Bad Blood

by Lily Hayden

  He arrived at the restaurant a little behind schedule and saw that most of his team were already seated.

  “Who are we waiting for?” He asked as he looked around the table.

  “Emma Boucher,” Lisette, his head of operations in the South-East, informed him before her eyes flickered behind him. “Oh, speak of the devil.”

  Tim turned to follow Lisette’s gaze feeling his pulse quicken at the sight of the newcomer. Emma Boucher was five-foot-eight-inches of tanned limbs, glossy caramel hair and the smile of an angel, and the last time Tim had seen her, she had left his head spinning following a very boozy Christmas party. He felt a rush of desire at just the memory of her brushing her full lips across his, tantalisingly slow before she’d disappeared into the evening.

  “Emma!” Lisette rose to her feet kissing the woman’s cheeks with gusto. “There’s a space by Tim.”

  Tim stood up to greet her. “Emma, how are you?”

  “I’m good,” she replied. “It’s been forever.”

  “It’s good to see you again,” he said politely, trying to ignore the way the heady scent of her perfume made him want to bury his face in her neck.

  A slow smile spread across her lips as she sat down tearing her gaze from his to accept the proffered wine from Lisette. “I can’t believe it’s been three months since I was here.”

  “It was a great night,” he said unable to resist probing to see whether she remembered her forwardness that night.

  “So, you’re alone tonight?” She raised her wine glass to her full cherry-red mouth, and he knew in that moment that not only did she remember, but she was utterly unapologetic for any line she had crossed.

  He caught the eyes of the rest of the team watching the interaction, and he quickly turned back to the table before Emma could draw him in any further. Tim did his best to pay equal attention to each of his employees throughout the meal but found himself slipping into quiet asides with the delectable woman over the course of the evening. They kept the conversation deliberately light, but it wasn’t long before they’d looped back to that night.

  “It was such a great party,” Emma said in a teasing tone and he knew he wasn’t imagining the flirtatious twinkle in her eyes. “Such a shame I’m not in London very often. It might have been interesting to follow a few things up from that night.”

  “Such as?” He held her gaze challengingly.

  She slowly swept her hair to one side exposing the creamy skin of her shoulder, and he felt his breath catch in his throat at the thought of her naked. “I remember a very insightful conversation with you towards the end of the night.”

  He leaned forward keen for her to say more, but James the head of operations up in Scotland chose that moment to call across the table to them. “You two seem cosy! Care to share with the class?”

  “Sorry James,” she replied without skipping a beat. “Caught us talking shop again. Very naughty.”

  Tim held back a groan at the deliberate purr she added to the end of her sentence.

  There wasn’t a single thing about Emma that wasn’t sexy. Why did she have to be so tempting?

  Tim forced himself to give his undivided attention to the others for the rest of the evening, and it wasn’t until they were all parting ways, tipsy and full of great food, that he got chance to speak to Emma again.

  “It’s been lovely to catch up with the team,” she said looking up at him from beneath a sweep of dark lashes. “Are you staying at the hotel tonight?”

  His heart sped up, and he berated himself for cancelling his reservation.

  “I’m not,” he replied regretfully.

  “I’m sure everyone will be making use of the bar this evening,” she said. “Care to join us?”

  Tim turned to look at his team of Operation Managers, all slightly worse for wear from the free-flowing booze, and he knew that it would be wise to decline. It was all he could do to keep his hands off the stunning young woman, and he knew that a couple more drinks would lower his inhibitions and that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

  “Not tonight,” he shook his head. “I’ll leave you all to it.”

  The look of disappointment on her face almost had him changing his mind, but he resolutely turned away knowing it would be foolish to stay. He waited for his taxi alone, watching the enticing shape of her until she disappeared into a cab with the rest of the team, and alongside the relief that he felt that he hadn’t crossed any line, he felt a tingle of excitement that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Rose

  Rose was bone tired; the kind of exhaustion that starts in the morning when you peel your eyes open, that makes your body feel like concrete, and your soul feel weary no matter how many hours you’d led unconscious in bed the night before.

