Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  She didn't say anything. She held her hand out towards me for the printouts, and when I passed them to her, she leafed through them until she found what she was looking for. She handed that sheet to me, indicating where I should read.

  I looked down at it. 'A copy of this complaint had been CCed to the manager of the employee(s) selected, as per Frost Group performance management policy'.

  That knocked the wind out of me. Sean had said the exact opposite. I read it again and again while Diane watched me. Eventually I managed to ask her, “Is this always what happens?”

  She nodded once. “A manager is likely to notice if one of their employees is suspended.”

  My blood ran cold as the gravity of that hit me: he'd lied to us, and now I was sitting in here, across from Diane. God, he'd lied to us. To our faces, and with a smile on his. I felt sick. God, I felt sick.

  While I stuck on that thought, Diane had been looking through a pile of papers in front of her, and she held one of them at me. I could see it was a copy of the Vladivostok materials before I'd even taken it from her. I winced. I'd been handling the Burov ones all day and these looked vulgar and slapped together in comparison. I thought that's what she meant. “I know they're not my best work,” I began, “But I didn't—”

  “—the numbers, Min,” she interrupted me. “Look at the sales figures you've quoted there.”

  I looked up at her. “Did John get them wrong?” I asked, confused. “We extracted them straight from the raw data files.”

  She gave me a considered look, and then slid open a drawer in her desk and went through it until she found a copy of last year’s full annual report. She opened it at the gross sales page and lay it on the desk in front of me, one perfectly manicured fingernail pointing to a figure on the page. I looked from that number to the same one on the Vladivostok materials.

  They were different. Very different.

  But we’d had the financial reports extracted straight from the system, and, well, maybe John had got the numbers wrong, but I’d quickly double-checked his calculations and hadn’t seen anything that I was worried about. The numbers in the materials matched the numbers in the data files that Sean had…

  I swallowed. That Sean had extracted for us.

  Oh, shit.

  Oh, shit.

  Fuck, I'd been so messed up over the Gemma-lift-thing that I... oh, my god. How could I have been so stupid?

  I sat back, my jaw wide open as I looked across at Diane. Oh my god.

  Diane gave me a few moments to sit with that before she added, “And let's not forget who you were in a meeting with when Jason and I wanted to speak to you about John and the Vladivostok pitch falling over.”

  With Sean, I thought. With Sean. I'd been so worried about Bree that I'd decided to risk it. And boy, was his door wide fucking open for me when I did.

  Oh, my god.

  Fuck, I'd cried in front of him. I'd let him comfort me. He must have thought I was pathetic.

  “So,” Diane said, lacing her fingers in front of her. “The IT contractors cost me $13,700 to set up an external secure network in Oslo. The encryption was a further $650, and then to set up all the security software was another couple of thousand on top of that. I got them to come in and start at 3am. I spent days talking over who to put on this project with Jason.”

  And I'd completely disregarded all of that, her specific advice to stay away from Sean, and now look at what had happened. I'd thought he was nice. I'd thought he was supportive and professional and warm like Henry was. And I'd thought that even though Henry himself had warned me about Sean.

  Fuck.

  Diane had warned me about Sean. Jason had even warned me about Sean. Everyone had warned me about him, and still I'd been in his office letting him offer me tissues.

  Fucking hell, I was an idiot. I was a prize fucking idiot. In front of both of the CEOs of a multi-billion dollar corporation, I looked naïve, pathetic and stupid. I'd just had so much other stuff going on in my personal life that I hadn't... I swallowed. I hadn't been paying attention. I'd let myself be a fucking puppet. Sean was probably laughing over how easy it had been to use me.

  Diane didn't speak for some time. “Don't think I don't know what my brother's like, Min,” she said eventually. “And don't think I'm not onto Jason for not giving you the managerial support you should have been provided. But despite that, you're an intelligent woman who's been working here for five years, and yet we still find ourselves in this situation.”

  I could barely speak. “I know. I'm sorry.”

