long dark straight hair with an arrogant flick of her head. ‘He has an important visitor.’
‘Julia, I’m on my lunch. You get it for him, you’re his assistant.’ Lordy, where had that come from? Elizabeth wondered.
Julia did a few rapid blinks but any loss of composure was quickly recovered. ‘Yes, I am. But you make the tea.’
Something wordy and eloquent formed in response in Elizabeth’s head. Unfortunately, the filter at her voicebox was a little brutal and what came out was, ‘Go and bollocks.’
Where had THAT come from?
‘I beg your pardon?’ Julia’s voice was so quiet with rage that Elizabeth wasn’t sure if it was audible at all and she had merely read her lips. Either way, some tired, weary part of Elizabeth’s consciousness, pushed to the very edge of reason by a whole cocktail of events and emotions, registered that this was the point of no return. Her mouth disengaged from the rest of her body and ran ahead like Red Rum with a little fat stable-boy 300 furlongs behind shouting, ‘Stop, stop! For goodness’ sake, stop!’
‘What I mean is, why don’t you take your bandy little legs into the kitchen, switch on the kettle and when it’s boiled, stick it up where the sun refuses to shine?’
From the way the open-plan office fell into a stunned hush, Elizabeth sort of gathered that this had not been delivered in a whisper. Even the air conditioning seemed to drop in volume.
‘W…What?’
Whoosh. A tidal wave of adrenaline rushed through her system with such velocity that she started visibly to tremble with it as her mouth came up to Beecher’s Brook.
‘Then, when you’ve done that, why don’t you takemy job and stick it up there as well to keep it company.’
Behind Julia, Laurence’s door pulled violently open, but not even he and his one long foreboding eyebrow could stem Elizabeth’s flow.
‘Do you know, you’re a nasty, vicious little bitch, a bullying, sycophantic talentless little turd and I can’t stand to work here with you for one more nano-second, so, if it’s not yet sunk into that minuscule little brain, I’ll say it in monosyllables for you. I. Quit.’ Silence.
They stood facing each other like two gunfighters, hands itching for their Colt 45s. The only movement was Julia’s left eye twitching spastically. Then, as soon as she detected Laurence’s presence at her shoulder, her lip started to wobble and Elizabeth watched in amazement as she squeezed on every facial muscle she had to bring water sucking up her tear ducts. God, she was Oscar nominationally good.
Elizabeth gave her a slow clap and said, ‘Bravo. Now please give the crocodile those tears back before he misses them.’
Laurence hoisted her up with his eyes, chewed her up and spat her out again.
‘Get out, you’re sacked,’ he said in a whispered scream.
‘Sorry, I’ve already resigned,’ she said, then stabbed a finger at Laurence. ‘As for you, you’ve gone through more staff in this department in the last six months than the average family goes through bog rolls in a year. You should be ashamed. All those decent kids turned away for no reason at all.’
‘If you had a problem you should have come to me to discuss it privately ,’ Laurence said, his voice a covered growl, aware of the unwanted attention. With his eyebrow in a deep V in the middle, where on humans there would have been a gap, he looked very much like a big bad wolf. But Elizabeth was Red Riding Hood with attitude.
‘Oh yeah?’ She laughed with a mix of bitterness and amusement. ‘Would you truly and honestly have listened? I think not! You’re as bad as she is. You can stick your precious job, Mr Stewart-Smith. I saw what was on that note you wrote about those women being old scrubbers, so don’t you tell me you’d listen to what I would have had to say! Twenty-two years I’ve worked here, without anything but positive feedback. Suddenly not only do I need a “supervisor” but I’m back filing and