  There was, however, an advantage to being bone-tired, Rose reasoned as she stared out of the grimy window of the bus. She no longer felt weepy and overwhelmed at every slight inconvenience or minor upset. She no longer cared.

  The tipping point, she believed, had been the week after her visit home. Despite the mixed feelings from the day, she had enjoyed her lunch with Gareth, and she’d gone to sleep with her overactive mind playing out far-fetched scenarios where they met up again. A hellish week in work followed by her phone being cut off because her direct debit had bounced had brought her tumbling back to reality. She was angry at herself for her foolish daydreams, and there were a million worries circling her frazzled mind; guilt over her detached family, guilt that she’d let down her mother and that her father was being fleeced, worry about the boys at University, worry about meeting all her direct debits this month, worry about how she’d been messing up at work and an overwhelming loneliness as she realised with weary acceptance that she would never meet anyone who would love her. The thoughts spiralled through her head until she had finally fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning. She’d slept until her alarm, something she couldn’t remember ever doing before, and she struggled to sit up in bed waiting for the sense of impending dread to return, but that morning, she found that it didn’t come. The tiredness stayed with her and instead of fading away with her first shot of caffeine, it grew like a grey mist starting in her chest before working its way through her body and into every limb. She had glanced at the final demand that had been the reason for her panic last night and when the anxiety didn’t return, she realised that she didn’t care anymore. She felt distant as if it were happening to someone else.

  Rose wondered if she should have felt some relief at the absence of her agonising anxiety. Maybe she should feel concerned that she just felt nothing. She was conscious that she should be feeling a certain way, but she just couldn’t seem to summon up the energy to feel anything. Instead of dread when her new manager announced that she was flipping the new recruits onto outbound calls, she barely flinched.

  “We were hired as Inbound Sales,” Lena protested as the team were taken through a quick presentation on the difference.

  The job that had they had applied for had been cross-selling loans and credit cards to XZ Finance customers who had called in to the Customer Service department for help. Rose had quickly learned that Customer Services would then resolve their query before bouncing the call over to Rose’s team, usually without bothering to tell them why they were being transferred. After just weeks in the job, they were now being told to call existing XZ customers to try to increase the centre’s sales.

  “We’re trying something new,” the unsmiling manager replied curtly. “If you don’t like it, you know where the door is.”

  Lena returned to her desk without a word but rolled her eyes at Rose in a show of defiance. They obediently logged into the system and within an hour, Rose was close to downing tools as she was sworn at and hung up on with every successful connection.

  What is the point? She wondered as the manager prowled between their desks scowling at them if they dared voice their frustrations. I should just leave before I’m fired.

  As the
week went on, she began to grow more despondent as her colleagues began to make sales and the likelihood of quitting being taken out of her hands grew more and more likely.

  “Hello, is it possible to speak with Mrs Palmer?” She began in a tone as upbeat and cheerful as she could muster when the line connected.

  “Who is this?” Came the cool response.

  “Hello, good morning to you,” Rose parroted in the sing-song voice they were encouraged to use. “My name is Rose and I’m calling from XZ Finance. How are you today?”

  “Fine,” the woman’s tone was guarded, but she hadn’t hung up. Yet.

  It was further than Rose had got all morning, so she pressed on.

  “That’s great. I’m calling as we’ve got a special introductory offer on credit cards. Can I ask who your current credit card provider is?”

  “I don’t have credit cards,” the woman answered snootily, and Rose could sense her slipping away.

  “Really? Wow, that’s great to hear!” Rose exclaimed. “Have you ever had a credit card in the past?”

  “I don’t see…” The woman sounded angry now at the intrusive questioning and Rose couldn’t blame her.

