by Jane Fallon
‘Hi! Are you OK? You’re not sick, are you?’
I raise my stuffed bag as proof. ‘Too noisy in the office. I thought I’d come home and get these read. Didn’t you go to work in the end?’
‘Tea?’ she says as if I haven’t just asked her that question. She’s dressed in black leggings and an oversize white T-shirt that drowns her tiny frame. A slogan on the front says ‘Grill Power’ with a retro drawing of a couple having a barbeque. ‘This is really bad but I just fancied the afternoon off. I claimed a migraine.’
I remind myself to act normally. Don’t give anything away. ‘Good for you. And yes to tea, please.’
‘I won’t disturb you,’ she says, getting out another mug. I pluck a teabag from the box and drop it in. ‘In fact I was thinking about going for a walk after I’ve drunk this.’
‘You should; it’s a lovely day. I’ll just shut myself in the living room anyway. I’ll be fine.’
‘Do you have to read all those?’ she asks, peering at my bag.
‘I thought I might as well bring enough to keep me occupied tomorrow too.’ This is a lie. I need to go into work tomorrow. I can’t let my job slide. But if she thinks I’m definitely going to be at home then there’ll be no reason for her not to go to work herself. What would be the point of taking another day off if I’m going to be guarding the computer all day?
‘Ah, the old sneaky long weekend,’ she says, sloshing milk into my tea.
‘Exactly,’ I say, smiling. I’ll still need to watch the webcam all day just in case but I’m pretty confident I’ve put her off.
My journey home was uneventful, by the way. My reception is good on the Overground so I was able to keep an eye on my living room. I knew that Juliet would be glued to my sent box. I sent her a text as I approached my front door. Home in 2. She sent back All OK before I’d even reached the steps.
The minute I’m on my own I check my email. I know there’s an unexploded hand grenade out there, I just don’t know where. Until whoever Hattie sent her last missive to reacts I won’t have any idea who they are. For all I know they’ve already put the wheels in motion to put in a formal complaint about me or worse.
I hear Hattie’s door click shut. I settle down in the armchair, an unopened script on my lap, like a pioneer woman with a shotgun.
35
I get up and walk to the desk to check my email approximately every five seconds. Dee would be proud of me for getting my steps in. Nothing. In the end I decide I can’t just sit here waiting for the bomb to go off. I send Juliet a text: Can you call me when you’re on your own?
Three minutes later my phone rings. ‘I’m in the car park,’ she says breathlessly. ‘Everything OK?’
‘No. I mean, yes, nothing’s changed. I just can’t stand not knowing where that last email went. I need to do something to lessen the impact.’
‘Then do the mail-out.’
Juliet and I decided earlier that if the waiting got too much I should think about sending out a company-wide message now – well, company-wide except for our department. Roz and Lorraine for obvious reasons, Joe and Emma because I want to be sure they won’t say anything in front of Lorraine when the message pops up. Oh, and Glen, because he already thinks I’m an idiot – in an effort to flush out the recipient and stop the problem in its tracks. I need to protect myself and if, in doing so, I draw attention to what’s been going on I’ll just have to suck it up.
‘OK. That’s what I think too.’
We bat the wording back and forth and then, when I’m satisfied, I sit down at the computer. We decide to keep it short and to the point:
‘If anyone in the company has received an email from me that seemed unusual in any way please contact me ASAP. I believe someone may have gained access to my password and sent some rather bizarre messages but, hopefully, the problem is now dealt with.’
Then I hit the button to bring up the addresses of everyone at the channel, painstakingly trawl through to remove Roz’s, Lorraine’s, Joe’s, Emma’s and Glen’s names from the list. I double-check again, take a deep breath and press send.
Then I sit and watch my inbox like a cat watching a mouse hole, only taking my eyes off it to go to the kitchen or the loo. There are a few ‘Oh, poor you, I didn’t receive anything though’ type replies, and a curt note from IT asking if they should be worried about a security breach. I ignore the former for now, and send IT a quick message back saying there’s nothing to worry about.
