Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 802(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 802(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
And then I start the long trek home, taking endless detours down the safe, Christmas-free side streets, hating the awful disease that stole my mum, hating my egotistical, misogynist brother. Hating my soon-to-be ex-husband.
Wondering if my life will ever hold any joy again.
December 4th
“Jesus, Thomas.” I push my foot into my heel and stand, striding to the door and swinging it open. I take a moment to assess the corridor. “It’s like Santa’s fucking grotto,” I mutter, making Debbie, my assistant, look up from her computer screen. People move out of my path as I march on, and conversations die. Which means the sound of WHAM! gets louder. It’s December 4th, for Christ’s sake. Give it a rest!
I don’t bother knocking, instead barging right in, catching Thomas with his feet up, relaxed back, his desk phone held to his ear as he tosses a cricket ball up and down.
The moment he clocks me, his smile falls. “I’ll call you back.” He drops his feet, sets the receiver calmly in the cradle, and places the ball down, clearing his throat. “Camryn.”
“Tell me I didn’t just read the email I read.”
His lips twist. He’s thinking, really thinking, which means there could be a few different emails I could have read. “Want to help me out?”
“The bonuses.” I remain standing in the open doorway, prompting Thomas to look past me. I glance over my shoulder and see a few staff loitering, feigning the scanning of files as they wander, pretending to be on calls. I slam the door closed.
“It’s Christmas.” he says, slightly high-pitched.
“Thomas, you have one hundred and two members of staff in this building. You have just authorised the payroll department to pay bonuses between one thousand and twenty thousand to each and every one of them.”
“It’s Christmas?” he says again.
“Half a million, Thomas!” I yell. “That’s straight off your profit.”
“I authorised twenty thousand for you,” he says, smiling. It drops the second he realises I’m not impressed.
“Show me the appraisals.”
“What?”
I give him grabby hands. “The performance reports. Show me the performance reviews that determined each and every bonus amount.”
He scans his desk, as if looking for them. We both know there are no reports. Does he actually know what they fucking are?
“Profit, Thomas. To take this company to the next level, to attract the right board, you need to make a healthy profit. Right now, you’re undoing everything I’m working toward to ensure TF Shipping gets there, Thomas.”
“I’m the boss, Camryn.” He picks up his pen and starts clicking the end fast and furiously. “I can do what I like.”
“Do you want to take this company to the next level?”
He gives me a tired look. “I hired you, didn’t I?”
“Then you need to get used to how things will be moving forward, and no new board would agree to your bonus plan, especially without concrete evidence of staff performances. If this company floats, you’ll lose an element of control, Thomas. You’ll be answerable to a board that doesn’t include your wife and son. Buying ships will involve many meetings and strategic planning.” I go to his desk and pick up his cricket ball, tossing it in the air. He catches it. “Stop spending money or this isn’t going to work.” I pivot and walk out.
“I suppose now would be a bad time to tell you I just bought hospitality tickets for Wimbledon next year.”
I stop in my tracks, my teeth gritted. “Yes, now would be a very bad time.”
“I’ll rein it in.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past two years.” Truth is, I would have walked out on this job last year when I admitted to myself it was going to be next to impossible to work with Thomas’s son and wife, who show zero respect for me and my purpose here. And given how expensive it is to live in London as a newly single woman, my fat salary is a basic necessity. So even though I despise many attributes of this job, they need me, and I need them.
“From now on, I promise,” he calls.
“That goes for Barbara and Anthony too,” I snap, exasperated. “And I don’t want to see any personal spend on their business credit cards either.”
As I near my office door, Debbie comes out from behind her desk, and I skid to a stop, my eyes on her legs. “What the hell are you wearing?” I ask, squinting.
“These are my advent calendar tights.”
“They’re hideous.”
“But of course you’d love them,” she sings, completely unaffected by my curtness, something I quietly appreciate. I actually like Debbie. “I can’t wait for you to see my elf ones.”
“You’re a fifty-year-old woman.”
“Forty-nine, actually.”
“Oh, well then, this”—I wave a hand up and down her legs—“is perfectly acceptable.” I push my way into my office and grab my coat and bag, leaving over an hour earlier than usual.