7

With their temporary access cards in lanyards around their necks and a lot of nervous sighing from Sophie but self-important shuffling from Paige, the S & S Investigators were getting ready to start interviews. Josh had organised for them to each have a small meeting room on the third floor at their disposal for the duration of their contract.

“Okay, I’d better get next door,” Sophie said with a nervous smile.

“Yep. See you at lunch.” Paige nodded and took a seat at the desk. “Oh, hey. Someone came into S & S looking for you the other day. And it was the weirdest thing, Soph, she looked exactly like you.”

Sophie paused at the door. “What?”

Paige shrugged. “She showed up, took your business card and left.”

“And she looked exactly like me?” Sophie was rightly dubious. Facial recognition was not exactly Paige’s strong suit.

Paige recounted the entirety of their brief interaction to Sophie.

“But who was she?”

“She’ll call you, I’m sure of it,” Paige said. There was a knock on the door. “We’ll talk about it later,” she added before calling out, “Come in.”

Sophie eased past the robust young man who’d appeared in the doorway.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought I had an appointment in here.”

“You do.” Sophie nodded at Paige. “But not with me.”

He glanced into the room but then returned his gaze to Sophie.

“Ahem,” Paige said loudly.

He frowned, peered into the room and said, “Oh, right. Didn’t see you.”

Sophie returned to her own meeting room a little dazed. She couldn’t believe that someone who looked like her, named Hannah apparently, had walked in and out of their office without the normally pushy Paige gathering any useful information. She also couldn’t believe it had taken Paige days to remember to tell her. She shook her head. She wouldn’t worry about it for now—Paige was probably mistaken.

***

JOSH CHECKED THE TIME, wondering if it would seem too keen if he went downstairs to check on Sophie.

He’d done his darnedest to get her sitting somewhere on the tenth floor—near his office and away from the small pushy one, who he could already tell might end up cramping his style—so that he would be more easily able to swing by and call on Sophie whenever he felt like it. But he’d had no luck. The office manager Denise had glared at him with suspicion when he’d asked about spaces on the tenth floor, and narrowed her eyes with irritation when he’d tried to fluff over the reason for it, so he’d dropped the matter. Denise was in charge of booking all the meeting rooms and the only one who knew which forms were needed for what and where to find them—you couldn’t fart inside these office walls without having a request and approval form completed—so Denise was not someone you wanted to upset.

***

SOPHIE FLICKED HER eyes from the HR file on the desk in front of her back to McKenna Bryston’s face. According to the file, she was in her late twenties and had only been employed for three months, but already had a formal warning on record. For what, Sophie did not know. Even though they’d signed a confidentiality agreement they did not have a full access pass to HR files.

McKenna leaned forward and continued talking about how she had single-handedly revolutionised the way they processed absence requests. Sophie was almost certain this wasn’t true. She’d realised McKenna had narcissistic tendencies almost immediately, but now, after spending twenty minutes with her, she was beginning to believe she might have a diagnosable case of narcissistic personality disorder sitting in front of her. Sophie wondered whether this nugget of information was on the redacted section of the file. Or perhaps this is the very thing they wanted to uncover, Sophie mused. She should have another conversation with Josh about exactly what they wanted in the individual files they were creating for each employee. When she made a note of this McKenna’s eyes lit up, believing she’d said something particularly important. Enthused and validated, she carried on with gusto. Sophie suppressed a sigh. Sophie’s only utterance so far had been to check she had the right person in front of her and confirm her role in the organisation. From then it had been a constant stream of grandiose and self-congratulatory speechifying. It was like hanging out with Victoria, Sophie thought, but at least she was getting paid to listen to this.

“Right,” Sophie said the moment McKenna paused to take a breath. “Let’s get you started on this questionnaire, shall we?” Sophie coaxed her dormant laptop into life and started the programme. They were using their own personal laptops for this but pretending they were business laptops so they seemed more professional. This meant Sophie had spent several hours yesterday removing all her shortcuts to various non-professional looking things and photos on her desktop. She’d even changed the screensaver so it had their S & S logo, but she suspected Paige had not done the same, which meant that at least some of the employees were likely to see Paige’s desktop background, which was a photo of herself, Paige and Tim during a New Year’s Eve celebration.

Sophie turned the laptop around so that McKenna had access to the keyboard and stood up. “I’ll stay in the room, but I’ll be over there, so call out if you have any questions. I won’t be able to help you decide on an answer, of course, but just in case anything goes wrong or there is an issue with the instructions, for example.”