  “The reason why I ask,” Rose cut in quickly before the woman could hang up on her. “Is there’s a lot of fraud going on at the moment, particularly online. Credit cards offer you and your money greater protection against this.”

  Rose hesitated and scanned her eyes across the script they had been given. She didn’t usually make it to this point, and she was so surprised she had that she had lost her train of thought. A hand stretched from behind Rose to poke the script pinned in front of her. Rose looked up and met Lena’s eyes, smiling appreciatively.

  “Keep going!” Lena hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Fraudsters are getting clever and it’s scary how quickly they can get access to your details. For example, did you know more than 17 million people in this country were victims of cyber-crime last year?”

  “Say ‘isn’t that scary’?” Lena hissed.

  “Isn’t that scary?” Rose parroted.

  “Mmmm,” the woman made a noncommittal noise.

  “Could you imagine how devastating it would be to have your bank account drained?” Rose continued. “People have been left without money to pay their bills and to buy food. It’s terrifying and emotionally stressful waiting for the bank to investigate. In many cases, the money is gone forever and there is no way of getting it back. Now let me tell you how a credit card works differently in this scenario…”

  Lena nodded her head encouragingly and rolled her hands to signal Rose should keep talking. Rose tried to keep up the enthusiastic tone as she read out a paragraph about the consumer credit act to Mrs Palmer.

  “Now say ‘doesn’t that sound great?’,” Lena whispered.

  “Doesn’t that sound great?”

  “I suppose…” Mrs Palmer still didn’t sound impressed.

  “Now, as well as all that protection and peace of mind, what if I told you I could offer you zero interest for the first three months on anything you spend?” Rose couldn’t believe how far she’d got in the script. “As well as offering you a guaranteed way to protect your money, there’s no charge at all for this card. How does that sound?”

  “That’s not bad.”

  “It’s not, is it?” Lena mouthed theatrically. “Now what I’m going to do…”

  Rose repeated Lena’s words in a cheery tone.

  “Is take some details to get this sent out to you.”

  Rose obediently chirped Lena’s words at the customer.

  “Oh no!” Mrs Palmer interrupted. “I don’t want a credit card.”

  “You don’t need to sign up to anything today,” Rose read. “All we do today is conduct a quick approval check and I’ll get all the information sent out to you. That way, you can read through the information yourself over a nice cup of tea. If there’s anything you’re not happy with, you can cancel this at any time for absolutely no charge at all. All I need to do is read this compliance information and I’ll get the pack out to you.”

  “I don’t want to take anything out,” Mrs Palmer protested. “Can you just send me the information?”

  “We do need to complete the quick check before we can send it out,” Rose said apologetically. “But like I said, if you change your mind, it’s quick, easy and free to cancel. There is no fee for this, Mrs Palmer, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh,” Rose could tell the woman felt railroaded and she began to feel her resolve to sell to her slipping, but Lena was jabbing her finger at the sheet in front of her. Rose knew she that if she didn’t make this sale her days at XZ were numbered and she really needed this job. She thought about the boiler that was just one more reset away from packing in, her overdraft, her credit cards, the boys’ birthdays coming up. She needed this.

  “So, what I’m going to do now,” Rose took a deep breath and pushed on, ignoring the guilt she felt. “Is give you my details. Do you have a pen to hand? That way, if you have any questions, you can give me a call when you get your paperwork.”

  Lena’s mouth broke into a wide smile and she rewarded Rose with a double thumbs-up. Rose pressed on through the legal jargon before clicking the submit button that would complete Mrs Palmer’s application. Rose barely flinched as the search started; XZ Finance was the offshoot of a popular mainstream bank and their products were specifically designed for those with adverse credit histories, hence the extortionate interest rates.

  They’d probably even give one to me, Rose thought wryly as she tied up the call.

  “Yay!” Lena embraced her as she hung up the phone. “Well done, Rose! Now you’ve managed your first cold sale they’ll start rolling in! The first is definitely the hardest.”

