Page 10 of Every Silent Lie

“Fuck you.”

“God, you’re poisonous.”

I hang up. “Will someone please let me the fuck out of here?”

The door clicks, and I push my way through, rushing across the space and practically falling out onto the street, gasping in the cold air until my lungs scream. It takes a solid ten minutes to calm myself down until my hands aren’t shaking and I can type out a shitty message to my brother.

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.”