The Lonely Fajita Read online

  ‘I still won, didn’t I?’ he says. ‘What was it? Five games for me and how many for you? Four, I think?’

  ‘All right, mate. No need to get all Billy Big Bollocks about it.’ Jonathon laughs and smacks Adam on the back, and he bluntly smiles in suppressed annoyance. The others titter around him. From my desk, this display of male posturing is so potent I can almost hear David Attenborough’s commentary: ‘And here we have the young corporate man, defeated by the alpha male for failing to “banter” with necessary vigour.’ Jonathon waves them out the door and exhales deeply, cricking his neck from one side to the other.

  ‘I’ll pop a cafetière on, shall I? Enough for …’ Jonathon points to those gathered around him and mouths numbers. ‘Rhea? Coffee?’ She shakes her head from her treadmill by the window. Jonathon looks around the room, catches my eye for a split second, and turns back to the others. ‘Four then.’ Ha! I don’t even want a coffee. I’ve got one already; a coconut latte with butterscotch syrup that I spent £3.70 on.

  Bismah comes in wearing a huge puffer jacket that she sheds like a chrysalis under a blast of heating above the door, draping it over the radiator near her desk. She puts down a Pret a Manger bag and opens her drawer, pulling out an impossibly long scarf that she winds around her neck and shoulders as she sits down. ‘Cold today, isn’t it? I’ve got two head scarves on. Have you spoken to Rachael on reception?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been in long, why?’

  ‘Something’s going on. Something big.’ Bismah looks at me in earnest and lowers her voice. ‘Rachael was flitting about and I overheard her on the phone trying to order a cold buffet, but not from that place we had last time with the brown food and soggy salad. Do you remember?’

  ‘For the market research thing? Yeah, gross. Bleurgh.’ I’d actually enjoyed that food. It was free and there was loads of it. I’d even snuck back up before the cleaners came in and filled a tub with dry brownies and veg pakoras.

  ‘Mitchell’s ordered from the delicatessen in Selfridges. The stuff they only get in when the investors are here. Have you seen it? They carve the carrots into lotus flowers and emboss the app logo onto macaron shells. It’s too nice. I doubt there’ll be leftovers we can swipe.’

  ‘You’re right. We might get to scoff some dry sandwich crusts.’ I tap the table with my pencil. ‘As a treat, you know?’

  ‘Potentially. If we still have jobs by then.’

  My stomach twists into a knot and before I can question Bismah about what she’s just said, Mitchell opens the doors with a double-handed shove and strides towards his glass cube, stumbling over a loose laptop cable as he goes. I really want to laugh but going from the look on his face I decide that this would be akin to signing my own death warrant.

  ‘RODNEY!’ Mitchell stands rigid, having recovered from his trip. Rodney’s head appears, meerkat-like, from behind a whiteboard that he’s wheeled in front of his computer. His eyes are magnified and watery from the thick-lensed glasses he wears.

  ‘Why, in Chairman Mao’s name, is there a FUCKING LAPTOP CABLE ON THE FLOOR?’

  Adam skips across the room and picks it up. ‘Er, it’s mine, boss. Left it out – no big deal,’ he says casually. Everyone tenses and looks from Mitchell to Adam to Rodney, like we’re watching a match on centre court.

  ‘Put it down, Adam.’ Mitchell’s cockney voice has turned soft and supple. You’d think he was comforting a kid who’d just grazed his knee on gritty tarmac. ‘There’s a good lad.’ Adam looks around. No one moves. ‘Come here, Rodney. That’s it. Come on. What’s this, Rodney?’ Rodney pushes his glasses back up his nose.

  ‘It’s an AC adapter.’

  ‘Is it? An AC adapter?’ says Mitchell, pinning Rodney to his side, who visibly stiffens at such contact. Mitchell laughs and turns Rodney to face us all. ‘Guys, it’s an AC adapter! Bismah!’ Bismah squeaks. ‘Did you think this was an AC adapter?’

  ‘Um, yes.’

  ‘Who else thinks this is an AC adapter?’ Mitchell looks around the room, winching Rodney round under his arm. ‘Come on, Bismah, get your hand up! Jonathon? Rhea? You?’ He looks at me, his neck stretched and sinewy. This is a trick question. We all know this is a trick question. I look at the corner of the ceiling and raise my hand like all the other muppets in the room. ‘Right! So we’re all agreed, are we? This is an AC adapter.’ We’ve all put our hands down, except for Bismah, who looks so terrified she must have mentally detached herself from her own limbs. Adam and Jonathon nod.