  She didn't address my apology. At least not directly. “So. What do you recommend I do with you?”

  I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to throw myself through one of those big windows behind her. That was stupid, though, and I couldn't say that to her, even if I felt it. I'd got everyone into this mess and the mature, appropriate thing to do was to get everyone out of it, too. Even if I was so disgusted with myself that I was sick with it.

  “I'll fix them,” I said. “The Burov materials, I'll fix them. The pitch isn't over yet.”

  There wasn't even a hint of smile on her lips. She just glanced at her clock. It was 4:19pm. “Printing closes in 41 minutes,” she observed. “You'd better hurry up.”

  41 minutes? 'Hurry up' was an understatement of the century, I wasn't sure how I was going to lay out one new page in forty minutes, let alone fix and proof three in that time. I wasn't even sure it was possible, except it had to be, didn't it?

  She was clearly dismissing me, but I knew the conversation wasn't even close to being over. We'd just resume later. I stood, worrying about that, my treacherous fucking legs weak and knees locking as I tried to walk briskly out.

  She stopped me just before I left, and I turned towards her as she said mildly, “This is your last chance, Min. Any more mistakes and it would be irresponsible of me to continue to employ you.”

  I swallowed, and then left her office and made a beeline for Oslo and let myself in.

  I didn't have time to think. I didn't have any time to sit and reflect about what had just happened or what was going to happen or what was currently happening because I literally needed every fucking second to get these hard copies fixed before Printing closed. At least the text I needed to fix was laid out across a solid colour background, so it was just a matter of fixing the figures, resizing everything and checking the balance. Which meant focusing, and not thinking at all about Sean or Jason and what they'd done to me and, fuck, what time was it? How long did I have left?

  Every time I finished a page I looked straight up at the clock: 4:31pm, 4:44pm, 4:55pm. When the last one was done and I'd frantically checked over it to make sure not only did everything fit but that it also looked great, it was nearly on the dot of five and I had to rush out into Marketing and call Printing.

  “He's just left for the day,” their admin informed me when I asked for my contact.

  “Then run out there and get him,” I told her. When she hesitated, I said, “It's urgent!”

  After I’d made sure that my contact had returned and the materials would be printed, I moved straight onto the presentation materials.

  I didn't even have a second to spare because unlike the printed materials where the text was across a solid background, in the presentation slides there were figures across the graphics. That meant that when I'd corrected the numbers, the composition was off and two or three of them were really hard to read. I tried resizing the images a little and changing the font but that threw the balance off further, and in the end I realised I was going to need to edit the images if I wanted this to look at all professional and presentable. I tried to do it with my mouse but it was twitchy and imprecise and in the end I sat back.

  It was a lost cause trying to do this on work computers with work software. Fixing them properly meant getting my tablet, which was at home, where I was forbidden to go until this was finished. Which meant I needed to ask Diane.

  The prospect of needing t
o talk to Diane again was literally making me sweat. It took a lot of rationalising to convince myself to walk up to Diane's office; I kept telling myself that Bree was at home and she'd be able to do something with how crap I felt so that I had enough emotional energy to come back into the office and finish these.

  It was okay, I told myself, Diane was going to let me, she wanted this done as much as I did.

  When I let myself out of Oslo, Marketing was quiet. There was one guy still left up the other end of the floor, bent double over his monitor while he analysed something. Other than him, no one was left. The clock outside Diane's office said 8:17pm, and her assistant had gone home.

  Diane's light was on, though, but her blinds were drawn.

  I took a deep breath and lifted my fist to knock on the door, when I heard Diane say, “...what is this bullshit?” I heard the sound of rustling papers like she was shaking something. It was weird hearing her swear.

  I dropped my arm and held my head close to the door to listen.

  “Well, Di,” that was Sean's voice, and he was patronising her, “it looks like a formal complaint. But I'm not certain, since you won't let me read it.”

  All the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I was flooded with emotion. Sean. You bastard, I thought. You fucking bastard. How could you?

