Writing Our Song (7 page)

It didn’t work out to a regular full time job, but it cracked thirty hours a week and there would probably be opportunities for more here and there.  It saved them the hassle of interviewing people and training a new person, which offset my own shortcomings.

My increased hours started in two weeks time, which left me with not very long to sort out one of the most pressing issues.  I knew the rent on the house was far beyond what a single person’s part-time fast-food wage could pay, so I had to find somewhere to live.

If I let myself think about it too much I knew it would hurt to leave behind the only home I had ever known but there was no time for thinking about anything but what I needed to survive.  The way my mom had extinguished my hope had at least left me with that gift.  I felt cold and calculating, which was exactly what I needed to get through this latest crisis.

Over the next few days I used the internet as much as possible at lunchtime, requesting viewings of various apartments starting from the weekend.  Sadly, there wasn’t a lot in my price range, so I didn’t have anywhere near as many options as I would have liked.

Even sadder still was when I went to view them and the landlords confirmed how old I was, nobody would let me sign up.  My two weeks were almost over, my hours would be increasing at the diner soon and I didn’t have much time left before the rent ran out at the house, when I met with a landlady who seemed to take pity on me.

She wouldn’t let me have the apartment I’d applied for online but said she had something I could have ‘under the table, cash only’ if I wanted.  It was truly awful, dirty, dingy, small and in disrepair.  I looked around without much enthusiasm but with bucket-loads of resignation.

The landlady told me, with what I thought was highly misplaced cheerfulness, that she had once seen a cockroach here that could carry away an infant, as if that was some kind of selling point for the apartment.  On the bright side it was even cheaper than anything I had been able to find online, so I accepted it on the condition that she changed and upgraded the locks on the front door.

I didn’t know exactly what to do with the furniture at the house.  I hated to leave anything behind, but I simply didn’t have enough room for it all.  I ended up bringing everything that could be put into boxes, the couch (stain still on the underside of the cushion), my bed, the fridge, the TV and the coffee table.

I didn’t know whether my mom had expected me to take everything or nothing and it didn’t really matter to me.  Under the circumstances there was no way she’d have a legal leg to stand on if she came after me for theft, and my name was obviously nowhere on the lease so if the landlord was upset about so many things being left behind it was not my problem.

When the movers had taken away everything I asked them to, I did one last sweep of every room to make sure I hadn’t left behind anything I needed.  It was rough, everywhere I went I saw the ghosts of happier times, but I forced myself through as quickly as possible before leaving my keys just inside the front door and walking out.  It was official, I had a place to live but I didn’t have a home anymore.

My things were being delivered the next day, so I caught a bus and went to visit my dad before going to my new apartment.  The cemetery was as abandoned as ever, silent except for the swishing of wind through the trees.

By this time, my dad’s grave was long-covered in grass and indistinguishable from those all around it except the headstone still looked relatively new.  I sat down and leaned my head against the smooth surface and sighed, hardly knowing where to start.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited in a couple of weeks, I had to find somewhere else to live.”

The stone was so hard, I brought my hand up and then rested my forehead on that instead before continuing.

“I… I know you loved her, Dad, so did I.  But she’s gone.  As gone as you are but in a different way.  It’s just me now.  I don’t even know how to tell you what she did but I promise you, I
promise
, I’ll never be like her.”

I told him about leaving school, my job, and my new apartment before I left, catching a bus that took a long time to get to my stop due to the rush hour traffic.  When I arrived there I realized I should have stayed in the house for one more night because now I’d be sleeping on the floor.

When it was fully dark and I tried to get myself to sleep, I tried to think about what the future held for me and all I could come up with was a big blank.  All I could see was going to work, coming back to this apartment and then doing the same again.

Part of me wanted to curl up and die, like I had brought all this upon myself and deserved it.  Another part, an angry one, yelled back
No!
and chastised me for thinking it.  Maybe my mom was right, maybe I was a selfish bitch, but I was still just a kid, dammit, and I did
not
deserve this.