  ‘WELL IT’S FUCKING NOT! IT’S A TRIP HAZARD.’

  Mitchell plonks Rodney down on a beanbag, which makes a ‘pfffff’ sound as he lands. Watching this is like sitting through a dinner party with people you don’t like, whilst the hosts bicker in the kitchen. Mitchell rolls his head in a semi-circle and stands behind Rodney, who must be meditating or something, because he’s completely expressionless.

  Mitchell rests his hands on Rodney’s shoulders, massaging them in a way that is clearly painful. ‘Relax, Rodders! All that stress!’ His voice is almost a whisper. ‘Forgetting to replace the laptop batteries … leaving cables all over the floor … what’re you like, eh?’ Oh God, there is nowhere to look. I’ve gone a bit hot and feverish. Abruptly, Mitchell releases Rodney and makes a show of helping him to his feet.

  ‘Ten minutes. Upstairs. Conference Room.’ We remain deadly still. Mitchell gives Rodney a final withering look, picks a bit of fluff from his shoulder, and continues into his office, kicking the door closed.

  ‘Bismah.’ I scoot round in my yoga ball chair. ‘You can put your hand down now.’

  ***

  I make another cup of coffee, which is unusual for me so late in the day (I get jittery and paranoid), and head upstairs. I’ve only visited this level of The Butcher Works once before, when I was given a tour on my induction day. Lovr’s meetings never take place here. They involve nights out, beer, and a lot of blowing wind up someone’s arse, which is best done outside the office.

  When I get to the landing, the others are huddled in the corridor like moody teenagers loitering outside an off-licence in the hope that a passing adult might buy them alcohol. ‘How come we’re all out here?’ I say.

  ‘Mitchell doesn’t know the code to get in,’ says Rhea, nodding towards a tablet sitting on a podium beside the door. She looks more impatient than amused and I find it odd that no one sees the irony in a tech CEO locking themselves out of the ‘smart security’ system. We stand there in silence, except for Adam and Jonathon who are talking about last night’s rugby match. After a few minutes, Mitchell appears, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. He inputs a four-digit code that he’s drawn in biro on his hand.

  ‘Voila.’ He goes in first and paces the room whilst we take our seats. Not wanting to infuriate Mitchell with my notebook, I left it downstairs (hidden out of sight), but now I feel naked and underprepared. Needing to do something with my hands, I wrap them both around my mug. I wonder if I look all cosy and warm like the cover of a Danish lifestyle book?

  ‘Do you want the shit news, or the shit news first?’ Mitchell says, putting his hands on the table. Oh, it’s this kind of meeting.

  ‘Er, the shit news?’ says Adam.

  Mitchell turns a chair around and sits down with one leg crossed over his thigh. He looks out of the window and scratches his chin, pushing his orange-framed glasses up onto his head. He doesn’t acknowledge that anyone has spoken. ‘Bismah, you got a calculator on you, darlin’?’ He’s talking in soft, quiet tones – the Mitchell equivalent of a rhino scraping the floor with its foot.

  Bismah dives under the desk and pulls out a scientific calculator that I vaguely remember using in maths at school, mainly to work out different sums that would all provide the answer ‘80085’, which looks like ‘BOOBS’ on an old mercury display. Ahhh, those were the days.

  ‘Type in £270,000.’ Bismah taps it into the calculator. ‘Good girl.’

  Mitchell lists a number of costs and expenditures that Bi
smah inputs with a long, manicured nail, deducting from the total. Some of it seems obvious (domain subscription), but a lot doesn’t (£576 drinks bill from Adam’s last water-polo-themed client meeting). Finally, Mitchell finishes with a breakdown of the rent he pays for each desk in The Butcher Works.

  Numbers have never been my strong point (the only thing I know is that they go down whenever I post something on our Instagram account, which is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen), but even I can tell that this isn’t adding up properly.

  ‘Now take away £179,489. That’s what I pay for all of you.’ He motions to us. I inwardly scoff. It’s not like I see much of that money.

  ‘What does that leave us with, Biz?’ Bismah blinks slowly. She hates it when people shorten her name.

  ‘Well, er … nothing.’

  ‘Be more specific,’ he snaps.

  ‘Minus £117,983. And 72p.’

