves
you right now! She goes on nonstop about how selfless you are and how rare it is to have the kind of guts it takes to rise to this kind of challenge and how you must have been such a good friend for wosshername, thingy to trust you with her most precious legacy, blah fucking blah. How is that fair? Have I got a dead friend with fatherless kids? No. Therefore, it’s not fair.” Eve lifted her chin slightly. “I was just leveling the playing field,” she finished.

“I didn’t ask for this!” Sophie exclaimed, gesturing at the door as if all of her problems were piled up high behind it. “Do you think I’m happy that my best friend is dead?”

“Don’t seem too depressed by it, frankly,” Eve said.

“Trust me, I’m depressed!” Sophie yelled at her. “I’m sorry if Gillian thinks what I’m doing is the right thing, but do you honestly believe at the end of day that Gillian is going to give me a job over you because of a bit of babysitting?” Oh, God, I hope so, Sophie thought to herself. “She’s a tough businesswoman, Eve. She’ll give it to the person who’s best at her job, and being out of the office is dragging me down enough without you sabotaging me, okay?”

Eve leaned across the desk so that the two women were just a few inches apart. “Okay!” she said. “But just ask yourself one question, Sophie. Ask yourself why do you really want this promotion?”

Sophie shook her head. “Why does everybody keep asking me why?” she protested. “Why this! Why that! No one ever asks
you
why.”

“Because we all know that you’ve been at McCarthy Hughes since puberty, that you’ve worked you way up the ladder, paid your dues in blood, sweat, and tears et cetera. But seriously, why are you here, why do you
really
want this job, why does it mean so very much to you? Are you absolutely sure that you’re not sitting here in my office as a senior accounts manager at McCarthy Hughes by mistake? What if the job center had sent you to a fashion magazine or, or a pet shop?”

Sophie sat back in her chair abruptly. It was a surprisingly tricky question to answer off the top of her head.

Seeing her expression, Eve laughed. “You didn’t choose this career, Sophie,” she said. “It chose you, and never once in the last ten years have you stopped to think about whether or not it makes you truly happy. You have no idea why you want this promotion other than it’s there. It’s your Everest.”

“That’s not true,” Sophie said promptly. “Obviously I want it because this is my career,” she said. “Because this is what I’ve been working for for the best part of my life.”

“Face it, Sophie—you’re so stuck in a rut you can’t see past it. But ask yourself, What are you going to do when you’ve got Gillian’s job? Where are you going to go then? What will you have left to work toward, huh? What happened to your childhood dreams?”

Sophie rolled her eyes and thought of Jason Donovan. “He got bald and developed a twitch—that’s what happened to my dreams,” she said. “Come on, Eve, get real, will you? This is me you’re talking to. I don’t fall for all your bullshit mind games.”

“Oh, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie—” Eve lamented. “You should follow your dreams before it’s too late, not joke about them to cover up your true despair,” she said, sincerity etched all over her face.

Sophie was unimpressed. “My reasons are good ones,” she said. “I put a lot of years into this business, and I want the rewards that I deserve. The same reasons as you, I’m sure.”

Eve stood up, and coming around the desk, she sat on its edge, crossing her legs so that one of her shoes dangled balanced on her toes, revealing a fleeting glimpse of a Dolce & Gabbana label.

Sophie seethed. She still had on her now rather the worse for wear River Island flats.

“Not at all,” Eve said. “I want this promotion because this is all I’ve ever dreamed about since I was a tiny girl,” She said, completely seriously.

“Bollocks,” Sophie replied, and not only because she genuinely doubted that Eve was ever a tiny girl; it seemed more likely she was hatched fully grown from some giant genetically modified egg.

“Well, maybe, but I’m here now, and it’s every man for herself, if you know what I mean.” Without explanation, Eve took a plastic bag out of her desk drawer, and standing on her chair, she reached up and secured it over the smoke alarm with a rubber band. Sitting back down, she chucked Sophie a much longed for cigarette, which Sophie had to force herself not to scrabble for. After lighting up, Eve paused for a tortuous moment before throwing Sophie her lighter too.

Sophie took her first drag happily, and in that moment of deep satisfaction, she considered Eve, who had tipped her head back and was blowing smoke rings ceilingward.

After a few more puffs, Eve looked Sophie in the eye and sighed. “I’m sorry, really,” she said. “Okay?”

Sophie watched Eve through the haze of smoke. “I doubt it,” she said mildly. “But just don’t think I’m a pushover, okay?”

Eve considered. “Okay,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “You know it’s nothing personal, don’t you? I just get carried away a bit with the whole competition thing. I suppose I’d be quite annoyed if I had to sack you one day. Because, you know, you make me look really good.”

Sophie examined her. It was very hard to tell when Eve was joking, largely because with Eve there was a very blurred line between humor and general savagery. “Well, you’re on your own for the foreseeable future at least,” Sophie said, instantly regretting letting that piece of information slip. “God only knows when I’ll spend any decent time in the office again.”

“I thought they were going back next week,” Eve said with interest. “If I knew you were going to be out longer, I’d have waited for a decent period before raiding your office.”

Sophie pursed her lips. Before she could say anything else, Eve’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID unit.

“Gillian,” she told Sophie, picking it up while simultaneously opening the window behind her.

“Hi, Gillian, what can I do for you?” she said, hooking the receiver under her ear and attempting to wave the smoke out of the window as she spoke, as if Gillian would be able to smell her cigarette down the phone line. “Yep, yep, okay, I’ll tell her. Yep, right now.”