I wait, expecting that at any minute I’ll receive something from the Controller’s PA saying she’d wondered why I’d emailed him earlier to tell him I’d like to re-enact the Human Caterpillar with me, him and the bloke who cleans the toilets, or from the Head of Drama’s assistant saying he’d thought it was odd that I’d felt the need to let her know I felt sorry for her husband because she’s such an uptight bitch, but there’s still nothing. Either whoever was the target hasn’t seen my latest email, or they have but they’ve decided to ignore it. Because whatever was sent to them in my name in the first place incensed them so much. That’s assuming whatever Hattie sent was to someone within the company, because if losing me my job is Roz’s aim I can’t see what she’d have to gain from winding up anyone else.
By half past six when I hear Hattie let herself in I’m practically a nervous wreck. I can’t face seeing her. I’m not a good enough actress. Thankfully I get a text from Dee saying she’s coming round, bringing pizza because she knows I’ll be cowering behind the closed living-room door all evening. I text back: Brilliant. Bring booze.
I hear her coming down the steps and I run to open the door before she rings the bell. I can hear the low sounds of Netflix coming from Hattie’s room. I beckon Dee in frantically.
‘Act normal,’ she hisses. And then she greets me loudly, giving me a hug. ‘I’ll just get some plates and glasses,’ she booms.
‘Why are you shouting?’ I mouth. She rolls her eyes. Nods at me as if to say ‘Say something then’.
‘I’m just in the middle of something. Bring it all in here,’ I say, in what I hope is a clear but natural tone. Dee gives me a thumbs up.
I take the wine and the pizza box from her and retreat into the living room.
‘What was all that about?’ I say when she appears with a tray bearing everything else we need. It strikes me that as it’s my flat, and she’s brought all the food and drink, I probably should have been the one to do the work while she relaxed, but it’s too late now. I shut the door behind her.
‘You don’t want her thinking you’re on to her.’
‘I can’t even look at her.’ I pour two glasses of wine and we both dive into the pizza. ‘Thanks for this.’
‘I was hardly going to leave you hiding in here on your own.’
‘I daren’t leave the computer. I mean, I can’t imagine she’d risk it again while I’m home but even so, I might have to sleep in here …’
‘Can’t you change the password again now? And don’t save it this time.’ Dee pushes Smokey’s nose away from her plate.
‘I suppose so. But then, what if she does try? She’ll know.’
‘She won’t know we know it’s her. It would seem pretty odd if you didn’t change it again after all those emails going out this week, wouldn’t it?’
I think for a second. ‘Yes, but for all she knows I have done. I’ve just saved it on my home computer as usual.’
Dee sips. ‘True.’
I tell her about the group email I sent. ‘So maybe even if she does do anything else it doesn’t matter at this point. I just wish I knew what that last one was. Why they haven’t responded …’
My phone rings. Both of us leap out of our chairs as if we’ve been electrocuted. The pizza slice that was on a plate on my lap lands on the floor right next to where Smokey – who was on Dee’s – also lands, so that’s fortuitous. For him. I grab the phone, laughing about how on edge the pair of us are. It’s as if we’ve seen the finish line, we just need to work out how to get across it. I loo
k at the screen.
‘It’s Juliet.’
‘Answer it. I’ll go to the kitchen and make sure Hattie can’t listen in. Talk quietly.’
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Have you got a sec?’ Juliet sounds agitated.
‘Yes. What? What’s happened?’ I keep my voice as low as I can.
‘All good. Just … listen, I hope you don’t mind, but I gave Jake your email password. He’s totally trustworthy, I guarantee it. But, you know, he’s a teenage boy and sometimes they know how to do things that we might not …’
I wait but she’s leaving a long dramatic pause for me to respond to. ‘No, it’s fine, but what are you trying to tell me?’
‘Apparently there’s this thing where, even if you think you’ve deleted the things you’ve deleted from the sent box from the deleted items folder …’
I’m lost already. Never have I heard the word deleted so many times in one sentence.
