Agency

In Which the First Day at a New Job is Never Without Surprises

meanwhile, on the other side of the globe

The digital clock face reads 4:45 am. That means it's still yesterday afternoon in Canada. No wonder she's awake. A thirteen-hour time difference is a lot to get used to, and she only arrived yesterday. Or is today yesterday? It's all too much for her tired, buzzy brain to process.

She pushes the silk bedding off her sweaty legs and decides that she may as well get up. Even with the air conditioning blasting above her and a fan at the end of the bed to swirl the heavy, wet air around the room, it feels (and smells) like the inside of Berry's shoe in her tiny, agency-arranged condo.

When Allegra had arrived, rumpled and disoriented in the Changi airport yesterday-today, a veritable wall of humidity had greeted her. Her hair, usually sleek in its auburn twist, had immediately sprung from its bindings and created a halo of crinkled flyaways that gave her a slightly mad-scientist look, only heightened by the fact that she was dressed in her finest UK-made wool skirt suit which hadn't weathered the 20-hour flight well at all.

She'd left Toronto just as soon as Archie had called to confirm her new position. It hadn't been back in London, as she'd hoped, but beggars (or, more accurately in her case, seductresses in clear violation of their position of power) couldn't be choosers. She'd hastily packed her personal items into the suitcase that hadn't even had time to gather dust under the bed since its last trans-continental move.

When Berry's wife had called to let her know about his accident, she'd taken the opportunity to make one last half-hearted attempt at getting Henry back -- but in reality, the rigamarole of pet passports and vaccination documentation would only have delayed her. With Niall and his team of crack-detectives on the scent, she couldn't afford to lose any time. Once they'd figured her out, they could have gone straight to the Agency's worldwide executive board and had her dismissed as neatly as you like.

Given that, she felt it was best to simply disappear. She'd bequeathed Otto the lucrative Atrabax account, popped her office keycard on her desk, packed her case and hopped onto the first direct flight to her new, temporary home.

If Niall wanted to hunt her down, he wouldn't have an easy job of it. Not that she figured he would be bothered. He was far too self-involved to care what she got up to. That copywriter, Martin, and Niall's henchman David had a vindictive streak though -- enough that she'd be worried about them hounding her even after she'd left, but she'd taken care of them: an anonymous note tucked inside the little film canister she'd found taped to the back of David's desk drawer during one of her weekend root-arounds. Surmising, based on the odour that clung to Martin's moth-eaten clothes, that this was his secret stash, her note was anonymous but pointed:

You don't tell, I won't tell.

That would keep Martin quiet, and ensure that he kept David quiet too. If it didn't, she could always counter David's accusation with her own. Check the back of his desk drawer, she'd say to head office. Recreational drugs in the workplace? That's a sackable offence and discrediting, to say the least.

Speaking of which, there was also Otto's little flask that he kept hidden on the bottom shelf in the Accounts area. The English, being big drinkers themselves, would be bound to be more lenient if that were to come out — but Allegra didn't feel she needed to concern herself with Otto. He was Berry's friend and wouldn't be eager to put his buddy in a difficult position.

Overall, she felt she'd left things in a reasonably tidy little bow back in Toronto.

Out of bed now, Allegra prowls around her new condo in the mostly-dark. The sun is just starting to creep out from behind the busy cityscape that is her view. It really is a world-class skyline, she thinks to herself, and the Agency has outdone itself in finding her a flat on the 56th floor of a very exclusive building. Compared to the 8th-floor cement box in Toronto, this was a tiny piece of heaven -- if heaven's thermostat was dialled up to 'rainforest.'