Chapter 5 The Previous Friday
The Previous Friday
Three days before Tam was trapped in the lift with her boss of four weeks, preparing to either plunge to the ground and die or suffocate or bake in the airtight box, Jack Cesaroni had told her to prepare for getting the chop. There had been no other way of interpreting his words.
At precisely five-thirty she had knocked on his door and said politely, ‘Goodnight, have a nice weekend,’ and he had rewarded her by swivelling his head from his iMac and saying, ‘Could you make sure you’re on time on Monday, please.
There’s a meeting upstairs at nine sharp with the board and it is essential you are there. ’
‘I’m never late,’ she said, hackles raised, a fake stretch of smile counteracting the micro-snap in her voice.
‘Yes, I know. I’m just making sure as I have an announcement to make . . . and it concerns you.’
It sounded ominous. He must have taken her standing there musing as a need for clarification.
‘The mess is bigger than I was led to believe so I’m bringing my own people in, just in case you were wondering,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’
His goodnight sounded like a dismissal. A permanent dismissal?
He was preparing her, she knew it. What else could his words mean?
Was he implying she was part of the mess?
She’d tried to sort it, but it would have taken a lot longer than the few weeks she had in her big chair.
Now his chair, of course. This was a basic psychological tactic to upend her, have her fretting all weekend.
Yes, he might have been all charm and smiles on the surface, but only a little below the veneer he was just a control freak, devoid of empathy, and didn’t this just prove it?
She could see through him as clearly as if he were one of those transparent jellyfish.
They hadn’t really had a lot of interaction so far, other than him asking her for reports and her delivering them.
He’d been polite, if not warm, efficiency first. He had pored over every minute detail she had supplied.
She was aware that she was making herself redundant by telling him everything he needed to know, give or take her personal opinions on some people that – on balance – she wasn’t sure whether or not to share, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Not if it was for the good of something she cared about so much.
She’d been surprised by her first impression of him, had expected him to strut in on his inaugural morning with an air of entitlement.
He’d made quite the entrance in a stunning midnight-blue suit and blinding white shirt, with members of the board trailing and fawning behind him as if he were Harry Styles, but his manner had been anything but ‘film star’.
He had smiled, held out his hand to her and said, ‘Hi, you must be Tam, I’m Jack Cesaroni. ’
She shook his hand and resisted telling him that he sounded like a pizza. She had tried to smile, aware that she was terrible at smiling when she didn’t mean it and her expression resembled that of someone with bad wind.
‘Welcome aboard,’ she said, inwardly wincing at how corporate that sounded.
This is the start of the rot, she thought, because that’s what Martin Middlewood would have said.
He was full of all the management bollocks-speak phrases like: ‘let’s square the circle’, ‘herd the cats’, ‘paradigm shift’ – using them in all the wrong contexts.
She’d then been forced to accompany Jack-who-sounded-like-a-pizza around the building, because he asked her to and she was now his salaried slave and must comply.
He walked through every office introducing himself like the King backstage at the Royal Variety Performance.
If Tam had been an efficient stats person, like Olek in Accounts, she would have guessed that he shook over seventy-five per cent of the workforce’s hands.
Tam liked Olek enormously and had she remained in the top job she would have elevated him to the position he deserved, because Olek had more financial acumen in his little finger than his boss, Richard Idle, also known as ‘Idle Dick’, had in his whole brain.
Idle’s rise up the ranks had nothing to do with the fact that he was Sir Roland’s best golf buddy. Nothing at all. Obvs.
Tam had made sure she gave Jack a glowing introduction to Olek.
And she did the same with Sheila in HR, a fabulous woman who had defused many a bomb situation and done her best for anyone who had quit, or been forced to quit, the increasingly toxic regime.
Too few people realised that without Sheila’s input, their ‘goodbye package’ wouldn’t have been quite so generous.
During the last few weeks, Tam just got on with what was expected of her, always aware of the Sword of Damocles perched above her head primed to fall at any given moment.
And finally, that Friday night after the brief-but-telling convo with Jack, she realised it was going to fall in the boardroom on Monday just after nine.
