Drive Me Crazy by Portia MacIntosh Read Free Book Online Page B

spends more time at work than he does at home, but it’s always nice to hear from him during time that is not ours.
    I grab the remote and hit play. Now, where was I…

Chapter 7
    As if it wasn’t bad enough that I’m a little bit late for work today, I have just sat down at my desk and there is Charlie’s leaving card staring me in the face, the one I was supposed to have everyone sign yesterday – the one that is for her leaving party at lunchtime today, which, thanks to my lateness, is not that far off.
    I sit down at my desk, without so much as a ‘good morning’ from Sweet Caroline, and stare at the card thoughtfully, wracking my brains for who Will said was left to sign it. Rick in the warehouse and the IT department – I’m pretty sure that was it.
    As I sip the cup of tea that I picked up on my way into work, I catch Caroline’s attention. She spies the drink that obviously made me that bit more late than I already was, and narrows her eyes over the tops of her tiny spectacles at me. Caroline is in her late sixties, and is pretty much a permanent fixture here at the firm. She’s known Will since he was young, and as such they have a mutual level of respect. When she was his dad’s secretary, Will told me she would always be nice to him when he would visit the office, so as soon as he started working here and moved up in the company, he never stopped respecting her as one of his elders, like the well-mannered man he is. This means that he finds it very difficult to boss her around, and when he wants to shout at her (in that way bosses with stressful jobs do when things aren’t going right) you can see him suppress it, almost to the point of discomfort – a skill he seems to lack when it comes to me, his girlfriend. I guess he just doesn’t have the sweet spot for me that he does for Sweet Caroline.
    Caroline’s look is interesting. Her short, auburn hair is always flicked out at the sides, with the tips highlighted bright red, which I don’t like. I’ve never been a fan of unnatural hair colours. It’s not that I’m against having hair coloured as a thing, but if you can tell that it’s not natural then it’s not for me. Caroline always dresses like a
Loose Women
panellist, that is until there is work do, then she really goes to town and goes all Truly Scrumptious on us.
    As Caroline stands up and walks around her desk, I see this as my opportunity to shift a little of my already light workload onto her.
    ‘You on the move, Caroline?’ I ask.
    ‘Yes, why?’ she replies curtly.
    ‘Oh, it’s just Wi- Mr Starr,’ I stop myself from calling Will by his first name, because this ‘display of disrespect’ always seems to irk her, ‘asked that Rick and the IT boys sign Charlie’s card.’
    As I say the words I remember the other person who I was supposed to have sign the card: me. I grab a pen and quickly scribble something inside.
    ‘Did he ask
you
to do it, Candice?’
    ‘He just said
it
needed doing. He didn’t say that he needed
me
specifically to do it.’
    Caroline carries on walking.
    ‘You know what they say,’ she lectures me. ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’
    ‘I don’t care if it’s done wrong,’ I call after her hopefully, but she’s gone. Crap. I’ll just have to do it myself.
    I drain the last of my tea before exhaling deeply. It’s not that I don’t want to do any work, it’s just that I can’t face the ‘banter’ of the warehouse, nor the weirdness of the IT department.
    I stand up and smooth out my dress before grabbing the card and a pen, and making my way along the corridor towards the warehouse. The nauseating yellow corridor walls seem especially harsh on the eyes today. Yellow is very much the colour of the company, and it’s clear that a variety of marketing experts over the years have really abused the fact the company name is Starr. Queue lots of space puns to do with storage and light speed in relation to deliveries. The logo is