McKenna nodded, her eyes gleaming with excitement at the prospect of talking about herself, albeit to an inanimate object, for a little bit longer.

***

SHARON CROSS, THE OFFICE administrator, was a little shorter and a touch wider than average, and had shoulder-length brown hair that was attempting to be a ‘Rachel’ cut. Like the majority of women who asked hairdressers for this nineties hairstyle, she had not been transformed into Jennifer Aniston as a result, and had remained an ordinary woman who now had a haircut with inexplicably different lengths. But for Sharon, at least, the overall look had been improved by the addition of highlights framing her face.

Sharon was currently in the interview room with Paige and had now been sitting in silence for nearly a minute while Paige eyeballed her.

She shifted in her seat. “Cross is my name, but it’s not my game,” she said with a nervous laugh.

Paige squinted at her. “Huh?”

“Oh, it’s just a ditty I came up with. My surname is Cross but I’m almost never in a bad mood,” she added with a nervous smile.

Sharon had sailed into the interview room entirely confident in the security of her job, but now uncertainty was picking at her. Why was this young woman glaring at her? When asked to give an overview of her role, Sharon had tried to explain, without sounding full of herself, that she was the glue that held this department together. She knew everybody really well; was responsible for team morale; and she was always the first person people came to when they needed something, or to talk.

Sharon was, in Sharon’s opinion, the heart of the operation. In reality, Sharon was the office gossip, and people came to her when they were bored and needed something juicy to get them through the afternoon.

Although she’d started as a relatively diligent employee, Sharon’s need for chit-chat was far greater than any sense of work ethic or desire to reduce the size of her To-Do list, and so she spent a great deal of time wandering around the office looking for conversation. All it took was the slightest indication of interest and she would settle in for a good old chinwag. Almost entirely one-sided, of course. And once Sharon got comfortable, one was stuck with her for at least fifteen minutes, which might not sound like a long time, but her stories were meandering and full of unnecessary detail as well as cringe-worthy sentiments, and it usually became an agonising wait for her to finish. The trouble was, she often delivered something good at the end, and the next time she sidled up one’s memory would latch onto this, forgetting how painful the previous fifteen minutes had been. Thirty seconds in and they’d remember, but by then it was too late.

Paige tapped her pen against the desk and Sharon shifted in her chair again. She was beginning to worry that her job might be at stake.

Paige suddenly leaned forward. “Anything you want to tell me?”

Sharon, for the first time in her life unsure of what to say, merely blinked and shook her head.

“Okay. You can do the questionnaire now.” Paige swung the laptop around and nodded at Sharon.

“What happens with the results of this survey? Do my answers get scored or something?”

“The personality part gets scored, but it’s not the kind of score where a higher number is better. The aim is to see how different personality types fit into the organisational, or team, culture.”

Sharon felt a little better. If she was sure of one thing it was that her personality fit perfectly within the team. She turned her attention to the questions in front of her.

“Oh, but what is this about how I spend my day?”

“As I said at the start, there are two parts to this.”

Sharon blinked, trying to think back to what Paige had said earlier but she had absolutely no recollection. Instead of listening, she’d been trying to think about the best example she could give about how everyone needed her and came to her for advice.

“First, you tell us what your job involves—in your words—as well as what you do in a typical day. Your normal tasks. And then it’s the personality test.”

Sharon cast one more glance at Paige before, with a little flutter of worry, turning her attention to the laptop. She didn’t know that her role in the team was something that could be itemised like this. Not in a way that would do it justice, and certainly not into these brief intervals, which were, ironically, fifteen minutes each.

***

AT A FEW MINUTES PAST two o’clock, Sophie and Paige were seated in one of the meeting rooms on the tenth floor, wondering how this had happened. Sophie risked a wide-eyed glance at Paige. Paige returned the glance with an eye roll.

How had they ended up in the two-hour weekly HR meeting? This was one of the reasons they’d escaped academia—the endless and pointless meetings in which you could count on circular discussions, ego-stroking, pontificating and agenda-pushing. As it turned out, meetings in the corporate environment were not so different—it seemed only jargon that separated the two. And they weren’t even being paid for this extra meeting because they’d agreed on a set fee to conduct their interviews and write up a report.

“Thanks for that update, Pearl,” Josh said, casting a warm smile around the table. “Now, Jim, what about the FTE situation?”

“Ah yes,” a small man with greyish skin said. He licked his surprisingly pink lips and started reading something from the papers in front of him. For every few words he uttered, he paused to cough twice. It was a dry cough that didn’t appear to achieve anything except be extremely irritating. After a minute Sophie’s phone, sitting on her lap on vibrate, buzzed. It was a text from Paige.

