The Intern
Though Anthony tried to calm me down for the rest of the night, I couldn’t rest. I paced up and down our little house for the whole weekend, not eating and chastising myself while Anthony followed me around with chocolate biscuits and a large glass of wine.
‘If only you hadn’t put the revenge idea in my head!’ I groaned.
‘Don’t blame me. You were the one who was convinced she was a thief.’
‘I know,’ I said, flopping onto the sofa and gabbing my hair at the temples. ‘I’m a terrible person.’
I’d gone and ruined Cassandra’s chances of landing a choice job and being able to get back on her feet again. I was a monster, if not that then a totally irrational human being. Who does that? I tried to console myself with the fact that I was acting cray-cray because of my hormones. Maybe they were still out of whack. Surely she’d forgive me.
The truth was she’d never forgive me and I doubted very much she’d accept my hormones as an excuse.
There was only one form of recourse and that would be my going to Launchester to put things right.
I’d calmed down by Sunday night and fell asleep going through my master plan to get Cassandra back in the running as a possible candidate for the Launchester Group.
I woke to find a note from Anthony saying he went in early and didn’t want to wake me. I looked at the time. Nearly eight. Damn it. I’d forgotten to set the alarm. Stage one of my master plan was to arrive early at Launchester before they’d had time to send out offer letters. I needed to retract my statement about Cassandra first. Damn it. But if I got a move on I could be there by about nine o’clock and hopefully in time to fix the damage – stage two of my master plan.
I got ready in record time, called a minicab and begged the driver to go as fast as he could. I remembered my Parisienne chauffeur, Nadia, and wished to goodness that this limp-footed minicab driver could muster an ounce of her Lewis Hamilton know-how. I would have been faster running to Launchester. This driver took no chances at all in the rush-hour traffic. He slowed down at every amber light and before he pulled off he’d shrug his shoulders and proclaim, ‘Here we go again,’ in this annoying sing-song voice.
“Just drive!” I shouted in my mind. I seriously wanted to hit him over the head with my bag and hijack the minicab.
When we arrived he proclaimed, ‘Here we are then.’ I suppressed a scream, paid him, and slammed the door. I ran to the Launchester building. He’d parked a good twenty metres away despite me having shouted, “Here! Stop here!” in his ear when the building was in sight. I burst through the glass double doors, which opened onto a vast reception area and paused to compose myself.
Stage two of my plan was the really tricky bit and the most daunting. It involved speaking to someone in Human Resources. I had rehearsed a few speeches in my head but all of them sounded forced and, quite frankly, more like the ravings of a madwoman. In the taxi I decided that as long as I could get to see someone, the words would come.
I looked at the glamorous receptionist across the foyer with her slick dark hair. She lifted her eyes to me over the raised counter in front of her reception desk as I hovered by the doors. A Perspex screen separated the receptionist from an office of people that couldn’t be seen, the name “Launchester” emblazoned in bold letters across the screen.
The receptionist beckoned me over with a smile on her perfectly made-up face and what looked like perfect teeth from where I stood.
‘Good morning,’ she said once I’d approached. Her voice was dark and sexy, like a voiceover for a chocolate advert. Or a sexy lingerie advert. Or a lingerie-clad woman eating chocolate in a sexy manner advert. Either way, her collected manner threw me.
‘Oh, hi, yes,’ I said. ‘Is it possible I could see someone from Human Resources? I spoke to a woman on Friday but I didn’t get her name.’
Miss Dark Chocolate simply put her elbow on the desk and plopped her chin onto the tiny fist she had formed.
‘Didn’t get her name?’ she said, almost suspiciously.
‘N-no,’ I stuttered, like an idiot.
She sighed and took her elbow off the desk. ‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘Not exactly, no. But if you could get one of them down here I could ex –’
Before I could finish the sentence someone called the name “Paula” from the other side of the Perspex screen. The receptionist raised a long finger with an equally long red fingernail attached.
‘If you don’t mind,’ she said with dark chocolate undertones. ‘I’ll be back with you in a moment.’
I nodded. I had no choice but to wait. And so I waited. I waited a few minutes and then I waited a few more. By which time I was becoming agitated. It was well past nine and someone from Human Resources might be typing up a letter of rejection to Cassandra for all I knew.
From the other side of the Perspex screen I could make out the elegant frame of Paula, the long-fingernailed receptionist with the chocolate-coated voice. She was not only not back with me after a moment, she was also laughing in a chocolaty way to someone behind the screen – and not about to return to the reception desk at all.
I went up onto my toes to look over the tall counter in front of her desk. I was searching for something like a list of employee names in the hope I could find one for someone in Human Resources. If I had a name I could blag a meeting with him or her.
