pay an unscheduled nocturnal visit.
But no, Gloria came back alone. An envelope in her hand. ‘Came by courier,’ she said, sliding it across the kitchen table to me.
Inside the big brown envelope with my name on it, there was a small white envelope with my name on it. And inside that, a single sheet of paper. Also with my name on it.
Dear Ms Sherwood,
Please accept this letter as formal notice of your dismissal for a wholly unacceptable act of gross misconduct committed today.
Our HR Department will calculate any outstanding salary and holiday pay and remit to your bank account in due course, and your personal belongings will be forwarded to you by courier tomorrow. I should add that you are no longer welcome on our premises.
On a personal note, I am extremely disappointed by your behaviour and respectfully suggest you are probably better suited to employment in a not-for-profit enterprise.
Jason Chung
There went my chances of a glowing reference. Wordlessly, I handed the letter to Gloria.
By unspoken mutual consent, we opened a third bottle of wine. And since there was no longer any need to debate whether or not I needed to resign, we soon moved on to discuss Gloria’s favourite topic of conversation. Fred Carpenter QC. Visiting Professor of Law at one of London’s most prestigious universities. Older than Gloria and me by at least ten years. George Clooney hair. The fathomless brown eyes of a Labrador puppy. A silver tongue that effortlessly charms juries, judges and almost every woman under the age of eighty. And an ego the size of Uranus.
Also answers to the name of Thrice-Wed Fred. Or rather he doesn’t. That’s what Gloria and I started to call him when he appeared on the scene late last year, before Gloria got embroiled with him. Foolishly embroiled, if you ask me, although whenever I’ve tried gently to remind Gloria that Fred’s a married man, she turns somewhere between defensive and downright shirty.
Then again, who am I to judge?
Two months ago, I had a one-night stand with Jason Chung.
Jason and I happened because of a train strike. That and a serious, alcohol-fuelled misjudgement.
I was supposed to travel to Nottingham to collect a hearse from another business in our group. (We’d acquired a National Logistics Director who continually shuffled vehicles from one branch to the next, ‘To ensure maximum capacity at all times,’ as he so charmlessly put it.) The strike meant I couldn’t go, but rather than leave it an extra day, Jason announced the two of us would drive there together.
‘A great opportunity for me to brief you about the new commission opportunities from engraving,’ he threatened. ‘We’ve partnered with a firm that’s going to pay us by the letter.’
I’m afraid my immediate thought was that Jason’s Holy Grail of a client would be a recently deceased nanny whose compliant relatives could be persuaded to put ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ on her tombstone.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Okay is one of the most useful words in my vocabulary. It can cover a multitude of sins. On that occasion, it meant that since I had no choice in the matter, I’d do my best to behave like a good employee.
As it happened, our journey up the M1 was a revelation. Jason’s A–Z lecture about payment-by-the-letter – all I remember now is that capitals were apparently more valuable to the firm than words in lower case, so make that ‘SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS’ – drew thankfully to a close just before we reached Dunstable. Then, to my surprise, the further we got from London, the more he started to relax.
I’m a good listener – another part of the job – and Jason is a great talker. Most of what he says is total bollocks of course, but on this occasion, he chose a topic that aroused my curiosity. He started talking about himself.
‘I know you think I’ve got it easy, Nina.’ Jason shrugged his shoulders and gave me a sidelong glance that also incorporated the interior of his ridiculous, show-off Porsche. ‘But at least you’re doing this job because you choose to.’
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t have any choice. It’s either this or my parents threatened to banish me to bloody Beijing.’ That was the first time I’d heard Jason swear. ‘It’s not as if I’ve ever set foot in China in the first place,’ he continued. ‘We’re the American side of the family.’
My wet-behind-the-ears boss was a nephew of the ultimate owners of our business and beneficiary of unimaginable wealth, luxury and jobs for the boys. Or so the office grapevine had it. But once Jason started talking, a different picture emerged.
Boarding school in New Hampshire. Business school in Pennsylvania. ‘And then they told me – told me – I’d have to do this job for the next three years. And that unless my sales figures were fifteen per cent higher than every other manager in the group, I wouldn’t have any say in my next assignment.’
‘Okay.’
‘Not okay, at all. I wish you’d stop saying that. It really pisses me off.’
Blimey. Jason Chung was suddenly turning into a human being, right before my eyes.
‘Okay.’ But this time, I giggled as I said it, and Jason laughed, too. ‘So what is it you’d rather be doing?’
‘What I really want is to be a landscape gardener. When I told my parents, you’d have thought I wanted to run away and join the circus. Or the Democrats.’
By the time we arrived in Nottingham, Jason was babbling on about the joy he gets from growing flowers and vegetables in containers on his balcony. I’d learned about the correct time of year to set out poppies, plant onion sets, and seed sweet peas. Also about a bumper crop of strawberries, fit to grace Wimbledon. And then there was Jason’s relentless fight against super-slugs the size of a prizefighter’s fist. It was almost like having a conversation with Gloria, whose latest project involved making a wildflower meadow in a dustbin lid.
Once we’d arrived at our destination, the paperwork for transferring the hearse to our branch took about twenty minutes.
Back in the car park, Jason watched me get into the hearse and adjust the vehicle’s seat and mirrors. I wound down the window and said, ‘I’ll race you back to London!’
Jason produced the keys to his Porsche. ‘Okay.’ A grin. Then, ‘Tell you what. We’re almost into the rush hour so the M1’s going to be really busy. I know a nice little place just off the motorway. Follow me there and we’ll grab a bite to eat.’
‘Okay,’ I said. Driving in the slow lane surrounded by packs of impatient lorries and white van fleets isn’t my idea of fun, so I was super happy to agree to divert myself with food until the traffic thinned out.
Twenty-five minutes later, I was beginning to wonder if Jason had changed his mind. I had no idea where we were – maybe he’d decided to take the scenic route back to London – but just as I
