Kath Oliver peered through the glasses resting halfway down the bridge of her nose as she read the resume in front of her. She was a world-weary woman in her fifties, the grey hair and the deep furrows in her face brought about as much by the passing of time as the manner in which she’d passed it.
‘So, is it William, Will, Bill?’ she murmured without looking up.
‘None of the above.’
Kath lifted her head, her eyebrows raised, clearly expecting more information.
‘William’s a traditional family name, I’ve never really gone by that name,’ he explained.
‘So what should we call you, Mr MacMullen?’
He hesitated. ‘Ah . . . Liam. You can call me Liam.’
She looked intrigued. ‘How’d you end up with that?’
‘It’s short for William.’ He smiled faintly. ‘The Irish do it back to front.’
‘Oh,’ she nodded, thinking about it, ‘I never realised that.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Well, apologies for the delay in setting up this interview, Liam, but this is what happens in chronically under-funded and understaffed non-government organisations. We desperately needed to hire someone but couldn’t spare anyone to process the applications.’ She paused. ‘Am I turning you off yet?’
Liam smiled. ‘We’ve only just begun.’
‘Mm,’ said Kath, narrowing her eyes. ‘I just don’t want you to have any illusions from the get-go.’ She sat back, folding her arms as she considered Liam sceptically. ‘For example, are you aware of the kind of drop in income you’re looking at? I figure we’re offering somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter of your present salary.’
‘It’s probably more like a fifth,’ he corrected her. ‘But I’m not actually on a salary at present. I’ve already left my previous position.’
He had found a flat to rent only last weekend. When he hadn’t heard from the Small Business Agency he was unsure about whether to stay in Sydney. He thought about travelling, or going back to Melbourne, or moving somewhere new altogether. The house was sold and he and Anna had divided up their belongings. There was nothing keeping him here, but something was making him stay.
And that something was probably Georgie. He missed her dreadfully. Every single day. It was so bad at first he used to drive past the shop and try to catch a glimpse of her, but he never had. He had, however, almost managed to drive up the back of another car on one occasion. He’d felt like some kind of pathetic stalker that day, picturing the scene out the front of her shop if he had had an accident, Georgie coming out, seeing him there.
So he stayed away, but he couldn’t leave Sydney. Not yet.
‘I imagine you were swamped with offers once it got around you were leaving Morgan Trask,’ Kath was saying. ‘I’m intrigued as to why you would choose to work for an under-resourced, decidedly unglamorous NGO for a fraction of your previous salary.’
‘There have been offers,’ he acknowledged. ‘But I’m not interested in that kind of work. I left Morgan Trask because I’d been feeling restless for months. Right now I can’t see myself ever working in that kind of environment again.’
‘Be that as it may, I need to be sure of some level of commitment on your part, that this isn’t midlife angst and as soon as the going gets tough, you’ll get going.’
He was beginning to find Kath Oliver’s attitude galling. If working in this environment made you bitter and twisted, perhaps he was better off elsewhere. Or perhaps she was. He wasn’t giving up that easily.
‘If you’re asking me where I’ll be in ten years time,’ said Liam, ‘I can’t tell you that. But as you operate on a tied government grant and you can’t guarantee my position beyond three years, you can most certainly count on me till then.’
‘You’ve done your homework,’ she admitted grudgingly.
‘Do you think I’d take this on lightly, on some kind of a whim?’ he returned. ‘I’ve worked on some of the largest corporate mergers in the Australasian region over the past decade. It was my job to make sure I knew all there was to know about the stakeholders, the risks, the gains, everything.’ He paused, taking a breath. ‘I know you have a permanent staff of twelve, plus a fluctuating army of volunteers, primarily law and commerce students. Your funding is tied to demonstrating you have achieved stated outcomes, and you have been able to do that for sixteen years now. Predecessors in my position have typically handled a bottomless caseload and have significantly altered or reversed tax department decisions, not an easy thing to do, in an impressive percentage of those cases.’ He leaned forward in his chair. ‘I believe I have skills that could be useful to your organisation, but more importantly from my perspective, I’d like to feel I was doing something worthwhile.’
‘Very noble,’ she remarked. ‘No need to get tetchy, Liam, this interview is only a formality. If I don’t hire you, the committee will have my head. I’m merely interested to know what brought about your change of heart from big business to this.’
Liam thought about it for a moment. ‘Maybe I just want to be able to sleep at night,’ he said quietly.
‘That’s as good a reason as any,’ said Kath. ‘How soon can you start?’