So it was no wonder that she really wasn’t in the cheeriest mood for wedding-dress shopping with Natasha that weekend. She did her best to appear keen but worry and tension were leaking out of her every pore and no amount of silk, tulle or taffeta was going to fix it.
‘Well, I must say you’re acting more like a person looking for funereal clothes rather than a wedding dress,’ scolded Natasha, as Tam walked out of the changing room dressed like a puffball mushroom.
They had been in Maura’s Bridalwear in Meadowhall Mall for almost two hours already.
Tam now understood why people shot off to Gretna Green to get married in jeans.
She wished she could just relent and pick something that was ‘okay’, but for a reason she couldn’t really comprehend, she was doggedly still holding out to find the dress, the one that called to her heart, the one that offset her choices being swallowed up by the decisions of others.
It was more than important she claim this one element: the dress. And she would not back down.
‘That’s the worst yet,’ said Natasha, shaking her head.
The mirror was throwing back a reflection of a doll-in-a-crinoline that people in the seventies used to cover up their loo rolls. It would have looked much better on Natasha, who was tall and reed-slim like everyone seemed to be in Tam’s immediate intimate circle.
Tam went back into the changing room, ready for dress five hundred.
It didn’t look anything special hanging up, but the shop assistant had brought it in, urging her to try something a little different from what Natasha had prescribed: ornate, showy, designer.
This one was understated, simple, ivory lace with bell sleeves and no uncomfortable boning.
She slipped it on, lifted her head to the mirror and gasped.
Her reaction to it was a little strange, emotional even, because the reflection was of a Tam she had been but no longer was: a little-bit-bohemian Tam, who liked embroidered tops with hippy sleeves and bell-bottoms. The Tam in whose skin she felt most comfortable.
The Tam that Harris had fallen in love with but somehow she had evolved away from and she didn’t know why.
Seeing her reflection, she smiled; she liked being this Tam.
There had been some rain this morning and the damp had kinked her hair from its now-usual styled poker-straightness.
It took years off her, made her look fresher and more like the student who had a best friend called Anna with a similar bonkers wardrobe and mad hair.
This was it. This was the one.
Unfortunately, the dress would not go with the cathedral-length veil that Davina had insisted on because such a venue called for pomp.
Instead, it was crying out for a circlet of flowers and cute pumps on her feet.
Wouldn’t that be great, because she would be able to enjoy her day without spending most of it in pain and hunting down a chair.
Okay, she’d be three inches shorter without heels, but surely people would want her to be comfortable as well as pretty on her big day – and she really did look pretty in that dress.
How could she not? It was gorgeous. It was pure fairy-tale.
She walked out of the changing room and saw the shop assistant’s face break into a smile. ‘You look amaz—’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ Natasha said at the same time.
‘I love it,’ said Tam with breathy reverence.
‘You’d make a mockery of the day,’ said Natasha over-harshly.
‘The boys are in morning suits. My mother has bought a Victoria Beckham dress. The Lord-Lieutenant of South Yorkshire And the High Sheriff are both coming. You can’t wear something that makes you look as if you’re a reject from 1960s Woodstock. ’
Tam stared deep into the mirror at her reflection. If she had been Cinderella, this is the dress the fairy godmother would have magicked up for her out of a pumpkin or a mouse or whatever it was she enchanted.
‘No, no, you can’t have it,’ said Natasha, with a tone that prickled Tam. ‘Take it off. You have no sense of style and I do, trust me. Try the first one on again. That was the best out of them all by far.’
Natasha could be just like her brother sometimes. When they were right, everyone else was wrong and there was no debate, no argument to be had.
Tam’s eyes flicked to the shop assistant and she could tell she didn’t agree. She was most definitely on Tam’s side.
Tam took the dress off and tried on the one Natasha preferred again.
It was okay, but it didn’t have the X factor even if it would look the business in the photos.
Tam was beyond tired of trying on dresses now and more than deflated.
Did it really matter if she wore the one that would pass muster with everyone else except herself? Did it?