Men at Work [Quick Read] (5 page)

“Because I like this job and I saw it first,” whined Ian.

“You sound like a big baby . . . Oh, wait a second. You’re not the baby here, are you? That’s right, you’re going to make one instead, just so you don’t have to sit next to your girlfriend day in day out.”

“Okay,” snapped Ian. “You tell me what I should do. I love this job and I love Emma. Now, because of a whole bunch of stuff outside my control, I have to choose between being with Emma but unhappy at work or being at work but unhappy without Emma. Because you know what? She will leave me if I tell her that I can’t stand working with her. She’d never forgive me in a million years.”

“So the answer is to have a baby is it?”

Ian looked down at his shoes. “No, of course it isn’t.”

“Good lad,” said Amar. “You know it makes sense.”

********

Later that day, having just got back from his second trip of the afternoon to the shop for a packet of crisps, Ian sat down and looked at Emma.

“Babe,” he began, “you know all that stuff I said this morning about wanting to start a family? I know you said you’d think about it but . . .”

Emma smiled and put a finger up to his lips. “You don’t need to say a single word, sweetheart. I know what you’re going to say and I feel it too. Of course we want kids but now’s not the right time is it?” Emma took hold of Ian’s hand. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course I am,” he lied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s just that lately I’ve been feeling like you’re really unsettled. This past month or so all you’ve done is think about our future. Is there something bothering you? Because if there is, you know you can tell me.”

Ian knew he should tell her what was really wrong but he couldn’t find the right words. So he said something else that had been on his mind.

“As it happens there is,” said Ian quietly. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, without missing a beat. “Right now I can’t think of a thing I’d like to do more.”

The effect of the engagement was that for a couple of weeks Ian was so blissfully happy that Emma could do no wrong. Getting back late to the office from an all day inter-agency meeting he found that she had tidied his entire desk. Did he get angry that he couldn’t find anything? No, he just laughed, told her he had been meaning to tidy it for some time and kissed her.

A few days later he noticed that every time he saw one of the Ad Girls they burst out laughing. Then he found out Emma had told them that when he was feeling stressed he liked to slap on one of her face masks, hop in the bath and read the latest issue of
Glamour
. Did Ian get mad? No, he just laughed, told the Ad Girls that even he had a girly side and kissed Emma. A week later Emma managed to convince the Out of Office Hours Social Committee that instead of bowling, followed by Nando’s, followed by 2-for-1 cocktails in Henry J. Beans (like they did every month) they should go and see
Mamma Mia
at the Alexandra Theatre. Did Ian scream at the top of his voice that he didn’t like musicals and certainly not with Abba songs? No, he just laughed, sang a couple of lines from “
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight)”
and kissed her. But then one day Emma did something so terrible that he couldn’t laugh about it, find a witty line or even kiss her.

The Annual Policy Planning Department Away Day was Ian’s favourite day of the year. He knew it was crazy but, secretly, he loved it more than Christmas. He loved it more than New Year’s Eve. In fact Ian loved it more than Christmas and New Year’s Eve rolled into one. On the surface it was an overnight stay in a posh seaside hotel for twenty-four hours of team-building, workshops and the odd lecture from a government minister. The truth of the matter was that it pretty much always ended up being one long party.

In previous years, Ian had seen senior managers getting off with waitresses at the hotel and Amar being sick out of the window of a sixth floor hotel room. Then there was the year a middle-aged woman from Bought Ledger streaked naked through the hotel lobby screaming, “Look at me! I’m a fairy!”

In the past six years alone they had been banned from three different venues in Bournemouth, had an official telling off from a junior minister and once even made the front page of a local newspaper.

This year was meant to be the best year ever by a mile. Amar and the Ad Girls missed all the workshops and spent all day on the beach. The department director and a member of Senior Management got into a yelling match in the hotel lobby. Two members of the strategy team were sent home early for crimes so awful no one would even say what they were. And half of the Forward Planning Team were told they would be getting written warnings after a party in a fourth-floor bedroom that didn’t finish until the police arrived at just after eight in the morning. It really was an Away Day to beat all other Away Days.

