Free The Dish by Stella Newman Page B

next week.’
    ‘Maybe . . .’
    ‘Seriously, if I’d told Will when I first started seeing him half of the awful things going on inside my brain, he’d have run for the hills.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Well – like the fact I wasn’t over James at that point, at all. I still thought about him every day. And I used to feel guilty– like I should tell Will everything because that’s what you’re supposed to do in relationships – but I’m so glad I didn’t because it wouldn’t have given us a chance to get off the ground in the first place.’
    ‘Yeah,’ I say, kissing her goodbye. ‘You’re probably right.’

8
    To: Laura
    From: Sandra
    Subject: Punctuality
    It’s after 10.00 a.m. and you are not at your desk; not sure where you are, Laura?? Need to see you ASAP.
    Five of us sit on the first floor: Roger has his own office, my desk is right outside, and Sandra, Azeem and Jonesy, our commercial director, sit in the open-plan area in front of me. Whenever anyone wants to speak to anyone else they getup and walk the four seconds to their colleague’s desk – because, you know, you could throw a rubber and not fail to hit each other’s heads. You could throw a rubber pretty hard. Azeem occasionally corresponds via email, but only when the room is deathly silent and he’s trying to make me laugh. (Sandra’s head shot from her LinkedIn profile, Photoshopped on to various Fraggles’ bodies.)
    Sandra’sthe only one who tries to communicate exclusively via email. Partly it’s because she doesn’t like face-to-face interaction with anyone lower down the food chain; partly it’s because she likes a full paper trail of everything she’s done, but mostly it’s because she likes a full paper trail of everything anyone else has failed to do.
    Not sure where you are, Laura?? Is that true, Sandra?? It’s 10.03a.m. She saw me arrive at 9.50 a.m., smile, say hello and walk into Roger’s office for a catch-up. Then she saw me head for the kitchen, where she’ll have heard me boil the kettle ( Guinness Book of Records: world’s noisiest kettle.) Perhaps I was in there for three minutes instead of two because I have Adam on my mind – but it was three, tops. I swear she’s keeping a file of every time I’ve spentmore than three minutes in the toilet. One day I’ll bribe IT to break into Sandra’s neo-Stasi folders, delete them all and replace her GOOD, BETTER, BEST screensaver with a photo of a cheery Guatemalan coffee farmer.
    She’s looking at me now, so I head to her desk armed with my notepad and a fake smile.
    ‘You wanted to see me, Sandra?’
    She starts typing, then looks up as if surprised to see mestanding there. ‘You’re back.’
    I smile so hard, if the skin on my face was a balloon, right now it would pop.
    ‘What’s this I hear about you changing the flat plan for April’s issue?’
    ‘Roger’s signed it off.’
    ‘Yes?’ she says, staring up at me with a frown. ‘And?’
    ‘Sorry, are you asking me a question?’
    ‘No, I am not. I’m telling you that I oversee all flat plan changes,’ she says. ‘Unlesssomeone’s changed my job description overnight.’ She smiles thinly.
    ‘Right. OK, Sandra.’
    ‘And Roger’s told Dean to increase The Dish from a page to a DPS?’
    Clearly you know that or you wouldn’t be asking me . . .
    ‘Firstly, that change should have been briefed directly to me,’ she says.
    ‘Roger told me he’d take care of it.’
    ‘And secondly if you take up the whole DPS, I have to move that fractionalad.’
    ‘OK . . .’
    ‘And there’s a hugely sensitive leader on Damian Bechdel in April requiring everyone’s full focus, the last thing we need to worry about this month is the fluffy stuff . . .’
    Would she call Henry’s film reviews fluffy stuff to his face?
    ‘Must you hog all that space?’
    My knee-jerk reaction would be to say I’m not cutting a word: Roger’s approved it, Roger loves it, Roger’smy boss – and if she has a problem,