The only items on an otherwise empty desk were three name badges. They were laid in a neat row. The names Tim Chambers, Adil Roopra, and Sian Banks was printed on each badge respectively and the word “Intern” was written beneath each name. Without a second thought, I grabbed Sian’s badge and headed for the lifts on the far side of the lobby. In the lift I pinned the badge to my coat. I had no idea which floor to take but reasoned that Human Resources would probably be on the top floor. If I was wrong I could work my way back down to ground floor until I found the woman I’d spoken to about Cassandra.
On the top floor, the offices all had glass walls and doors. I had to blend in, not look suspicious and as Sian Banks as I possibly could.
‘You came back then,’ someone said to me as I passed the water cooler.
‘I. Er, yes, I did.’
A tall, middle-aged man in a shirt and tie, with a round red face and hair that looked as if it belonged to a member of One Direction grabbed my hand and shook it.
‘Martin Coombes,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t here for your induction week but Trevor tells me the team you were with really put you all through the mill. But you interns haven’t met Trevor yet, I take it. You’ll love Trevor.’
By Trevor, he meant Trevor Launchester, chief executive officer who grew the PR company from scratch. He’d started off in his parents’ shed learning how to spin turntables by day and DJ-ing by night. He became a promoter of gigs and eventually a promoter of every conceivable live event going. He bought his first penthouse flat at age twenty-five, by which time he was the owner of a PR company the others either hated or tried to emulate.
‘Good old Trevor.’ I grinned happily, waving a fist and giving Martin a hearty wink like a pirate.
‘I thought he said you guys were out visiting the Surrey office this morning,’ Martin said, looking puzzled.
‘Did he? Oh, um, no. I mean that’s where the other two are. I needed to see someone in HR. Could you point me in the right direction?’
‘I could but then I’d have to shoot you.’ He blasted a loud, toothpaste-scented laugh into my face and turned red again. ‘But seriously, I’ll take you along there later. It might be a good idea if you come along to the MIM. You’ll be ahead of the other two, then, and you’ll meet the big man himself.’ He winked and pulled me by my elbow along the corridor. I scuttled after him pointing over my shoulder and jabbering on about Human Resources and my urgent need to find them.
‘You can go later,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll love this. Something to get your teeth into. I think MIM is ultra important. Human Resources can wait. Trust me.’
He was full of enthusiasm and had a strong grip. He walked me into a very large, glass-walled conference room in which an enormous oak wood table took pride of place. The chairs surrounding the table were plush and plentiful. I don’t know how many of them were tucked in underneath in a neat design at the table, like petals around the pistil of a flower. Each equidistant from each other and the same distance from the table. At regular intervals, in the centre of the table, there was a plate of cakes and biscuits with teapots and coffee jugs and mugs.
‘Sit down, Sian,’ Martin Coombes boomed. He pulled up a chair at one end and started pulling laminated sheets from a case. I smiled at him. His head was buried in his case as he rummaged so I made for the door, hoping I could leave the room before he asked where I was going. As I backed towards the door I very quickly found that I was reversing into a flow of people walking in.
‘Oh, hello,’ a young man with a full beard said to me, hand on my waist. ‘Aren’t you going the wrong way?’
I shook my head as he dodged around me, continuing the conversation he was having with another colleague. I glanced at Martin Coombes, who hadn’t noticed me trying to escape, and I tried to make a break for the door again. I soon found I was being greeted with a smile by each member of the stream of people entering the room. I was trapped, being forced back into the glass-walled room as their rhythm drove me further inside and far away from the door.
Suddenly the door shut and the stream of people, mostly seated now, all called out, ‘Morning, Trevor.’
Trevor, a tall, muscular man with dark brown skin and a short Afro looked at me. I hovered right next to a vacant seat. He nodded at it for me to sit down.
‘Sian?’ he said, looking extremely puzzled. I nodded. I could tell he was on the verge of saying, “But Sian, what big hair you have,” when Martin started the meeting.
I wondered how long it would go on for. I could just excuse myself, raise my hand and say I needed the toilet, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself. Trevor was already eyeing me suspiciously. If he hadn’t met the interns during induction week, he was bound to have seen them at the interview. Maybe he couldn’t quite remember what Sian looked like. He must have seen thousands of young hopefuls, I’d imagined. On the other hand he must be too important to have interviewed interns but he was still looking at me as if wondering how Sian could have changed so much.
Either way I had to wait it out. I’d make it to Human Resources eventually and hopefully before they’d sent a rejection letter to Cassandra.
Martin kept saying the word “mim” every two seconds and telling the enthralled group that they would get to the “mim” part just as soon as he’d made a few announcements. These announcements went on for ages. People were polite and listened carefully while helping themselves to tea and coffee and reaching across for a cake or biscuit.
I sat there, boiling away in my coat with my man bag still strapped across my body, not daring to move, shaking my head every time someone offered me a drink.
