Alex’s fingers paused over the keyboard as she reread the email to her boss.
Hello Martin,
Could you spare a few minutes this afternoon to catch up? It won’t take long, but it’s quite important. Twenty minutes at the most.
Best, Alex
Her hand quivered over the send button.
‘Knock-knock.’ Brianna stood at the door to Alex’s office, looking particularly svelte and gorgeous as she leant casually against the handle. ‘Partners would like a quick word.’
‘I’ll be one minute.’ Alex’s finger rested on the mouse. To send or not to send.
She pressed send, took a breath and waited for Brianna to leave before standing to zip up her skirt all the way. Walking to the conference room, she felt a flutter of nerves. It wasn’t unusual for the partners to ask for an informal update on a matter during their regular Wednesday morning meeting, but still, Alex had the sense of having been summonsed to the principal’s office. Again.
She paused at the door to the conference room and tapped lightly.
‘Come in,’ came the sonorous voice of Rex Macauley, managing partner and founder of Macauley Partners. Alex stepped timidly into the room and ten pairs of eyes swivelled towards her, all but two belonging to men over the age of fifty.
‘Alex, thank you for coming,’ boomed Rex.
‘Of course. How can I help?’
‘Sit, sit.’ He motioned to the empty chair at the end of the boardroom table. That was strange. He never asked her to sit during the partners’ meeting. Seats at the conference table were for partners only. Underlings gave their updates and skedaddled.
‘Oh, I’m happy to stand … Really.’ Alex was flustered. She didn’t want to sit, and because of the tightness of her skirt around the little bean in her stomach, it wasn’t actually possible. Unless she wanted to crack a rib.
‘Alex, sit.’ This time it was a command. She sat and felt her waistband crush her middle.
Sorry, baby.
She tried to catch Martin’s eye to see if he could convey some inkling of what was going on, but he was studiously fiddling with some papers and refusing to glance in her direction.
What was going on?
Oh god. Had she made some grievous error in her work? She’d heard of one poor junior solicitor being called to the conference room, on Valentine’s Day last year, only to be sacked on the spot for misuse of the company credit card. There’d been a security guard at the door, ready to escort her off the premises. She wasn’t even allowed to return to her desk to collect the huge bunch of roses that had been sent by her wildly successful property-developer boyfriend.
‘Would you like a tea? Coffee?’ Rex gestured to the cups and saucers on the table.
This was getting seriously weird. Alex felt panic rising in her throat. Why were they being so nice to her? The partners weren’t nice. They were tough and brilliant and hardworking. But nice certainly wasn’t part of the job description. Perhaps there’d been a tragedy? Were they softening her up for some really terrible news? Not about her job but about something else far more important. Had someone died? Was it James? No. Even the partners weren’t cruel or cowardly enough to deliver tragic news as some kind of group therapy session.
Rex cleared his throat. Alex gripped her chair.
‘I still the remember the day you started with us, Alex. Twelve years ago, when the firm was a third the size of what it is now. You marched into our offices and declared to me that you would be the best solicitor this firm had ever seen.’
A couple of the partners chuckled.
Christ, was that really what she’d said? What a brazen little upstart! How had she not been fired on the spot, or at least killed by all the other talented solicitors already working at the firm? They must have hated her. Then again, that confident (and naive) young woman would never have quivered before the partners, feeling an urgent need for the toilet. That woman would have squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin.
‘A bold, but perhaps not entirely inaccurate, prediction.’ Alex laughed and locked eyes with the managing director. She straightened in her chair and felt the button that was securing her skirt’s zipper go pop.
Great. Now she couldn’t stand up or her skirt would fall off.
Rex clasped his fingers. ‘For some time now, the firm has been thinking about taking on a new partner. Some fresh blood, you might say.’ He gave a knowing look to the other partners at the table. ‘We want someone with integrity, someone who excels in managing client relationships and, moreover, someone who puts the firm first.’
The partners murmured in agreement.
Alex flexed her fingers and clenched them again as Rex droned on about the importance of renewal and generational change and a few other corporate buzzwords like open kimono and synergies and blue-sky thinking. Words that had inspired her and Brianna to think up a new game, Buzzword Bingo, where they passed the minutes in particularly boring meetings by counting up the number of times a particular client or partner used them. Rex was a renowned offender.
‘So, Alex … Alex?’ Rex rested his elbows on the conference table.
‘Yes, sorry, Rex.’
‘Tell us your thoughts.’ He sat back.
‘What value could you add to Macauley’s stable of partners?’
‘Wait, what? Me?’
Rex tilted his head in amusement. ‘Yes, Alexandra. We want you to join us as a full partner in the firm.’
Her mind went blank
‘Well, uh, obviously I’m very flattered,’ Alex began. The partners around the table nodded encouragingly. Martin was trying to smile but managed to look more like a squirrel trying to crack open a nut.
‘It’s a huge honour to be invited into such esteemed company.’ More head nodding. Alex rotated slightly on the chair and it creaked loudly. ‘I’m, ah … quite overwhelmed, actually.’ If only her parents could see her now. The mere thought of them made her eyes grow hot. Surely they’d be proud? It might take a bit of explaining, the significance of becoming a partner, but if she told them the salary, they’d soon get it.
Alex sat still. ‘Rex, you have an incredible memory, and you are quite correct in saying that when I came to Macauley all the way from little old Perth it was my ambition to become the youngest female partner ever appointed at the firm.’
But I was young and highly ambitious and didn’t have children back then …
‘In those days, the firm took up only half of this floor and I knew everyone’s name, from the receptionist to the mail-room clerks.’
And now it’s a sprawling, three-level corporate beast where the office Christmas party involves me getting drunk at the bar, with Brianna holding my hand and the two of us turning to each other every five minutes to say, ‘Who are these people?’
‘The growth in this company is testament to you, Rex, and the commitment of all the partners. It’s astonishing, really. Quite an example.’
Half of you are divorced. Most of you have children you never see. You have houses you never get to enjoy. But you do have money. Piles and piles of it. This is definitely what I want. To never have to worry about money ever again. To buy a smart little unit for Mum and Dad. To clear my mortgage.
‘Thank you, Alex. We understand this is a critical step. No doubt you have many questions, which Martin will be happy to answer, and we’ll have paperwork drawn up over the next few weeks for you to sign. But can I be the first to say—’ Rex stood. ‘Welcome to the family.’ He started applauding, and one by one, all the partners followed suit until Alex was the only one not standing or applauding. Now they were walking over to her, to shake hands. Oh bugger, she would have to stand up and shake hands and god knows what was going to happen to her skirt.
My stomach’s about to explode. My younger son is turning into a sociopath. I desperately need to cut down my work hours. But this is actually everything I’ve ever wanted.
With uncertainty, Alex rose to her feet and as she went to shake hands with Rex, she felt her skirt sliding down.
She was about to be exposed.