The Past and Other Lies by Maggie Joel Read Free Book Online

appeared to be unattended, which meant a couple of staff were going to get it in no uncertain terms at the next staff meeting.
    ‘Peacekeeper™,’ she said, grabbing a long, flat cellophane-wrapped box from the top of an untouched pile nearby. ‘It was our biggest seller this Christmas—you’ll have seen it advertised on TV?’ The Hugh Grant look-alike nodded vigorously. ‘It’s a thrilling adventure game but you learn about life at the same time,’ she said.
    ‘Oh. Right,’ he said hopefully, and Jennifer thought, you haven’t got a clue.
    ‘Every boy in his class either has one or wants one.’ That clinched it. She handed him the box and pushed him firmly in the direction of the cash register.
    Mr Gaspari was still on hold.
    She pushed open the Staff Only door and made her way along the drab uncarpeted corridor that ran the length of the fifth floor and at the far end of which was the office she shared with Gary Harding, the Sportswear Manager. Outside the office was Gloria’s desk, neat and empty but for her PC (logged off) and her telephone, on which a red light was flashing urgently. It was late January but Corporate Services still hadn’t removed the Christmas on-hold CD, which was Bing Crosby’s Christmas Classics —though for some reason whenever you got put on hold he was only ever singing ‘The Little Drummer Boy’.
    She pushed her office door shut with her foot and was disappointed to see Gary Harding was still at lunch—a phone call from the board of directors was something she’d quite like him to overhear.
    ‘Hello, Mr Gasp—’
    ‘ Arumpa-pum-pum! ’ sang Bing, and Jennifer stabbed at another button.
    ‘Mr Gaspari?’
    ‘Oh, Jennifer, there you are. It’s Aunt Caroline.’
    Aunt Caroline?
    ‘Your secretary put me on hold. I’ve been listening to ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. I think I prefer the Boney M version—’
    ‘Aunt Caroline, I have to put you back on hold—’
    ‘Oh, I only wanted to be very quick. It’s about that television program yesterday—’
    ‘Ah, you saw that? How—did Mum—?’
    Jennifer had been about to say Did Mum tell you about it? but as the idea of her mother ringing Aunt Caroline for a cosy chat seemed unlikely she stopped herself.
    ‘This might come as a shock to you, dear, but I do occasionally watch daytime television.’
    It did come as a shock.
    ‘Now I did want to talk to you and I thought you should come up. Shall we say tomorrow? Afternoon tea?’
    Jennifer experienced a moment of panic. If Aunt Caroline had watched Kim’s program, who else had? She had deliberately told no one about it—except Nick, of course. And Mum and Charlotte...though hopefully they hadn’t, in the end, watched it. Had they? Neither of them had emailed her. Perhaps they had rung? She hadn’t been home to check her messages.
    ‘I can’t possibly come up tomorrow, I’ll be working. Sorry but—’
    ‘Don’t you get days off? Aren’t you the manager?’
    ‘Yes and that’s why—look, I’ll call you straight back,’ and she stabbed the other line.
    ‘Mr Gaspari?’
    ‘At last! My dear girl, do you have any idea how long I have been kept waiting on this telephone?’
    Mr Gaspari, whom Jennifer had never actually met, sounded exactly like a petulant great-uncle she dimly remembered from childhood. She had an idea most of the board of directors were well over seventy and she adjusted her manner accordingly.
    ‘Yes, I am sorry, Mr Gaspari, I was just caught with a customer.’ That was good, the older directors liked management to stay in touch with the consumer.
    ‘Don’t you have sales staff to do that?’ he snapped back.
    ‘Well, yes...’
    ‘Never mind. It is about this television program. Yesterday afternoon—’
    Surely the board of directors didn’t watch daytime television? Had word somehow got out that she was going to be talking about kids’ computer games? But the producer had cancelled that show and instead she’d done ‘I Saved My