by Daniel Hurst
Entering my password, I wait a few moments for the computer to let me in, and once it does, I am able to navigate my way around the bank’s intranet system, opening up my emails, my calendar, and a couple of spreadsheets that I need to review ahead of this afternoon’s series of meetings. But before I can really get to work, I glance up at Imogen again and see that she is still watching me.
A lesser man might feel unnerved to be under such constant observation by an enemy but not me. Instead, I simply sit back, put a smile on my face and give Imogen a wave.
Needless to say, she doesn’t return the gesture.
I chuckle to myself before getting on with what I need to do, safe in the knowledge that when I look up from my screen again, Imogen will probably still be watching me and probably still be hating me. It’s a wonder she gets any of her work done with all the staring in my direction, but she doesn’t have to worry too much about things like that. I might like to give her plenty of deadlines and demands, but I wouldn’t want to get rid of her even if she failed to meet any of them.
She is here for good, just like I am.
Our paths are intertwined for the rest of our careers.
That means she is going to be watching me for a long time yet.
17
I know Michael has entered his password now. I know that because I watched him do it from my desk all the way across the office. But of course, I couldn’t see it from such a distance. I needed something much closer to see it for me.
Like the hidden camera on his desk.
Trying to stay calm because I don’t know if my plan has worked, I enter the ladies’ toilets and take one of the unoccupied cubicles before locking the door and looking down at my mobile phone. I’m checking the app now to see if the camera recorded the moment when Michael typed in his password, and I hold my breath as I scroll through the footage for the key moment.
I use my thumb to scroll the timeline of the recording back until I can see the desk is unoccupied, then fast-forward it slightly until it shows me Michael arriving and taking his seat. I sit down on the closed toilet lid as I watch the footage unfold, seeing the cup of coffee being handed to him by the junior before Michael takes a sip and puts it down on the desk. My heart is beating fast as I wait for him to put his fingers on the keyboard and type, but I know it is coming any second now.
Just before it does, I hear the toilet door open, and somebody walks in, whistling as they go, and I suspect it is Helen because she whistles when she is in a good mood, and she is nearly always in a good mood. I smile at my friend’s happiness as I hear her go into one of the neighbouring cubicles and lock the door, while keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the recording on my phone’s screen.
The whistling stops, and all is quiet in the toilets until I see Michael put his hands on the keys and start entering his elusive password, slowly and deliberately.
£Velvet!@27
‘Yes!’ I cry before I even realise what I am doing, and I instantly put my hand over my mouth, but it’s too late.
‘Imogen? Is that you?’ Helen asks me from her cubicle, and I’m not really sure how I can get away with not answering her.
‘Oh, hi, Helen. Sorry about that.’
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine. Just got some good news,’ I tell her, hoping that is enough to explain why I just shouted out so excitedly from within my closed cubicle.
‘It must have been good with a cry like that. What’s it about?’
‘Er, nothing important. Just something to do with Evan’s job,’ I lie, saying the first thing that came to mind.
‘Has he got a promotion or something?’
‘No, nothing like that. Just something to do with his boss.’
Well, I do have bosses on the mind.
‘Oh, okay,’ Helen says before silence resumes, and I leave her to continue her business in peace.
That brief distraction aside, this has been a very productive morning, and I am bursting with adrenaline now that I know Michael’s password. As I suspected, it is a combination of all sorts of letters, numbers and symbols designed to make cracking it an impossible task. But I have cracked it now and all thanks to that trusty little camera hidden within his desk plant. Now all I need to do is remove that camera at the first available opportunity, which I am hoping will be this evening when everybody has gone home. But I won’t just be rushing into Michael’s office to get the camera and then get out again before anyone can spot me. I will be sitting down in his chair, putting my hands on his keyboard and typing in the password I need to access his desktop before having a snoop around in his files and seeing what mischief I can cause.
Technically, I could access his desktop from any other computer now that I have his password, but I want to do it from his because whatever mischief I can cause on there that will be used to bring him down needs to be attributed to his IP address and not somebody else’s. It would be no good me framing him for something if it would only take an IT technician two minutes to work out that his workstation had been accessed remotely via somebody else’s computer. If the aim is to do this without attracting suspicion on my part, then that would be a silly thing to do. That’s why I need to be sitting at his computer when I log in.
Anything I do will then look like it was done by him.
I hear the toilet flush in the adjoining cubicle and decide I should probably come out of my own soon enough, considering I’ve been in here a while, so I get up off the seat and go to lock my phone. But just before I do, my mobile slips from my hand and clatters loudly on the floor.
When I bend down to pick it up, I can’t see it anywhere.
Damn! Where is it? I’m panicking now because I know that the screen is still unlocked, and that means it’s still showing the video I have of Michael’s computer.