Although I still couldn’t envision it, I vowed that I would show them all.  All alone?  Fine.  I would fight though this all by myself and try to have as normal a life as I could.  I didn’t need anybody, the only one I could rely on was myself.

I would work hard, I would get a better job, and I would get out of this crap-hole apartment somehow.  I might even date, but I would never let anybody take away my independence, take any credit for my continued survival.  I would to it all myself.

Most of all, I would never let anybody past that wall, never let them near that vial of poison inside me.  It was just too dangerous.

Chapter 7

2 years later…

“I’m afraid I can’t, Mr. Northropp, it’s company policy,” I said into my headset.

“Poor customer service is company policy?  Do you know how much I spend with you?”

His account information was displayed on the screen in front of me and the truth of the matter was he didn’t spend all that much with us.  If we accepted the goods back that he was trying to return we wouldn’t see a profit off his account for years.  Why was it that the people who spent the most were the easiest to get along with but the small accounts had egos that made each phone call a painful one?

“Yes sir, you’re a valued customer.  The policy I’m referring to is where we can’t accept back goods that have been opened, barring defects of course.  Once they’re opened they can’t be resold as new and there are warranty issues.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know if it can do the job without opening it?”

“The spec sheet I sent you details the limitations of that product range, and I never told you otherwise.”

“Don’t take that tone with me.  Actually, put Scott on, I’m done talking with you.”

“Sir, he’ll just tell you the same thing.  It’s company policy.”

“Just do it,” Alistair Northropp replied.

“One moment please.”

I sighed and pressed the hold button, quietly fuming before pressing the extension for Scott, the Account Manager I worked under at Bloxhamtech.  From the other side of the cubical wall in front of me I heard his phone ringing.

“Alistair Northropp from Scarstain Industries,” I called over the wall.

“What’s it about?” Scott called back.

“He’s pissed that he can’t return his order because he’s opened it.  Look up order five-four-six-eight-six-one.”

“Shouldn’t you be handling that?”

“He’s not listening to me and wanted to speak to you.”

From over the wall I heard a long-suffering sigh and then his phone stopped ringing.  Now through my headset as well as in my other ear I heard Scott tell me to put him through, which I did.

“Alistair!  Scott here, how’s things?”

I took my headset off and placed it on my desk next to my keyboard and mouse before rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, leaning back in my chair and letting out a puff of air.  This was one of those catch twenty two situations for somebody in a ‘Sales Support Executive’ role like me.

“Mmmhmmm,” said Scott to the irate customer.

We were expected to be the enforcers of company policy and had no authority to make judgment calls on whether the rules should be stretched for a particular customer.  The frustrating part about it was that I knew to a reasonably high degree of certainty that Scott, or our Sales Manager, would cave in.

“Yes, no she shouldn’t have said that,” said Scott.

And so it began.  I sighed again.  I knew from previous experience that I’d chosen the lesser of two evils for myself.  I would get thrown under the bus no matter what, but at least this way I hadn’t told a customer he could return goods.  Down that path was a sure-fire way to have my salary docked.

“No, you’re absolutely right Alistair.  Pack them back up as best you can and I’ll get back in touch with collection details.  Hmmm?  Oh yeah, I know.  It’s hard to get good help these days.  I’ll have a word with her.”

I’d been working at Bloxhamtech for over a year now but I hadn’t been a Sales Support Executive for very long.  I had started as part of the cleaning staff and after I’d been around for a while I had pestered the human resources department to let me have a shot in the sales team and eventually they had.

Thus far it had been tedious work but my foot was in the door.  If I worked hard and stuck with it then I could progress to being a full Account Manager, and then later maybe manage my own team of Account Managers as a Sales Manager.

