Who's Afraid of MR Wolfe? Page 11

  Jack stood there for a while and then laughed. Last word to her, he supposed.

  So, she wanted to play hardball.

  Fine.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mrs MacEndry contemplated Jack’s office door with a worried expression.

  ‘Are you sure Jack asked to see you right now, Ellie dear?’

  Ellie nodded. Jack had been brusque and insistent on the phone and she suspected that he was going to chew her out for her little performance the evening before.

  ‘Well, he already has somebody in there with him,’ Mrs MacEndry said, straightening some papers on her desk that already looked pretty straight to Ellie. ‘But I suppose if you’re sure he told you to come …’

  Ellie knocked on Jack’s door and pushed it open. A woman was sitting by Jack’s side, her portfolio of work open on the desk. Her glossy red hair was very close to Jack’s choppy, thick black hair.

  Jack raised his head and shot Ellie a cursory glance. ‘Yes?’

  The woman turned to look at Ellie too, and as she flicked her gaze up and down what Ellie was wearing, her blood-red lips formed into a little smirk.

  ‘Ellie,’ she said.

  Ellie’s brain froze. What the hell was copywriter Monikka Steel doing in Jack’s office? Nasty, scheming ‘Feral Monikka’? She must be thinking of leaving Rackman Jarvitt. Or even worse, Jack must be planning to tempt her away.

  Ellie’s eyes went to Monikka’s portfolio again.

  ‘Yes?’ repeated Jack, a hint of irritation in his voice.

  ‘You rang me. You wanted to see me.’ Ellie could not wrest her attention away from Monikka’s portfolio of work.

  ‘Did I?’ Jack’s face showed innocent puzzlement. ‘Can’t think what it was about now,’ he said, shrugging. Then he turned back to Monikka, who was examining him very closely. ‘You were saying, Monikka?’ he asked, shifting his chair a little nearer to her.

  As Ellie backed from the room, she heard Monikka in full flow: ‘Well, Jack, this was a difficult concept, yeah? But I came up with this clever way of combining the message with the medium, yeah, and it played very well. The judging panel loved it.’

  Ellie all but ran back to her office, but there was no Lesley there to offer sympathy. She was currently reshooting metal flanges with a particularly truculent photographer.

  Not that Lesley would have been able to help much. Elle knew what was going on. Gavin’s days were numbered and now it seemed that hers were too. She had been right: there was only one way of doing things, Jack’s way. They’d had one too many arguments and now she was about to lose her job to a Monikka with two ‘k’s, a glossy femme fatale who wasn’t invisible. Nobody would mistake her for a ruddy student.

  She moved around the office, taking in all the things that she and Lesley had collected over the years. There was the chart on the wall showing how many people had made the ‘Hey, your name’s Les and you are actually a Lesbian’ joke. She looked at the little figure of Frankenstein that they had christened ‘Hugo’, and at the posters and rude postcards. She thought back to the first day Lesley and she had moved in. Then she went downstairs to ask Rachel for some black bin liners.

  Mrs MacEndry put Jack’s cup of coffee on his desk. ‘All I am saying is that she could not hide how very, very upset she was.’

  Jack grunted and Mrs MacEndry retreated to her office, having learned through hard experience that this particular noise meant ‘end of discussion’. Jack carried on looking at the papers on his desk and then sat back in his chair. There had been no mistaking the look of shock on Ellie’s face when she had seen Monikka. Still, Ellie was a bright girl; she’d know it was a warning shot, a little message that he didn’t take kindly to her mooching about like some lovesick Victorian, or dropping him in it with Leonora. Whatever the reasons she’d been engaging in this little power struggle with him, that should knock it on the head.

  There was no way she could actually believe he’d let a viper like Monikka into the agency. God, the way that woman had simpered at him. She’d even run her hand up his leg at one point. He pulled a face and got on with his work.

  He was considering packing up and going home when Ellie reappeared in his doorway. She was flushed and even more dishevelled than usual as she walked over to his desk and put down a little pile of papers.

