‘Do you want to watch West Wing?’
‘Yeah, all right. Nice dinner, by the way.’
‘Thanks. It’s called pasta – apparently the Italians invented it. Not bad, eh? Shall we have it again sometime?’
‘Give us the remote.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine. Why – are you?’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’
‘Okay.’
Well, she’ll find out soon enough, thought Arthur, crawling through the next morning’s traffic. When I get given my cards … do they still give cards? Well, P45. Whatever. I hope I get redundancy. Ooh. What if I get redundancy? Maybe I should go round the world. On my OWN. Maybe I should go to Brazil and get plastic surgery and a fake passport and become a diamond smuggler.
He parked, for possibly the last time, and looked up at the grey building. Its boundless conformity scared him; always had. Whoever designed this building – what were they, a robot? Did they really despise people so much? To go through thousands of years of civilization and end up with a big grey portaloo with windows that didn’t open and flat roofs without gardens?
The office actually went quiet when he walked in. People would kind of half look at him, then pretend to be incredibly busy with something else as he approached. Ooh, the walk of shame. Any doubts he might have had about whether or not throwing a photocopier out of a window was quite as cool a feat as Lynne had implied were immediately confirmed. He could feel the tension in the air. He was going down.
And sure enough, when he got to his desk, there was that consultant bitch Gwyneth standing imperiously over it, her back to him. He felt his face colour. She’d bloody better not have been going through his stuff. He wished he’d had time to scribble ‘Gwyneth is a big nosy cow’ all over his papers, which had always done the trick at school.
She straightened up slowly, her back still to him. ‘Wonder what crappy power management weekend she learned that on?’ he muttered to himself.
‘Arthur,’ she said, turning round and extending a long hand. He didn’t take it.
‘Yeah?’
‘Would you mind stepping into my office?’
‘Is that really necessary?’ He’d decided to say this on the way in, as he reckoned it would sound rather cool and suave.
‘Yes, I think it is.’
‘Um, yeah, all right.’
Dammit, he thought. And, I wouldn’t be that rude to people, even if I did have fabulous legs … Arthur shook his head. Infidelity, unprofessionalism and favouring someone he despised all in one scoop. Dammit.
Gwyneth closed the office door.
‘Well, we’ve studied your tests, and everything that happened yesterday,’ she began.
Arthur attempted to jut out his jaw. ‘And?’
She sat down on the edge of the desk. ‘We’re making you – the new head of department.’
‘How soon can I leave?’
Gwyneth looked at him curiously.
‘Oh,’ said Arthur. He looked embarrassed. He had been expecting the phrase so much, he actually thought she’d said, ‘We’re making you redundant.’
Then he fell silent. ‘No diamonds, then,’ he muttered to himself.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘But what about …’ he started up again. ‘You know, the whole …’
‘The photocopier?’
He nodded, glumly.
‘Don’t worry about it. We’d like you to keep seeing that therapist, if that’s okay, but apart from that, we think you’re the man to take on our new project.’
‘What project?’
Gwyneth stood up with a theatrical flourish and unleashed a flattering picture of Coventry (taken from quite far away). Overarching it was the European flag. One particularly big star hovered over the top of the town hall.
‘What I’m about to tell you is extremely important,’ she said. ‘It’s entirely confidential for now, and is going to change your life.’
Arthur raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Don’t tell me, they want me to retime the traffic lights in the pedestrian precinct.’
She ignored him. ‘Right,’ she started again, indicating the picture. ‘We, with the help of you,’ she said proudly, ‘are going to make Coventry … “European City of Culture 2005”!’
Arthur stared at the picture for a long time. Then he looked at Gwyneth to see if this was some terribly unfunny office prank, which would eventually lead to him losing his job after all. She wasn’t smiling – smiling did not seem to be a Gwyneth attribute so far – but was looking at him expectantly. He winced. The silence lengthened until he realized he had to say something.
‘Um …’ He coughed. ‘Why would they choose us and not, say, Birmingham?’
‘Exactly!’ said Gwyneth dramatically. ‘We have an epic fight ahead and many strong competitors!’
Arthur shook his head. ‘Gwyneth, I don’t know what this has to do with me but, you have to admit, we are generally considered to be the ugliest town in the entire world. Well, we’re running a very close thing with the dung heap shanty towns of Rio de Janeiro.’
‘That’s why it’s such a great challenge! We need someone strong and motivated and unafraid to make this happen – we need you, Arthur.’
Arthur was stunned. ‘But … This’ll never work. I don’t even think there are that many hanging baskets in existence.’
‘’Course it will. Glasgow was a slum.’
‘A slum with a working infrastructure and thousands of beautiful Victorian sandstone buildings.’
‘Grab this!’ said Gwyneth, dramatically leaning in close and looking straight into his eyes. ‘This is your great opportunity, Arthur. Seize it with both hands!’
‘Oof, hang on.’ Arthur leaned backwards to reclaim some personal space.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Gwyneth immediately retreated and dusted herself down. ‘I knew that weekend assertiveness course was a bad idea.’
They looked at each other.
‘It’s completely impossible,’ said Arthur.
‘You get your own office,’ she replied. ‘And a budget. Your own team. And access to corporate catering.’
‘Access to what?’
‘You know, those mini prawn thingies. And sausages and stuff like that.’
‘When would I get those?’
‘Whenever you like. Every day.’
Arthur stared into space and said a brief farewell to the diamond mines of southern Brazil.
‘Well, I guess I’m your man.’
‘I know.’
She stood up and held out her hand. He shook it. It was soft and warm and … oh crap. He fancied her.
‘We’ll be working together quite a bit,’ she said.
I was afraid of that, thought