‘Oh, chill, will you? You’ve been uptight all week. It’s bad for your blood pressure.’
Polly had her nose back in the drawer. ‘I don’t have any boring black tights.’
‘Just wear leggings. Here’s a box—start packing.’
She took the box and forced herself to breathe slowly. Even though she’d grown up knowing that sex and love were two different things, the sexual tension between her and Damon horrified her. ‘I wouldn’t touch the man with a long pole. Apart from the fact that I can’t be attracted to a man who doesn’t smile, I wouldn’t want to have sex with a guy who is about to make a load of innocent people redundant. It doesn’t show a caring personality.’
‘You can’t expect him to smile when he’s taking over a company as unusual as ours.’ Debbie closed the box she was packing and started on another. ‘Most people just don’t get the way we work here. I mean, I love it, but we’re not exactly conventional, are we? Nothing about your dad is conventional.’
‘Don’t remind me.’
‘Relax. When your dad finally emerges from wherever he is this time, at least he’ll still have an intact company even if it does belong to someone else. If Demon Damon was thinking of making everyone redundant immediately he wouldn’t be mobilising an army of removal people to transport us from economy city to Doukakis World.’ Debbie carefully lifted a plant. ‘I’m excited. I’ve always wanted to see inside that building. Apparently there’s a fountain in the foyer. The plants are going to love that. So are the fish. Running water is very soothing. He must care about his employees to give them something as lovely as a fountain.’
‘It’s probably there so that despairing employees can drown themselves on their way out of the building.’ Polly walked across to the noticeboard she had on her wall and started taking down photographs.
‘You always say that everyone has a sensitive side.’
‘Well, I was wrong. Damon Doukakis is steel-plated. There’s more sensitivity in an armoured tank.’
‘He’s super-successful.’
Polly stared at a photograph of her father standing on a table at a Christmas party with a drink in one hand and a busty blonde from Accounts in the other. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘Actually, Pol, I’m on the side of the person who pays my salary. Sorry if that makes me an employment slut, but that’s the way it has to be when you have dependants. Principles are all very well, but you can’t eat them and I have two cats to feed. Careful with those photographs.’ Debbie looked over Polly’s shoulder and gave a nostalgic sigh. ‘That was a good night. Mr Foster had one too many. He’s been nice to me ever since that party.’
‘He’s a lovely man but he’s not a very good accountant. He won’t last five minutes if Damon Doukakis decides to analyse what he does.’ Overwhelmed with the responsibility, Polly carefully slid the photographs into an envelope. ‘I’m sure the Doukakis financial department are killer-sharp, like the boss. They’re not going to be impressed when they see Mr Foster using a pen and a calculator. It will destroy him to lose his job.’
‘Maybe he won’t. You’ve been teaching him to use a spreadsheet.’
‘Yes, but it’s slow going. Every morning I have to go back over what we did the day before. I was hoping we could sneak him past the inquisition without anyone actually wanting to know what he does but it isn’t going to be easy. I bet Doukakis knows if his staff stop to draw breath.’ The responsibility swamped her. ‘Debs, we can’t give him a reason to let anyone go. Everyone has to pull their weight and if they can’t pull their weight then we have to cover for them.’
‘So this probably isn’t a good time to tell you that Kim’s child-minder is sick. She’s brought the baby into the office because that’s what she always does, but …’ Debbie’s voice tailed off. ‘I’m guessing Damon doesn’t have a soft spot for babies.’
Swamped by the volume of work facing her, Polly tipped the contents of a drawer into the box without bothering to sort it. ‘Tell Kim to quietly take the rest of the day working from home, but get her to try and find childcare for tomorrow.’
‘And if she can’t?’
‘We’ll give her an office and she can hide in there. I suppose it’s a waste of time asking if my father has phoned? I’m going to fit him with an electronic tagging device. Did you phone any of those hotels I gave you?’
‘All of them. Nothing.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him to have bribed some blonde hotel manager to keep his booking quiet.’ Polly put the photographs into a box. ‘We need to get the rest of this packed up. The barbarian hoards from Doukakis Media Group are going to be descending on us any minute to help us move.’
‘The takeover is headlines on the BBC. You dad must know by now.’
Polly paused to swallow two painkillers with a glass of water. ‘I don’t think he’s exactly watching television, Debs.’
‘Do you have any idea who he’s with this time?’
Yes.
Her father was with Arianna, a girl young enough to be his daughter.
Humiliation crawled up her spine as she anticipated the predictable reaction from everyone around her. Polly was no more eager to share the information with the world than Damon Doukakis.
For once in his life, couldn’t her father have picked someone closer to his own age?
‘I try not to think about my father’s love-life.’ Dodging the question, she crammed the lid onto the box. ‘I just don’t see how we can move our entire office in the space of a few hours. I’m exhausted. All I want to do is go to bed and catch up on sleep.’
‘So go to bed. You know how chilled your dad is about flexitime. He always says if the staff don’t want to be there, there’s no point in them being there.’
‘Unfortunately Damon Doukakis is about as chilled as the Amazon jungle. And he wants me in his office at two o’clock.’
Debbie’s eyes widened. ‘What for?’
‘He wants me to start working for my money.’
Debbie stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. ‘Sorry, but that’s so funny. Did you tell him the truth?’
‘What’s the point? He’d never believe me and he’s made it his personal mission in life to make my life hell.’ Polly ripped off a piece of tape and slammed her foot down on the bulging box to flatten the lid. ‘So far he’s succeeding beyond his wildest fantasies.’
Debbie picked up a stack of prospectuses from universities. ‘What do you want me to do with these?’
Polly stared at them and felt slightly strange. ‘Just shred them.’ If Damon Doukakis found those on her desk, he’d laugh at her. ‘Get rid of them. I should never have sent off for them in the first place.’
‘But you’ve always said that what you want more than anything is to—’
‘I said, shred them.’ She resisted the impulse to grab them and stow them carefully in a box. What was the point? ‘It was just a stupid dream.’
A really crazy dream.
Numb, she watched as her hopes and dreams were shredded alongside the paper.
Five hours later, exhausted from having supervised the packing of the entire building and seen the staff safely into the coaches laid on to transfer them to their new offices, Polly took her first step into the plush foyer of the Doukakis Tower. The centrepiece was the much talked about water feature, a bubbling monument to corporate success, blending seamlessly with acres of glass and marble. Blinded by architectural