Her boss
‘Some creep just took a picture of me.’
Clara says this, matter-of-factly, sitting down in front of her computer. She removes a can of Diet Coke from the pocket of her leather jacket and pops the ring-pull.
‘What?’ says Ren, who is sitting at the computer opposite, hammering the backspace button. ‘Like, from the bushes?’
Their too-small table has been divided down the middle into two de facto desks, the backs of their monitors pressed up against one another. Across the top, they paddle conversation back and forth, questions lingering like shuttlecocks in the air.
‘Yeah,’ Clara says, her lower lip pushed out. ‘Well, no. From the street.’
‘So, a street photographer?’ Ren says. She stops typing, black nails hovering over the keyboard. ‘Like a street-style thing?’
Elizabeth watches them through the open glass door of her office.
‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley is playing on the radio, turned down to a level she mandates as non-distracting.
Clara is supposed to be her PA, and these flights won’t book themselves.
Elizabeth had even left a Post-it note on Clara’s desk, with words to that effect.
She can see the can of Diet Coke resting on top of it.
‘No,’ says Clara. ‘Just some guy. He wanted to post it on his blog.’
Elizabeth watches Clara pick up her can and take a swig. The Post-it note, now wet, clings to the bottom. Clara pulls it off without reading it and discards it in the bin beneath her desk.
‘What did you say?’ Ren asks.
‘Absolutely fucking not,’ Clara says, proudly.
Elizabeth considers heading over there, reminding Clara and Ren that she doesn’t pay them to chat.
But she doesn’t want them to think she’s fusty.
She remembers what it was like to be a thwarted creative.
Before they entered the world of ad production, Ren wanted to work in fashion, Clara in films. Or was it the other way around?
Elizabeth can only half-remember their CVs, preferring to hire on general vibe.
She tries her best to bring in renegades and right-brained thinkers, but they never seem the right fit.
Ren had recommended Clara – and it would be the last recommendation of Ren’s that Elizabeth would take.
She turns to her computer, now, and types out an email.
To: Clara.
Subject: Flights.
She adds a word: URGENT.
Ren sighs. ‘What were you doing when he took it?’
A pause. ‘Drawing.’
‘What were you drawing?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
God forbid Elizabeth gets out of this godforsaken country.
God forbid she gets an assistant who actually assists her, rather than one who makes it her mission every lunch break to get as far away from their Belgravia office as physically possible.
Clara says that she walks to ‘clear her head’, that she only draws ‘on her own time’.
But it’s called a lunch hour, not a lunch hour-and-twenty-minutes.
Clara’s ‘art’ is an aimless habit for restless hands.
I’ve been there, Elizabeth wants to say. I grew up.
‘I’m just saying,’ Ren is saying. ‘If you’re drawing strangers, you can’t get annoyed at people taking pictures of strangers.’
Clara is holding the now-crumpled can in her hand, arranging it like a sculpture. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘It’s exactly the same! He’s a photographer,’ Ren says. ‘They take photos.’
‘Of women?’ Clara says. ‘Without permission?’
‘Did you get this guy’s permission?’ Ren says. ‘To draw him?’
‘A drawing is different.’ A pause. ‘And I didn’t say it was a guy.’
Neither of them says anything else for a while. They have a habit of talking without speaking. The pair of them live together, arrive at work together, leave together. Elizabeth sometimes wonders if they’re conspiring against her.
‘I’m interested in people,’ Clara says.
And something flickers over her face, as if looking like she cares is a cardinal sin.
Elizabeth’s co-founder had once described Clara’s look as one of ‘studied disarray’, a high-minded way of saying he wanted to sleep with her despite her being twenty years his junior.
Everyone wants Clara, because she’s beautiful, and because she makes it known that she doesn’t care about anything, including the fact that she’s beautiful.
How unprofessional, to turn up to the office every day in scuffed Vans and faded jeans, a slacker hoodie and a jacket which, vintage or not, looks like it’s falling apart at the seams. Elizabeth supposes that Clara is trying to be edgy when she dresses like a boy.
When Elizabeth had invited her to a glitzy industry do, Clara had turned up in a baggy white shirt and men’s trousers.
Elizabeth, in sequined dress and stilettos, had felt like Clara was mocking her.
‘So, what did he say?’ Ren says, without looking up from her screen.
‘Who?’
‘The guy you drew.’
The song has changed. Elizabeth has already stood up, smoothed out her blouse and taken her first steps towards the telling-off she’s about to give Clara.
But just then, Clara glances over at her, those bright eyes holding her in place.
At the same moment, Elizabeth notices the plane tickets in her in-tray, accompanied by a handwritten note.
Clara’s handwriting. Elizabeth falters, sits back in her chair.
‘He asked me what I was going to do with it,’ Clara says.
‘And what did you say?’ Ren asks.
‘Nothing.’
‘And him?’
‘He asked if he could have it.’
‘And?’
‘I said, sure.’