In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

  – Don’t be silly, Stella. You give your kids so much and you’ve worked so hard in the past I’m sure you can coast for a bit.

  Stella did not find these words consoling. Emily was trying to be sympathetic but did not sound as if she meant it.

  – I worry that I’m about to do something really extreme. I can’t live at this level of madness, it’s too painful. And I keep on nearly getting found out. I thought at the beginning that I had nine lives, but I’ve used up most of them, and still can’t stop. The weirdest thing is that the only person who knows something is badly wrong is Charles’s nutty mother, who has Alzheimer’s. She says over and over again: When are you giving up that job? Yesterday, I so desperately wanted to confide in someone, I told her. As I was driving her home I said: I am having an affair with someone who is young and who I adore, and who has spoiled my life. And she looked at me and said: Well! Fancy that!

  – God, said Emily. Wasn’t that mad?

  – Of course it was mad, said Stella, though she never remembers anything for more than three seconds. It wasn’t as mad as the rest of it. Do you know what this feels like? It feels like I’m in a car driving down the motorway the wrong way, and I’m wearing a blindfold. Rhys is with me in the passenger seat and we are both screaming. I know we’re going to crash. But that adds to the pleasure. Do you know what I mean?

  – No, said her friend. Frankly I don’t. Stella, I’m really worried about you. You absolutely have to stop this now.

  – I know that, Stella said angrily. I’ve just told you that. But I’m trying to explain to you why I can’t.

  – I don’t understand, said Emily. I’ve never known you to say you can’t do something before. Stel, this isn’t you.

  – Well if you haven’t felt this, you can’t possibly understand. Experiences this intense cut across reason. They are their own reason.

  – Possibly, said Emily. But do you want to know what I think?

  Stella nodded, even though she wasn’t sure that she did.

  – I think this is about control for you. You have never been out of control in your life. You are both thrilled by it and scared shitless. It’s not a good look.

  – You know what, said Stella, I’m really fed up with being called a control freak. Charles calls me a control freak and so do the kids. If I didn’t control things I wouldn’t get things done. If everyone was passive the world would be in chaos. I’m not a control freak. I am a conscientious and hard-working woman, and yes, I do take the fucking initiative.

  But afterwards, running through the conversation again, she decided that Emily was right. The problem was that she could not control Rhys. She would lose him eventually. And there was absolutely nothing she could do to control that.

  Part Three – Withdrawal

  Stella

  – Stella, have you got five?

  Russell was hovering at the door of her office in a most annoying fashion.

  – No, said Stella, I haven’t. I’ve got a meeting with Stephen and our lawyers.

  She gathered up some papers from her desk and walked past him.

  – It’s quite important, he said.

  – Ask Nathalie to find five minutes in my calendar this afternoon.

  Stella went to the meeting and didn’t give the matter another thought. But when she came back he was sitting in her office waiting for her.

  – Is this a good time?

  – Fine, she said wearily.

  – Stella, he said. This is a little sensitive.

  She inclined her head.

  – But basically, in a nutshell, I’ve received a complaint from a member of your department about your – your behaviour.

  Stella said nothing, and he continued.

  – Obviously we take our whistleblower rules seriously, so I cannot reveal the identity of the person who has raised the matter. However, I do happen to think that the complaint is a little – how shall I put it – far-fetched. But, for my sins, obviously as HR director I need to ensure that we go through the motions, to make sure we are ticking all the boxes, if you will. Basically, the issue concerns yourself and your executive assistant, Rhys Williams. One member of staff has alleged favouritism, and has even stated – forgive me, Stella, this is not easy – that there might be an unprofessional relationship between the two of you of a sexual nature, and that this is clouding your judgement.

  Stella felt as if she was shrinking. It was the most peculiar sensation – as if she were removing herself from here and going somewhere else where this was not happening.

  She focused her eyes on Russell’s soft, yellow cashmere sweater and said: I don’t know what you expect me to say. I absolutely refuse to deny something that would be so outlandish.

  He waited, as if expecting more, so she went on.

  – There have never been any complaints by people in my department before. Rhys, as we have discussed, is a talented and unusual man. I promoted him for his leadership potential, and would stand by that. I do, it is true, spend a great deal of time with him, but that is because he is my assistant. It would be strange if I didn’t. So I really cannot imagine where any of this is coming from –

  Russell smiled and shut his notebook.

  – Thank you, Stella, he said. Sorry to trouble you with something so sordid. Not to say … improbable. But you must understand that I was only doing my job.

  – Of course I understand. And I was only doing mine. So is it closed?

  As soon as she had asked the question she regretted it.

  But Russell was too embarrassed or too frightened of her to notice how guilty it sounded.

  – Yes, he said. It’s closed.

  And that, thought Stella, was life number six. She only had three left.

  Bella

  At ten o’clock in the evening Bella got a text from James. It said just one word.

  Disaster.

  She texted back:

  What???

  But she received no reply. When she got into work she went straight to James’s office without stopping to take her coat off. Anthea witnessed this in knowing silence.

