7. SEVEN
On Monday morning, Roscoe stopped the lift at the sixth floor and walked to Aubrey’s office.
“Like a carrier pigeon returning home. Get lost, Goldy?”
“Only existentially.”
Aubrey had just arrived himself. He eyed Roscoe as he unbuttoned his coat and lay it carefully over the back of his chair, then sat back against the edge of his desk, arms folded. “Everything alright?”
Roscoe glanced around. Not many others were in yet. He sank down into his old chair, fiddling with the coffee cup in his hands. “Intuition’s part of this game, isn’t it? Being able to read a situation. Understand what’s happening. Predict what’s going to happen next.”
Aubrey gave him an assessing look, then sat down, too. “Sure. That and reams of data analysis.”
“Have you ever…” Roscoe rubbed a hand over his eyes, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose. He dropped his hand to his lap, wrapped it around his coffee again, feeling the faint warmth through the insulated card. “Have you ever realised you were completely wrong about a situation? Specifically, um, with a girl?”
“Jesus. Is there a lawsuit coming? Do you need my father?”
“No! No. Nothing that bad. Thank God.” But what if she hadn’t stopped? What if she’d gone through with it, and all the time she’d…not really wanted it? He cringed, sick at the thought. “Just… There was a girl… I thought she was into me. But it turns out she was trying to use me to get a job or something. I guess she thought I could get her a role? Put in a word with HR? I have no fucking idea what she was thinking, to be honest.”
“Mm.”
“What?”
“Emily Malcolm. That’s probably what she was thinking.”
“Who the hell is Emily Malcolm?”
“That little brunette in research. Christmas party?”
He cast his mind back. Got nothing but the fuzziest recollection. He’d gone home with someone, sure, but… “I don’t know! That was months ago. Wait… Em? Emmy?”
“According to the gospel of the BG rumour-mill, you went home with Emily Malcolm. And when we all came back after Christmas, she was promoted to Senior Analyst.”
“And people think I had something to do with it?”
Aubrey’s silence spoke volumes.
“That’s ridiculous. If she got a promotion, it was all her own doing. Aubrey… Just what kind of reputation do I have here? Am I fucking blind?”
“Your reputation…” Aubrey busied himself for a moment, switching on his computer. “Let’s see. Golden Boy. Irritatingly good at everything. But too irritatingly nice to hate for it. Precocious. Workaholic. Slightly insufferable. Enthusiastic supporter of…erm…interdepartmental liaisons.”
Roscoe snorted. “You’re no monk, Aubrey.”
“But I don’t sleep with anyone I hold authority over.”
“Neither do I!”
Aubrey gave him a flat look.
“What?”
“You’re you. You have authority over every single person here except one. And he’s your father.”
“A week ago I was basically an intern!”
But Aubrey just rolled his eyes.
“Seriously?” demanded Roscoe. “You think I go around handing out promotions in return for…favours?”
“No. Not personally. But it’s BG. Rumours abound.”
“Well this specific rumour is pissing me off.”
Aubrey pulled a non-committal sort of face and sought refuge in his screens. Roscoe sagged back in his old chair, glaring at his old desk, fingers tapping on his coffee cup.
It had shaken him badly to realise his instincts could be so off. He relied on his intuition. All that rapid analysis and pattern abstraction that went on at a subconscious level, somehow intuiting trends and making predictions when confronted with vast amounts of complicated data… That was his job. Any event, anywhere in the world, could shift the market. And he had to be one step ahead of that—guess what was about to happen. There were predictive models, reports, stats, analysis. But at the end of the day, he relied on his gut more than he’d care to admit. And he needed to be confident in that. In this game, you absolutely had to be confident. Millions of pounds—people’s entire fortunes—were at stake. And when the markets were moving, he had to react quickly, no second-guessing, because things literally changed in seconds.
And he couldn’t even tell if a girl liked him.
Jesus Christ. Had he been blinded by lust? How had he read things so wrong? In the lift, the way she had looked at him, the breath she took when he touched her…
“I don’t abuse my position,” he said. Stated. Informed the world.
Reassured himself.
Aubrey glanced up. He met Roscoe’s eyes, but for a moment he did not speak.
“What?” Roscoe said.
It took Aubrey another moment to weigh his words. “I know how much it means to you to feel like you’re one of us. And I know how hard you’ve worked to prove that you deserve to be here. And I believe it. I do. Even without your name, you could apply for a job anywhere—any of our competitors—and you’d be in the door, no problem.”
“But?”
“But you are Roscoe Blackton. And pretending otherwise doesn’t change that fact.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re going to quote Spiderman at me?”
Aubrey smiled slightly. “‘With great power comes great responsibility?’ It’s true enough. Your name carries weight. And you might want to forget it, but the rest of us can’t.”
“So everyone’s brown-nosing, are they? Everyone’s cowering, too scared to say no, and no one here is really my friend?”
“What I’m saying is, as the kids may or may not still put it, you might need to check your privilege.”
But the first thing Roscoe actually checked when he arrived at his desk was his emails. And then, eyes fixed on the name written there, the next thing he did was call HR.
No matter how much she was dreading it, Poppy went to work on Monday. Quitting was hardly an option. Besides, she was out of food, and BlacktonGold provided complimentary fruit in the staff kitchen.
She would get paid in twelve days—the Friday after the Easter Bank holiday. BG’s payday was the fifteenth of every month. Which was extremely inconvenient, but it was a whim of George Blackton. Legend had it that he’d taken his first pay cheque out of the newly founded company on the fifteenth. And so the tradition continued. Screw everyone else’s monthly budgets.
Maybe people would bring cake to the office. Easter chocolate. And, as always, she’d be the one who took what was on offer and never contributed anything in return. She knew she had a reputation for being stingy, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. The way life was going, she’d probably get caught swiping excess fruit from the kitchen and be sacked for theft.
Maybe her life was a Dickens novel and she was bound for debtor’s prison, for the street, for grubby rags and a begging bowl.
She’d already attempted to sell her body. And look how well that had gone.
Her heart raced as she stepped into the building. Raced harder as she got into the lift. Practically killed her as she walked quickly past his office, head down, no idea if he was there.
This would be how she survived. Never look at him. Keep her head down and develop a highly specific and severe case of Roscoeblacktonblinditis. And amnesia.
But when had the world ever cared about what Poppy Fields wanted? Thirty minutes after she sat down at her desk, her boss Liz walked in beaming and said, “Good news, Poppy. You’re going to be Roscoe Blackton’s EA!”