Charlie
It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m staring at the email from Julie rather than the mountain of support calls. Danny Walker has ignored me all week, acting as if I don’t exist. Clearly, Jen had serviced him sufficiently, so he has no further need for me.
There have been zero messages after I failed to reply to the ‘don’t play games with me’ message.
Who does he think he is, for Christ’s sake? Al Capone? Who talks like that?
I hate that he affects me so profoundly that he consumes most of my thoughts. Such wasted effort.
Everyone else in the office gets a nod of recognition or even a hint of a smile. Me? The one time we walked past each other, getting in and out of the elevator, he looked straight through me as if I was a ghost. I’m starting to think the guy is a sociopath.
Julie was spot on. I can’t trust him.
I’m paranoid every time I hear someone whispering in the office, and I swear Michelle, his PA, is laughing at me when I walk past her.
It doesn’t help that everyone else in the office is as pathetic as me. People are tripping over themselves to be in his eye line like he’s some sort of god. Jackie’s skirts are so tight now it takes her ages to shuffle anywhere.
Even the men are flirting with him.
To make matters worse, Mike has been raving to anyone that will listen about his ‘night out with the big boys’ this evening. Danny is treating the leadership team to an all-expenses-paid night at the swanky new bar in the hotel beside the office. I have visions of them laughing as Danny regales tales of his Friday bed-hopping activities.
A small part of my head knows he’s better than that.
I scan the email again and flinch. Julie doesn’t mince her words.
I am writing to express my concern over your inappropriate use of nudity in the work area and inability to follow your own company’s code of conduct….
…my misconduct concern is related directly to you, as CEO….
….Your lewd, inappropriate sexual act has brought on unwanted anxiety for me in the workplace. Please confirm how you intend to rectify the situation.
I chuckle to myself, imagining Danny’s face when this pops up in his inbox.
No, I’m not sending that.
Please note that I will not accept bribery or pay-out to be silenced for your sexual indiscretions.
I quickly close the email. Danny Walker would hit the roof if he caught wind of this.
When I open my phone, ready to text Julie to warn her to cool it, I see five missed calls from Mum. Great.
If I don’t call back, the calls will continue all day.
I hit redial.
“I wouldn’t like to imagine what would happen if someone passed away, Charlie. We would have the funeral before you picked up your phone.” Not ‘hello’ or even a ‘how are you?’ That’s my mum.
“Has anyone died?”
“Of course not!”
“Well then, is there any need to call me so many times when you know I’m working?” I snap. I don’t have the patience for this today.
“If you answered the first time, I wouldn’t have to call the other four times,” she bleats in her faded Southern Irish lilt. “Charlie, I’m not well,” she continues at great speed.
I’m not alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Janey Davidson is stressing me out.” Poor Janey Davidson. Ever since Mum moved into the new house Tristan bought her in St Albans, she hasn’t been able to acclimatise to the hip neighbours.
“What has she done now?”
“What has she done?” Mum squawks so loudly I flinch. “I’ll tell you what she has done. She has taken up piloting in her front garden! She’s been strutting around in a bra with her fat arse and these great big jugs bouncing around, trying to do the splits. Right in front of me! I can’t even enjoy my own garden without her getting naked. It is a complete disgrace on the street!”
“Do you mean Pilates?” I question incredulously.
“Sure, isn’t that what I said? She’s driving down the bloody value of the properties in the street. You wouldn’t get that in Cork, I tell you what, this country …”
I hear this line almost every day of my life, in supermarkets, parks, bus stations, houses, planes, dentists, any open space you can imagine. You wouldn’t get that in Cork.
“Pilates is a very normal way of keeping fit,” I explain. “Janey has every right to do it in her garden.”
She sucks in a breath. “That strip show isn’t normal at her age! It’s immoral. Who deals with these types of matters, the council?”
“Do not call the council, Mum,” I warn. “They’ll tell you off for wasting their time. Again. Just ignore it—”
“Betty, get out,” she roars down the phone. “Charlie, I have to go; the rabbits have broken out and are running riot.”
I stare up at the ceiling. Why doesn’t Tristan get these critical calls?
“But before I go, I have more news.”
“Oh yeah?” My ears prick up. I sense I’m not going to like the sound of this.
“I’m coming to visit you this Saturday before Tristan’s fortieth dinner party.”
“We just celebrated Tristan’s fortieth. How many parties does he need?”
“Don’t be childish, Charlie,” she tuts. “This is for family and close friends. He barely got to speak to us at the last one. Expect me at 10 a.m.”
The phone goes dead before I can retaliate.
Family and close friends. So not only do I get to spend the workdays being iced by Danny Walker, now I get to spend my Saturday night doing the same.
Everything is too closely intertwined. I need to move cities and change my birth certificate.
My phone buzzes again. It’s Cat.
“I just checked Mark out on Facebook,” she announces breathlessly. “You have to see this.”
Mark is my online date for this evening in an attempt to stop obsessing over Danny Walker.
“Oh, God.” I groan. “What is it? Is he married? Girlfriend? Gym selfies? Skinny jeans? Satanist?”
“No, nothing like that!”
“Is he a chav?” I ask. “Sometimes, I don’t mind a bit of chav.”
“No, listen, it’s not that,” she says excitedly. “Charlie, he is gorgeous. I mean, drop-dead gorgeous. Stop dead in the street and wet your pants gorgeous.”
“Really?” I ask suspiciously.
“Look, the class is going crazy here. I need to go.”
“You rang me in the middle of teaching?”
“That’s how gorgeous he is. You need to hear. I’m sending over his profile link. You need to do some serious prep for this date, and I am not talking about a simple leg shaving. Gotta run.”
I zoom into his contact photo and sit up.
Oh. This guy is smoking hot.
An email flashes in my inbox from Suze. “Cat told me he was a HC?”
I smile to myself. Yes, definitely in the hot-cock category.
Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone tonight.
I’ll have to leave work early, nip to the shops then home before our date.
If Danny Walker thinks I’m going to sit around pining after him, he has another thing coming.
***
I self-administer every possible beauty treatment I can in the timeframe.
Hairs are threaded, plucked, bleached, waxed, and tweezed. Skin is toned, cleansed, moisturised, exfoliated, and sandpapered.
I am as hairless as a Sphynx and smell like a branch of The Body Shop.
I’m wearing a fitted nude colour dress that I spent a fortune on that gives the illusion of nakedness. It screams sex.
My lip liner is painted to maximize my full lips, and my eyes are dark and smouldering.
The dress curves around my breasts in just the right places. It’s my best come-fuck-me look ever.
“If you can swing a second date out of this one, Charlie, I’ll be impressed,” Julie says as the girls inspect my ‘natural’ tan.
“He’s 6’3. You need to wear tall heels,” Cat adds.
I turn around. “So he says. He could be lying on his profile.”
“I looked at his profile pictures on Facebook and ‘gram. He looks 6’3.” She inspects my new bra that pushes my breasts to my chin.
“Isn’t that a little stalker-ish?”
The girls roll their eyes.
“Nonsense,” says Julie, “you never go on a date without checking every form of social media first.”
“Sounds worse than the government. What else did you find out about him?”
“Not much.” Cat shrugs. “He owns a farm of foxes.”
“What?” I snap. This is worse than I thought. “Why would you farm foxes?”
“I’m joking,” she giggles. “Why are you so on edge?”
“I’m waiting to find out the catch,” I explain.
“Don’t be so negative,” Julie tuts. “There doesn’t have to be a catch.”
“There’s always a catch,” I grumble.