Not for Ian though. He missed the beach because Emma wouldn’t skip any of the workshops. He missed the two members of the strategy team being sent home because at the time Emma wanted a cuddle on the bed while watching
Neighbours
. And he missed the Forward Planning Team’s all-night party because right after dinner, as everyone was getting ready to hit the bars of Bournemouth, Emma asked Ian to come back to the room because she had a headache. That was the last straw. He could put up with a lot from Emma but not spoiling his last night in Bournemouth. Worse, having made him promise not to leave her alone, she had promptly fallen asleep.

The next morning Ian was still angry. And the following night too. But when he woke up the third morning at six and found his anger still there, he knew he had to do something. Part of him knew the sensible thing was to talk to Emma but now he was not only scared of hurting her, he was furious with her. He wasn’t thinking straight. So he got up quietly, headed to the spare bedroom, opened up his laptop and began searching around the internet.

Later that day, when Emma headed to the break room to get her Pret-a-Manger salad from the office fridge, Ian leapt into her seat. He disabled her computer’s firewall like his friend Stewart in IT had shown him, loaded up the image from his pen drive as an email attachment and pressed send. As quickly as he could, he put the firewall back, took out the pen drive and set Emma’s computer back to sleep.

For a moment or two Ian could hear nothing but the beat of his own heart. He felt breathless and like he might actually faint. As soon as he had done it, he knew that it was not only wrong but pretty much evil. In a bid to clear his mind he went to the loo and splashed water on his face. It didn’t help. He realised that he had gone too far. What he had done was too awful. He would have to go up to Stewart in IT and see if he could get the email back or at the very least hide where it had come from. Glad that he had made up his mind to do the right thing, he went back to the office but it was too late. Emma was standing at her computer in tears while an angry looking Douglas stood next to her shouting into his phone for IT to come up to the fourth floor right now.

“This has been the worst day of my life! The worst ever,” sobbed Emma as she and Ian got home and she flung herself on the sofa. “They’re going to sack me for sure and I’ll never be able to get another half-decent job again and all for something I didn’t do! It’s not fair, Ian! It’s just not fair!”

“You never know,” Ian said soothingly, “they might just give you a good telling off and leave it at that.”

“But I haven’t even done anything to be told off for!” sobbed Emma. “You know me. You know I’d never do what they say I’ve done. So who is picking on me? What have I done to make someone hate me so much that they would set me up like this?”

If it had been possible to press a button to open a door so he could jump in and be swallowed up, Ian would have been pressing it now. He hated seeing Emma upset like this. And he hated himself for putting her in this position in the first place.

The idea had come to him that morning. The only way to end the nightmare was to get Emma sacked. Heading to the spare room he had typed, “Reasons why people get sacked” into the search engine. One of the top entries was a story about an office worker who had forwarded a picture of a semi-naked glamour model with his boss’s face stuck on her body. A few clicks and a cut and paste job later, Ian had exactly what he needed – Douglas’s head stuck on the body of a topless girl on a Harley Davidson. Adding a speech bubble to the picture that said, “My name’s Douglas and I like a big Chopper!” Ian had then downloaded the image on to his pen drive and put his plan in motion.

Watching Emma sobbing as IT took away her computer had been awful. She was sent home and told to come back first thing next morning to find out what would be happening to her. Feeling like he was going to throw up, Ian had asked Douglas for a half-day to go and look after her. It took a while to talk him into it but after ten minutes of begging, Douglas had finally said yes.

********

The next morning Ian still felt sick. Emma had spent most of the night crying and had even said she might not bother to go in as there was no point if all they were going to do was sack her.

“You never know,” said Ian as Emma finally got up to take a shower. “Maybe they’ll find out who really did it. Or maybe the person who did do it will own up.”