‘… there’s a way to still recover them within a certain time period. I don’t really understand. But, anyway, Jake has. He’s found the email that you missed.’
‘Oh my God!’ I say way too loudly. ‘Who was it to? I’ve been having kittens because no one’s told me they’ve received anything.’
‘It was to Roz,’ she says.
36
The email that I have apparently sent to Roz is an incoherent diatribe telling her that I will make sure her working life is hell, that I’ve planted false rumours about her carrying out a hate campaign against me, that it’s my mission to make her look as bad as I can. Juliet takes a photo of it and texts it to me so that I can show Dee.
Clearly Roz’s masterplan is that she returns from her week’s holiday on Monday to find this upsetting, not to mention offensive, message has arrived while she was sunning herself in Italy. The shock! The horror! She’ll take it straight to Glen or to HR or to anyone she thinks will listen. There will be an outcry and I will be hauled over the coals. They will all be sorry to say it but they don’t see how they can possibly make my job permanent now. If I’m not sacked I’ll almost certainly be so demoralized and humiliated that I’ll leave. Job done.
She has no way of knowing, of course, that I’ve gone part way to covering my tracks by letting everyone – HR included – know that rogue emails are being sent in my name. Or that I have evidence that Hattie was using my computer at the time it was sent. It’s not enough though. I need people to know that Roz is guilty, not just that I’m innocent.
Dee reads the email open-mouthed. She saw Hattie in the kitchen, she tells me. She claimed I had a headache and that’s why we were being anti-social.
‘We had a nice chat, actually. Which is beyond weird when you think that she wrote this.’
‘So what do we do now?’ I’m feeling despondent again.
‘Change your password like you were going to.’
‘I will. I’ll let Juliet know though, in case Jake needs to look at anything else.’ I go and sit back at the computer.
Dee fills my glass and puts it down next to me. ‘She’s got a sixteen-year-old kid and you had no idea?’
‘None.’ I send Juliet a quick text to tell her what I’m doing. Click through to find the option to create a new password, like Emma showed me to.
This time I say no when asked if I want my computer to save it. I change it to FuckYouRoz101, something I’m unlikely to forget.
‘Don’t kill me.’
Juliet is at my office door. It’s lunchtime and there’s no one else around. Why do people keep saying this to me?
‘Do you know my friend Dee?’
She looks at me confused. ‘What? No. I have to tell you something.’
‘Come in and shut the door. What?’
She grabs a script from a pile on my desk, a reflex action so that it will look as if we’re talking about work if anyone comes in.
It all comes out in one long sentence. ‘So Jake and I were trying to think what else we could do, and I thought, maybe, if you could delete that email from Roz’s computer then she would come back on Monday all guns blazing, but what would she have to attack you with? Only, of course, none of us know Roz’s password now, so it would be impossible …’
She gives me a meaningful look, only what its meaning is I have no idea. ‘And …?’
‘There’s a thing you can do … you set up a page, and send them an email from a fake address that looks as if it might be from the channel. So, it’s the same email address but just with one of the l’s changed to a figure one, something like that.’
‘Are you talking about phishing?’
She gulps audibly. ‘Something like that. Anyway, he did it. Don’t tell anyone, obviously. He sent her an email pretending to be from tech support saying she had to verify her details because there had been a security breach, with a link to the page he made …’
‘Jake might be a genius,’ I say.
Juliet flushes red. ‘He is very clever. He just googled how to do it. He said it wasn’t that hard. Anyway, on the page it just asked her to confirm her password and that was it. And she has. She’s done it.’
I try to take this in for a second. ‘Fucking hell, Juliet.’
‘I know.’
I twiddle my earrings. ‘So then what?’
‘Nothing. I didn’t want him to get in any deeper. But we have her password. We can access her email without her knowing.’
‘And it won’t get traced back to Jake?’ I would hate for him to get into some awful kind of trouble because of me.
She shakes her head. ‘No. Well, it could be if there was some kind of big investigation. I mean, you can’t truly hide anything. But we both know that won’t happen. She would come off far worse than you. We decided, on balance, it was worth the risk.’
