Harriet's Arrangement

Dealing with the consequences

As her eyes nervously scanned the email from Malcolm, looking for the words 'written warning' and not finding them, she gave herself a little shake and forced herself to read the message properly. She had to read it twice more before fully understanding it. It wasn't rude or angry – everything was set out just so which, in her experience, was rather typical of Malcolm. He had hardly mentioned the incident at the conference, although the client's name appeared in the email, so he must know about it... instead, he seemed to be inviting her to join him for a drink that evening – although inviting wasn't quite right either: she clearly didn't have a choice in the matter, which again seemed to be a classic trait in the way Malcolm operated – with her at least.

She took a deep breath. Was he going to fire her after all? Did he think doing it over a glass of wine would make it less humiliating? Was it even ok for her to go to his house? Should she text the girls? She chewed on her lip, questions racing through her mind. She half considered forwarding the message to Kieran to ask if he might have any inkling of what was going on, but Kieran had been cool with her today, which was presumably his way of reinforcing his disappointment in how she'd handled things the day before, so she decided against that too. Instead she spent the rest of the afternoon finding it difficult to concentrate on anything at all, and when 5 o'clock came, she bundled up her bag and was logged out of her computer and out of her cubical in record time.

Ducking into the ladies to check she was presentable, and to calm her frazzled nerves, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her mousy brown hair was tousled and a little greasy because she'd been running her hands through it agitatedly all afternoon. Man up, Harriet, she told herself sternly, as she dug in her bag for a hair clip to twist her hair up out of the way, own the fact that you fucked up and deal with the consequences.

But her stern self-talk had only a mild effect, and she walked to the tube station still in a bit of a daze, punching Malcolm's address incorrectly into her phone twice before managing to find the right place and figuring out how to get there.

She emerged in Chelsea and followed the directions on her phone to the address Malcolm had provided, staring up at the enormous imposing houses that stood along the road, their front gardens framed with immaculately-trimmed topiary. Malcolm's house, she saw as she stopped outside the iron gates, was built of traditional mid-century red brick and featured tasteless mock-tudor beams in a dark wood. She disliked it immediately as she reached up to press the button on the intercom, which was simultaneously a relief and a disappointment, mixed with her conflicting and confused feelings about the man himself.

"Harriet!" Malcolm's silky voice crackled, "Do come in, darling."

Darling? That was... unusual. "Oh... um, thank you," she mumbled, unnerved, watching as the iron gates swung silently forward. She stepped slowly forward, her feet crunching on the gravel, as she passed his gleaming black Bentley. This was a man, she thought, with far too much money to burn.

He was waiting at the door as she approached. "Come, come," he called, beckoning her into the house, and swooping in to grasp her shoulders and plant an unwelcome kiss on her cheek, "Good of you to come at such short notice."

"Oh... no, um, no problem," she stuttered and feeling quite out of place as he – uninvited – helped her take her coat off and hung it on the hook by the door. He put a slightly too familiar arm around her shoulder (was he trying to be comforting?) and led her out of the dark wood-panelled hallway into a study that was almost comically exactly as Harriet would have imagined: red-brown leather furnishing, thick pile carpet, heavy red curtains looped back with gold-coloured tiebacks, and an enormous mahogany desk at the edge of the room.

He seated her in an armchair and busied himself at the drinks cabinet (also a dark mahogany) by the door. He said nothing as he poured a glass of whiskey – without asking her if she'd like a drink – and sat himself in an armchair opposite her. She didn't know what to say, and felt alarm bells going off in her mind at this less-than-subtle gesture.