Page 39 of After Felix
AFTER
CHAPTER NINE
FELIX - TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER
I lower the paperwork to my desk and look at the young man sitting on the chair in front of me.
“So let me get this straight, Aaron. The customer requested that you deal with his shed. He intended for you to strip the paint off and paint it in the lovely yellow colour he’d chosen so painstakingly.” Aaron squirms, and I narrow my eyes. “And you did what?” He mumbles something, and I put a hand behind my ear. “Come again?”
“I set fire to it,” he mutters.
I grimace. “Yes, and that’s what Mr Harkin told me, but I said to him, ‘Mr Harkin, I cannot believe that a member of our staff needs so badly to clean his ears out. I will have to question the young man myself because he’s a model of integrity.’” Aaron stares at me, and I shake my head. “I was, of course, lying.”
He perks up. “You don’t need to cross-question me?”
“Of course, I do.” He instantly deflates. “You are the anti-model of rectitude. You set fire to a shed which then set fire to the poor man’s fence and entailed the fire engine making a little trip. It was quite a chain reaction, as Diana Ross would say.”
“Does she work for the fire service?”
I look at him for a long second and then give up. “Why did you burn the shed down?” I say, pinching the top of my nose.
“He said to take care of it. That means to destroy it.”
“Only in Guy Ritchie films.” He looks winsomely at me, and I shake my head. “Aaron, you need to learn to listen properly to the customer. Not just pay attention to the first two seconds and then make the rest up yourself. Now, you’re going to trip along to Mr Harkin’s house, and you are going to drive him to the garden centre and buy him a new shed and a fence. You are then going to put both things together. And you are not going to return to the office until that is done, because I cannot answer for the sharpness of my tongue if Mr Harkin is still unhappy.”
“The sharpest,” he says in an awed voice. He bites his lip and gets up but then hovers. “I presume this will have to come out of my pay, Felix?”
Internally, I give a huge sigh because I know when I’m beaten. “It should do,” I say, eyeing him and the subsequent droop of his shoulders. “But you can use the company card to pay for it this time.”
He brightens. “Really. Oh, thank you so much, Felix. I know I should pay, but I’m helping my brother out with his rent after the accident and?—”
“I know,” I say. “But you need to listen now. I can’t do this again, and I might be soft, but I’m not stupid. I’m definitely not paying your wages on this. That was already covered during your arsonist phase.”
“You’re thebest,”he cries, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair and hightailing it out of the office before I can change my mind. “I’m so glad Zeb made you the manager of the agency. I’d have shit myself if I’d had to answer to him. Mr Crossy McCrosspatch would have …” There’s a stuttered pause, and his voice, when he speaks next, is hushed. “Oh, Mr Evans, I didn’t see you there. How are you?”
“Well, Aaron, I have to say that I’m doing very well for a Crossy McCrosspatch,” Zeb’s voice drawls, and I can’t repress my smile.
There’s the hurried sound of footsteps and the slam of the outside door, and then my old boss appears in my doorway. I blink at the sight of him. Once upon a time, my day would have started with eyeingwhichever designer suit he’d chosen to wear. Now, he’s dressed in disreputable jeans, a T-shirt, and a liberal coating of brick dust from his latest property renovation.
“You’d better not get any of that shit in my office,” I warn him.
He grins. It’s a lazy, happy grin. The sort he’s worn ever since he ditched Patrick and got involved with the lovely and irrepressible Jesse.
“Wasn’t thismyoffice, Felix?”
“Yes, and it was full of repressed yearning and angst. Then you got involved with a younger man and left to knock walls down in old houses or whatever you do now, and I inherited it along with half of this very up-and-coming firm.”
He leans against the door, folding his arms over his chest. His eyes are bright and knowing. “Can you still say that with a straight face after the little firebug just left with the company credit card clutched in his arsonist hands?”
I shake my head. “Let’s not discuss it, Zeb. I have a wrinkle forming over my left eye that is solely down to him, and I’m far too young and single to cope with that.”
“Thought you had a fancy new man,” he says lightly. He sneaks a look at me that he thinks I don’t see.
“Andrew?”
He nods.
I laugh. “He’ll probably just be a variation on all of his predecessors. Promising, yet ultimately useless.” A frown of concern crosses Zeb’s face, and I wave my hand at him. “At least I’ll get a dirty weekend in the Cotswolds for my trouble. It’s better than a shag in the bathroom of the Lyceum. I’ll even get breakfast.”
