Page 168

What’s this? What is he doing, damn him?
He didn’t leave me a lot of time for wondering, or for damning. Two minutes later, a small metal container shot out of the pneumatic tube and landed with a plink next to me on the desk. I jumped and grabbed the thing, pulling out the message. It read:
Mr Linton,
You are three minutes late. This will be deducted from your wages at the end of the month.
Bring me file 38XI301.
Rikkard Ambrose
All right. So, at a guess I’d say he wasn’t pining with passionate love for me.
So he didn’t want me.
Ergo: the kiss never happened.
Well, so much the better. I wasn’t even a tiny bit disappointed. No, I wasn’t. After all, the fact that last night’s more… intimate occurrences had just been a dream had been what I had been trying to convince myself all the time. Now that I knew it was true, I ought to feel nothing but deep satisfaction.
Ought to, yes, but…
Hurriedly, I stood up and marched to the shelves of files. In no time at all, I had discovered the required document and transported it to the door. I reached for the doorknob, turned it - and almost ran headlong into a closed door. A very unladylike word escaped my lips as I stumbled back, the file clutched to my chest.
What the…!
I tried the door again. I hadn’t been mistaken. It was firmly and utterly locked.
‘Hey!’ With my free hand, I pounded against the heavy wood. ‘What’s the matter? Why is the door locked?’
Silence.
‘Didn’t you hear me? I said why is the door lock-’
A soft plink interrupted me. Turning my head, I saw that another metal cylinder had arrived on my desk. Mystified and annoyed, I stomped over to the desk and grabbed it. Now what would he have to say?
Because I locked it.
Rikkard Ambrose
I took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to calm my stormy temper. It didn’t work.
Crossing out the original with maybe a little bit more force than strictly necessary, I wrote under his message:
Dear Mr Ambrose,
And why did you do that?
Yours faithfully
Lilly Linton
Ha! I wondered what he was going to say now. Was he going to claim you could work more efficiently with all the doors locked? I wouldn’t put it past him, the stingy, stony old…!
Plink.
Ah!
Mr Linton,
It is a measure to further your abstinence and thereby the efficiency of your work. There is a liquor store only two streets away and a sweetshop selling solid chocolate right beside it. From your behaviour at the tavern, I deduced that keeping you locked up is the only way to prevent you from succumbing to irresistible urges.
Rikkard Ambrose
How on earth did he know I liked chocolate? Wait… irresistible urges? My eyes sparked!
I’ll give him irresistible urges!
Not alcoholic ones, though - the ones I was feeling right now tended more towards homicidal!
Still… there might be other kinds of irresistible urges, too. I blushed as, unbidden, memories flooded into my mind… soft skin pressing against my lips, moving, caressing…
Dreams! Hallucinations! The whole lot of them! Things like that would never happen in real life. In real life, Mr Ambrose didn’t go around kissing people. He went around bossing people around and locking them up.
I’d show him!
Fuming, I grabbed the next best bit of paper.
My very, very, very dear Mr Ambrose,
May I inform you that the strongest urge I feel at the moment has nothing whatsoever to do with alcohol, and everything to do with your disembowelment? OPEN THAT DOOR!
Your affectionate secretary
Lilly Linton
The answer wasn’t long in coming.
Mr Linton,
You may say anything you like as long as it distracts neither you nor me from working. The door stays locked.
Mr Ambrose
The obstinate…! But why was I wasting my time like this, anyway? I was in a superior position.
Dearest Mr Ambrose
You might not recall, but I have the necessary keys in my possession to open the aforementioned door. You gave them to me yourself. Therefore, I shall see you in a minute.
Yours affectionately,
Lilly Linton
I stuffed the message into the tube, pulled the lever and marched off triumphantly towards the door without waiting for an answer. My triumphant march was somewhat impeded, however, when my keys wouldn’t fit in the lock. I tried them again, and again. Still, they didn’t fit. Marching over to the other door, the one to the hallway, I tried to open this one, but discovered that it, too, had been locked, and my keys didn’t fit. By the time I had returned to the desk, another message had arrived.
Mr Linton,
I had the locks changed.
Rikkard Ambrose.
P.S. Affection is not among the services I require of you.
Heat rose to my cheeks on reading the last line. I had reached for the pen before I had started to think.
Dear Mr Ambrose,
I wonder you went to the expense of two new locks, simply for the sake of my abstinence! How wasteful of you.
Yours
Lilly Linton
P.S: If you do not require it, I shall not offer it.
Only half a minute later, his response arrived.
Mr Linton,
They were not new, but second-hand. I am still waiting for file 37VI288. Shove it under the door.
Rikkard Ambrose
I’d like to shove it up his…
Oh no. I didn’t want to have anything to do with his… Well, with that part of him. No matter how juicy it looked. Not even for shoving files up it.
Dear Mr Ambrose,
I demand to be let out immediately!
Yours
Lilly Linton
His reply was short and to the point. Who could have guessed?
Mr Linton,
You work for me, not the other way around. You cannot demand anything. Now bring me file 37VI288.
Rikkard Ambrose
What did I do? Yell? Hammer at the door in protest?
No.
I brought him the file.
I just managed it, all the while chanting in my head ‘Think of the money. Think of the independence it will bring you. Think of what you can do for Ella if all goes horribly wrong. You must have that money. You must.’
My chant was interrupted by the plink of another message arriving.
‘Mr Linton?’
‘Yes?’
I resurfaced from a mountain of files I was sorting through and looked around. But there was no one there.