1

‘Ron Jonson thinks he's a sofa.’

Jane Child looked up from her screen. Alistair Downley was always making little jokes. ‘Chesterfield, divan, rolled arm or mid-century modern?’ she asked.

‘Certainly something well-worn and over-stuffed,’ Barry Tonks added in a low voice, pushing back from his desk and wheeling his chair across to join the conversation.

The other two looked askance at him. Barry was normally the quiet one of the trio. Bespectacled, middle-aged, married with a house in Surbiton, he wore pinstriped suits and carried a rolled umbrella to and from work each day regardless of the weather. In many ways he was an archetypal banker, a cardboard cut-out you could slot in anywhere in London’s financial district, but there was more to Barry than met the eye, as both Jane and Alistair knew. Still, snarky comments were not his milieu, and they regarded him with surprise.

Barry coloured from the base of his cheeks to the top of his balding head. ‘Well ... you know what I mean. I’ve never had much time for that lazy so-and-so.’

‘Worn out and completely stuffed,’ Alistair said. ‘You know I’ll be quoting that in the staff bar, don’t you?’

‘I did not say he was—’

‘The punchline, Alistair?’ Jane sighed. ‘Ron Jonson thinks he's a sofa because ...? C’mon, I’m busy here. These audit reports won’t finish themselves.’

‘Forget your audit reports, darling, I’m serious. There is no punchline, just a simple statement of fact: Ron Jonson thinks he's a sofa. End of statement.’ With that, Alistair tossed his head, went to his desk and logged in to his computer.

Barry and Jane exchanged a glance. They knew Alistair. They knew he was waiting for them to beg for more, and they were both equally determined not to play his game.

‘Arthur Timms plays with dolls,’ Jane said to Barry.

‘And David Cholmondeley-Majoribanks won his surname in a raffle,’ Barry replied, sliding back to his desk.

Several seconds of silence filled the cubicle as Jane and Barry pretended to get back to work, then Alistair spluttered, ‘What the devil are you two talking about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I give you the hot goss of the year, and all you can do is come back wit school-yard tittle-tattle.’

‘Was mine the tittle or the tattle?’ Jane asked Barry.

‘I thought you had audit reports to finish.’

‘You can't really split that conjunction, you know,’ Barry told her. ‘Tittle on its own just means a tiny amount, while tattle can refer to disclosing information, speaking rapidly, or—’

‘Yes, yes, thank you, Thesaurus Rex! Look, if you’re not interested, just say so.’

‘Not interested.’

‘But you should be! It’s absolutely, stone-cold true. He’s just been escorted from the premises.’

Jane glanced towards the window despite herself, but nine storeys up she couldn’t see the street.

‘Not out the front, obviously. Divisional managers get executive treatment, even barking mad ones. Especially barking mad ones.’

‘A barking sofa. Now there’s an image to conjure with.’

Alistair let out an exasperated sigh, rocked back in his seat and stared at the ceiling.

‘Oh come on, Al. We’re just teasing. We can see you’re bursting with it. Just spit it out and stop being such a drama queen.’

He gave her a petulant look. Jane was one of the few people who could get away with a remark like that. ‘Well, I was talking to Maddy Higgins on twelve. Just chitchat, passing the time of day, you know the sort of thing. Then she got bleeped. Urgent text. Up to the boardroom, pronto, please. They had a situation.’

‘This is Dr Higgins from HR?’ Barry asked.

Alistair’s glare said two things: How many Maddy Higgins are there? And will you damn well stop interrupting!

Barry had the grace to look chastened. Alistair continued. ‘So me being me, I tagged along. Said I had something to drop off on the seventeenth and took the lift up with her. And she said, without any prompting at all, “I expect it’s Mr Jonson again.” “Oh, really?” I said. “Yes, he’s been having one or two issues lately.” “What sort of issues?” I asked, ever so nonchalant, and she said I wasn’t to tell anyone, but she suspected he was suffering from Ekbom's Syndrome.’

‘Wha—?’

