the internal phone ringing usually only means one thing.
Oh Christ alive, no. Please don’t let this be happening … Not today.
But no two ways about it, the nightmare is real. The chairman’s assistant is on the phone, summoning me upstairs to a meeting of the board of directors – the T. Rexes – right this minute. This rarely happens on the spur of the moment like this and it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out why they’ve convened this meeting at such short notice.
The online issue of the Post. Can’t possibly be anything else. I know it’s a matter of huge concern for the board and the last time I bumped into Sir Gavin Hume, our esteemed chairman since the year dot, he as good as told me it was a matter requiring their immediate attention. That it’s costing too much and is effectively losing readers. And here’s me in a severely weakened position, because it was my brainchild and I’ve effectively staked my reputation on it. So I whip out a bulging file of notes I’ve been working on about the online edition and mentally steel myself for the grilling that lies ahead.
Anyway, I’m just clickety-clacking out of my office to get the lift to the boardroom on the top floor, when Rachel, my assistant, stops me in my tracks.
‘Eloise?’ she says standing up behind her desk and looking petrified. ‘Thank God I caught you. There’s a phone call for you. And it’s urgent.’
Odd, it strikes me: Rachel looking so terrified about whoever’s on the phone. Mainly because every single phone call that comes for me is urgent; there’s always some emergency. Frankly, the day that someone leaves a message for me saying, ‘Oh tell her it’s not that important, no rush at all in getting back to me’ is the day hell will freeze over.
Plus, Rachel is normally the epitome of glacial blonde coolness under pressure, which is not only why I hired her, but it’s the main reason why she’s survived so many staff cullings round here. She’s around my own age and the human equivalent of half a Xanax tablet; always chilled, always in control, never loses her head; in short, the perfect assistant for someone like me.
But right now, she’s thrusting a phone at me, looking ghostly pale, ashen-faced and like she needs to be treated for deep shock.
‘Trust me, you need to take this call.’
‘I’m on my way to the boardroom!’ I almost hiss at her impatiently, not meaning to be rude, but come on … surely Rachel of all people knows that when the board of directors calls, you drop everything and go running?
It’s non-negotiable.
‘I’m sorry Rachel, but you’ll just have to tell whoever’s on the phone that they’ll have to wait till I call them back.’
‘Eloise, you have to listen to me. Please try to stay calm, but … it’s about your little girl.’
Chapter Two
And the day from hell rolls relentlessly on.
I’m now sitting in a poky little waiting room outside the principal’s office at the Embassy PreSchool, where Lily has been a pupil for about three weeks now. The emergency call came through from the principal, one Miss Pettifer, to say I needed to get here urgently – but as soon she’d reassured me that Lily was neither sick nor had been in an accident but was safely at home with her nanny, I calmly told her that I was on my way to a board meeting and it was a bad time for me to talk. Elka, I told her in no uncertain terms, would call her ASAP and troubleshoot whatever storm in a teacup was going on. So I’d just get her to do what she was being paid to do, while I obeyed the royal command to haul my arse up to the T. Rexes in the boardroom above, right away.
But Miss Pettifer was having none of it.
‘I’m terribly sorry if there’s any inconvenience Miss Elliot,’ she told me in no uncertain terms, ‘but I’m afraid this is a matter for the parent and the parent alone, which I can’t simply delegate out to a childminder. I realise that you’re a busy woman but I can assure you, I am too. Now, we close for the day in just under an hour’s time and as this matter is of some significance, I strongly suggest that you come in here immediately. Surely you agree that the welfare of your child is more important than any board meeting?’
No more information forthcoming about what in the name of God could be so pressing anyway, or why the antics of a little girl now had her principal acting like the child had tried to set fire to the place or else gone into her preschool brandishing a shotgun. And if Lily’s okay and not sick or anything, then what in the name of God could it possibly be?
‘Ah, Miss Elliot, please come in; so sorry to have kept you waiting.’
I look up from where I’m impatiently perched in the waiting room and there she is, the famous Miss Pettifer. We’ve never actually met before; a few months ago, when I stuck my head in the door to vet the place and see if I could enrol Lily as a pupil, I was dealing with her assistant and of course, ever since then, Elka brings her to and from preschool. So apart from writing humongously inflated cheques for their services, to my shame I’ve next to nothing to do with the place. Or with Miss Pettifer, who’s now holding out an outstretched hand and beckoning me into her tiny little office, decorated with dozens of kids’ class photos and cute little drawings done in coloured pencil dotted all around the brightly painted walls.
She’s early fifties, I’d say, holding middle age tenuously at bay, with more than a touch of the Aunt Agathas from P.G. Wodehouse about her; grizzly grey hair that looks like it could be used for scouring pans tied back in a no-nonsense bun, clipped speech and dressed like she’s about to referee a hockey match any minute. Stern and stentorian; I instantly get an image of her parading up and down past a line of toddlers inspecting their finger paintings and checking for runny noses. A bit like the Queen doing a meet and greet on a visit to a toilet roll factory.
She invites me to sit down on a coloured plastic chair opposite her desk, which immediately wrongfoots me; normally it’s me on the far side of a desk, the one who’s about to initiate a meeting and take charge.
‘Miss Elliot, may I call you Eloise?’
I nod mutely, thinking, please for the love of God, just cut to the jugular and tell me what this is all about. No time for preambles here. No time for anything.
Mercifully, she’s a woman who seems not to believe in sugar-coating things and comes straight to the point.
‘Eloise, I’m afraid we’ve been having problems with Lily, which I strongly feel you need to be made aware of. And so, it’s my duty as principal here to ask you, let’s just say a few personal questions.’
Okay, now I’m staring dumbly back at her, thinking, ehhh … What exactly can a little girl who’s not even three years old have got up to that merits the bleeding Spanish Inquisition?
‘Fire away,’ I manage to say, calmly as I can, given that the mobile on my knee is switched to silent and hasn’t stopped flashing up missed calls from the office ever since I got here.
Miss Pettifer instantly cuts across my stream of worry.
‘Eloise, I’m afraid I need to be perfectly frank with you here. You’re a single mum, I know, and a very hardworking one at that. You single-handedly carry out an incredibly demanding job. I’m an avid reader of the Post
