Chapter 10
Olivia stands in the corridor and, like a Co-Op Columbo, tries to assess the situation as it appears to her this Monday morning: that on Friday night, a Gen Z-er in a bright pink suit kidnapped and drugged her, while pretending to work at The Morning.
Was this an elaborate way to get free drinks, or something more sinister?
It all made about as much sense as a Christopher Nolan movie, without any of the redeeming qualities of Cillian Murphy, or a stirring Hollywood film score.
Olivia heads back to the safety of her desk.
As Olivia approaches, she immediately spots Nina in her new office.
It’s really more of a small glass box, but the point is that it has a door.
Sat at her pristine desk, the only belongings on it a bottle of Tom Ford perfume, a pale green Stanley cup, and a Chanel lipstick, Nina is ranting animatedly at her screen, slamming her mouse up and down on its mat, as Joe stands over her, rubbing her back in a consoling manner.
But with Joe, as with everyone in this place, he could just as easily be knifing her in the back.
Olivia sits down at her desk, littered with sachets of sugar, wooden hot-drink stirrers, Post-it notes and pictures of her children.
She switches on her computer and wonders if there is something in the air.
Maybe the moon is full, mercury is in retrograde, and all the stars and planets have realigned to wreak havoc on Earth?
Why is it that she can suddenly see all the myriad ways in which she has allowed herself to be slowly boiled alive in this place, like a frog trussed up in a Zara frock and Charlotte Tilbury lipstick? What is happening to her brain?
‘I can’t BELIEVE they wouldn’t delete these,’ shrills Nina from her office, with the self-important air of someone who has just been made a national newspaper columnist. Olivia has to admire the speed at which Nina has settled into the role.
Her first week on the job and already criticizing the overworked online moderators.
‘I know,’ slithers Joe. ‘But see it as a compliment that all these morons wasted their weekends below the line on your column. And think of the engagement, darling!’
‘I suppose it will have made the numbers look good,’ nods Nina, temporarily mollified.
‘But Jesus, where do these people get off? Nina Hunt clearly only got this job because she’s sleeping with someone at the top.
Liked two thousand eight hundred and ninety-two times, Joe.
TWO THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO TIMES. ’
Olivia writes the word ‘BASTARDS’ on a Post-it note, and realizes that she would have hated this aspect of the job, that no amount of praise from on high would be able to cancel out the endless negativity from arseholes on the internet.
‘Think of the numbers, babe,’ Joe reassures. ‘Think of the numbers.’
‘Are you paid to write this drivel?’ Nina’s head is craned directly at the screen as she reads out more of the vicious missives posted below her first column.
‘Well, to be fair, you are,’ nods Joe. ‘And handsomely. Meanwhile, are they paid to write these comments? Now who’s the loser?’
Olivia nods along at her desk, thinking that for all his many barbed asides, Joe does at least put in a good shift as a hype man.
‘I’m tempted to log in and write that as a response,’ snorts Nina.
‘Look at this dude,’ Joe says, leaning into the screen. ‘HaalandIsLife? He’s left about seven hundred comments. He’s completely hot for you, look.’ Joe points at the monitor.
‘He absolutely wants to have sex with me,’ nods Nina, in a way that suggests she isn’t entirely upset about this.
‘Nina Hunt would be better off writing for the Beano than a once-great newspaper,’ reads Joe.
‘Nina Hunt?’ he continues, reading out another comment. ‘More like Nina *unt.’
Nina looks aghast at the C-bomb. ‘Joe! What the fuck does HaalandIsLife even mean?’
‘He’s probably referring to the Man City player, Erling Haaland,’ interjects Olivia with a sigh that ripples through her like a shudder.
That name is following her around like a bad smell after an afternoon on the pickled onion Monster Munch.
She dismisses the paranoia with a roll of her shoulders and a shake of her head, then notes the blank expressions on her colleagues’ faces.
‘Famous Norwegian striker, quite popular with ten-year-old boys.’
‘Well, you know quite a lot about this HaalandIsLife troll, don’t you, Olivia?’ Joe narrows his eyes at Nina. ‘Have you been trolling Nina under a pseudonym? Even I didn’t think you’d be that provincial, Olivia.’
Everyone within a ten-metre radius has stopped what they are doing, Spidey senses alert to a spectacle about to unfold in front of them.
‘Oh my god. Don’t even try that playing-us-off-against-each-other bollocks, Joe. Not today.’
