In Office Hours

by Lucy Kellaway

  Stella watched his face fall from smarmy impatience to alarm.

  – Oh dear, he said.

  He stood up and turned round so that he was staring out of the window and Stella could only see his back.

  – Oh dear, I see … Um, no. I don’t condone it. Obviously not. Would you like me to talk to him? … Please, Hillary. Look, I’m terribly sorry. This is an awkward situation. Please don’t cry. Hillary … are you there? Hillary?

  He closed his eyes, sighed and put the phone down.

  – What was that? asked Stella, knowing perfectly well what that was.

  – I shouldn’t tell you, though I expect you may have surmised.

  He said the last word with an arch pomposity, as if to distance himself from the sordid nature of the facts.

  – Something to do with James?

  – The stupid idiot has had an affair with someone on his team. That was his wife weeping and gnashing her teeth.

  – Oh dear, said Stella. But why did she tell you?

  – I don’t really think she knew what she was doing. She was babbling incoherently. She apparently saw her husband locked in an amorous embrace with this young woman last night in the garden, which cannot have been a particularly pleasing sight. I suppose she phoned me because in the heat of the moment she had forgotten that revenge is a dish best served cold, and all that.

  He paused and went on.

  – Funny, I thought it was a perfectly good do last night. Everyone rather well behaved for a Christmas bash. But then one never knows what is going on under the surface. Still waters, one could say.

  Stella ignored this philosophizing and said: Does she expect you to sack him? Surely she wouldn’t want that?

  – No, I think she expects me to sack the girl and read him the riot act. Though I don’t think she had thought any of it through. She was just having a hormonal moment.

  And then, as if suddenly realizing that he was addressing a woman, he said: No offence to present company.

  Despite everything Stella wanted to laugh. ‘No offence’ was what Finn said to her before he told her that she looked old or that her cooking was worse than the nanny’s.

  – Tell me, Stella, what am I supposed to do about this? We are all adults. I don’t expect anyone to be an angel. God knows, I’m not one myself.

  He looked at Stella in an unpleasantly suggestive way.

  – But I really would expect people to have the good sense – the taste – not to conduct affairs with subordinates whom they then promote.

  Stella swallowed.

  – Does everyone know about this affair? Did you know?

  – Well, I had my suspicions, said Stella.

  – Why didn’t you tell me?

  – Because, Stella started to say, but Stephen interrupted.

  – I know why. Because it wasn’t your business.

  Stella nodded uncertainly.

  – Look, Stella. You are a morally upright person and I’m sure you find it terribly hard to imagine how people get themselves into messes like these. But they do. This sort of thing looks so sleazy if it gets out. I think we need to have a policy to cover this. I think I’ll talk to Russell about it.

  – Do you really think it’s a good idea to involve HR? Stella started cautiously, thinking of her recent conversation with Russell.

  – You’re right, said Stephen, nodding. We don’t need the dead hand of HR on this. Can you draft something yourself and then liaise with Russell? And in the meantime I’m going to have to have a word with James. Really, this wasn’t in my job description. CEO of global oil company – Task 1: Tell your senior executives to keep their bloody trousers on.

  Bella

  James called Bella in. He was looking odd. Not distraught, just stiff. There was a dead look in his eye.

  – You should know this, he said.

  He was speaking slowly and precisely.

  – Last night Hillary saw us in the garden.

  – She called me, said Bella.

  She was still shaking, and finding it hard to speak. James didn’t seem to have heard her but went on in the same monotone.

  – She has responded with anger and hostility, which is perhaps not surprising. I have assured her that you will be transferred immediately to another role.

  Bella stared at him in horror. This was the man she loved. Who had told her in the garden, fifteen hours earlier, that he adored her and that he could not bear to be apart from her. She could understand that he was in shock. But what she could not understand was why he was looking at her as if she had a nasty contagious disease and needed to be kept away from him for fear he might catch it. He could not even, she thought bitterly, spare one thought for her or how she might feel, or what it was like to have his wife shouting wildly down the phone. Her suffering in this just didn’t register.

  – We are going to have to find you another job. I will make sure it is a good one. In fact I might ask Stella if she’d take you.

  – I’m not a bundle, said Bella.

  He looked at her, and for just a moment she thought his mask was going to slip, and that he was going to weep.

  – No, he said. You are not a bundle, Bella. I am aware of that.

  And then, after a brief silence, he said: I loved you, you know.

  Loved. One letter, one minute change in tense was the most painful thing of all.

  Stella

  Stella would have liked to have had a conversation with James about it. One in which she would have said: I think I may know some of what you are feeling. It’s total hell. I don’t blame you – I pity you and feel sorry that it’s all such a terrible mess.

  But she didn’t do that, not because she thought James would tell – he might be a serial adulterer, but he was not a gossip – but because she dreaded his response. It was normal – or what passed for normal – for a man to have an affair with his much younger PA. But for a woman to do the same: that would seem perverted.

  Yet so desperate was she to tell someone who might understand that she was feeling so very bad, she might have risked his amusement – or even his disgust. What stopped her was the look on his face as she went into his office.

