Page 41 of Famous Last

She had the usual Muriel intimidation glare as she stared disapprovingly at him.

“I was sick—”

“Remove the mask. I feel like I’m talking to a highwayman.”

Spencer did as told and folded the black mask into his trouser pocket.

“I had a slight fever and thought it best to stay home. But I followed procedure, contacted the HR team and left a voice message. I also texted Clarissa.”

“I see.”

Spencer offered nothing more. In the past, he would have filled one of Muriel’s silences with a flustered explanation, and probably given away far too much. But not today. If Muriel wanted to see him, she could jolly well explain why. He wasn’t about to volunteer any information.

“Everybody knows you weren’t in. What I want to know is whether you’re aware of what happened here yesterday? In the office. Did anyone explain to you?”

“Clarissa’s not in yet.”

Another of Muriel’s silences while she processed his answer.

“Do you know why I chose to employ you, Spencer?”

“I have my suspicions,” he replied, without missing a beat.

Muriel narrowed her eyes at him. His heart started to speed up.

“And?”

A whole speech flashed up on autocue in his mind about her attempt to redress the male-to-female workforce ratio. If he got onto the fact that she had employed one of those, her son Blake, and segued into the subject of nepotism, there would be no stopping him.

“I heard other candidates turned the job down. I suppose I was sort of Hobson’s Choice.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Blake had told him about two other candidates being far better qualified for the role, both women. One had decided to pull her application, and the other had been offered a better-paid position at a rival magazine.

“I can’t remember who told me.”

“You shouldn’t listen to office tittle-tattle. You were chosen out of all the other candidates because I needed someone competent, reliable, and well-organised to assist Clarissa. I put a lot of pressure on her, and unfortunately, she doesn’t work well with other women.”

“I see.”

He didn’t see, at all. If that was indeed the case, why hadn’t anyone told him at the interview, or at least during his onboarding? And why would Blake have lied to him? In the two years he had worked with Clarissa, she’d appeared to take the job for granted—the kind of person his brother referred to as a vocational skiver—and relied on him to do the bulk of her tasks. Maybe a female colleague would have been less accommodating.Bev certainly wouldn’t have put up with the unequal distribution of work.

“Do you? A lot of things went wrong yesterday, and on each occasion the cause appeared to involve you—or, rather, your absence. To begin with, there was a complete lack of morning beverages and nobody to assist with the conference room equipment. During the day, apart from an important legal document going missing, and water damage in the small meeting room, your absence caused missed deadlines, and the icing on the slowly crumbling cake was Killian Pinkerton believing that you are the only person competent and trustworthy enough to give the final sign-off to his pieces of fluff. I would dearly like to hear what you think about all of this, to get your perspective.”

“Do you really want to hear what I think?”

“I encourage all of my staff to speak their minds. If you have something to say, I would like to hear it. And then I will tell you what I would like to happen in future.”

If Spencer had felt damned before, Muriel’s last remark pretty much sealed his fate. If she didn’t get rid of him during the meeting and expected him to continue being the office punch bag, he would walk anyway. Was there any point in stating his case? But then he thought back to Marshall’s parting words to him and decided to speak his mind.

“Okay, this is what I think. But let’s get a few things straight to begin with. Apart from taking my statutory annual holiday and public holidays, I haven’t had a day off sick in the two years that I’ve worked for you. I could point out a large number of your employees who have had more sick days than the annual leave allowance you grant them. And yet the first thing you want to whinge to me about is coffee and why there was none because I was sick for a day. Here’s a thought. Why don’t you invest in a coffee machine in the conference room? Or better still, if it’sa matter of cost savings, get those attending to buy their own beverages on the way into the office. I offered to get drinks once, because the receptionist whose job it was had resigned. What I did back then was a gesture of goodwill, something everyone has subsequently taken for granted.”

Muriel had begun to pout, her expression turning waspish, but once the dam walls had been breached, there was no stopping Spencer.

“As for the conference room setup. This is something you employ a perfectly competent IT person to deal with. Even then, in my opinion, it’s not really something that someone as highly qualified technically as Prince should have to deal with. Plugging a cable into a wall socket, for goodness’ sake. How difficult can it be? Prince spends evenings here sometimes, doing tests and making sure the network is working stably. That’s what you pay him to do. Once again, I made the mistake of helping out on one occasion when he had a problem getting here on time. Now the burden seems to have been transferred to me. What else was it? Oh yes, missed deadlines. If you had bothered to check, you’d have found those deadlines belonged to Clarissa, not to me. And if she had asked me to complete them for her on Friday, I would have done so before I left the office for the weekend, the way I always do, even if that had meant forfeiting my lunch break. She did not. I have no idea about the lost legal document or the water-damaged meeting room, and would suggest you get Alice to check with your legal team and the buildings technicians respectively. On a final note, because, after all, you’re encouraging me to speak my mind, I ask you to stop using me as an office lackey in future. Use me for the professional skills for which you employed me, such as editing other people’s work. And I include proofreading the pieces by Killian Pinkerton in that. His stories bring in a whole new raft of recognition and readership toCollective.”

Spencer sat back in his seat and folded his arms, feeling the heat that had risen in his cheeks. Muriel sat staring at him, her eyes wide.

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