‘You’re not usually so defensive, Olivia.’ Joe’s face lights up at the shit he has managed to stir. ‘Anybody would think you had something to hide.’
‘Ironically, Joe, you’ve caught me on a day when I’m just about done with hiding.’ She feels a fury building inside her, that after all this time working her behind off on the Women Rising programme for absolutely no thanks – or remuneration – this man would try to make out that she’s the bad guy.
‘Going to admit that you’ve been trolling poor Nina, then?
’ Joe is playing to the crowd now, warming to his theme.
Olivia’s seen him do this before with other colleagues – she’s watched him toy with people for his own amusement, lapping up all the laughs he gets.
She’s always tended to cower behind him, and now his vitriol is aimed at her she feels ashamed of every time she’s seen it happen and not called him out on it.
His sense of humour has always been cruel, always been about taking someone down, usually a rival who threatens his place in the pack.
She’s never been that person, never posed a threat to him, and she marvels at how quickly his nose has been put out of joint by her simply saying a few feisty words to him on the escalator.
The fact that he’s nothing but an insecure, immature bully smacks her in the face.
‘With all due respect to Nina, I have better things to do with my time than troll her.’
‘Bit suss, though, that you know so much about this Haaland chap,’ he says, with a flourish. ‘Who else could it be, Olivia, if not you?’
‘One of the thousands and thousands of anonymous men that this organization actively encourages to post misogynistic shit on its website every day?’ Olivia shakes her head as if she’s just had to explain Catholicism to the Pope.
‘That’s pretty convenient, isn’t it, Liv?’
Olivia closes her eyes for a moment, tries to calm her breathing. She needs to respond, not react; she can’t allow Joe to get her flustered, or she’ll lose the argument entirely. And for once, she not only wants to have an argument – she wants to win it.
‘You know, Joe,’ says Olivia, spinning her chair slowly round to face him.
‘I’m going to take responsibility for something today, but it’s not what you think it is.
I’m going to take responsibility for allowing you to suck my energy.
To drain it, with your fake friendship and your back-stabbing and your manipulation.
You’re a vampire in designer clothing and the whole time we’ve known each other, I’ve let you suck on my blood.
Whenever you’ve felt like shit, you’ve just dumped all of it on us without any consideration for what might be going on in our lives.
And I’ve tolerated it, because I’ve been a pathetic, emotionally naive empath, who thinks the worst of myself and the best of everyone else in the hope that it might make you like me more. ’
Out of the corner of her eye, Olivia notices people nodding along with her.
She used to cringe when actors and creatives gave interviews talking about the importance of living-in-their-truth, but all these validating glances are giving her an inkling of how very intoxicating it is. ‘Olivia, that is—’
‘No, I haven’t finished. You’ve always refused to own your bad behaviour.
You’ve always put it on other people’s backs, instead of taking responsibility for it yourself.
You’ve just accused me of trolling the woman I’ve been mentoring, for Christ’s sake.
But I’m handing it all back, Joe. I don’t need you to like me.
I don’t even want you to like me, when I really think about it. You’re just someone I work with.’
Joe’s lip quivers in shock. Nina sips on her Stanley cup, enraptured.
‘Do you remember when you told me that someone over in Baghdad had been slagging me off? You pulled me aside and told me that he’d been having a go at my, what was it?
’ Olivia steeples her hands as she searches for the words that had pierced her in the heart back when she had first heard them.
‘Beige copy and middle-aged ideas? And when you told me, Joe, you said it was because you wanted me to know you had my back. That you were looking out for me. Ha! I was really upset, and yet you expected me to be grateful for this beautiful act of friendship. You were just passing off nastiness as some sort of enlightening honesty.’ The adrenalin is pumping through Olivia’s veins now, courage finding its way from her heart to her mouth.
‘But if you think I’m beige, then you should see my insides.
You should see them. They’re red-raw and raging with all the things I have wanted to say but swallowed down.
Well, that stops now. I can promise you that from this moment on, I will tell you what I feel clearly and openly, and you won’t ever find me hiding behind some pseudonym on the internet to do it. ’
From behind her, she hears a slow hand-clapping.
She turns to see Stephen, grinning like a man who has just watched his football team demolish the opposition in the Champions League final.
‘Very impressive,’ he says. ‘Very impressive. I was just coming over to suggest that my new columnist and my new Anniversary Architect join us in conference, but after that performance, I don’t know if I dare!
’ He laughs with all the soul of a clown in a collapsed circus.
For the first time in her career, Olivia doesn’t feel the need to laugh along with him.