  James was sitting at his desk, looking at her evenly. His face, thought Bella, bore no expression at all.

  – This arrived in the post yesterday, he said.

  He got an envelope out of his briefcase and put it on the coffee table. Bella took it and opened it. It said ‘ISLINGTON COUNCIL’ at the top and was a fine for driving his car in a bus lane.

  – So, she said.

  – Look at the date. Look at the time. The location. Look at the bloody picture.

  The date was five days earlier, the time seven thirty in the evening, the location Holloway Road. The attached picture was blurry but it showed James’s murky silhouette at the wheel, with Bella’s smaller one leaning towards him.

  – Hilly opened it and worked out that I was meant to be in Aberdeen that night.

  – What did you say? Bella asked.

  Going through her head was the idea: this was it. This was the crisis that she had been waiting for. Hillary would chuck him out, and he would be hers. She knew she shouldn’t be feeling so exultant. She should perhaps feel terrible about the misery of his depressed wife opening this awful envelope, but she didn’t.

  – I said that I had had to pick someone up on the way to the airport, and she seemed to believe me. It was a really bad moment, though.

  He was looking at her accusingly.

  – It’s not my fault, said Bella, seeing that this was not going to end in the way she planned at all.

  – No, he said, doubtfully. But if something happened, if I was thrown out and living in a bedsit and not allowed to see my boys …

  Bella wanted to say: Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before you shagged me. But she didn’t say that. Instead she gave a forced smile and said: I’m glad you got away with it.

  She turned on her heel and went back to her desk and as she left she heard him picking up the phone. I bet he’s calling hom
e, she thought. And sure enough she could hear him saying:

  – Hello, darling. Just wondered how you were. Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?

  You are a creep and an idiot, thought Bella. Your wife will smell a rat the size of the Titanic if you suddenly start being nice.

  Stella

  Stella had decided again to end it. This time it wasn’t because of guilt or because she was frightened of discovery. To have lost so many lives already, instead of making her fearful, had started to make her complacent. If she had narrowly avoided discovery in the past, she would go on narrowly avoiding it in the future.

  She didn’t want to get out to save her marriage. Her marriage, she thought, was the same as it had been for ages. It wasn’t ideal, but it was fine. She cared for Charles just as much as she had done a year ago.

  No, she was getting out to save herself. The pain of going on had got too intense. She needed to escape from the hateful person she had become.

  In hating herself, she had even come to hate Rhys, in a way she was sure he did not deserve. In the early days Rhys had made Stella feel funny and engaging and reckless and young and invincible. Which was partly, she thought, why she had started to love him. But the person she now was when she was with him was very different: mad and needy and dishonest. She did not want to be this person any more. She wanted to find her old self again, but worried that it was too late. Perhaps her old self was dead.

  And sometimes she wondered if she loved Rhys at all, or whether this was a compulsion that had very little to do with him. Nietzsche had it right. Ultimately one loves one’s desires and not that which is desired. The thought gave her some hope: if it wasn’t really Rhys himself that she loved, maybe she would be able to do without him.

  She had made up her mind: she would have the conversation with him the next day. She had thought about it carefully and decided it was best to have it in the office, which would keep it brief, and would lessen the risk of relapse. Kissing him in her office in the middle of the day was not an option.

  The following morning she sent Rhys a message that said:

  Have you got a minute?

  Her courage almost failed her when he came into the room and smiled at her and said she looked nice in her dress. She got up, closed the door and sat down, fixing her eyes on the air vent set in the wall above the door.

  – Rhys, she said. There’s no good way of saying this. I can’t do this any more. If we go on, I think I will go insane.

  He nodded dumbly. And then he asked: When did you decide?

  – Last night, she said. I lay in bed and was so miserable I cried and cried and couldn’t stop. Charles hugged me and asked what was wrong, and although he was trying hard to be sweet, his concern made it even worse.

  – I don’t want to know how sweet Charles was, he said coldly.

  – I’m sorry, Stella said. I’m not trying to make you feel wretched. I’m just trying to explain. I am beset by fear of losing you, so much so that I can’t enjoy being with you at all. I feel we have reached a point where it is all pain. I can’t remember the last time that we were simply happy together. Can you?

  Rhys said nothing.

  – You have to look at the trend. There are some up and down cyclical movements around the trend, but the trend is down. It’s not going to get any better.

  She had meant this mention of economics to sound ironic. It just sounded cold.

  Rhys said nothing.

  – Are you OK? she asked, meaning the question to spark grief, which she could then respond to and forgive, just as she had done so often before.

  Instead he looked straight at her and said: Take a guess.

  He stood up and walked out of her office.

  Twenty-three of them filed into the boardroom on the fourteenth floor. The usual eighteen, the company secretary, and Stella.

  The chairman, Sir John Englefield, took off his watch and laid it officiously on the table.

  – Good morning. Before we get into the formal business of the meeting, I would like to welcome Stella Bradberry, who all of you know. In line with our articles of association we need to take a vote on her appointment to the board. Can I assume that we have consensus on this?