  “Do you ever feel bad?” She asked Lena later as they packed up their belongings to leave when the shift was finally over. “Selling to people who clearly don’t want or understand what they’re getting?”

  “My father used to say, ‘once among the crows, you do as they do’,” she pulled a face. “At the moment, I need this job. It’s just a stepping-stone to something better and then one day, when I’m in charge I’ll make the way we do business better, but for now it’s a case of needs must.”

  “That’s a wise sentiment, but I still don’t know,” Rose tilted her head to one side regarding her pretty, younger friend. “It feels so wrong.”

  “I feel bad too,” Lena admitted with sudden seriousness. “But what choice do we have? I’m skint, you’re skint. As the saying goes ‘Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have the less shit you’ve got to eat’.”

  For the first time in weeks, Rose found herself laughing; a from-the-gut, belly laugh that made tears run down her face as she gasped for breath.

  “Are you laughing?” Lena regarded her with concern. “Or crying?”

  And Rose realised she really wasn’t sure anymore.

  Belle

  Belle glanced up at the tiny strip window, the only natural source of light in the back room of the club. She could see the sky had lightened from an inky black to a dark grey and she rubbed her eyes wearily with the back of her hand. There were no phones allowed out in the club, and she could never get used to the frustration of trying to guess how much time had passed on the shift. She checked her makeup in the mirror, swiping away a smudge of eyeliner from beneath her lashes.

  God, look at the state of me.

  She grimaced at her reflection. In the harsh light of the manager’s office, her striking green eyes looked dull and flat beneath heavy kohl liner and the tight, black dress looked cheap. Her shoulder-length red hair hung around her pale, bare shoulders in lacquered ringlets and she turned away, disgusted by what she saw. The muted lights of the club masked the ugly tackiness of both the décor and the costumes of the women who worked here. Seeing her image reflected in the looking glass reminded her of how far she’d fallen.

  “Belle!” A bras
h blonde in a sequin G-string barrelled through the Staff-Only door. “Lucy’s been over ten minutes in the private room and he’s only paid for seven.”

  Belle nodded to acknowledge that she’d heard as she headed back out onto the floor. In the three months, she had been working as a hostess at Fantasies she’d quickly picked up the best way to keep the dancers in line and avoid any trouble. She glanced around the club as she entered, mentally clocking where everyone was and any new arrivals. Casey had followed her back out onto the floor and Belle quickly directed her towards a lone gentleman nursing an almost empty glass. She hurried over to one of the private rooms discreetly slipping through the curtain to signal to Lucy that her time was up. By this time of the night, some of the girls were wasted which is why it was Belle’s job to keep everything running smoothly, enforce the club rules, and maximise the night’s profits.

  Her job was a solitary one, and she often found herself gazing enviously over at the dancers, chatting and flirting with the customers, or slipping off to the toilets discreetly in pairs to bitch about other dancers or in some cases, snort half their night’s takings up their noses. Belle’s job relied on her having her wits about her, so staying sober was a necessity. The first few shifts hadn’t been so bad as she concentrated on picking up the job, but as soon as she had worked out a little routine for herself, the rot of mind-numbing repetitiveness set in and the biggest challenge in her shift was a tie between staying awake and staying sane. She thought about quitting maybe ten times a shift; when her eyes burned with fatigue and her mind screamed with boredom. Hard physical work she could cope with. Her body could grow accustomed to strenuous labour, but her mind craved stimulation and the monotony was torturous. She’d done all kinds of jobs since leaving home at sixteen; waitressing, bar work, retail before she’d started modelling. It had mainly been catalogue work, but she’d had a few national adverts to her name. She’d naively planned to keep modelling when she’d had the baby, but the irregular hours and travel just didn’t work when you were a single mother with a support network of zero. Her last job had been on the make-up counter of a department store before she’d been sacked for taking too much time off due to childcare. As much as she hated her job at Fantasies, it was a necessity.