OMG I am going to murder this man.

...

For the love of God, someone give him a lozenge.

Sophie’s hand shot to her mouth to cover up her smile. She could feel Paige’s eyes burning into hers, but if she looked at her, she would erupt into giggles. For sure. Instead, she cast her eyes across to Jim. His report had at least five sheets of paper stapled together.

This was excruciating.

Why were they here?

Sophie caught Josh’s eye. He winked and smiled.

Oh, Sophie thought, that’s why.

***

AT TEN PAST FIVE PAIGE and Sophie left the already throbbing downtown area to have a quick Friday night drink at Love Bucket on K’ Road.

K’ Road, known for its grungy clubs and all-night partying, was still relatively serene at this early hour and Sophie planned on being long gone by the time the first wave of party people—those pre-loading at cheap BYO restaurants—started filling the streets.

They entered the bar and walked past the dark, corner booths—good for a date, Sophie found herself thinking as an image of Roman popped into her head—and past the smattering of tables in the middle, to sit at the back, right under the window facing out to Myers Park. The air was heavy, muggy with the potential of rain, but there was a patch of optimistic blue sky persevering in the north and this was the direction they faced.

The waitress came over and they ordered a glass of wine each. Paige went for an expensive Shiraz, whereas Sophie chose the house red because it was on special for Happy Hour.

“Hey, did you know that everyone has like, a set amount of words that they need to use in a day,” Paige said. “If you don’t use them up, you have verbal diarrhoea with the next person you see. But if you do use all your words in a day, then you find it hard to make conversation.”

Sophie nodded. Not only had she heard that theory before, she herself had experienced it. During her PhD on those blissful days she worked at home, she would—completely out of character—pounce on her flatmates when they came home from work, craving conversation. Tonight however, it was the opposite. Her words were most definitely nearly used up. In these times she was glad to have flatmates like Myra, who could sit in silence all evening, and Victoria, who was happy to carry on an entire conversation completely on her own.

The waitress came over and deposited their wine and some sunflower seeds for them to nibble on.

“Great,” Sophie said dully, gazing at her phone. “Josh friend requested me.”

“I wonder if I have a request too,” Paige said drily.

“Should I ignore it? If I accept it now, I feel like he’ll start messaging me tonight. He’s out at drinks right now.” Sophie rolled her eyes. “He made a point of telling me earlier.”

“Definitely wait, then.” Paige checked her own phone. “Hey, Leo’s keen to hang out. Shall I tell him to come join us?”

“Sure. But I’m going after this wine, okay?” It had been a long week and Sophie was knackered.

Paige nodded. “Tim said dinner would be ready at seven o’clock, so I can hang with Leo for a bit.”

Sophie suppressed a surge of jealousy at Paige’s seeming domestic bliss, and shoved a few sunflower seeds into her mouth. But maybe domestic bliss was just around the corner for her too.

They sipped their wine as they compared notes about their interviews, agreeing that the corporate environment might be as odd as the academic one.

“I think it’s just that in general, people are kind of weird,” Sophie mused, “and we all pretend we aren’t, but the moment you start asking questions, trying to measure us, human beings, it becomes obvious.”

Paige chuckled. Her phone, still sitting on the table, beeped. “Leo’s nearly here.” Paige typed out a quick response then saw that she had a message from Tim. A YouTube clip. Expecting to see a cat-fail video, or similar, she pressed play and instead saw a montage of babies and toddlers covered in flour, chocolate, paint, makeup... and every other substance under the sun that toddlers could adorably get themselves covered in while their parents were distracted. It was pretty cute, Paige had to admit, but she thought that the frequency with which Tim was showing her these cute-kid videos might be increasing.

“Ladies!” Leo bellowed. “I’ll get myself a beer and join you,” he shouted from across the bar, his voice piercing the thrum of intense but quiet conversation. Sometimes Leo seemed to know just the right thing to say but other times he could be completely clueless.

“He’s looking pretty trim, aye?” Sophie said, eyeing him.

Paige turned to regard Leo as he approached. “Have you lost weight?” she said when Leo was in earshot.