“Do you really think that’s likely?” sniffed Emma. “Come on, Ian. The kind of person who would sneak around using other people’s computers like that is hardly likely to have the guts to own up, are they?”

Ian shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “They probably aren’t.”

Emma barely spoke a word on the way into work. She sat on the bus with her head against the window staring out into the traffic. Arriving at the office at five to nine, Emma was met at the door by Douglas. Without even a hint of a smile he led her to a room in which four members of Senior Management were seated, and closed the door.

“This is mad!” said Amar sitting down on the edge of Ian’s desk. “Everyone knows that Emma would never do what they say she’s done.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” said Ian. “What do you think will happen? A slap on the wrist?”

“More like a punch in the face, mate,” said Amar. “If there’s one thing they hate in the Civil Service it’s people messing about with the internet at work. Add to that the fact it was a picture of a manager stuck on the body of a nudie model and I don’t see how it can help being the sack.”

“What if she got the union involved?”

“Is she even a member of the union?”

Ian shook his head. “The papers you’ve got to sign for the direct debits are still on the kitchen table.”

“Then that’s it,” said Amar. “Game over.”

********

An hour later the door to Douglas’s office opened and Emma came out in tears.

“What happened?” asked Ian. “What did they say?”

“I have to leave immediately,” said Emma. “My contract has been cancelled.”

“They can’t do that,” said Ian. “Not for one lousy email!”

“They can,” said Emma, “and they have.” She looked up at Ian and shook her head. “Do you want to know what the worst thing about all this is? I never really wanted to take this stupid job in the first place. I thought the pressure of us spending so much time together would mean we’d end up fighting all the time, but it never happened. You were always so sweet and kind to me. You never made me feel like I was in the way. You always made me feel welcome. And although I won’t miss the job, I’ll miss you, Ian Greening. I’ll miss you every minute.”

This time, Douglas wouldn’t let Ian go home with Emma no matter how much he pleaded, so he had no choice but to say goodbye to Emma in the downstairs lobby.

“Everything will be all right,” said Ian hugging her. “It will, really, babe. This was a rubbish job anyway. You’ll get a better one. Just you wait and see. Then you’ll look back on this moment and wonder what the fuss was about.”

Emma nodded and kissed him, but he could tell that she didn’t believe a word he said. She was worried about money. She was worried about finding another job. But most of all she was worried that getting sacked would stop her from ever getting a decent job ever again.

“Text me if you need anything,” said Ian, feeling like the lowest of the low. “Anything at all. Just let me know and I’ll sort it out for you straight away.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Emma trying to put on a brave face. “You just make sure that you work as hard as you can today. The last thing we need is you getting sacked!”

For the rest of the day Ian stared blankly at Emma’s empty chair wishing that he could turn back time. If only he could take back his actions and stop this terrible thing. What had been going through his mind? How did Emma deserve this? How could he ever look her in the eye when he had been the cause of so much pain? Ian wished he had never heard of the fourth floor of the Department of Work and Pensions. And even though he had got what he had wanted, now there was no way he could enjoy a single moment at work, knowing what the true cost of his actions had been. Life as he knew it was over. There was no chance of getting it back.

He picked up Emma’s cat calendar. The picture for the month was of a tiny grey kitten, all soft fur and big eyes, poking its head out of a box. At any other time this photo would have made Ian pull a face in disgust. Today it made him smile, and feel sad, and miss Emma more than he thought he could.

He pulled out his phone and typed out a text. “Babe just want to say how much I love you. Things will be OK I promise.” He pressed send. Then he put his phone away, took a deep breath, opened up a brand new spreadsheet and started typing.

********

Just before five, Ian was about to close down his computer, collect his things and head home when Amar appeared at his desk.

“Do you want to go for a drink?” he asked. “Just a quick one before you go home? Today must have really done your head in mate.”