Chapter 2 The Lift
The Lift
Jack spoke down the emergency phone in the lift and Tam listened in to his half of the conversation.
‘An hour? Really? . . . Ah, I see. Well, I don’t see as if we can do anything other than wait, can we?
Thank you.’ He was calm, polite, as he put the phone back on the cradle.
‘They said to sit tight and they’re sending a crew round.
So we shouldn’t really attempt the hatch and climb up the cables.
’ He pointed to the small square trapdoor above their heads. ‘I am joking, by the way.’
The noise of Tam’s breathing was filling the lift. She could hear her own lungs operating like a battered accordion, complete with whistling wheeze. And her inhaler was in the desk drawer because she hadn’t anticipated she’d need it merely going up a few floors in a lift. Just brilliant.
‘I suppose we should make ourselves comfortable, Tam, what do you think?’ Jack folded his legs beneath him and sat on the floor of the lift and Tam thought she’d better follow suit.
For one thing, she didn’t fancy standing in one place in these ridiculous Louboutin heels she had worn to give her some confidence to get through today.
All they ever threatened to give her was pain and eventual bunions.
She lowered herself as gracefully as she could, which wasn’t easy in this black pencil-skirted suit.
A present from Harris, something to wear and look smart and businesslike in, he’d said when he presented it to her, though she felt a frump in it really.
She sat with her spine straightened by tension, her eyes forward, her breathing jagged.
‘So . . . tell me about how you came to work for YorkMart,’ said Jack.
Tam’s eyes shifted round to him in disbelief that he was trying to engage her in conversation when she was clearly in a state.
‘Beats the silence,’ he said, with a shrug.
Tam grabbed a breath, humoured him.
‘I’d just graduated. Ten years ago. Business Studies. First-class honours.’ Tam wasn’t usually prone to bragging, but she wanted him to know she was no teacake. ‘I walked in here and I just knew this was the place I wanted to be.’
‘Why?’
‘There was a buzz, a vibe, an energy. It was like being in the pull of a power station,’ replied Tam, aware of how airy-fairy that sounded, but it was nevertheless true.
‘It was the youngest and smallest of all the supermarkets, but it had great potential. I was right to trust my instincts. Back then, I was part of a keen dream team of like-minded people. It was a great place to work.’
‘Was?’ He drew attention to the use of the past tense.
‘Yes.’ She replied with emphasis but without elaboration.
‘And you rose through the ranks.’
She’d been justly rewarded for her efforts, until the then MD retired and Martin Middlewood took over.
Then her career path stalled. Middlewood had greased his way into top position; the board were well and truly taken in and promoted him way beyond his abilities, and he only wanted his own people around him: an all-male comfort blanket.
‘I went as far as I could,’ said Tam. Which was not the same as saying she went as far as she should. Her head was so flat from banging on the glass ceiling, she could rest a full dinner plate on it.
‘Well, that’s not quite true, is it?’ replied Jack. ‘You did get to sit in the MD’s chair.’
Tam permitted herself a wry smile.
‘I’m under no illusions about why I was allowed to do that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The board needed a mug, a stooge,’ she replied, without thinking too much about what she was saying, because her focus was more on keeping breathing than on the words coming out of her mouth.
What did it matter anyway now? She had nothing to lose by being candid.
‘Everyone knew that the first thing the Messiah would do when he landed would be to get rid of the interim, that’s why only I stepped up to the plate.
’ The mug. Business was ruthless and that’s why no one else had put themselves forward for the job, though none of them were as dedicated and knowledgeable as she was anyway.
But she had been willing to take the risk.
And she had been a fool, because it hadn’t paid off.
She could see Jack smiling, even in the semi-dark.
‘The Messiah? Is that who I am?’
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, with hindsight. But she had, so there was nothing to do but own it.
‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’
According to his page on Wiki, he was thirty-six, had an Italian father and Yorkshire mother.
He had once been married to a concert violinist, but no children, and he boasted an amazing cache of business achievements.
Tam would have allowed herself to be impressed by his credentials had he not nicked her job, but she just couldn’t bring herself to gift him any brownie points.
No one would have taken more care of getting YorkMart back to where it should have been in the marketplace than her, not even him with all his past proven successes.
His amused, smiling face was annoying her.
‘I was making great inroads before I was ousted, you know.’
Jack folded his arms, kinked his head. ‘Tell me.’
Okay, she would then.
‘Turnover rose, customers were being lured back from those bargain-famous supermarkets whose names we shall not mention. I brought in the internal incentive scheme for the workforce, asking those doing the actual jobs how they might be improved in stores, on the machines and computers and systems they operate day in day out, and we gained some truly amazing insight very quickly. There were things I wanted to implement but they would have taken longer to show their effect, of course, but I once got a standing ovation from Sir Roland in a board meeting.’
Sir Roland was the chairman, whose father had built up YorkMart from a market stall, and he was always notoriously difficult to impress (unless you were one of his golf cronies).
At night in bed, she’d visualised being told by the board that they were taking her on permanently as MD.
She would make it happen by brain power.
‘You have no idea how big the mess to sort out was when Martin Middlewood left, and I was sorting it.’ Ha – a mess was like saying a tsunami was a bit damp.
‘But, let’s be honest about it, the board wanted a man in charge.
And you just happen to be a . . . a genius as well as a man. But I was doing a great job.’
She dropped a big breath, spent. She felt a stone lighter for saying all that had been weighing down her heart for a full month.
Jack nodded slowly, digesting her words before speaking.
‘I think you’re right. Not about me being a genius or a Messiah, but about the board preferring a male in charge.
Though it didn’t work out too well with Middlewood, did it?
You would have thought they’d have learned a lesson there.
I’ve read all about what a disaster he was.
And I’ve seen what you did to undo the damage.
You accomplished a hell of a lot in those weeks as MD. ’
Was he patronising her? She couldn’t tell.
‘You must have been gutted to hear your position wasn’t going to be permanent,’ he went on.
Gutted didn’t even touch it, thought Tam.
She’d been summoned to the board for a formal meeting after two months, long enough to start proving herself, and she knew in her heart that they were going to offer her the job without looking elsewhere.
In the bath the previous night, she had practised her acceptance speech, which wouldn’t have been out of place orated in the Roman Senate.
On that day she’d worn this same black suit, again paired with the beautiful Louboutins she had on now.
Tam had strutted in her posh shoes into the boardroom, where the ‘fusties’, as she secretly called them, were assembled. This was her moment.
But . . . Sir Roland thanked her for being such a credible stand-in and now the feted Jack Cesaroni was going to take the wheel and he hoped that she would give her most splendid support to him because she wouldn’t be drafted back to Ops; her old department would be absorbed into another, but she was to act as Jack’s sidekick and she knew what that meant.
He would parasite all he needed to know from her, then she would be toast because there would be no place for her to go.
How exciting for them all that they had persuaded him to join them.
How flaming exciting indeed.
Tam had stuck her fingernail in her hand to quell the rise of emotion in her throat. All her great plans for the company up in smoke.
Gutted, Jack had said she must have been. He didn’t have a clue how gutted it was possible to be.