Day 83 – Writing exercise

…

It was a mistake.

I knew the moment I walked back into the office and found my key card didn’t work.

The security guards, in fact, were all new, and treated me like I was trying to break in.

The reception staff had also changed.  Uniforms and dour expressions.

The woman I was standing in front of knew who I was, and was pretending not to.

And the moment she mentioned Mr Ainsbury, I knew exactly what had happened.  He had manoeuvred me into being sent to the London office for two weeks while he made his ‘rearrangements’.

The first was to have me shifted from the Executive level.  When I refused to hand over the corner office, he didn’t make a fuss; just a face.

His father would not tread on my toes or be as presumptuous, but I’m sure Ainsbury the elder was shunted somewhere while the son played king of the castle.

This was the result.

I was watching her pretending to look me up on the computer.  It was sad. After all, I could see my new access card sitting on the table, with an older photo of me on it, because I had not been there when the card was made.

A violation of security right there.

I shrugged.

“Don’t bother.  I’m going off to the cafe up the road and have a coffee. Call me when you figure out whether I should be allowed in.”

“I’m sure. ..”

“That you like playing games.  Please, carry on.  Call me.”

I walked off, heading to the door.  I came straight from the airport, such was my dedication to the job.  Now I doubted that dedication was worth a tinkers’ damn.

“Mr Collins.”

Halfway across the door, she called out.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe she had stretched the joke too far.

I turned around and glared at her, then shook my head.  I was no longer in the mood to talk to her, or anyone.

….

There was a small Cafe not far from the building, a place I hadn’t known existed until Dorothy, my invisible but amazingly competent personal assistant, took me there the day before I left for London.  

A heads up, she called it.

A memo was sent to all of Ainsbury’s allies, and her name, being the same as one of them, got the memo by accident.  She printed it, then deleted her copy, completely so Ainsbury would never know.

It basically said Ainsbury would be assuming my role when I left the next day, and that major changes were being instituted.  I was being moved to some eloquent but meaningless titled role and sent downstairs, and Dorothy was being made redundant.

I couldn’t fight it because I had to go.  Ainsbury had created such a mess that if I didn’t fix it, I would get the blame.  He’d been working in tandem with several disillusioned employees I had demoted for incompetence, and now he had struck back.

I could have simply resigned.  I wanted to, but Dorothy said that I should wait until I got back to see the extent of the disaster.  As for her job, she would work for me from home. 

She had set up her office there ages ago when her mother was ill, and IT had never rescinded her access.  I wouldn’t have given similar access, not after the demotion.

She didn’t use that access while I was gone.  These things were monitored, and it was best no one knew.

Now I was back.

And the game was afoot.
…

The coffee was excellent, and the hustle and bustle brought me back to why I loved this city and everything about it.

I used to love the job too, but in the last year, after Ainsbury the elder had three heart attacks and had to start stepping away, the only child got the nod to come in and start learning the ropes.

Ainsbury had never promised me the CEO job, but he did say he would look after me.  It was a handshake, and I believed him.  I sacrificed a lot, and it reflected in the status and worth of the company.  I had shares. I was comfortable, but the trip to London highlighted one very basic issue.

I had no one to come home to.

Or take with me.

For a long time, I convinced myself that I didn’t need anyone, and for formal occasions when I needed a plus one, Dorothy stepped in. 

It was not as if we were romantically attached; she just enjoyed playing a part, and she did it so well that most people thought I was taken.

Now, sitting by myself, I felt something I hadn’t for a long time.  Loneliness.

The waitress delivered the coffee with a smile.  The reception staff in my building could take lessons in politeness from her.

Then my cell phone rang.

I looked at the screen.  Ainsbury.

I shrugged, let it ring until the last moment and then answered by first accidentally dropping it on the metal table with a loud clank, and then taking a second to answer.

“Yes?”

It wasn’t the way to answer the phone, but I wasn’t feeling charitable.

“Where are you?”

Demanding and impolite.

“Ask the front desk staff.”

“What have they got to do with anything?”

“If you don’t know that, then we have a serious problem.  Call me back when you work it out.”

I disconnected the call.

He knew exactly what was going on.

The cell phone rang again.

I ignored it.