‘Ssshh!’

‘I was about to ask what that was when the lift pinged and we arrived. Max Rogers from Security was waiting for her, and Laurel and Hardy waved them straight through, leaving poor old moi standing around like a spare whatsit at an orgy.’ Laurel and Hardy were the nicknames staff gave to the two starchy receptionists with alabaster faces and ingenuous smiles who guarded the executive suites from behind an imposing oak desk. ‘So quick as a flash I said I had a ten o'clock with Mr Jonson. I didn’t of course. They checked his diary. But I said he’d asked me to come up on his way in to work this morning and had probably hadn't written it up yet.

‘What could they say? They knew something was up backstage and that it involved him, but not what or how bad. All they could do was ask me to take a seat. Which I did. And while I was there, I looked up old Ekbom.’ He withdrew his phone with a flourish.

The others watched as Alistair began reading from the screen. ‘Ekbom’s Syndrome, more commonly known as delusional parasitosis, is a disorder in which individuals believe they are infested with parasites, insects, or bugs, whereas in reality no such infestation is present.’ He looked up. ‘Remember his left arm? How he was always shaking and scratching it?’ Jane did. Jonson had been her boss for over a year now and she’d assumed it was a nervous tic, though it had got worse in the last few weeks. He’d started twitching his left leg too. ‘He apparently thought he had woodworm.’

Barry’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a bit of leap isn’t it, Alistair? How could you possibly know that?’

‘Because they escorted him out while I was sitting there. Max on one side, Maddy on the other. Ronnie-boy kept saying ‘Mind the arm, that’s an antique,’ and stomping and shaking his leg. Reckoned the woodworm were wreaking havoc with the mahogany, and that without him, the king and Princess Caroline would have nowhere to sit.’

‘Princess Caroline?’

‘Married George IV in 1820. You can trust an old queen to know his monarchs. He said they, plural, would have nowhere to sit. Therefore, he thought he was a sofa.’

‘Why not a pew or a park bench?’

‘Fuck off, Barry.’ The retort was good-natured. ‘Anyway, before the lift arrived he had some sort of fit. Nothing major, just a bit of twitching and swearing. They sat him down, either Laurel or Hardy called an ambulance, and the other one said they should take him out the back way. The executive lift. You know, the one that goes straight to the executive car park. Can’t have old Ronnie frothing and babbling at the proles, can we? They might lose all respect for senior management. Hah!’ His laugh was ironic.

‘So, exit Ron Jonson, stage left. God knows when, or even if he’ll ever be back.’ Alistair sat forward in his seat, crossed his arms and regarded his cubicle-mates with a What do you think of that? look.

‘And that just happened, just now?’ Jane asked.

‘Not five minutes ago. You two are the first to hear.’

‘Gosh, that’s ...’ Jane didn’t really know what to say. Jonson was her boss, she reported directly to him, but he was an oleaginous man with a heightened sense of his own importance. He’d tried to slip a hand up her skirt on her first day and she’d forcefully dissuaded him. So forcefully that he never tried anything like it again. If it had been his right arm that had that tic she might have worried she’d done some permanent damage. Since then their relationship had been remote and purely professional, and on a purely professional basis she didn’t regard him as a particularly good or a particularly effective manager. Still, she didn’t wish ill on anyone, and despite Alistair’s humorous recitation, it sounded like the poor man had had some sort of breakdown.

She blinked, suddenly aware of the other two beaming at her. ‘What?’ she said.

‘She doesn’t get it, does she Barry.’

‘It’s certainly taking a while to sink in.’

Jane frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘If she expects us to kowtow Barry, forget it. Alistair Downley kowtows to no one – with the possible exception of George Clooney. And then only if he asks nicely.’

‘No, I don’t think Jane’s like that,’ Barry said. ‘She wouldn’t let it go to her head.’

As he spoke, the realisation dawned on her. Jane was Ron Jonson’s deputy. With him out of the picture – on long-term sick leave or perhaps even pensioned off – she was now in charge of the whole division.