by Anna Roberts
I remember Roach’s apoplectic reaction when I told him I was getting married and to whom, and how, shortly afterward, my position was confirmed. I realize now it was because I was marrying the boss. The thought is unwelcome. I am no longer acting editor – I am Anastasia Steele, editor.
I don’t know who Roach is, but you can see his point. It’s things like this that make me wish this book was set in reality, so we could watch the company’s share price fall through the floor when everyone finds out that horny nitwit Christian Grey not only bought the company but put his wet-behind-the-ears wifelet in charge.
I haven’t yet plucked up the courage to change my name at work. I think my reasons are solid. I need some distance from him, but I know there will be a fight when he finally realises that.
Oh honey – you could change your name to Reginald Dwight and everyone will still know you got the job because you married the boss. You’re twenty-one, practically illiterate and you never do any fucking work. Please don’t tell me you seriously think you’re there on merit; nobody can be this stupid and maintain any kind of higher brain function.
And there will be a fight. Obviously. Because that’s how it goes in these books.
Then she does some work for all of about five minutes before getting distracted by her honeymoon snaps. Apparently Christian picked up the camera and started taking photos of her while she was asleep and sucking her thumb. Naturally she sleeps pretty and he doesn’t get any snaps of her with her head thrown back and her nostrils flared so that everyone can see her sleep bogeys. And there are no pictures of her with that intense expression of concentration that people get when they’re straining out a fart in their sleep.
Also it’s not creepy when he takes pictures of her when she’s not looking. It was creepy when José did it, obviously, but he’s not rich.
She stares at a picture of Christian for a moment and works herself into another tizzy.
Someone out there wants to harm him – first Charlie Tango, then the fire at GEH, and that damned car chase. I gasp, putting my hand to my mouth as an involuntary sob escapes. Abandoning my computer, I leap up to find him...
So long, work. So long, job that I want to keep because I want my career to reflect my own merits. Hello again to you, perfectly believable rumours of nepotism.
Christian is in his office farting around with a new character named Barney. He will now be played by a large purple dinosaur because I have to make my own entertainment while reading this book. They’re going through security footage of the server room at GEH (That’s an unfortunate acronym when you sound it out. Something you want to talk about, Christian?) and enhancing it 100000000x with magic computers, just like the author saw them do on CSI.
And obviously they find out that it’s Jack.
But you knew that, right?
Chapter Seven - Smirking Nine To Five
“Why would [Jack] do this?” I ask Christian.
Why wouldn’t he? Why would anyone who had spent more than eight minutes in the company of these people not want to set them on fire?
For some reason they also have the contents of Jack’s hard drive in their possession and he’s kept some kind of creepy dossier on Christian. Like the one Christian kept on Ana. But that’s totally different and not creepy. Because he’s hot.
Right – that’s enough of the plot for one chapter. Let’s get back to what’s really important – smirking our way through pointless dialogue that the author thinks is just precious.
“So what would you like to eat, Sir?” I ask sweetly.
He narrows his eyes. “Are you being cute, Mrs. Grey?”
“Always, Mr. Grey...sir.”
He smiles a sphinxlike smile. “I can still put you over my knee,” he murmurs seductively.
Actually, E.L., you might want to give words like ‘sphinxlike’ a wide berth, considering you spent the last book basically confirming that Christian is sexually attracted to Ana because she reminds him of his Mom.
Ana goes to make Christian a sandwich and is unhappy to find Mrs. Jones in there. Because she wants to be the one to cook for her man. Except when she doesn’t.
I like the idea of cooking for Christian on the weekends. Mrs. Jones is more than welcome to do it during the week – the last thing I’ll want to do I when I come home from work is cook.
See? I’ve barely reached the bottom of the page and I already want to set fire to Ana. Wouldn’t it be nice to only cook for your family when you felt like playing house?
Christian comes in and they talk about kids. He says he’s not ready to ‘share’ her yet and we all know he’ll never be ready to share anything ever, because he’s little more than an overgrown grabby toddler. I’m also reminded of a line from one of my favourite guilty pleasure movies – Goldie Hawn in Overboard; “But darling, if you had a baby you wouldn’t be the baby any more.”
Then they talk about how they’re going to renovate the house.
Christian points to the master bedroom, and we start a detailed discussion on bathrooms and separate walk-in closets.
When we finish it’s nine thirty in the evening.
“Are you going back to work?” I ask as Christian rolls up the plans.
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
Of course she doesn’t. And what does she mean by ‘back to work’? He hasn’t been at work all day. Come to think of it neither of them – the workaholic billionaire and the driven, hot-shot young editor – have done any fucking work in this entire book.
There are several boring pages in which they watch TV and hump on the couch, which I’ll skip because they are pointless.
“It’s been a heavenly three weeks. Car chases and fires and psycho ex-bosses notwithstanding. Like being in our own private bubble,” I mutter dreamily.