‘Wow. Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ she says, her pink face turning red. She digs in her pocket for a piece of paper, hands it over. ‘Here it is.’
I look at it. Just a random sequence of numbers, letters and punctuation. ‘God, she really didn’t want anyone to guess it.’
‘Indeed,’ Juliet says.
Now I have a weapon I have no idea what the best way is to use it. I have the chance to strike one killer blow, or to do nothing. It’s all in my hands.
‘Do you think I should?’ I say.
Juliet shrugs. ‘That’s up to you. I would, I think. But think about it carefully. Don’t do anything rash.’
‘Say thanks to Jake for me. I really appreciate it.’
She smiles. ‘He enjoyed himself. I told him not to get any ideas. This is a one-off.’
‘Oh God, I’ve helped turn that lovely boy into a cyber-criminal.’ I laugh, and I’m gratified to see that she does too.
‘Next week’s going to be interesting,’ she says after a moment.
‘Shit,’ is all I can manage.
37
I’m spending the evening at Dee and Gavin’s, trying to make a plan. Even though Hattie has almost certainly gone away for the weekend I didn’t want to risk her gliding in unheard and listening in on our conversation.
‘Do you think she’s even got a sick mum?’ Gavin passes the tarka dhal container to where I’m sitting on the floor on the other side of the coffee table.
‘Oh God, don’t. She wouldn’t make that up, surely?’
He shrugs. ‘Roz would have told her that you wanted a tenant who went away every weekend.’
‘Of course!’ Dee says.
I look between them, fork in hand. ‘So where the fuck does she go?’
‘Shepherd’s Bush would be my guess,’ Gavin says. ‘I mean, I doubt she’s paying for herself to stay anywhere else. Not when this whole thing seems like some weird favour for a friend.’
Dee stands up abruptly. ‘Let’s go down there now.’
‘What? No!’ I throw a cushion at her. The corner lands in the sauce on her abandoned plate. ‘Oh, sorry. Besides, we’ve all been drinking.’
She sits back down. ‘To
morrow, then.’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s work out what we’re going to do with Roz’s email first.’
I have a very small window of opportunity. I need to delete the email Roz sent from me to her from her inbox. But if I do it too soon she might notice. She might remember getting the random message from the IT department asking her to confirm her password, put two and two together. If she does nothing else she might change it again while she tries to work out what’s gone wrong. So we’ve decided that the middle of the night on Sunday would be the best time.
And I need to decide what to do with the evidence I have. I only have one chance. I need to end this.
We stay up way too late trying to work out the best plan of action. Stupidly I log into Roz’s email on Dee’s laptop and lose myself in a series of bitchy back and forths between Roz and Lorraine.
‘Stop looking,’ Dee says after I’ve read out a couple to her.
‘Listen to this one. “God, she’s so up herself now. Anyone would think she got this job on merit and not just because she flirts with Glen.” When the fuck have I ever flirted with Glen? Glen?’
‘You know what she’s like. You’ve told me yourself the way she talks about people.’
‘But …’ I stammer. ‘Glen?’
Dee takes the laptop out of my hands. ‘This is why you should never listen at closed doors.’
‘I’m going to kill her.’
‘Yes. Yes, you are. So let’s just concentrate on how.’
‘OK.’
Gavin comes back in with three cold cans. ‘She thinks I only got the job because I flirted with Glen,’ I wail.
He looks confused, and who could blame him.
‘She doesn’t,’ Dee says. ‘She just has to find a way to justify it to herself other than you were a better candidate than her.’
In the end we turn in without deciding anything. I bed down on their sofa because it’s easier than trying to get home but, even with the windows open, it’s too hot to sleep. After the shortest spring in history a sweltering summer seems to have arrived with a vengeance. Some time around 2 a.m. and five cans of lager down each we made a plan to stake out Roz’s flat over the weekend, in the hope of catching sight of Hattie. In the bright light of morning I realize that Gavin is the only one of us neither of them would recognize so he’s going to have to go it alone.