Leo reddened. “I guess,” he said, shuffling his feet. Leo was, in fact, on somewhat of a diet. The unexpected but welcome arrival of Paige and Sophie in his life had spurred him into new behaviours. He’d cut back on the regularity in which he chowed down entire packets of chips and was trying to eat better across the board. This was difficult when one was on a limited budget, but he’d managed to switch from white bread to boiled or grilled potatoes as his main carbohydrate, he’d cut back on sugar, and he’d stopped drinking coke completely. The weight had fallen off with these seemingly small, but rather important dietary changes, and after an initial few days of feeling like crap as his body withdrew from coca cola, he was now feeling much better than he could ever remember.

Sophie drained her glass. “Hey Leo, it’s nice to see you, but I’m heading off now,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“No worries. I’ll come by the office soon for a catch-up.”

Sophie left money for her wine with Paige and waved goodbye.

“I need a job,” Leo said, taking Sophie’s seat.

“You know we’ve got a corporate gig, right?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing else?”

Paige studied Leo’s forlorn expression and felt sorry enough him to give the matter some serious thought. Out of nowhere, an image of her mother, sweaty and red as she yanked weeds out of her garden, popped into her head.

“How much are you willing to endure?” Paige asked.

***

WHEN SOPHIE GOT HOME Victoria was taking an after-work shower, which meant one of two things: either she was going out and she’d float out of the bathroom in a cloud of body lotions and wearing an ear to ear grin; or she’d had a terrible day and would slouch into the living room in her bathrobe and infect everyone within a one-kilometre radius with her bad mood.

“What’s the situation in there?” Sophie asked Myra, sitting on the couch in the living room with a textbook on her lap and a cup of tea balanced on the arm rest.

Myra shook her head, eyes wide. “Don’t know. She’s been in there for ages.”

Sophie placed her six-pack of KFC chicken wings on the table, trying not to look or feel guilty. Her bus stop was literally right outside the Pt Chev KFC and it seemed as if they pumped the smell out onto the street to entice customers inside. It was very effective, and one pack of chicken wings was rather restrained, she thought. “How’s the studying going?” she asked as she shrugged off her coat. Before Myra could answer, the lock to the bathroom clicked. Sophie and Myra tensed in anticipation.

“Oooh, Sophie! Great. You can help me decide what to wear!” Victoria beamed. “Well, it’s only between two dresses. But it’s still a big choice,” she added, her eyes wide and serious. “And then there’s the shoes... and hair up or down... and the style of makeup.” Victoria did a twirl and scampered to her room.

That’s right, Sophie recalled, tonight was the company ball Victoria had been going on about for the last week. She’d been graciously invited to join someone in her department’s table—based on the timing, it seemed to Sophie that Victoria was filling an unexpected vacancy—and she’d been in seventh heaven since then, discussing and planning everything to do with that night down to a shocking level of detail. From what Sophie could tell, Victoria had been plucked, waxed, highlighted, bronzed, massaged, manicured and pedicured in preparation for tonight.

An excited thump came from Victoria’s room.

Sophie hoped she would have a good time, and that these “work friends” she had started talking about didn’t exclude her in any obvious or mean way. For all her insufferableness, Victoria wasn’t a bad person, and she seemed so happy to be invited to something it made Sophie’s heart ping. As she reached for her chicken wings she resolved to be a better friend—or at least something of a friend to her.

***

MEANWHILE, AFTER LEAVING Paige, Leo had made the mistake of popping in to see Barrett, who was now eying Leo with what was unmistakeably hostility. This was getting ridiculous. Barrett was acting like if Leo didn’t pay back his money immediately, he would be bankrupted and cast out onto the street, and this was far from true. Leo had met Barrett’s mother and she would do anything for Barrett. She was basically his servant.

“Can’t you give me a break? You don’t need the money.”

“Listen, I’ve had second thoughts. Money gets between friends. I shouldn’t have lent it to you.”

“Okay fine. I’ve been offered a gardening job. I’ll take it and pay you back as soon as I get paid. Is that good enough?”

“Gardening?”

“Shut up. I’ll see you later.”

As Leo walked away he pulled his phone out and brought up Paige’s mother’s number. Unease crept into his shoulders as he made the call. Paige’s mother, Alice Garnet, was one of his pet napping ‘victims’. Her cat, the extremely chilled out TomTom, had been the very first pet he’d nabbed but he didn’t know whether Alice was aware of this or not. It was entirely possible that Paige had forgotten all about it. Or maybe Alice was like one of those trusting business owners who gave criminals a second chance? Based on what Paige had said about her mother, it seemed unlikely. No, Leo thought, she probably didn’t know. In which case, if he did start working for Alice, should he confess? Get it out in the open straight away and explain?

He sighed. He’d figure it out later if he got this job. The idea of him gardening was kind of ridiculous. But what else could he do?