  He looked entirely blank. There was no sign of distress, or even embarrassment. She had heard his words in the garden the night before, and though delivered in a slightly stilted way, she believed them to be genuine. Surely he was suffering at some level; but if he was insisting on wearing a mask like this, then so must she.

  – Stella, he said. This is somewhat sensitive, but I would like to ask you a favour.

  Stella nodded.

  – Bella Chambers, who I believe briefed you for your recent interview, needs to move on from my team for personal reasons. I don’t really want to go into details, but I do not wish her to return to the secretarial pool and be punished for what was not her fault. I wondered if there were any openings on your team?

  Stella thought of the intense dislike she had felt for Bella at the party the night before; even though it turned out that her jealousy was probably unfounded, it still left a bad taste. She did not want this pretty girl sitting near Rhys, even if Rhys himself might shortly be moving.

  – I’m sorry, she said. I have a PA and an EA and that seems enough.

  – Stella, he said. Please. Is there not some research project? She is very bright and willing –

  This last word, with its unintended innuendo, hung between them.

  And then he said, in a slightly different tone: It said in the Telegraph yesterday that you were keener on promoting young men? This might set the record straight?

  Stella looked at him closely. What was he saying? Did he know?

  – That’s bollocks, she said. But yes, if it helps you and helps her, I’ll take her.

  – Thank you, Stella, he said.

  Bella

  Bella knocked on Stella’s door, and was beckoned inside.

  Stella was at her desk, calmly typing at her keyboard. Her life seemed so settled, Bel
la thought, so grand and so happy. Presumably Stella knew all the sordid details and was judging harshly this stupid PA who had slept with her boss, and now needed rescuing. It was all so humiliating.

  And then Bella thought of the previous evening, and Stella witnessing her talking to Hillary. What a low opinion of her she must have.

  This was particularly painful – Bella admired Stella and wanted to be liked by her. When she had presented the diversity numbers to her, Stella had been so clever at sorting out the waffle. She was informal but she was also scary. Perhaps it was because she set such high standards herself she couldn’t understand how other people made a hash of their lives.

  – I understand, Stella was saying, that you have come to the end of your research stint in External Relations and are interested in economics. James says that you are a brilliant linguist, that you pick things up very quickly and that you have huge promise. He said that you deserve to be on the management fast track.

  Bella gave a strained smile. The idea that he thought her worthy of the fast-track programme would have given her such pleasure a few months ago. Now, she neither believed it, nor cared.

  – I have been looking at your latest Work and Development Plan, Stella went on, and I think you have a lot of skills that we could use. I don’t have a job for you to be slotted into at once, so for now I will ask you to help out Nathalie, and to work on projects for me and for members of the department. The job is ill-defined at the moment but, if you are willing, we will be able to find things for you to do.

  – Thank you, said Bella. I really appreciate this.

  Stella smiled.

  – It’s utterly self-interested, she said. I need good people. The only spare desk is with Nathalie, but you won’t be doing PA duties, as Nathalie has that more than covered, as you can imagine. I hope that is OK?

  – Thank you, said Bella again. Her eyes were filling with tears, and her voice was shaky. She thought she might cry. Why was it that when people were nice to you at work they made you cry, but when they were horrid you kept your dignity?

  – Are you OK? Stella asked.

  Bella fought to get control of herself.

  – I have been humiliated today, and made to feel like a worthless piece of scum. It’s just a shock when someone starts to be kind, especially someone like you. I doubt if you have ever done a stupid thing in your whole life.

  – Oh, I have, said Stella suddenly.

  Bella thought she looked a bit odd. Could it be that she was so moved by Bella’s plight that she was inclined to cry too? Such softness was quite unexpected. But just as Bella was thinking that, Stella stood up sharply, and said briskly: Nathalie will sort out your desk and so on.

  Bella was putting her things in a crate to move from her old desk in ER. She had had to stop in the middle of it and go to the loo to weep. The distress she felt came in waves. She would feel almost normal for a bit, and then she would feel as if she’d been hit like a truck by guilt and anger mixed in with grief. As she put her last pens into the box Rhys came by.

  – I suppose you’ve heard, she said.

  He nodded.

  – Does everyone know?

  He nodded again.

  – What are they saying?

  He shrugged and said: Nothing much.

  – I don’t believe that, said Bella. I suppose they are saying a great deal. Every time I go into a room people shut up at the sight of me. If I wasn’t so miserable, I’d really mind. I suppose they’re saying I’m an idiot.

  Rhys didn’t comment on this.

  – Do you think I’m an idiot? she asked, picking up a picture that Millie had done when she was six of the two of them holding hands and putting it in the crate.

  – Yes, he said, obviously you are. But then we are all idiots.

  – You’re not, she said. You are, in other ways, but you’d never be so stupid as to have an affair with someone who is not only taken, but who is also your boss. Things don’t get more stupid than that.

  – No, said Rhys, they don’t.

  He said this with a surprising amount of feeling. Why was he rubbing it in, she wondered.

  – So why do it? he asked.

  Bella looked up and could see James sitting at his computer, eyes fixed on his screen.

