Chapter 12
MOLLY
The air is crisp as I step out of my car, adjusting the strap of my purse over my shoulder.
I glance up at the sleek office building in front of me, nerves and excitement swirling in my stomach.
It’s been two and a half years of late-night feedings, first words, and tiny toddler hands clutching mine.
I wouldn’t change those years for anything, but I feel like Autumn is old enough now to go to daycare, and my mom has promised to pick her up in the afternoons and have her for a few hours until I finish work and collect her.
It’s time for me to step back into the working world.
I take a moment to look down at myself and make sure my outfit is ok.
I’m wearing a black knee length shift dress with a pink suit jacket and pink heels.
My hair is in a messy bun and my makeup is minimal.
I think I look professional and from the people from the company I saw when I went for my interview, I think I fit with the style of other employees.
I can’t put off entering the building any longer.
It’s time to ditch my nerves and go and do this.
I’ve given birth and nothing can be harder than that, or so I tell myself as I approach the front door.
I open it and step into an air-conditioned lobby.
There’s no rush of workers entering the building because I was told to come in at eleven for the first day, and everyone else will already be tucked away at their desks by now.
The whole space is white – white walls and ceiling, white floor tiles, and a large white reception desk along the back wall.
The company name – Redfern’s Consultancy – is in large chrome letters on the wall behind the desk.
The waiting area contains white leather seats with a chrome and glass coffee table between them.
I’m almost afraid to walk across the lobby in case I somehow get it dirty, but I tell myself not to be ridiculous and I head over to the desk.
The woman behind the desk isn’t the same person that was here when I came for my interview. That woman was blonde, and this one is a brunette. She looks up at me with a professional smile.
“Can I help you?” she says.
“Hi. My name is Molly Matthews. I start work here today,” I say.
“Oh, hi Molly,” the woman says, her professional smile morphing into a more natural one. “I’m Larissa.”
“Great to meet you,” I say, returning her smile.
“Do you want to take a seat over there and I’ll find out where you’re meant to be,” she says.
I go over to the seating area and sit down in a seat that means I can see the reception desk on one side of me, and on the other I can see out into the street through the glass wall that makes up the front of the lobby. After a few minutes, Larissa comes over to me.
“I’ve spoken to HR. Someone will be along in a moment,” she says.
I thank her and sit and wait. I’m dying to check my cell phone to make sure that Autumn’s daycare hasn’t tried to call but I resist the urge.
It won’t look good if the HR rep comes out and sees me playing on my cell phone, and Autumn has been going to the daycare for two weeks now and she seems really settled there.
There’s no reason they will have called me.
I look up when I hear heels clacking on tiles and I see a woman in a navy-blue blazer with matching pants and a lighter blue and white striped top beneath the blazer coming across the lobby towards me. She smiles warmly as she approaches.
“Molly?” she says, and I smile and nod and then I stand up and the woman offers me her hand. I shake it and the woman goes on. “I’m Linda from HR. Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you,” I say.
My palms are slightly clammy, and I hope Linda didn’t notice when I shook her hand. I force myself to breathe through the nerves.
“Let’s start with a tour and then we’ll get the boring paperwork out of the way,” Linda says.
As Linda leads me on a tour of the building, I find myself starting to relax.
She chats as we walk, putting me at ease with her.
As we go, she explains she is only going to give me a brief overview of where each department is on each floor, and then she will show me around the floor I will be working on properly.
That sounds much less overwhelming than me seeing every single room, and she leads me to the elevator, where she points to the numbers for each floor as she says them.
“On the first floor is HR and accounts,” she says.
“The second, third and fourth floors are sales, and the fifth floor is billing and retentions. The sixth floor is customer services and IT, and you’ll be working on the seventh floor, which is where the top executives work as they are the ones who you will be working beneath, and also where the conference rooms are. ”
She presses the button for the first floor and the elevator starts up. Linda takes me to her desk, and we fill in paperwork for my payroll and personnel file. Once this is done, she hands me a list of systems with a username and password next to each one.
“These are the systems you’ll need. Mostly, you will be working on Word and Excel but it’s good to have all of these set up and ready,” she says. She points at the correct logins of the next few programs as she goes. “This is your email, and this is the calendar program we use.”
I take the list and put it carefully in my purse.
That’s not something I want to lose, especially not on my first day.
We leave the HR department and head back to the elevator where Linda takes me up to the seventh floor.