  “Don't bullshit me, Sean. Stay the fuck out of my department and stop meddling with my assets.”

  Assets?

  “Your assets?” Sean said in an amused voice. “You mean your staff? They're people, Di, people who—”

  “Who you need to learn to stay away from.”

  I moved to a place on the interior window where I could see a tiny gap in the blinds. I peeked through it; Sean was sitting casually on the edge of Diane's desk, tinkering with the desk clock while she sat 'calmly' at her computer. I'd seen him do the same to Henry, and Henry had looked just as annoyed as Diane did right now.

  “Oh, please,” Sean said casually. “I never seek out your staff, they come to me like children in need of a big hug because Mummy is so mean.” He twisted towards her. “By the way, how about the ones you actually send to me, should I stop ‘meddling’ with those, too?” He was clearly baiting her.

  She took a measured breath. “See you in court, Sean,” she said, attempting to be dismissive.

  That got a reaction out of him, and he put the clock down on the desk. “This is fucking ridiculous, Di, you're actually going to go ahead with this? Just because of one dispute I lodged? You're going to be that anal about it?”

  “The directions hearing today found grounds to sue, so I will.”

  “Why? It's going to put Waterbank out of commission for 12 weeks. If you have this head for business, or whatever you like to think about yourself, you'll know that means tens of millions of—”

  “—Reputation, Sean, is worth at least that. I would have thought that was something you'd understand, given how you like to present yourself to my staff.”

  “Gee, I'm so sorry that people actually like me, Di, I know that's difficult for you to understand because fear is a poor substitute for—”

  She cracked. “—oh, fuck off, Sean. No one likes you, they like this bullshit nice guy persona you invented. Everyone who knows who you really are hates your fucking guts. And you really think your wife doesn’t know? Really? Because she’s a smart woman, Sean. I can’t wait until she actually has the courage to leave you.”

  He laughed openly. This time, it was a really harsh sound. “Oh, Di, you can be so funny sometimes.”

  Diane smiled tightly at him, lacing her fingers together on the table in front of her. “Yeah. Must be pretty funny to hear about how much your own parents hated you. I bet you lie in bed every night and laugh about it.”

  “At least there's someone lying next to me. No one would come within ten k's of your bed.”

  Diane didn't look the least bit bothered by that. In fact, she smirked. “Well, it's that far up the driveway,” she paused, “of Mum and Dad's estate.”

  He directed her a heavy stare. “Which I'm sure is going to be really comforting when you're alone on your death bed. Maybe you can hire some top grief professionals to expertly cry for you.”

  Diane just gazed calmly at him, and then feigned surprise. “Oh, that was it? I was expecting you to finish with something actually insulting.”

  He didn't sound as relaxed when he spoke this time. In fact, he sounded very serious. “Drop the fucking court case or I'm going to stuff up your pitch tomorrow. I don't even care how much our share price drops if I do. It'll be worth it to watch your face when you miss out on getting finance for your pet mine.”

  She pretended to turn back to her computer. “See you in court, Sean.”

  “Did you even hear me? You can't piss me off by blocking access to Waterbank if your mine doesn't exist.”

  She glanced towards him and smiled again, repeating pointedly, “See you in court, Sean.”

  “Well, then, see you at your pitch tomorrow, Diane,” he said, slipping back into his super-professional, super-calm tone, and hopped off the table to approach the door near where I was standing.

  My heart pounded, and I backed into the corner of the room and hoped it was as badly lit as I thought it was. When he opened the door, slamming it so loudly the windows all shook as he left, he didn't notice me.

  I stood there for a second trying to process what I'd just heard, but the clock was directly across on the other wall from me and it read 8:26pm. I had no idea how long it was going to take to fix the images, but it was going to take me at least twenty minutes to get home and back and that was time lost.

  Stunned and numb, I knocked on Diane's door. She didn't answer—probably because she thought it was Sean—so I just entered. Her jaw was still set when she peered over her monitor at me. “Are you done?” I couldn't read her.