“Hmm,” Christian hums deep in his throat. “I’m not sure I’m ready to share you with the rest of the world yet.”
“Back to reality tomorrow,” I murmur, trying to keep the melancholy from my voice.
Isn’t she precious? Hey, rich-girl – you don’t even have to swap phone numbers with reality if you don’t want to. And presumably you don’t, since you think Patrick Bateman’s evil twin here is anything but a repulsive, dead-eyed psycho with no sense of humour and all the sexual finesse of a drunken donkey.
The next morning Ana goes to work and starts sorting through three weeks worth of paperwork.
“...I have to say, reading through all this correspondence, I wish I was back in the South of France.”
Elizabeth laughs, but her laughter is off, forced, and I cock my head to one side and gaze at her like Christian does to me.
Elizabeth hates you, FYI. Elizabeth probably also wishes you were in the South of France. Or facedown in a dumpster somewhere. Anywhere where she didn’t have to deal with you, basically.
“Glad you’re back safely,” she says. “I’ll see you in a few minutes at the meeting with Roach.”
“Okay,” I murmur, and she closes the door behind her. I frown at the closed door. What was that about? I shrug it off. My e-mail pings – it’s a message from Christian.
And so it goes. God, I hate the e-mail thing. I hate it so much. You have no idea. Every time they start e-mailing I feel like I’m going to start pissing blood. It’s supposed to be cute and funny, but they’re not funny people – they’re just smug and thick.
He gets all miffy because her e-mail still says Anastasia Steele. She says she wants to keep her name at work, because they couldn’t have talked about things like this before they got fucking married. Oh no. Because that would cut into time better spent drinking, whining or having really boring sex.
As the meeting progresses, I grow more and more uncomfortable. There’s a subtle change in how my colleagues are treating me – a distance and deference that wasn’t there before I left for the honeymoon.
That’s because you married the boss, you stupid girl.
Perhaps Christian’s right...perhaps I can’t do
this anymore.
What do you mean, anymore? The only book you ever talk about is Tess of the D’Urbervilles and you get that catastrophically wrong every time you do.
The thought is depressing – this is all I’ve ever wanted to do. If I can’t do this, what will I do?
You can’t do this. You’ve never been able to do this. You never do this. You do nothing but e-mail your boyfriend and phone your friends. Oh my God, how can you be this dumb without dying in some gruesome but darkly hilarious accident involving a lawn-chair, fourteen dozen helium balloons and a BB gun?
Can you imagine working with this cretin, let alone working for her? Well, it’s just about to get even more enjoyable for the long-suffering personnel at SIP Publishing.
Christian Grey turns up to ask his wife why it still says ‘Anastasia Steele’ on her e-mail. This is why your colleagues hate you, Ana.
To anyone with half a brain it’s obvious what’s going on here. He doesn’t actually want her to work – he’s said so on several occasions. So he’s making a mountain out of the molehill that is her married name, so as to cause so much embarrassment and disruption that she’ll never want to go back to the office. And she’ll be his. All his.
I’d feel sorrier for Ana if she wasn’t so fucking dense. My pity at this point is reserved for the peripheral characters who are trying to do their jobs. There’s no way they can get rid of the Fisher-Price editor whose idiocy and laziness are no doubt costing the company dear, since she’s been foisted on them by the massive screaming manbaby who is currently having a giant hissyfit in their boardroom.
“Christian, when I took this job, I’d only just met you,” I say patiently, struggling to find the right words. “I didn’t know you were going to buy the company -”
What can I say about that event in our brief history?
How about ‘bye’?
His deranged reasons for doing so – his control freakery, his stalker tendencies gone mad, given completely free reign because he is so wealthy. I know he wants to keep me safe, but it’s his ownership of SIP that is the fundamental problem here. If he’d never interfered, I could continue as normal and not have to face the disgruntled and whispered recriminations of my colleagues.
By George, I think she’s got it! Well, she’s half got it. Like I say, I have very little sympathy at this point; back in book two she was angry about the buyout, but her anger was short-lived because he said something to remind her that he’s fundamentally broken and broken men give her a serious case of fizzy knickers.
“Why is it so important to you?” I ask, desperately trying to hold on to my fraying temper. I look up at his impassive stare, his eyes luminous, giving nothing away, his earlier hurt now hidden. But even as I ask the question, deep down I know the answer before he says it.
“Ana, I am a big spoilt baby and if you don’t change the name on your e-mail right now I’m going to cry until I make myself sick. And if that doesn’t work I’m going to climb up on the boardroom table, drop my pants and do a massive poo.”
Okay, he doesn’t say that. I wish he did, but he doesn’t.