‘Thanks for throwing your phone at me while I’m on the toilet,’ Helen says sarcastically from the neighbouring cubicle, and I realise that she has it now. It’s bounced under this partition and into her cubicle.
‘Sorry! Can I have it back?’ I ask, quickly unlocking my cubicle door and stepping out while hoping that Helen will do the same herself before she has too much time to look at what I have been watching.
The sight of her locked cubicle door is torturous to me because every second that passes is a second when she could figure out what the video on my screen is really showing, and then who knows what she will do with that information? She might be my friend, but I have no idea how she would react if she realised I had planted a hidden camera in our boss’s office.
‘Helen?’
Her cubicle door suddenly pops open, and I see my colleague standing there with my phone in her hand and a serious look on her face.
Has she seen what I was watching? Does she know what I’m up to?
‘Somebody’s been a naughty girl,’ she tells me, and my stomach lurches with dread.
‘Wait, I can explain,’ I begin, but Helen shakes her head.
‘Watching TV on company time. I can’t believe you would do this.’
She thinks that video on my screen is a TV show?
‘Oh right, yeah,’ I say, laughing nervously. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
‘Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,’ Helen says with a chuckle as she hands me back my device, and I gratefully lock the screen, making the video disappear.
‘So, what were you watching?’ Helen asks as she walks past me on her way to the sink.
‘Oh, nothing much. Just catching up on some trashy show I watch. It’s really not worth it.’
‘It’s got to be better than work, right?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
I join her at the sink, and we take it in turns to wash our hands and dry off before heading for the exit.
‘Seriously, what was it? I could do with a new show to watch,’ Helen asks me as we leave the toilets and head back to our desks.
‘It’s very cheesy and very embarrassing, so I’d rather not say,
’ I try, really hoping my friend will drop it and not make me lie to her anymore.
‘Wow, it must be bad. You are going to have to tell me about it at some point. Maybe at lunch?’
‘Ha, maybe,’ I say. ‘But better get back to work now. Talk to you in a bit.’
I rush back to my desk so that Helen can’t ask me any more questions about what she may or may not have seen on my screen, before sitting down in my seat and taking a deep breath. It was crazy how one second I was feeling so happy and the next my plan almost evaporated in front of my eyes. It wouldn’t have been much good getting Michael’s password, only for him to find out five minutes later that I had been caught watching a recorded video of him on my phone. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like Helen had any idea what she was looking at when I dropped my phone in the bathroom, so my secret is still safe, and that means my plan can still go ahead.
Putting my phone into my handbag under my desk, where it is more secure now, I prepare to get back to work after my brief break in the bathroom. But before I do, I glance over at Michael in his office, and I see him typing away on his keyboard without a care in the world.
Enjoy that feeling, Michael, I think to myself as I watch him work.
Enjoy it because very soon, you won’t be the one sitting in that seat anymore.
I will.
18
MICHAEL
As the manager of a bank, I am well aware that I am in what many would dub ‘the hot seat’. That means I occupy the position with the most pressure, the most responsibility, and basically, the most to lose. I am also aware that someone has sat in this seat before me, and somebody will sit in this seat after me. That’s just how business works. There will always be new employees to take over the duties of the old. I’m not immortal, and I’m not irreplaceable. But while I have no idea who will occupy my ‘throne’ when I am gone, I do know about the men who occupied it before me. I only have to take a walk down this office corridor to remind myself of that.
There are four paintings that hang on the wall here, and they depict the four men who were the managers of this UK branch before me. One day, my painting will hang here when I move on, but for now, it is the famous four instead of the famous five.
There’s Edward Armitage, the first man to lead the UK branch, and his painting has him looking resplendent in a green jacket with a red tie, an outfit that seems a little eccentric by modern-day standards but was quite normal back in the early 1900s. Next up is Benjamin Reynolds, who was at the helm here during some of the most difficult years in English history, overseeing the bank’s survival during the Second World War, when more people were concerned with staying alive than depositing their savings with us. His image has him looking rather suave in a dark suit with his hair slicked back and his hand on the arm of a brown leather chair. Occupying the third space on the wall is Frank McDonald, an imposing Scotsman who led this branch throughout the sixties and seventies and whose image is forever encapsulated here with him looking very formidable as he sits in front of a desk and scowls at the viewer.
And last but by no means least is William Stone, who was in charge here for over thirty years and is, of course, Imogen’s father. Having taken over at a time when mobile phones were the size of house bricks, and video calls hadn’t even been thought of, he left this branch in a very different world, stepping down when his sorry diagnosis was confirmed, and his extensive experience was no match for his ailing memory. William’s painting shows him standing in front of the bank with his arms folded and a small grin on his face. Some could say it was a smirk, while others like to think it hints at his playfulness and good humour. I’m not sure which way I see it. I almost seem to see something different every time I look at it, but I guess that means the artist did a good job.
