Page 14 of Strictly Business

“Ok, I can do that,” I say.

“Oh, and if you get the chance, offer to grab everyone some coffee and give the bitch a friendly but sarcastic nod,” Brook says.

I laugh and nod.

“I might just do that,” I say. “Right, I’d best get back to work, I just needed to get that off my chest.”

“OK, catch you later,” Brook says.

“Bye,” I reply.

I feel a lot calmer after my conversation with Brook. Yes, I got yelled at, but that’s it. I can fix the pitch easily enough, and now I know for sure that bitch is out to get me so I will be watching my back even more closely.

I sit down at my desk and open my laptop. I decide to work on the laptop rather than my desktop. I lean down and get the adapter out of the bottom drawer and plug it in to the socket and then into my laptop.

I open the presentation, shaking my head at my own damned stupidity. It was my mistake to continue with the work knowing that the message felt totally wrong – I should have gone and checked it with Wyatt at some point – but although I had played dumb in the conference room, I knew exactly who had set me up: the wonderful Ruth. She had been the one to tell me the brand’s USP was being a vegetarian brand and I know I hadn’t misunderstood that because it stood out as so weird to me that I clarified it more than once with her and she agreed that I was right about it being weird.

I have no idea why she wants to sabotage me or make me look stupid, but from now on, I won’t be trusting a damned thing she tells me that’s for sure. If I had only been presenting the work to Wyatt, or Ruth and Wyatt, I could maybe believe it was some sort of jokey initiation thing that all the newbies got, but no way would Ruth do that knowing there was going to be other people in the meeting because it wasn’t just me who looked stupid, it was Wyatt as well, because if it was some sort of jokey initiation thing, then surely Wyatt would be in on it, and there was no way he thought anything that happened back there was funny.

I decide that I need to let this go or I will spend hours dwelling on it and still be no further forward with fixing my work. I turn my attention to the laptop. The first thing I do is fix the logo and packaging for the food, both of which are easy fixes as I don’t have any of the ingredients lists or nutritional information yet anyway, all I have to do is remove the part where I have said the food is one hundred percent vegetarian and change it to sixty percent meat, which is three times the market average.

Next, I start on all the social media blasts and ads. They take a little bit longer because there are so many of them, but there is nothing difficult to it – again it’s really just a matter of switching out one USP for another, because ultimately, my strongest message before I knew I had to switch was that your dog deserves the best and Hislop’s is the best. I can still run with that, and I don’t even need to skirt around the truth now, because the more meat, the better in this scenario.

I have almost finished tweaking the social media blasts when there’s a knock on my office door.

“Come in,” I call.

The door opens and Ruth comes in.

CHAPTER11

Serena

She smiles widely at me.

“Hi. Sorry I haven’t been by sooner, I’ve been so busy,” she says. “I just came to see how the presentation went today.”

I almost laugh because this is exactly what Brook said she would do. I remind myself of our conversation and of the fact that I am not going to give her the satisfaction of mentioning what really happened or anything about the vegetarian thing.

“It went really well thanks,” I say, with a smile that I hope doesn’t look too forced. “There were one or two tweaks requested but like you said before, that’s normal.”

As I speak, I watch Ruth closely. Her smile slips for the shortest of seconds, replaced by a frown. It could be a frown of confusion because she knows I would have gotten into major trouble for this, or it could have been a frown of anger because she knows I am onto her. I don’t care either way. It confirms what I thought I knew; Ruth didn’t make any sort of mistake – she wanted to sabotage me. But why? Her smile reappears so quickly it would have been easy to tell myself it never slipped off at all if it wasn’t for the other evidence of Ruth’s actions towards me.

“That’s good then,” Ruth says in a voice that tells me that actually she thinks that this is anything but good.

I debate pointing out that she was wrong about the vegetarian angle (wrong but purposely wrong), but I don’t. She will obviously deny knowing anything about that and when it gets back to Wyatt which it inevitably will, it will make me look petty as well as mistaken.

“Yes, I thought so,” I say. I beam at her. “Thank you for your help.”

“Anytime,” Ruth says. “And if you need a pair of eyes on the new pitch, let me know.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got this, but thank you though,” I say.

Ruth nods to me and leaves my office and for the first time since I delivered my incorrect pitch, I feel happy. It’s partly because Ruth didn’t get the satisfaction of hearing how her sabotage really went and it is also partly because now that I know for definite where the misinformation is coming from, I can check anything too far out there with Wyatt.

I have no intention of taking this matter to Wyatt and getting embroiled in a she said she said argument, especially not with Wyatt’s number one trusted employee. If I can catch her in a lie or trip her up somehow though, I can go back to just enjoying my role without having to watch my back all of time. In the meantime, I will be watching my back though, even though I don’t think she will try and pull anything for a while now that she knows I’m onto her. And she knows she failed. Or at least she thinks she did, and I can’t see her going and asking Wyatt how I did on the presentation, because if she does, it will remind him that she was meant to be checking in on me and keeping me on track, and that will make him stop and think. I still don’t think he would assume Ruth was sabotaging me, but I think he would want to know how the hell she missed that this was a big fuck up.

Once Ruth leaves my office, I get back on with my work and I’m almost finished when my stomach starts growling and I realize how hungry I am. Now that I have noticed, it is a major distraction and I decide to pop along to the kitchen and get something to eat if there is anything left in the fridge at this time of the night. If not, I’m pretty sure there’s a Seven Eleven just down the block and it’s only getting towards ten – I have plenty of time to get to the store and grab a sandwich or something. I get up and grab my handbag and leave my office. I have only gone two steps when I hear Wyatt calling my name. I freeze. Am I in even more trouble? He might think I’m leaving before I have completed my task, but surely if I explain to him that I was only going to grab some food and come back he will be ok about that. I can’t see him objecting to me taking a break and there’s no reason for him to think I am lying. Still though, the nerves churn in my stomach.

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