  ‘First draft of the copy for the Jubbitt & Jubbitt brochure. I’ve managed to beat him down to a sixteen-pager this time, but there wasn’t a lot else he was willing to lose in the copy line. Lesley’s got the photography arranged for next week.’

  Jack tried not to look smug. He’d got the result he wanted quicker than he’d imagined.

  ‘OK,’ he said, picking up the papers and offering them back to her. ‘But really there’s no need to bring this to me – Gavin’s still your creative director.’ He hadn’t expected her to cave in so quickly.

  Except Ellie wasn’t taking the proffered papers and she had a disconcerting expression on her face.

  ‘No, you keep them, Jack,’ she said in a very sweet tone, ‘and have this too.’ She placed a white envelope on top of the papers and then turned and walked out of the room.

  Ellie was chucking the contents of her desk into a black bin liner when Jack reached her office. He held out the white envelope she had given him earlier.

  ‘Ellie, this is stupid. I’m not accepting this resignation.’

  She ignored it, ignored him and kept on filling the bag.

  Jack lowered his head and came into the room, placing the envelope on the desk. He watched as Ellie kept sorting through her papers and winced as she stamped on a blowup strawberry to get the air out of it.

  ‘Come on, Ellie, stop being so dramatic.’

  Ellie continued to ignore him. He looked at how she was holding herself, how she was moving and it all shouted, ‘Manic woman,’ to him.

  ‘Look, I think you got hold of the wrong end of the stick with Monikka.’

  No reaction, still the frenzied sorting and chucking.

  ‘It’s Gavin’s job to keep up to date with the talent out there. He’s not doing that, so I am.’

  Ellie gave him a disbelieving look. ‘Don’t waste your breath, Jack. Besides, Monikka’s an excellent writer. A crap human being, but an excellent writer. There might be a few personality glitches, like between her and everyone else who works here, but hey, I’m sure you’ll sort them out.’

  Ellie tied the top of the bag and then looked at the few remaining items on her desk. Picking up the wastepaper bin, she swept everything into it.

  ‘Well, I’m off,’ she said in a brittle voice. Hauling the bin liner into her arms, she turned and moved towards her handbag.

  Jack got to it before she could.

  ‘Right, stop this now,’ he said. ‘Calm down and talk to me.’

  ‘Give me my bag, Jack.’

  ‘Not until you’ve calmed down and we’ve had a talk.’ Jack got himself between her and the door. He lowered his voice and tried to establish eye contact. ‘Ellie, I would have hoped that we could sit down and discuss anything that was bothering you,’ he said. ‘You know I’m always willing to listen to any concerns that you have.’ That sounded pretty reasonable to his ears.

  ‘Ha,’ Ellie said with some force. ‘Ha bloody ha. Pardon me while my pelvic floor collapses.’

  There was a little standoff during which Jack debated whether to try again, but then the decision was taken out of his hands.

  ‘If you don’t give me my bag back, I am going to slap your smug face, you arrogant Yorkshire git,’ Ellie shouted at him. ‘I’m going home. I don’t care whether you think I should be handing in my notice or not. That’s my decision. And stop pretending that you’re put out about it. You’ve been chipping away at me since you got here.’

  Jack clutched her handbag tighter. ‘Ellie, don’t be so idiotic, and stop sodding shouting at me. All I’ve ever tried to get you to do is raise your game. You know I think your work’s brilliant.’ He went to take a step towards her, bu
t she let out a strange, too-high, too-quick laugh and it made him hesitate.

  When Ellie spoke again, she did it so quietly that he found it much more disconcerting than when she had shouted.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jack,’ she said. ‘I’m never going to be good enough to meet your high standards. I’m not high profile enough, not glamorous enough, not Monikka Steel enough. Hey, and guess what, I’m not even German enough.’

  Before he could stop her, she had wrenched the handbag out of his arms, and while he was still nonplussed by that, he felt the flat of her hand on his chest and she shoved him out of her way. Then she walked out of the door.

  Jack looked at the doorway as if expecting her to reappear. What the hell? Nobody pushed him about. If there was pushing to be done, he did it.

