that resembled a see-saw with a toddler on one end and an eighteen-stone fully-grown bloke on the other. He wanted, as Luke had, as Charlie had found, balance.
Kimberley had been drafted over as a PA fill-in for Jack until he found a suitable permanent replacement for Mary. He couldn’t look at her without thinking of the snowwoman with the slit for a mouth, small bird-like eyes and blob for a nose. She wasn’t bad at the job, but she wasn’t – say it Jack, said a voice inside him – she wasn’t Mary. Not by a long chalk. Also, she seemed to have been morphing into a parody of Marilyn Monroe since she came back to work after the Christmas holiday and discovered that Mary had left. Kimberley had automatically presumed she was first in line for the position and was doing her level best to secure it, using all her feminine wiles. Her clothes had got tighter, her lipstick redder and she had started sashaying everywhere. Or trying to, which resulted in any drinks she was carrying being sloshed over the side of the mug and onto the linoleum.
Jack sipped the coffee she had just brought him – too weak, too much milk – and wondered if Mary had seen the entry he wrote in the House of Quills red diary yet. If she had, what had she made of it? What could she make of it? What was she supposed to even do about it? It was as weak as this awful coffee. He hadn’t even specified a time, or what the arrangements were. Why didn’t he write, ‘Firenze, 8pm, Jack will pick me up at home’, direct and strong – well, in so far as writing a sneaky note in a diary went. Why hadn’t he bitten the bullet and asked her outright if she’d like to go out to dinner with him? Why hadn’t he been a ship that sailed out of the harbour into an open sea of uncertainty, in pursuit of the treasures of excitement, pleasure, love, instead of sending out a rubber dinghy with an idiot pilot to act as scout?
Jack picked up a biscuit from the plate, a choice of a bourbon finger, a garibaldi and a malted milk. Mary knew he hated those, would have put a pink wafer, a jam ring and chocolate digestive on the plate. He’d barely noticed her when she was here and yet he felt her loss deeply now. Butterly’s just didn’t run the same without her, like a machine that functioned perfectly and all the cogs got the credit for it, until the oil dried up and the real master of operations was uncovered.
A knock on the door. Kimberley’s boobs entered a moment before she did. He tried not to look at them, but it was difficult as they took up a good portion of the office.
‘Someone’s just dropped off a parcel for you,’ she said and put it down on the desk. He caught a blast of scent newly applied, heavy and cloying. Mary’s fragrance was light, like a summer flower garden on a warm, balmy evening. Funny, he didn’t even realise he remembered it enough to compare.
‘Thank you, Kimberley. Have a nice weekend.’
But Kimberley didn’t leave, just continued to hover until he was forced to look away from his screen and up at her.
‘Er, I was just wondering about the prospect of this position being permanent,’ she said. ‘Now Mary’s left you in the lurch.’
He felt a mini flare of annoyance on Mary’s behalf and decided, on the spur of that moment, to do something about it, as the opportunity had arisen.
‘Why don’t you sit down and I’ll interview you for it now?’ said Jack.
‘Really?’ Kimberley smiled and Jack thought her mouth looked strangely like a letterbox.
She sat in the chair at the other side of his desk after wriggling her skirt down, back straight, ready to convince Jack of her suitability.
‘So,’ began Jack, ‘we can skip a lot of the preliminaries and get straight to the nitty-gritty. How long have you been working for Butterly’s?’
‘Four years and three months. I came from an agency for a part-time position originally but was taken on as full-time permanent staff almost immediately.’
‘And what do you see as the difference between working for me as opposed to working in finance?’
‘I’m a qualified PA,’ she answered, as if that was self-evident. ‘I’ve been waiting for an opening for a long time in my chosen field. I want