“I want your world to begin and end with me,” he says, his expression raw. His comment completely derails me. It’s like he’s punched me hard in the stomach, winding and wounding me. And the vision comes to mind of a small, frightened, copper-haired, grey-eyed boy in dirty, mismatched, ill-fitting clothes.
Hey, I was close!
Holy shit, this relationship is ridiculous. Ridiculous. Is it paedophilia if your husband is mentally five? What the hell is wrong with her? Every time he behaves like a total fucking psycho she’s all ‘Oh, but he’s pretty and he used to be a Victorian orphan or something, and I can’t be the bestest woman in the whole world if I don’t love him unconditionally’.
It’s like watching an exceptionally stupid child trying again and again to stuff the cylindrical brick in the star shaped hole.
Ana makes a little speech about how she’s always worked, and that she can’t be suffocated. She may as well have been speaking Urdu – to a parrot – for all the sense it makes to him. Then he decides to shit on her dream job (she says it’s her dream job, but take that with a pinch of salt, since she never actually does it) and tells her that he’s the reason she got the editor’s job in the first place.
WHICH WE ALL KNEW ANYWAY.
Except Ana didn’t know this, which proves without a doubt that not only is she the dumbest human being to ever defy the odds and survive infancy but is also so delusional as to her own abilities that it’s a wonder she hasn’t tried to invade Russia. In winter.
To further fuck things up, Christian announces he’s going to give her the company. As a wedding present.
At this point everyone who has been listening at the boardroom door stops listening at the boardroom door and runs to start shopping their resume to rival firms, if they haven’t done so already. Ana, for once on nodding terms with reality, says she can’t run a publishing house. Ana - running a publishing house. And there was me thinking I’d find few opportunities for comedy in this book.
Anyway, just like every time they’ve had a really terrible argument about something important (stalking, buying the company where she works, not wanting her to work for a living); he suggests they fuck and it’s all forgotten. She refuses to get down in the boardroom and he leaves. Finally. She goes back to ‘work’, which involves requesting a cup of tea from her assistant.
And then she e-mails him.
Fuck. You. So. Much.
And she changes the name in her subject e-mail to read Anastasia Grey, so basically the whole argument was for nothing. Her spoilt husband has once again learned he can get away with any kind of bullshit by throwing a tantrum and reminding her that he was once a big eyed Victorian orphan who had to eat catfood.
Oh, these people. These fucking people.
She works herself into a snit via e-mail and goes home with every intention of continuing the argument. This has gone on for so long already, but I have to show you this. It’s an amazing insight into how Christian Grey built his billion dollar empire.
“How much did [SIP] cost you?”
“It was relatively cheap.” His tone is guarded.
“So if it folds?”
He smirks. “We’ll survive. But I won’t let it fold, Anastasia. Not while you’re there.”
“And if I leave?”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know. Something else.”
She should get a job with Microsoft. Good luck buying that company, shitface.
Current theory on how Christian Grey has any money left at all is that he owns an ‘industrial laundry’ somewhere, but there’s a secret door behind one of the dryers and it takes you down into a wacky world of methamphetamine hijinks and bodies dissolved in plastic barrels. It’s the only explanation.
And to cap it all, he wants to give me SIP! How the hell could I run a company? I know next to nothing about business.
Neither does your husband, if he’s prepared to pour vast sums of money into a failing publishing firm just to keep his wife amused. And SIP is failing – it has to be failing. Surely everyone who matters knows that the company is little more than a toy in the hands of two complete assclowns who do nothing but squabble all day like a pair of greedy seagulls fighting over a spilled bag of chips.
This chapter has gone on forever, and once again nothing has been resolved. Once she’s at home he plays some ‘stunning’ music and after a couple of glasses of wine and some more mentally challenged banter, Ana is all better and ready to face the architect who has come to discuss their plans for the house.
Chapter Eight - The Couple That Bullies Together...
Chapter eight opens with the arrival of the architect, Gia Matteo. Gia is elegant, attractive and worst of all, blonde. And we all know what happens when Ana is confronted with a blonde – she gets up on her back legs and starts hissing like a cat threatened with the ironing spray.
“
You both look so well after your honeymoon,” she says smoothly, her brown eyes gazing at Christian through long mascaraed lashes. Christian puts an arm around me, holding me close.
“We had a wonderful time, thank you.” He brushes his lips against my temple, taking me by surprise.
See...he’s mine. Annoying – infuriating, even – but mine. I grin. Right now I really love you, Christian Grey.
I don’t know how ‘You both look so well after your honeymoon’ translates to ‘Hi. I'm trying to fuck your husband’, but at this point we have enough evidence to write these people off as hopeless freaks who are incapable of functioning socially.
They stand there like lemons until Ana ‘remembers her manners’ (what manners?) and goes to find some wine. Gia is determined to be difficult and requests a dry white, which is not in itself difficult, but this is Ana we’re talking about.