  My heart was still pounding, and as I opened my mouth to speak I could feel it against my ribs. “The printed materials are done and I got them in on time,” I told her. “I need to alter two of the images on the slides, though.” I took a breath. “Which means I need to go home and get my tablet.”

  She watched me intently for a few seconds. “30 minutes,” she said finally. There was an implied threat in that. I knew something bad would happen if I wasn't back in the office and working hard by minute thirty-one, but she didn't specify what that was.

  I swallowed. It would probably only take me twenty, anyway, which left a couple of minutes for Bree. “Okay.”

  She nodded, and I showed myself out and went to grab my handbag and head downstairs.

  The muscles in my legs were weak and I had to be careful about how I walked. All of me was shaking, and I honestly felt like I was just about to pass out.

  Fuck, I could barely make any sense of what had just happened. What I'd discovered about Sean, what a fucking idiot I'd been, and then that conversation I'd overheard. The details just hung in my head and didn't fit together. Now that I had a second, I needed to tell Sarah about this. She was incredibly fucking switched on and not a human mess like I was, she'd figure it all out.

  I took my phone out of my handbag and dialled her number while I was waiting at the lights. I held my phone to my cheek and waited. I needed to remember to ask her if she'd known that Jason would be suspended when we complained, too.

  It didn't ring, though, it went straight to voicemail, and as her upbeat voice told me to leave a message, I pulled the phone away from my ear and frowned at the screen. Why wasn't she— oh, of course, that's right. It had been ages since she'd left, and by now she'd be entertaining Sasha Burov in the Star. There was no way Jason would let her get away with having her phone on, let alone answering it.

  I put the phone back to my ear anyway to leave a message. “Hey,” I told her, forgetting to say who it was. “I need to talk to you. Ring me as soon as you get this.” I put the phone back in my bag.

  I'd been looking forward to speaking to her and the anticlimax of not being able
to do it was disorienting. It made my pulse race, and I tried to walk a little faster to burn off the adrenaline. Bree was at home, anyway, and I'd have at least a couple of minutes to spend with her. She'd sort me out. She always did.

  The lift in my building took ages to arrive, and then it felt like it stopped on every fucking floor on the planet before it got to twenty-six. I paced restlessly in the lift, I just wanted to get home, get my tablet, and get these slides done so I could get at least one thing right for Diane and my team after I'd royally screwed everything else up.

  When I finally got to my level, I strode down the hallway on shaky legs, trying to figure out how I'd brush out part of one of the cliffs in the graphics. I was thinking about the best way to do that, fishing my keycard out and fitting it into the reader when I noticed the surface of my door had fresh marks on it.

  I stopped, frowning.

  I put a couple of fingers to the wood to touch them; they were sunken and crescent-shaped as if someone had struck the centre of my door with an object that had a round edge.

  Worrying about that, I swiped my card and stepped inside. I had begun to say, “Bree?” when I noticed there was something large missing from the hallway. I didn't trip over a schoolbag as I walked inside and dropped my Jimmy Choos, and there weren't school shoes or thongs discarded randomly en route to the living room. My apartment was cold, and empty and silent.

  I let that sink in as I walked into the living room, dumping my handbag on the kitchen counter. Bree was gone, and I had absolutely no way to contact her, and those pock-marks in the door could only mean one thing: Andrej.

  I stood in the centre of the living room, worrying about her in that toxic house. She'd specifically said Andrej wasn't violent but she must have been a bit afraid of him, right...shit, is that the time?

  My eyes passed over the clock on my wall: 8:49pm. I worried about her. I worried a lot about her, and I also worried about myself that she wasn't here to give me a hug right now but I didn't have time for this and I—take a deep breath, Min, take a deep breath and focus—I've just got to get my tablet and get back to work in ten minutes and finish those slides and then I can come home and have a drink and worry about Bree. Then, I can.