‘Okay,’ said Martin. ‘If you don’t mind, Trevor, I’ll ask Kadeem to start us off. I have a feeling this is going to be a lively Monday Ideas Mashup, especially since MPS PR was on the news last Friday and made the headlines in the Financial Times this weekend. Kick us off, Kadeem, and we’ll go around clockwise shall we?’
Damn it. They’d come around to me eventually. What was I going to say and why was this Monday Ideas meeting called a mashup? I had to get out of that room. I could pretend to faint but I wasn’t sure I could keep a straight face. Heart failure? What if I told them I needed to throw up? Dodgy curry on Sunday night or something?
I reached across the table and picked up the closest cake to me, which happened to be a sugary doughnut. I needed to think fast and I thought sugar would give me a brain boost. It was just as I tore off a piece of the greasy doughnut, which was shedding sugar all over the desk in front of me, that I realized I’d mixed up my clockwise with my anti-clockwise. My turn had come around quicker than I thought and all eyes were on me. The doughnut morsel was millimetres from my mouth, which had dropped open as I looked nervously at Martin’s expectant face.
‘It’s all right, Sian,’ he said. ‘If you have an idea you can just go for it. Nothing is a bad idea and it can totally be absorbed into something a bit more rounded. Hence, “Ideas Mashup”.’ He made air quotes, laughed, and nodded for me to go ahead. ‘Sian?’ he said. ‘Anything?’
‘Well, I er,’ I began, inadvertently licking the piece of doughnut I was holding. I was beginning to perspire in my coat as I licked sugar crumbs from my lips.
‘She’s not Sian,’ a voice from across the table declared. ‘I don’t know who she is.’
There was a rumble of commotion as lots of others began to agree that they’d never seen me before in their lives. I put the piece of doughnut in my mouth and swallowed it whole, eyes on the jam and sugar that had dropped onto the desk.
‘Just who the hell are you?’ Trevor said to me.
‘I … I …’ I reached over and put the remainder of the doughnut onto the plate in the middle of the table and started scouting around for a serviette. ‘Well, I …’
‘Are you even an intern?’ Martin asked.
‘No, I’m …’
The glass door opened and the chocolaty receptionist stood at it with at least three burly security guards in her wake.
‘There she is. Trevor, Martin, sorry about this but this person doesn’t have any business here.’ She pointed a long finger at me.
Martin looked crestfallen and wiped the hand he’d used to shake mine on his chest.
‘Would you mind telling us what this is about?’ he asked. The security guards, one of them female, edged their way into the room and stood behind me.
‘She came in asking for Human Resources,’ said the receptionist.
‘Whatever for?’ asked Trevor.
‘Well …’ I stopped short. How could I explain this to Trevor Launchester? Any mention of Cassandra’s name and her association with me would completely invalidate her job application. If I just left quietly, I might be able to make a call to Human Resources later, find the person I spoke to, and say that a madwoman broke into my office pretending to be me and gave her a made-up story about their candidate. It sounded plausible – in my head anyway. Actually it was a fantastic plan and perhaps I should have just gone with it in the first place.
The female security guard put her hand on my shoulder. I swallowed hard and pushed out of my chair, briefly putting my hands in and out of my pockets to get the sugar off my fingers.
‘There is a really, really weird story behind this,’ I said, smiling and wiping more sugar onto the back of the plush chair as I pushed it under the table. ‘And I’d love to tell you all some time.’ The room was as quiet as stone and just as cold. ‘But you guys just continue with your “mashup”.’ Here I made air quotes with sugary fingers. ‘They were really, really good ideas. I’d like to have stayed but, you know, time constraints and everything.’ I was sidestepping my way to the door and once I got there the receptionist shot me a filthy look.
‘The lift is this way,’ she said, eyes narrowing into slits.
I followed behind her with the security guards hot on my heels. The lift took an agonizingly long time to come up to the top floor and once the five of us were inside we all appeared like giants in a tiny space. The lift doors opened onto the ground floor and as we spilled out the receptionist turned to me.
‘I’ll take that name tag.’ She held five red talons under my nose.
‘Oh, yes of course. There you go.’
It wasn’t easy to unpin the name tag, especially with greasy fingers.
I was escorted to the double doors at the front of the building by the heavy-duty guards and stepped onto the street.
The guards stayed on the other side of the glass doors, looking menacing and making sure the lunatic with sugar down her coat didn’t try to come back in.
I waved before I left, dusted off the front of my coat, and stomped off down the street, shaking my head.
I knew I’d have to make it up to Cassandra somehow. Maybe I could offer her a job at Shearman if all else failed, even temporarily until she could get a deposit for a flat. I was sure I’d need extra help with my rebranding operation. I planned to call Cassandra as soon as I got back to the office and proceeded to take the very scenic route back to Shearman. I wanted to put off the inevitable fury Cassandra would unleash. Having witnessed Cassandra’s wrath before, I needed to buy myself some time. Come up with a plan.