  And how had she managed to shift him, anyway? It must be all that fury. She was really boiling at the end; he could see it in her eyes.

  He sat down heavily in Ellie’s chair. He’d made a right mess of that, completely ballsed it up.

  Looking around the office he noticed the mini-fridge on the cabinet. Had that always been there? Soon he had a bottle in his hand and was slamming it against the edge of the desk to get off the top. He took a long drink. That Monikka stunt was a mistake. Now he was a copywriter down and about to can the creative director. Why the hell had Ellie gone completely over the top like that when sacking her wasn’t even on the agenda?

  Didn’t she understand how these things worked? You had a spat with your boss; he let you get away with it for a while; then he slapped you down and gave you a bit of a taste of how bad things could be. Result: you took the hint and toed the line.

  How she’d managed to survive this long in the business when she was so blasted sensitive was a mystery. Everything he said to her she took the wrong way. He had another swig of lager.

  Maybe, though, if he were honest, she did have a point about him chipping away at her. It was just so damned annoying seeing someone who was as good as she was not making more of herself. That’s all he’d been trying to do, wasn’t it?

  He’d let her cool off for a couple of days, then send Lesley round to talk to her. She’d listen to Lesley.

  How come she’d got him on the back foot when he was meant to have the upper hand? As he thought of the way he’d just got his back foot entangled with his upper hand, Ellie’s comment about ‘a tortuous set of mixed metaphors’ drifted into his head and he took another long pull on his drink.

  Why did he feel as if he’d lost their little fight when she was the one with her possessions in a black plastic bin liner?

  Jack frowned as he thought about coming into this office tomorrow and seeing Ellie’s empty chair and all of a sudden he was back in his first-ever flat, the one he’d had in Leeds.

  The memory came out of nowhere and made him put down his bottle on the desk with a clunk.

  He sat there for quite a while trying to find some sense of calm before slowly bending down and retrieving the things that Ellie had swept into the bin. Carefully he put them back on her desk, trying to position them where she’d had them before, as if by doing so he could peg her back into place. Or perhaps, if he got the order exactly right, conjure her up again.

  She had no right to leave him like that. No bloody right at all.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ellie threw the black bin liner on to the sofa and watched as it tipped over and the contents spilled over the carpet.

  ‘So you decided to let yourself in and rifle through my belongings?’ she said to Sam’s back.

  ‘Our belongings,’ he answered, and carried on doing what he had been doing when she arrived: picking over the CDs on the shelves. ‘We never got round to sorting them. You said I could come back and get them. I rang, but you weren’t in.’

  Ellie shook her head in disbelief, but Sam said quickly, ‘Come on, don’t look like that. It’s still really my flat too, Ellie. I’m paying half the mortgage till the end of the month.’

  Ellie did not need reminding of that, or of the fact that the flat was going to have to go on the market pretty quickly because she could not afford it for long on her wage alone.

  Now it suddenly hit her that she would be looking for a new job at the same time as a new home. She sat down on the sofa next to the empty bin liner and wondered how much worse this day could get.

  There was a constant ‘Tap, tap, tap’ as Sam piled CDs into a cardboard box and she knew that she should see what he was taking, but she couldn’t bear it. So many of those CDs they had bought together and trying to decide what belonged to whom would be too painful. Let him have what he wanted.

  Sam paused and she saw him look at the black bin liner.

  ‘Hard day at work?’

  Ellie said nothing and struggled up off the sofa and walked out of the room into the kitchen. Her hand reached for the open bottle of red wine from the night before, and without bothering to find a glass, she started to drink from it.

  Might as well get used to it: she’d be under the railway arches soon, homeless and cuddling a cider bottle.

  ‘I won’t take much longer,’ she heard Sam shout. ‘Lotte and I are off to a film.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Ellie said with as much sarcasm as she could. ‘What’s it called? How to Come to England and Steal Somebody’s Boyfriend? Hope there are subtitles for the blonde.’

  There was no reply from Sam, and Ellie shrugged and took another large slug of wine. What had happened to her promise to herself to act at all times with dignity? She only had to see Sam and she was like a vengeful witch. She hated what came out of her mouth, but she couldn’t seem to stop. It was all about trying to inflict the same kind of pain on him as he’d inflicted on her, she knew that.

