Chapter 9
The day before the renewal of the vows ceremony
Sheridan’s wet chair had thoroughly dried overnight, because when Polly walked into the department, who should be sitting
swiveling on it as if it were playground apparatus but Brock Harrison, clicking a pen.
“Seems I’m starting earlier than expected,” he said, giving her his best corporate smile. “I hear she’s had the sprog.”
“Sheridan has had her baby, yes,” said Polly, already feeling the hairs on the back of her neck bristling, and he’d only been
in situ three seconds. She put her bag down, took off her jacket, and switched on her PC.
“Just before you start, any chance of a coffee?” asked Brock. Polly took a breath and prepared to nip this right in the bud.
“Yes, the kitchen is over—”
Then Jeremy came round the corner.
“Make that two, will you, Polly? Then just bob in for a moment, will you?” Seething, Polly put the kettle on, brought out
the two cups. Brock was talking on the phone; otherwise she would have told him that in future he’d be making them because
he was the assistant, not her. She was going to be more Sabrina at work as well as out of it, and that would start here today.
She took Jeremy’s coffee into his office.
“Any ideas about Auntie Marian’s Bread yet?”
“Yes, I’ve had some ideas,” Polly said. “I seem to be having trouble getting hold of the owner, Mr. Peach, though. He hasn’t
returned any of my calls.”
“So what are we suggesting to him?” Jeremy templed his long fingers and looked as if he was about to launch into prayer.
“Change the packaging—it’s terrible.”
“I know, we’ve just sent him a reworked suggestion. Timon’s been hard at that.” He smiled smugly.
Timon Cavendish, one of Jeremy’s managers. The one who falsely claimed credit for her “Nutbush. No Limits” slogan. If good
ideas were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to stir his nasal hairs.
“I mean change that reworked one. You can’t possibly use it.”
“Why? Not trying to throw a spanner in Timon’s works, are you, Polly?” said Jeremy, looking at her with the amused suspicion
of one who thought she had the temerity and shallowness to be jealous.
“Not at all, but it’s way too similar to Warburtons, the exact color palette in fact. They’ll sue.”
“It’s an homage,” he threw back, rhyming the word with fromage .
“It’s a rip-off, Jeremy. And it smacks of following, not leading.”
Jeremy, however, was not about to let Polly win the argument. “The lettering isn’t the same, is it? It’s much bolder than
theirs. The eye is drawn to that before anything else.”
“Yes, I know. He’s changed all the capital letters to lowercase.”
“Inspired. No one else is using lowercase.”
“And coupled with the font he’s used, that giant A in Auntie now looks like a C .” She tried not to gloat too much. Jeremy pulled his keyboard over and started tapping while looking at his computer screen.
When his face registered horror, Polly knew he’d seen it. And once seen, it couldn’t be unseen.
“Not a prob,” he remarked, though the muscle twitching in his jaw said different.
“They’re trying to compete with the quality market and they aren’t quality,” she went on.
“Well, that’s what they want to be. That’s what we’re going to make happen.”
“Won’t happen. He went full pelt without market testing his new products and there are better for the same price. He’s got
too many variations; he needs to streamline, not add to his range. And no, Timon’s dictate that I be sure to endorse his ‘The
Biggest in Bread’ as a slogan is not going to happen for reasons that are more than obvious. Anyway, as you asked for, those
are my initial thoughts. Arthur Peach won’t like them, but he will have to adopt them if he wants to compete with the quality
big boys, or he can revert to being cheap and high volume and not spend his money with us, which would be my recommendation
because he can’t have both worlds, and I suspect he’ll want the one that brings him the most revenue. I don’t mind telling
him.”
“Not sure about that,” said Jeremy, as expected, because saying, “Keep your cash, we can’t help you,” wasn’t an option Charles
Butler would approve of. “And while we are on the subject, talking of Arthur Peach... he’s not what I’d call a modern man.”
He pulled a cringey face.
“Meaning?”
“Well, he’s already made overtures that... he’d prefer dealing with... someone... male.”
Polly’s disbelief manifested in a series of rapid blinks. “In this day and age?”
“Sadly, yes. So I’m going to ask you to involve Brock from the off on this one, okay?
” Jeremy tilted his head like a confused Alsatian.
“He could do a lot of the talking, man to man.” Brock was on the first rung.