  – I can’t talk to you here. Will you come down to the canteen with me and get a cup of tea?

  And so they walked to the lift together, Bella feeling the eyes of not just Anthea upon them, but the entire team.

  – Do you really want to know why? she said as they sat down in the canteen with a cup of tea that she didn’t feel like drinking. It’s because I was tired of dating stupid boys who either looked down on me, or couldn’t cope with Millie. Or who drank eight pints of lager and threw up. James isn’t like that. I admired him. And he admired me, or so I thought.

  – Really, said Rhys. I thought he was a bit of a pillock. Seemed to have something wedged up his arse.

  Bella smiled. She was so angry with James that the idea that others despised him made her feel better.

  – Yes, she said. I don’t know what I thought I was doing. Maybe it was just proximity. Or maybe that work is so boring that doing something forbidden is exciting. But it’s not as if I set out to do it. In fact I set out not to. But he was nice to me, and I was flattered, and I thought why not?

  Bella knew that this wasn’t true. But she wasn’t going to tell Rhys how much she had loved him and how, even now, even in the middle of it all, she still hoped – and sometimes even expected – that he would come back to her. Neither was she going to tell another version of events that sometimes she thought was the true one: that she had fallen for him, and made a play for him, and forced him to ignore his guilt. She had played on his weakness, just as Hillary had said.

  – You’re right, Bella went on. I was an idiot. And – guess what – it’s always the woman who pays the price. No one has suggested that James be moved somewhere else. I’m being packed up and sent to a different job, and expected to be grateful for not being fired.

  – That’s an incredibly sexist view.

  – It might be sexist, but it’s also true. How many men do you know who have suffered from the bust-up of office affairs?

  – Well, I haven’t counted. But you’re wrong anyway. The reason that you’ve been dumped on isn’t because you are female, it’s because you’re below James in the food chain.

  – Well, yeah, but that’s always how it’s going to be, isn’t it? How many women date their male PAs?

  – Point taken, said Rhys, doubtfully.

  Stella

  On the last day before the Christmas break, Stella went back to the doctor. This time she insisted on an appointment with her own GP, a woman in her mid fifties who had seen Stella through two pregnancies but not much since. She sat in the waiting-room and picked up a copy of the Financial Times and stared at the front page.

  ‘G8 ministers seek to reassure markets’, it said. She tried to read the story, but could not take it in. After a while her name was called and she went into the doctor’s treatment room.

  – What can I do for you? the doctor asked, looking at Stella over the top of her reading glasses.

  – I’ve been having difficulty sleeping, she said. And I’m also a bit anxious – not all the time – I’m fine for a bit and then a wave of panic hits me. I keep bursting into tears.

  As if to prove the point, she started to cry. The doctor handed her a paper tissue.

  – I’m sorry, said Stella.

  – Has something happened? the doctor asked.

  – No, not really. I’ve just got a lot on at the moment. I’ve been promoted into a new job, and it’s Christmas, and my mother-in-law hasn’t been well, said Stella.

  The doctor was looking at Stella’s notes on the screen and had doubtless seen the record of her last, humiliating visit there, three months ago.

  – There was something else that has been a bit – Stella hesitated while she thought of the righ
t word – destabilizing. I’ve been having an affair with someone at work. But now it’s over.

  The doctor nodded.

  – I see, she said.

  Stella found it was not a relief getting the truth out into the open. The admission sounded so banal, so humdrum, and so entirely of her own making.

  – It’s all a mess, Stella said. I never meant to do this. But it has hijacked my life and –

  She started to sob again.

  – Sometimes I think I’m going mad, she said.

  The doctor handed her a form on a clip pad, and told her to fill it in. There were twenty questions, to which she had to write ‘Strongly agree’, ‘Agree’, ‘Not sure’, ‘Disagree’ or ‘Strongly disagree’.

  Stella dabbed at her eyes with the hankie and looked at the first sentence.

  I take less pleasure in things than I used to.

  Stella ticked ‘Strongly agree’. What a stupid question.

  I have difficulty sleeping. She ticked ‘Strongly agree’, again.

  I often feel blue for no reason.

  Actually she felt more than blue, she felt black, but she had every reason to do so. And on she went through the questionnaire until she came to I feel suicidal. She did not feel suicidal, although if she had to fill in many more moronic forms like this one she might be shunted in that direction.

  Stella handed the completed questionnaire back to the doctor, who on looking at the answers proceeded to tell her exactly what Stella had said at the outset: that she was suffering from anxiety and depression and insomnia. She gave her beta-blockers and antidepressants and warned her that she must not drink any alcohol.

  – Are you still in touch with this man? she said.

  Stella nodded.

  – I have to be. He works for me.

  – Ah. I see. And what about your marriage?

  – My marriage is fine.

  The doctor showed no sign of having heard.

  – It often helps, she said, going to see a Relate counsellor. If you look up Relate on the internet you’ll be able to find the name of someone convenient. They are usually good.

  – But, protested Stella, I don’t want to see a Relate counsellor. I love my husband. This is something quite separate.