  A few minutes later she heard him say, ‘I’m going now.’

  She didn’t answer, couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said.

  Ellie waited for the front door to close and went into the living room. The denuded CD collection now looked like a gap-toothed grin. ‘Here’s to happy listening,’ she said, raising the wine bottle in a mock toast before it percolated through to her brain what CDs Sam had actually left her with.

  ‘No. No way. No,’ she said out loud, slamming the bottle down on the table.

  Within seconds she had snatched up the CDs and barged out of the room.

  Sam was loading the boot of the car and telling Lotte that Ellie hadn’t been ‘too bad’ when something sharp hit him on the back of the head. He spun round to see Ellie, eyes blazing with anger, standing on the pavement outside the flat, a stack of CDs held to her chest.

  ‘Bloody Santana!’ she screamed. ‘I hate them. I’ve always hated them. You know that.’

  Whoosh – another CD flew through the air. Sam picked up his briefcase from the boot and held it in front of himself like a shield. The CD bounced off it and landed on the road, the case breaking open.

  A passer-by stopped to see what was going on.

  ‘It was your seduction music,’ Ellie screamed, throwing another CD. Sam batted it away easily with the briefcase, but Ellie was giving every appearance of just getting into her stride. ‘Every time’ – chuck – ‘you felt romantic, you’d put it on.’ Chuck. ‘Boring guitar solos.’ Chuck. ‘Boring drum solos.’

  Sam was having to work hard. The CDs were raining down and Lotte was shouting at him in German to get into the car, but Ellie had him pinned down.

  Some people had now come out of their front doors and were trying to look as if they weren’t staring. Ellie was making quite a noise.

  ‘… and do you know what, Sam the Shagger?’ Chuck. ‘You always finished ages before the music.’ Chuck. ‘I had to lie there and listen to the stuff while you dropped off to sleep on me.’

  Someone, in what was now quite a crowd, laughed and Sam was distracted long enough for one of the CDs to catch him on the side of his face. ‘Stop it, Ellie,’ he yelled, rubbing the place where it had caught him.

  Just then
there was a shout from further along the street.

  Ellie turned. It was Lesley.

  Sam took advantage of Ellie pausing and slammed the boot, wrenched open the passenger door and threw himself into the car.

  Lesley was shouting something about knickers.

  The crowd switched their attention from Sam to the woman racing down the street. This was good; this was worth every penny of the higher-band council tax.

  ‘Our knickers are back on, Ellie. They’re back on!’ Lesley was shouting.

  The crowd murmured. Wow, violence and sex all in one evening.

  Sam and Lotte’s car screeched away down the road.

  ‘Back on?’ Ellie let the last remaining CD fall from her hand.

  ‘Yeah.’ Lesley stopped and tried to catch her breath. ‘Old Hetherington … dropped dead … in the company car park yesterday. He’d come back in for his retirement party. How ironic is that?’ Lesley tried to look serious. ‘I mean, it’s terrifically sad.’ She was silent for a few seconds and then her smile burst out again. ‘But, Ellie, that woman, Pauline What’s-her-name, has been on the phone to Jack. Says she wants us to present the knickers idea again.’ Lesley grabbed hold of Ellie’s hands and twirled her round before drawing her into a hug.

  There was a ripple of expectation in the crowd … These two might be going to kiss.

  Ellie had a huge smile on her face too and then it died. She remembered she didn’t work for the agency any more.

  ‘We’ve got to get a move on,’ Lesley was saying, ‘because they want to see us tomorrow. We’re going to have to work on it tonight. Jack’s on his way. In fact, I thought he’d be here by now.’

  ‘I am,’ Jack said, and they turned round to see him leaning against his car, a little further down the road.

  The crowd looked at him. Hmm, tall, craggy, handsome man. This was getting better and better.

  ‘I’ve been watching the cabaret,’ Jack said, as he moved away from the car and walked towards them. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Will there be a second half where you throw bigger things, or was that it?’