He should be sitting in meetings, taking notes, observing, learning, not “involved” when he didn’t know the first thing about putting a failing business back on its feet.
She had absolutely no intention of being shoved to one side just because she was female and Arthur Peach preferred talking to a bloke, especially not by a novice too young to grow anything but bum fluff on his chin.
She felt her cheeks register an angry heat because Jeremy wasn’t asking, he was telling.
If she said no, Jeremy would override her.
Wasn’t happening and she needed to say so. Sabrina definitely would have.
She began. “I really don’t think—”
He cut her off. “And then I need to discuss something with you that is a little more sensitive,” he continued.
He reached into his drawer and pulled out a stapled group of papers. “The test you did on Wednesday.” He flipped through it,
refamiliarizing himself with the results, and then flashed an awkward smile before speaking again.
“I’m very concerned about what was... uncovered.” He slid it across the desk toward her. “This is your signature on the
back, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” said Polly, confused.
“The thing is...” said Jeremy, licking his nonexistent lips, “the results of this test are quite... quite worrying,
I have to say.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no other way of putting this, Polly. I’m afraid you have a personality disorder.” Jeremy raised his eyebrows, newly
overplucked, and kept them high as he waited for that information to sink in.
Polly hadn’t a clue what to say to that. She could feel various responsive expressions tweak at her facial muscles, pulling
first this way, then that. What won through was a laugh, a hoot.
“I am serious,” said Jeremy, wearing his best serious face. The one he used when he said things like, “ I think we need to hand over Nutbush to Timon. He’ll look after the client from here on. ”
Now Polly was serious. “Jeremy, what are you talking about?”
“I’ve checked the results. They clearly show that, well, basically... basically, you show signs of being mentally unbalanced
with possible psychopathic traits. And I will have to record this in your HR file. I thought you should hear it from me in
person.” He turned over his hands, looking from the elbows down like Christ at the Last Supper, and above them like a sneery,
pompous twat.
There followed long seconds of silence, then a voice in Polly’s head said, Girl, how much more of this are you going to take? It was actually a line she’d written for Sabrina in her novel, delivered to her boss, Dick Germany, in a worm-turning moment.
The worlds of fiction and fact suddenly blended into one as Polly felt a spiral of fire rising inside her, just as she’d imagined
rose inside Sabrina when she was writing the scene.
“So let me get this right, Jeremy. You’ve been on some sort of amateur day course and decided to subject everyone in the company
to a cobbled-together personality test where the results are recorded in indelible ink on our records. And can I ask for what
purpose?”
Jeremy’s jaw tightened, not expecting to be questioned by the meek and mild Polly, and also not liking that amateur word.
“It’s an established test,” he answered. “I have just added my own guided variations.”
“Am I the only psychopath in the company?” Polly asked.
“Actually, no. There are a few with—”
Polly cut him off. “Oh, you don’t say. There are a few of us. A group. Maybe a murder of psychopaths, because I’m not sure what our collective noun would be. A derangement ? An instability ? An anger , perchance?”
Anger would fit. She felt very angry, but also his twitching face was amusing her in a situation where she shouldn’t be amused.
Maybe she was deranged. Who wouldn’t be, putting up with this sort of crap day in, day out?
“Your results were by far the most positive. Off the scale,” said Jeremy.
“Really?” She leaned forward and noticed Jeremy jerk back.
“Alas, yes.”
“You really are a tosser, aren’t you, Jeremy?”
Jeremy’s mouth dropped into a long O. And so did Polly’s.
She couldn’t believe she’d said that. It was all very well unleashing her inner Sabrina, but Sabrina could afford to walk out of her job and Polly couldn’t.
She needed it more than ever. She should pull that back, apologize, offer to make some tea and roll out the best biscuits, say absolutely yes to working with Brock on Auntie Marian’s Bread, but something inside her was popping like corn kernels and she couldn’t keep it in.
“You have systematically sidelined and undermined me since your backside hit that chair, haven’t you, Jeremy? You have promoted
people above me, you have sent me out to muster up refreshments like a skivvy, but when you want to turn around a business,
you’ll harvest every idea I have and pass it off as your own, won’t you, you inadequate little shit?” Even her inner Sabrina
was now standing back in wonder.
“Whaa—” Jeremy spluttered, but Polly wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to speak yet.
“Let’s take Nutbush as one of many examples. Remember, the shop you were going to shift entirely online. The shop now quadrupling