  Mitchell nods slowly and turns to face us all. ‘Well, I see university wasn’t wasted on our Bismah, was it? That’s the news, fellas. We’re in the fucking shitter and no one brought a paddle. MediaCell – our only guaranteed source of investment for the next fiscal year – are going to pull their funding if we don’t show some serious fucking improvement.’ He looks at us with accusation.

  ‘So, what to do?’ I’ve realised by now that this is not a meeting in which we’re expected to contribute. Mitchell looks like he’s delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy; he’s all narrow eyes and dramatic irony.

  ‘Bake sale?’ pipes up Jonathon, tittering to himself.

  I can see the exact moment he realises what a terrible mistake he’s made. His face sort of … spasms and he shakes his head rapidly, biting his lips as though they’ve betrayed him. Despite his clear discomfort, it’s brilliant to watch. I wish I could turn it into a looping GIF to watch whenever I feel a bit sad. Mitchell fixes Jonathon with a hard stare. ‘Get out.’

  ‘What?’ says Jonathon, eyes darting around the room as though the ‘bake sale’ joke had come from a phantom body elsewhere. ‘Like, out of the room?’

  ‘Like out. Out, the opposite of in. Out, as in out of the building. Out, as in out of work.’ Mitchell has froth in the corners of his mouth.

  Jonathon looks with incredulity at each of us, like this is a clear injustice and we should all be standing up for him. When no one does, he gets to his feet abruptly, blinking, like he’s about to cry. ‘Mitch?’ he says. After a horribly awkward silence, he whips open the door and disappears down the corridor. Holy fuck. I cross my fingers under the table in the hope that I’m not asked to take on any of Jonathon’s responsibilities: namely analytics, contracts, and pretending to do more work than I’m paid for.

  ‘Here’s the situation. Encounter have just launched a subscription platform. It uses a patented matching algorithm that works in real time to schedule dates in a user’s calendar without the need for previous virtual interaction.’ That’s exactly what we’d planned to launch next month. ‘They’ve got there first, which means three things. One: our guys over in Bangladesh who were working on the interface have done six months’ work which is now useless, but we still need to pay them. Two: MediaCell have suggested they’ll transfer our funding over to Encounter if things here don’t change. If they do that, we’re toast. Three: we need to come up with a new, different, better idea that keeps us relevant. And we have to be making a profit from that idea within three months.’

  The silence in the room is like a taut balloon. Since when did my breathing sound so loud? Adam coughs. We all look at him, expecting him to say something that’ll deflect attention away from any of us. He drums his fingers on the table, which is somehow worse than before. A noise – a bit like a lawnmower chugging to life – comes from the end of the table. Mitchell is … laughing? He definitely sounds like he’s laughing, but he looks more like The Joker just before he detonates a bomb that’ll blow up a school, or a river cruise full of veterans, or something else equally disturbing.

  ‘What’s the matter with you all?’ He laughs and rubs the three-day-old stubble on his chin. ‘Why’re you all so fucking miserable?’

  Oh, I don’t know, because you’ve told us we’re going to lose our jobs in three months? Because you just fired Jonathon for making a bad joke, like he’s done every day since I’ve been here? Because you look like you’re going to chop someone’s fingers off with a pair of bolt-cutters? Dear God, this man is unhinged.

  This is a peak example of ‘classic Mitchell behaviour’; it’s like he rolls a dice and whatever emotion comes up, he goes with it, even if it doesn’t match the situation. Just before Jules (his last PA) went on maternity leave, he told her to work from home for her last few days with us because he ‘needed some time to process what she’d done’ (she was eight months pregnant at this point). Then, on her last day he threw her a surprise party (costing hundreds) and gave a speech on the beauty of new life that was genuinely moving. He even shed a tear.

  ‘Er, shall we … come up with … some sort of strategy?’ Rhea says. After an extended pause, Mitchell jumps up with sudden alacrity and smacks his hand on the table.

  ‘Yes! A strategy! I only had to wait a fucking age for someone to suggest it! Rhea, darlin’ –’ Rhea looks up, nervous ‘– you’re getting a pay rise, my girl. This is what I want! Solutions! Not problems! That’s what you’re on the books for!’

  Buoyed by this sudden validation, Rhea launches into a proposal, but Mitchell holds up a hand. ‘Don’t be fucking simple, Rhea, I’ve already come up with an action plan. I haven’t been sat at home with me trotters up, twiddling me thumbs, have I?’