He needed to sweat a little.  I’d momentarily forgotten the meeting with one of our biggest clients, the people who had requested the audit in London, and I was supposed to report back to them.

It was a bit difficult when Ainsbury revoked my access.

My cell phone rang again, this time a different number.  The CIO.  He had a similar opinion of Ainsbury, but only shared that with me. 

The walls, he said, had ears.

He was also at the briefing.

“Teddy.”

“Michael.  You’re missing the show.”

“Walter or Susannah?”

“Susannah just handed his ass to him in a sling.  And didn’t raise her voice once.  When she asked him where you were, he told her you’d probably forgotten the meeting, and she then asked him why you were down in the foyer trying to get an access card.  She wanted to know if he had fired you.  The poor bastard had nowhere to hide.  What happened?”

“Changed my access.  He got a belligerent reception clerk to play funny buggers.  I went to the cafe instead.  Now he’s trying to get me.”

The phone was telling me there was another call.

“He’s got the corner office in a reshuffle.”

“He’s got the job too, so he’s the front man for the problems.  I think I’m now head of Janitorial.”

“A promotion then.”

“I’ll be dealing with a better class of people.  I guess I’d better answer the call.”

“Later.”

I waited for the next call, let it ring and then answered almost on the last ring.

“Yes.”

“It’s fixed.  Get up here.”

“No.”

“What?”

“You have the title, Gerald.  That means you’re the man in charge of sorting out the problems.  I sent you the report before I left London, so go do your job.”

“They didn’t want me.”

“Well, that’s not how this works, Gerald.  Now, stop thinking, and go do the job.  You wanted it, and now you’ve got it.”

“I’ll fire you.”

“I’d go see legal first, Gerald.”

Then I hung up.  I caught the waitress’s attention and ordered another cup of coffee and a bagel. 

…

Ten minutes later, the dour front desk security officer came to the cafe and found me.

She was supposed to call. 

She had the look of someone who had got caught in the middle of a turf war and just realised she’d picked the wrong side.

“Sir.  I was asked to deliver your access card personally.”

“That’s all?’

She looked at me oddly.  “There wasn’t anything else.”

I took it, and she left.  I was hoping for an apology, but that was never going to happen.

I looked at it, shrugged, and put it in my pocket. 

My phone rang again.

Busy morning.

Susannah.

“Michael?”

“We’re you hoping for someone else?”

“Given what that crazy fool has done in the last fortnight, it was not beyond the realms of possibility he’d give your phone to one of his sycophants.  How are you, anyway?”

“On the outside looking in.  You’re not happy?”

“What’s going on?”

“Gerald thinks he’s king of the castle.  Probably is now.  His father is not well.  All work, well, you know.”

“I do, unfortunately.  It’s time for us to run away and find something less stressful.”

“Together?”

“Given the morning I’m having, I couldn’t think of anything better, but sadly, there are things to do.  I can’t get any sense out of Gerald, so what can you tell me?  The report from London was cryptic to say the least.”

I could feel her frustration.

“It’s a case of about a dozen conflicting miscommunications, mostly not from my office, nor me.  I haven’t been there.  The breakdown was caused by inferior spare parts, and I’ve instituted an investigation as to how that happened.”

“I heard you have a new title.”

“Part of the new broom and new directives.  I’m no longer in charge or with any authority without a rubber stamp.  I just got an email with my new responsibilities.  It won’t work.”

“Good luck then.  We’ll talk again in a day or so, if not before.  Ainsbury is back, so it’ll be interesting to hear what he has to say.”

So would I.

…

It seemed completely out of character to be sitting at a table with a cup of coffee, now half drunk and cold, watching people walking past purposefully.

Until two weeks ago, I was one of them.

Until two weeks ago, when Finsbury junior came in and told me, ‘As a courtesy, there will be some changes by the time I get back from London, and despite what I might hear, my role was not part of the restructure.

Good to know.  I left for London thinking that Ainsbury junior was just flexing his muscles, and that everything would be fine.

Only it wasn’t.  I’ll give the lad his due; he had completely undefended the whole office, transplanting his cronies into positions of power, and used everyone’s NDA to stop them from spreading the news.

Really, it was just to stop them from telling me.