As I look at it now, I see a man who wasn’t afraid to work hard and who was certainly not afraid to impose his will on others. I know that much is true because of how Imogen ended up working here. I remember seeing her during her first few years here, and she was a lot different from the employee she is today. Back then, she was lethargic, uninterested, and generally lazy towards her work, a result of her father telling her she was to accept a role here rather than her genuinely wanting to get it herself. The pair of us would sit in the staffroom on lunch breaks, and she would tell me about how banking wasn’t for her and that she felt she could do something more than handle people’s deposits and help rich clients get even richer. Back then, I really hadn’t expected Imogen to last long at the bank, even with her father at the helm looking out for her, but over time, her attitude towards this place changed. If I had to trace it back to a more exact date, I would say it was when her first bonus was paid into her bank account.
It’s all well and good for people to have dreams of something better or something nobler, but it’s another thing when those dreams are put to the test by cold, hard cash. After that year’s round of bonuses and with Imogen a couple of thousand pounds better off, she no longer talked about quitting, travelling, and about how banking was corrupt. Instead, she seemed to turn over a new page and improve her work ethic, coming in earlier, staying later and making more of an effort to build her relationships around the branch with both clients and colleagues, as if she had suddenly accepted that this was the life for her after all.
It would be easy to say that the money turned her head, and maybe that really was the case, but I’m not so sure. With William as her father, I’m sure she wasn’t struggling for cash in her personal life, so it might not have been as simple as that. Perhaps it was simply that she realised that she had to grow up eventually, and where better to do it than in a place where the boss would always be on her side and help pull her up each rung on the ladder?
I wasn’t exactly envious of Imogen being the boss’s daughter when I worked alongside her. While it did seem like a major benefit to an outsider, I could see how it also created problems for her because she knew that plenty of people around here felt like she hadn’t earned her role on merit.
No, I was envious of someone else in Imogen’s life.
I was envious of her new boyfriend, Evan, the man whom she would go on to marry and the man she is still married to today.
I had only been working here a few months alongside Imogen when I made a pass at her on a staff night out, which resulted in our brief and ultimately doomed relationship. Was I a fool to think we could have been something more? Maybe, though I’ll never admit to it. I don’t like the man I was back then because I was weak and led by emotion, and I’m much happier now that I have stopped caring so much about the opposite sex’s feelings and use them for strictly transactional purposes these days.
But what if Imogen hadn’t broken up with me back then, and what if she hadn’t turned me down all those years later after I discovered her wrongdoing? Would our relationship be this toxic now if not? I seriously doubt that, but I’m not having any regrets. I know she doesn’t regret turning me down both when we were younger and in more recent times. Just like these paintings on the wall are a nod to history, what has gone on between Imogen and me is also history too.
One day, my painting will hang on this wall beside these formidable men, and I deserve to be enshrined and revered by the bank’s employees of the future. An outsider could take one look at this wall and note that it is missing representation from a member of the fairer sex, and they wouldn’t be wrong. I’m sure it is only a matter of time until a female manager leads this branch and adds a little diversity to this ‘rogues’ gallery.’ But for now, there is no hint of any women ascending to the top of the mountain, the same mountain I am currently sitting at the summit of and looking down over all who serve before me.
It would have been William’s dream to have his daughter’s painting next to his own on this wall one day, and I know that it eventually became Imogen’s dream too, but instead, it is my image next to his, showing that when it comes to being a boss, it’s sometimes best not to keep it in the family.
I
walk away from the paintings and make my way back to my desk, fantasising as I do about the day when an artist will get a fresh canvas out and have a go at capturing my form in art. Will I be standing or sitting? Arms crossed or open? A smile or a serious expression? I’ll leave that up to whoever the bank commissions to create the artwork because they are far more qualified than me to make that decision. Instead, I will focus on what I am good at, which is getting my own way.
I’ve been a winner ever since the day Imogen turned me down and made me realise that I needed to change if I wanted to command respect.
You could say that her rejection was the best thing that ever happened to me.
You could also say that it was the worst thing that ever happened to her.
19
Of all the nights for Michael to work late, this has to be the most inconvenient. I’m still waiting to go into his office, remove the camera, and log into his system, but I can’t do that until he has left and gone home, and right now, he is still sitting at his desk.
It’s approaching seven pm, and everyone else who works here has gone. Everyone else but us two. That’s not unusual considering we are the two highest-ranking employees here and have far more responsibilities than everybody else, but tonight, I really need this office to myself. Maybe Michael knows that. What if that is why he is staying so late?
Is he on to me?
I put those thoughts down to paranoia and nothing else. There’s no way he can know that I have planted a hidden camera in his office and obtained his password. I’ve been careful, barring that silly incident with Helen and my mobile phone in the toilets, of course. I feel confident that he has no idea what I am up to. That means he is just working late because he genuinely has more work to do rather than because he is looking to thwart me.