Since moving on from Eddie’s Diner and being a cleaner, I’d been able to use the increase in salary to move out of the pest-riddled apartment I’d lived in for over a year and into somewhere a bit nicer.  It was still firmly at the low-end of the accommodation spectrum but I hadn’t seen a single cockroach yet and I was pleased about that, to say the least.

“Bye,” Scott said and I heard the click of his handset going back down on the cradle before he stood up and peered over the wall at me.  “You shouldn’t have said that to Mr. Northropp, Beatrice.”

I pulled a piece of paper that had been thumb-tacked to my cubical wall off and turned it around to show him.  The heading, in bold and highlighted, said ‘Returns Policy’ and had been handed out by Rod Stevens himself, part of Bloxhamtech’s upper echelons of management.

“Why did Mr. Stevens make such a point of this?” I asked.  “Is the policy right, or isn’t it?”

“Look, there’s more to it than that.  That account has been with us for a long time, you need to take into account any mitigating factors.  I don’t have time for this, just don’t do it again, OK?”

“OK.”

Yeah right,
I thought.  I’d do it again in a heartbeat because if I had accepted those goods back I knew it would have been even worse.  Just then all the Sales Managers came out of a meeting and rushed back to their desks, talking to their teams urgently.

“They’re here,” said Antoine, our very own middle-manager.

We’d been warned about this.  Every so often Bloxhamtech had visitors that upper management considered to be important for whatever reason.  Whether they were potential customers, essential suppliers, local or central government officials, or anything else, we were rarely told.

The only thing we were directed to do was make sure we were on the phones when they walked through the office, we had to make sure the whole place was ‘buzzing’ and we looked as busy as possible.  I ran my finger down my list of scheduled calls for the day and found the position I had been at before I had been interrupted by Alistair Northropp.

I was a couple of minutes into a phone call to tell a customer about our latest promotions when a group of suits walked through the sales floor, past the cube farm, on their way to the boardroom.  I resisted the urge to look up as usual, although it was stronger than previous occasions for some reason.

After they were out of sight it was business as usual.  I had a lot of phone calls to make even without the added pressure of ‘looking busy’ so I kept my head down and worked through my list until my thirst demanded I fill up my water bottle, which I kept on my desk and which had been empty for at least an hour.

Taking my headset off once more and placing it next to my mouse, I grabbed my water bottle and headed for the staff lunchroom area, which was where the water cooler was.  I was absent-mindedly watching the bubbles gurgle to the surface of the water cooler and listening to the near-constant drone of the photocopier from the adjacent copy-room when somebody walked in.

I glanced up and then straight back down again when I saw it was Rod Stevens, Chief Process Officer for Bloxhamtech.  He was a rude and sexist man with a notoriously short temper, the last thing I wanted to do was make eye contact, if I had a choice.

“You,” he said.

“Yes sir?”

“I need you to make some coffee and bring it to the boardroom.  Six cups, keep the sugar and milk separate.”

“Oh… uh… I’m not part of the reception team, isn’t that their…”

“Seems like you should just do what you’re told,” he said and walked out.

I clenched my teeth and pursed my lips, clamping down on a growl of frustration that might have carried out to him.  I cursed my bad luck to have been caught in the kitchen at just that moment and began boiling some water and putting cups on to a tray.

While the kettle boiled I muttered about Rod Stevens under my breath, mostly about his ridiculous moustache.  It was huge, I bet he could grab a fistful on either side and still have tufts poking out the ends of his hands.

Looking the way he did it was hard to take him seriously sometimes but I’d seen his fury unleashed on another poor soul on the sales floor.  When he shouted and his face started going red, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Yosemite Sam.  Cartoonish or not, his temper was real enough, and his position in the company was too.  Best to not rock the boat.

Once the cups were full I took a deep breath through my nose.  I’d always enjoyed the smell of coffee and even though I’d not liked it so much in the past, I was thinking of giving it another shot one day.  I put the little container of sugar on the tray, poured some milk into the little jug and picked the whole thing up.