Thus, when I returned the transformation complete, my access was stopped, my office was gone, and my personal assistant was banished.

Fait accompli…

I guess in that very specific moment when my access card failed, I knew the extent of the damage, and it was going to be irreparable.

Ainsbury junior had just steered the ship straight onto the rocks.  He had already proven twice he had no idea about the business.  It had to be learned from the ground up.  Years of training, years working through the issues, the breakdowns, the troubleshooting, and understanding what was behind customer complaints.  Really listen.

Ainsbury didn’t have the patience. He wanted to be the loudest voice in the room, the one telling everyone what to.  From what I heard while I was away, he had the record of losing the most customers in a day.

That wasn’t a record anyone else wanted.

….

I stayed at the cafe for another half hour, half expecting Gerald to come and get me.  He didn’t, so I went home.

I chose not to look at my phone; in fact, before I left the cafe, I had turned it off.  It was not as if I had to work for a while, and I needed a vacation.  I hadn’t had one for a while, and there were weeks owing.

When I walked in the door, I called HR and told them I was applying for leave, and they told me which forms to use.  After making a tea, Earl Grey, I sat down, filled it out, and sent it to the person I  spoke to.

Next, I looked at the seventeen calls and thirty-two messages Gerald had left me, the messages angry at first, then pleading.

I had a shower and sat out on the balcony with a bottle of beer, watching the ice hockey replay, relaxing while I considered what I was going to do.  I had a resignation letter written, and I had written it on the plane over to London, thinking how much nicer it would be in the Cotswolds.

Dorothy had put the idea in my head, and if I ever did get a cottage there, she would be straight over.  When she said it, the way she said it sent a tingle up my spine.  Now, she was just inside the periphery of my thoughts.

That thought of Dorothy in an awful Christmas sweater made up my mind for me.

I waited until Gerald called me.

“I can’t fire you, but I can make your life hell.”  That was his opening gambit.  The fellow had a lot to learn if he was going to have a position of power within the company.

I didn’t care.

“You do that, Gerald.  When I come back from Vacation.”

“You have no vacation requests.”

“It’s down in HR.”

“It’s denied.”

“Read my contract, Gerald, or better still, get Legal to simplify it so you can understand.”

“What are you talking about?  This isn’t a negotiation.”

“As of now, it is.  What are you offering me to stay?”

“What are you talking about?” 

Obviously, no one else talked back to him or asked questions.

I disconnected the call.  If he stopped to listen just once instead of trying to shout people down, he might realise just how vulnerable a position he was in.

Just the supply of faulty parts was a criminal act and a lawsuit in the making. That, in turn, if it materialised, would hurt the company’s reputation, and in turn, I would be tarred with the same brush.

At the moment, I could see no upside to staying there.  Especially if that was Gerald’s bottom line, getting me to leave of my own volition.  It would be less expensive for him, at least.  That was the inference behind making life hard for me.

One thing it appeared he wasn’t quite across was the fact that my contract specified I would only deal with his father.

It took Gerald ten minutes to call back.  Perhaps he decided to read my contract.

“Gerald.”

“What do you want?”  It came out as if it were a question and a sigh of defeat at the same time.

I’d thought about that in those ten minutes.  I came to the conclusion that my time at the company was done.  No matter what I wanted, I was never going to be in an autonomous position, the sort of authority needed to get problems resolved.

“Nothing, Gerald.”

“Good.  Then I can expect you back in the office after this vacation thing is done.”

“No.  I’m not interested in being the Director of Sanitation.”

“It’s not Sanitation, it’s just a title change, nothing else has changed.  You just report to me for approvals.”

“Someone might, Gerald.  I won’t.”

“The board approved it.  You don’t get to pick and choose.”

I had my laptop sitting on the table.  I switched from the ice hockey to the resignation letter, attached to an email ready to send.  I pressed the send button.

Let the chips fall where they may.

“Actually, Gerald, I do.”

I disconnected the call again and waited.

Seven minutes this time.

“Gerald.”

“You can’t resign.”

“I just did.  I also sent the resignation to your father with a covering letter.  In case you are not fully across what your role entails, it’s not you who has the authority to accept or deny anything to do with me.”

The line went dead.

I could see him frantically dialling his father to plead his case, but it was too late.  I had a receipt notice that Ainsbury the elder had opened the email.