  ‘No, of course you haven’t. I just—’

  ‘In three weeks’ time, we’re going to meet again, in here, and each of you is going to pitch a rebrand.’ He draws his hands in an arc, as though he’s a 1930s Hollywood director announcing his next big picture. I think I might have audibly sighed at this point, because Mitchell turns to me, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  ‘Don’t think this doesn’t concern you, Miss Evans.’ I’m shocked. I really didn’t think he knew my last name. ‘You, Rhea, Bismah, Adam, and even Rodney over there will be pitching. Did you hear that, Rodders?’ Rodney, who up until this point had been coding on a mini laptop at the other end of the conference table, looks up from his screen. ‘Blink once for yes and twice for no, Rodney! You. Pitching. Yes?’ Mitchell over-enunciates his words. Rodney stares back, completely devoid of expression.

  ‘Fine,’ he says.

  ‘Three weeks. Two minutes each. Within the hour I’ll decide who wins and everyone – and I mean everyone – is going to be working their backsides off to make it a success. Got it?’ We all nod furiously and stand up, ready to get as far away from this horrible meeting as possible. Mitchell jabs at the keypad and swears under his breath.

  ‘Can anyone figure out how to open this fucking door?!’

  Chapter 6

  I stay at work half an hour later than my usual clock-off time, which is something I do pretty frequently on Fridays. It’s a semi-believable reason to keep my head down when Jonathon initiates a mass exodus to a bar round the corner. Occasionally, a mate of his invites me out of pity, which is an offer I can’t accept, not since the ‘cokecident’. Too frugal to buy beer, I’d once taken up an offer of Coke (thinking of the beverage) and ended up in a disabled loo watching Jonathon and one of the skinny girls from MeowCall snort lines of cocaine from the toilet cistern.

  Back at the flat, the heating doesn’t kick in until 6.30 p.m., so staying at work for a little longer means less time turning myself into a sad blanket burrito with a hot-water bottle shoved under my arse. I riffle around in my bag for my bruised and neglected banana and as I do, my fingers catch on the pointed edge of a card. Pulling it out, I bend the corners straight and see my name hastily scrawled along the envelope. Tom’s handwriting.

  Before I get too overwhelmed, I pull the card out to find a sun-bleached image of a martini glass, the glue marks sh
owing beneath patches of glitter that spell out ‘Birthday Girl!’ I’m so horrified by Tom’s poor taste that it’s a few moments before I realise where I’ve seen this card before: in the window of the corner shop below our flat, where it has sat for approximately thirty-seven-and-a-half years. Wow. Tom’s hardly sentimental, but this? Inside, the message reads: ‘Sorry I’m not there. Have fun. Tom.’ That’s it? It’s so impersonal, I’m almost offended. I am offended. My throat feels thick. I pinch the skin between my finger and thumb and count down from ten, nine, eight … a fucking martini glass?!

  I steal one of Bismah’s posh tea bags and make a cup of tea, using Tom’s shit card as a coaster. On my laptop, I open the questionnaire I’ve been slowly adding to all afternoon and scroll down to number nine. ‘How much time would you be willing to dedicate to your ElderCare companion?’ I’m not sure if this is a coded question. If I say, ‘whenever I’m not at work because I can’t afford to go out,’ would that be seen as a red flag? Too desperate, perhaps? I go for ‘most evenings and weekends, except for occasional nights at my partner’s residence’. Partner sounds better than boyfriend. More … mature. Under ‘hobbies’ I write, ‘Baking, swimming, and nature documentaries,’ which is well-rounded and wholesome enough to sound legitimate. After attaching a photo, I press ‘send’ and turn my screen off.

  Tom is usually out on Fridays with the other venture capitalists. I’ve met up with them a couple of times in the past, but unless you’re out-of-your-mind-pissed, thumbscrews would be less painful than sustaining a conversation with one of his colleagues. Before he got promoted, I would say that Tom was too much his own person for silk ties and Möet. But when he won golf clubs from his office raffle and asked if I’d like a set so I could join him on the course at weekends, I knew he’d turned to the dark side.

  As I’m waiting for my computer to shut down, I think forward to my prospective weekend and am engulfed by a wave of loneliness. I should be at the pub with workmates. I should be ordering £12 cocktails, or chipping in for a bottle of prosecco. I should be one of those dainty drunk girls you see slumped against the Perspex partition on the tube and secretly judge for their smeared mascara, but also envy. I’m twenty-six. It’s my birthday. And so far today the most fun I’ve had has involved two strangers gaping at my vagina and a video of dogs pretending to play musical instruments.