Of course today would be the day I chose to wear my high-ish-heels.  I carefully placed each foot down, my knees slightly bent as I tried to cushion the impact of every step on the tray of coffee.  I must have looked like an idiot, but by the time I stood outside the door to the boardroom, I was an idiot that had not spilled a drop.

Who knew that serving coffee was so fraught with trials?  I vowed to go to the receptionists and give them all high-fives when this was all over.  My next problem presented itself in the form of the shiny metal handle of the boardroom door.

The door was hinged to swing into the boardroom but it was closed.  I tried to crouch down and reach out with two fingers, still keeping a firm grip on the tray, but the handle was round and I couldn’t get a hold of it enough to turn the damn thing.

I dared not knock with my elbow for fear of upsetting the tray, and a knock with the foot would probably either end up being too soft or too hard, or could even make me lose my balance.  The image of Rod Stevens opening the door to see me in a crumpled heap on the ground in the middle of a steaming coffee stain was enough to make me shake my head to dismiss the idea.

Thankfully I managed to catch the eye of somebody walking past and motioned them over.

“Hey, could you help me out?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Could you please knock on the door and then open it so I can get through?”

“No problem.”

Reaching out the guy gave three brisk knocks on the door, twisted the handle, and gave it a shove that sent it coasting gently open on its hinges.  I silently mouthed my thanks and stepped through as he walked off.

I’d never been in the boardroom before, never had any reason to be, but it was about what I expected.  If anything, it was a lot simpler and less luxurious than I had anticipated.

I had this picture in my mind about lavish leather seats that would actually be comfortable to sit on, unlike the ones the rest of us had on the sales floor, expensive furnishings, gadgets and maybe even a mini-bar or something.  In reality it was little more than a room with a large oval table surrounded by chairs, a projector sitting on one of two desks pointing at a projector screen, and a decent view out of the window.

The people sitting around the table, on the other hand, now they were exactly what I expected.  Expensive suits, airs of superiority, people who always get what they want.  I bet they all drove fast cars and thought the rest of us were little more than speed-bumps.

On one side of the table was John Bloxham, the founder and CEO of Bloxhamtech.  I’d never met or spoken to him, but hearing about how the company started was all part of the induction process, so I was familiar with what he looked like.  To his right were two men, one of them being Rod Stevens, and to his left were a man and a woman.

The other side of the table, facing towards the windows, was a man all by himself, younger than anybody flanking John Bloxham.  For a moment, before the sun went behind a cloud, his face was lit up by light reflected off some other building and he glanced in my direction before his eyes flicked back to the piece of paper in front of him, then he did a double-take and looked back to me as I began to make my way across the room.

I had no idea if the lone guy was there for a job interview or what.  If that was the case, his age seemed to be somewhat at odds with the panel of people interviewing him and the kinds of positions that would warrant such high-level involvement.

On second thought, casting my eyes over him as he pushed his chair back from the table a little bit and turned his body slightly towards me, he was dressed in an expensive enough suit, with a pricey looking watch on his wrist, he didn’t look like he needed a job.

The idea that he was looking for employment was also completely at odds with the fact that he had been rushed through the sales floor like a dignitary on his way to the boardroom earlier.  I raised my eyes back to his face and saw that, while the others in the room had returned their attention to the document they had obviously been discussing, the young man was looking at me as if everything else in the world had disappeared.

Aside from his age and the fact that he didn’t seem to be interested in reading what was on the table in front of him, he fit right in with the wealthy people sitting opposed to him.  He was a part of their world.  It was a shame, in a way.  If it wasn’t for that, he would actually have been quite cute.

As I edged closer with my steaming tray of caffeine his left foot slid away from the table a bit, as if he was going to stand up.  After a split-second, he seemed to think better of the idea and pulled his foot in again, never taking his eyes from me.  My brow furrowed slightly at the strange attention he was giving me.