  Stella looked down at her blotter, to the side of which was a patch slightly lighter than the rest of the table, a blemish that had been almost invisibly repaired and polished. Stella fixed her eyes on it and tried to focus her mind. This was a board meeting. She must hold it together.

  – Thank you, she said.

  – We’ve got a busy meeting today, Sir John went on. Obviously we are going to need some time to discuss the situation in Russia, and the new business climate created by the fall in the oil price, but first we have a presentation on our new IT system. Over to you, Kevin.

  Stella watched the director of Global IT go through a presentation about platforms and add-ons, slide after slide.

  Why didn’t Rhys message her? Why had he said nothing to her at all for twenty-four hours, save the minimum demanded for work? Was she really worth so little to him? She got out her BlackBerry and sent him a text.

  I’m in the board meeting. I love you. I didn’t mean it. Sorry.

  She looked at what she had written. It was weak. He would despise her. She should wait and see if she felt better in a couple of days. But she would not feel better in a couple of days, she was sure. She looked at the message again. It was true, and what was true could not be wrong. She pressed ‘send’, and the minute it was gone her spirits lifted. She had learnt something. Her affair with Rhys could not be declared over by an act of her will. She loved him, and that was stronger than everything.

  – Before we get on to today’s agenda, I think it would be helpful if we took AOB first, the chairman was asking.

  He went around the table asking board members if they had any other business. Most appeared not to have. One non-executive director said that he would not be available for the meeting scheduled for April two years hence, and proposed moving it two days forward. The other board members started jabbing at their BlackBerries to see if they were available on that distant day.

  – Stella, the company secretary was asking. Which of those dates works for you?

  – They both do, she said.

  In two years, thought Stella, my car will have crashed along the motorway, and so what difference could it make to me whether the April board meeting is on the twenty-first or the twenty-third?

  The next item was to approve the results statement to be released to the stock exchange the next morning. James had drafted this announcement and had come into the boardroom to present it.

  He looked at Stella, but then looked down at the point on the table where the French polish was uneven.

  – I would like to draw your attention to the revisions made to the statement following the conference call with the drafting committee, he said. We have inserted the sentence, ‘We anticipate current market volatility to persist with consequent effect on short-term profits from E&P activities.’

  The non-exec who was sitting next to Stella looked up from his BlackBerry, on which she could see he was writing a message beginning ‘My darling Tim’.

  – I’m a bit uncomfortable about us saying ‘short-term’, as it implies that we are not predicting volatility for medium-term, he said.

  James looked exasperated.

  – With respect, I don’t believe it says any such thing.

  The debate to-ed and fro-ed with those favouring ‘short-term’ and ‘medium-term’ lining up against each other.

  – Why not say ‘in the future’? said Stella.

  This was her first suggestion as a director, and it seemed reasonable, if a little basic. No one took any notice. The chairman said: I propose taking out ‘short-term’ and substituting ‘going forward’.

  Everyone agreed this was an excellent idea and the words were inserted.

  Stella’s BlackBerry flashed.

  Her heart stopped – and then started ag
ain when she saw it was a message from the Government Statistics Office with some inflation numbers she had asked for.

  Twelve more messages landed, and each time she felt a lift of the spirits and then a fall when the sender was not Rhys. The thirteenth message had his name next to it.

  Stella opened it. She didn’t need to read it. She understood what it said simply by seeing the shape of the words and the absence of kisses. The words made no difference. They said:

  Of course it’s tempting. I love you. But I can’t go through that again.

  During the following three hours of the board meeting Stella made no further suggestions. When the meeting was over Stephen said to her: So what did you think?

  – It was long, said Stella, and then, pulling herself together, said: I thought it was fascinating to get so many different minds engaged simultaneously on these issues. Though I was quite surprised that some of the non-execs weren’t always up to speed.

  Stephen nodded approvingly.

  – I knew I could trust you to cut straight to the chase, he said.

  On her way back to her office Stella had to walk past Rhys, who was staring intently at his screen. She should have gone straight past him, but found herself stopping at his desk.

  – Hello, she said.

  – Hello, he replied.

  Then she said: The board meeting is over.

  – Yes, I gathered. How did it go?

  He asked the question so correctly, so politely, that Stella almost wished he had said ‘I hate you’ instead. His professional coolness implied that he was coping whereas she was not.

  – Thank you, it was fine.

  She propelled herself into her office and sat at her desk, her heart thudding in distress. She bowed her head in an attempt to hide the tears from Nathalie, who was eyeing her curiously. She got up, walked briskly to the toilet and shut herself in the disabled cubicle. She leant against the closed door, put her hands over her face and was so racked with tears that her legs would not hold her up. She put down the seat of the loo and collapsed on to it, her body convulsed with silent tears. In her mind there was only one thought: don’t make a noise. The sobs racked her body so much that she released a series of shuddering sighs and had to flush the toilet several times to cover the noise. She could hear others coming and going, signs of normal office life that to Stella came from a world in which she no longer belonged.