We get out of the elevator and the first thing I see is another white and chrome decorated space with a receptionist sitting behind a desk.
“This is Lena,” Linda says.
Lena and I say hello to each other and then Linda whisks me off down a long white corridor. As we go, she points out the kitchen, the copy stations, the bathroom and the employee lounge.
“You’ll be working with the other secretaries down this hall,” Linda tells me. “They are a good group - Frieda, Patty, and Sarah – and they will help you settle in.”
As we walk, she gestures to a door at the end of the hallway. In front of it sits a young woman at a large desk.
“And that door right at the end there is Mr. Redfern’s office. He is our CEO. You may not see him much, but he keeps the company running smoothly. That’s Margo at the desk, his personal secretary.”
I nod, filing the information away as we reach an open door.
Behind it is a large room with four desks.
Three of them are taken and Linda tells me that the fourth one is to be my work area.
On my desk – my desk! - is a computer, a phone, and a pile of neatly stacked files.
From the other three desks, three women look up, all of them smiling at me. Linda points at them one by one.
“This is Patty,” she says, pointing to the youngest looking of the three women. She has long, dark brown hair with a subtle tinge of purple that only shows when it catches the light.
“You must be Molly,” Patty exclaims giving me a little wave which I return. “Welcome to the trenches.”
“And this is Frieda,” Linda says, pointing to the oldest woman who wears round glasses and wears her grey streaked hair in a bun. She looks quite fierce until she smiles, and then a dimple appears on each cheek turning her into someone much friendlier looking.
“Welcome,” Frieda says simply, and I nod my thanks to her.
“And finally, Sarah,” Linda says pointing to third and final woman.
Sarah has blonde hair and ice blue eyes.
She is pretty but I instantly get mean girl vibes from her.
She looks up from her desk, looks me and up and down and seems to find me lacking, because all I get from her is a grunt in greeting before she turns her focus to Linda.
“Finally,” she says. “I hope she knows what she’s doing because I’m getting a bit sick of us having to absorb all of Roxanne’s work as well as our own.”
“I’m sure Molly knows what she’s doing, and if she does get stuck, I know you will be on hand to help her,” Linda says.
Sarah rolls her eyes and looks back down at her work.
“I’ll leave you to it then Molly,” Linda says. “Frieda is in charge, and she will show you the ropes, but if you need anything from me, you know where I am.”
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”
Linda leaves the room, and I go over to my desk and sit down. Frieda comes over on her wheeled chair and sits beside me.
“The first thing you need to know is to ignore Sarah when she’s being bitchy like that,” Frieda says. “We’re a great team and it’s nothing personal. It’s just like she said, we’ve been picking up the slack after losing one of our team.”
“And not getting any extra wages for it,” Sarah adds. She looks at me and gives me a smile. It isn’t the friendliest of smiles, but it’s better than the daggers she gave me earlier. “I’m sorry Molly. I just wanted Linda to know how I felt, it wasn’t anything against you.”
“No worries,” I say.
“What did Linda tell you about the CEO?” Patty asks.
“Not much,” I say. “Just that his name is Mr Redfern and that I probably won’t see him that often.”
“That about sums it up,” Patty says. “Except for the obvious omission.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
Sarah takes over the conversation.
“That we have the best view in the house, because when he is here, we’re right near his office and out of everyone, we get the most glimpses of our very own hot CEO.”
Patty sighs dramatically.
“Mr. Redfern. The man, the myth, the legend,” she says.
I wait for her to laugh but she doesn’t. I chuckle, shaking my head.
“That’s quite the introduction,” I say. “I can’t wait to see him.”
“You should know I have dibs on him though,” Sarah says.
“Noted,” I say with a smile.
“No, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t call dibs on a person,” Frieda says.
“Ah but I did,” Sarah says. “And you have to respect the rules of dibs.”
“I respect the rules of dibs,” Patty says. “But I’m not going to lie. If Mr Redfern asked me out, I would be like Sarah too.”
We all laugh at this, but I feel like Sarah’s laughter is a bit strained. I’m probably imagining it because the others don’t seem to notice anything off and they know her a lot better than I do.
“I respect the rules of dibs,” I say. “But I am intrigued to meet this man. There’s no way he can be this attractive.
“Oh, you’ll see,” Frieda says with a smile. “But for now, let’s get you settled in.”
I switch on my monitor and my computer and as we wait for it to boot up, I feel something I haven’t in a long time - excitement for what’s ahead.