I sincerely hoped it didn’t give him another heart attack.

…

Dinner with Savannah’s was everything I expected it would be.  It was an engagement to test the waters, if we might take things to another level.

We had danced around the proposition a few times, but there was always a measure of reluctance, on both sides.

It was no surprise that after she sat down and got her first or second glass of champagne, she said, “I heard a rumour that you are now a free agent.”

She had an unrivalled network of spies everywhere.

“I haven’t had confirmation from old man Ainsbury, but it doesn’t really matter.  He made two promises, and family will come first.  I had a good run, but it was never going to end well for me.”

“Come and work for us?”

“Are you making an offer, knowing what it would mean?”

She knew my views on dating fellow employees.  Her views were the same.  Perhaps that was the reason for the slight aloofness that hadn’t been there before.

“I am.  And I do.  I have been thinking about it, Michael, very hard.  We’re two of a kind.  We can work together, but we just can’t live together.  It is something I think might have worked while we things were the way they were, but not now.”

“And if I turned down the offer?”

“You’d be a fool, and I know you’re not a fool, Michael.  Besides, I know a certain someone who’s been waiting with bated breath for you to say all those sweet little nothing’s us girls love to hear.”

Dorothy.  We had been together for so long, Susannah had said once, we were like an old married couple.  Perhaps we were, because my first thought the moment I considered accepting the offer was of Dorothy.

I shrugged.

“I’ll let you know.  But, no more talk of work.  Let’s enjoy the ambience, the food and the company.”

…

I woke late the next morning after a relaxing evening and night.  Savannah was everything I had expected she would be, and it was clear she was on a trajectory that I could neither match nor keep up with.

I didn’t want to.

In that same assessment came the realisation she was not looking for a permanent partner; she just wanted to go with the flow, until she had completed her mission.

I didn’t ask what that was, only that by the time she got there, she would own a conglomerate, be the first female President of the United States, or God. 

She still did her own cooking, cleaning, and washing when she was at home.  She was proud of the fact that she could look after herself.

My cell phone woke me.  I’d forgotten to turn it off, or perhaps I still hadn’t broken the work regimen set many, many years ago.

An email from Dorothy with an attachment.

Ainsbury the elder, memo to all staff.  My resignation as of immediately, and the replacement of Gerald, who was stepping down from all roles in the company, has been replaced by Ophelia, his daughter.

Ophelia had shadowed me for a year, almost invisible, but was sharp, keen, and insightful.  I had told him in the email with my resignation that she would more than adequately replace me, and that Gerald needed to be taught a lesson.

Perhaps in saying that didn’t exactly earn me any kudos, but at least he listened.

I called her and congratulated her.  It was well deserved.

Then I called Dorothy.

“You resigned.”

“There was nowhere else to go.”

“You tell him to promote Ophelia?”

“A gentle nudge.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I bought a cottage in the Cotswolds?”

I heard the knock on the door, which was odd because you had to get through the security on the ground floor.  It had to be someone in the building.

“Hang on a sec, there’s someone at the door.”

I pulled on a dressing gown and opened the door.

Dorothy.

“You just said the magic words.”

“How?”

“The same as the last umpteen times.  You gave me a passkey.  You said it was the key to everything.”

I stepped to one side, and she passed through, pulling a small travel case.

“I forgot to ask if you were free.”

“Is it permanent, or just a whim?”

“What would you like it to be?”

“May I be candid?”

“Of course.”

“Then, I would like to spend a few months in the English countryside with the man of my dreams, after which we would get married in a beautiful little village church, and spend a month or so cruising the Greek Islands.”

“And who would this mysterious man of your dreams be?”

She put her arms around my neck and looked into my eyes.  “The same man who is about to ask me a single question.”

Then waited.

“Oh, you mean me?  Dorothy Bain, would you do me the honour of marrying me?  Oh, should I have asked your father’s permission first?”

“That’s three questions.  The first, yes, you.  The second, yes, yes, and a thousand times yes, and the third, you can’t unless you can see and talk to dead people.  God, you’re going to make everything complicated, aren’t you?”

“Me?”

“Oh, forget it.  Just kiss me before I change my mind.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2026