Free The Interview (short romance story) by V T Turner Page A

strange she had probably sounded, in no small part down to her nerves, when the receptionist nodded towards a door at the end of a long hallway.
     
    “Through there, take the steps up to the second floor,” she said, looking down at her desk halfway through, as if she couldn’t be bothered to maintain eye contact until the end of her sentence.
     
    Shelly studied the corridor and the stairs that she could see through the glass panel in the door at the end. “Is the elev--”
     
    “Broken,” the receptionist cut in. “The walk’ll do you good,” she added, without raising her head.
     
    Shelly wondered why she had said that. She studied her own appearance for a moment, looked sternly at the receptionist and then shrugged it off, too nervous to start anything. She slumped down the corridor and slowly climbed the stairs. As she neared her destination she could hear the bustle of a busy room; a dozen voices or more all clattering together to create an apprehensive noise which awaited her.
     
    At the top of the stairs she paused before pushing open the door to the second floor office. She took a moment to calm herself and then gently swung it open.
     
    The floor was one large open space, cluttered with lines of desks, each occupied by stressed looking workers in formal clothes. She saw people that clearly hated their jobs: an overweight man with wet patches under his arms, swearing at a computer screen and slamming the mouse on the desk; a middle-aged woman who looked like she was ready to  start a fight with her monitor. She also saw people who looked content and relaxed, including a number of young men who weren't entirely unattractive. Shirley was nervous, tense, not in the perfect mood for flirting, but she did catch the eye of one of those young men and she was sure she saw a sparkle of flirtation in his smile.
     
    She walked down the long aisle that cut through the centre of the office and led to the back. There were number of offices there; these ones enclosed and solitary, with their own doors to shut out the noise from the main room and their own windows looking out onto the street below. There was also a decent sized kitchen, complete with communal cooking facilities for the workers. She sneaked a quick peek, saw that it was empty -- except one man who had his back to her and seemed to be busying himself with a microwave -- and then she walked on. She stopped at the door marked ‘interview room’, a temporary sign on a room that was probably used as a conference room.
     
    There was a chair outside the room but no one around to tell her to sit in it. She tried to peek through the large windows that looked into the room, but the blinds were drawn. Just as she was about to sit down, to wait in the hope that someone would come and tell her what to do, the door opened and a woman with short stumpy legs, huge breasts and a fake smile exited. She was followed by a man in his thirties wearing a smart shirt and tie. He was also smiling, his smile seemed more genuine, less exaggerated.
     
    The woman gave Shirley a contemptuous look as she passed. The man stood in the doorway, said a final goodbye to the departing woman and then cringed slightly when she replied with an over exuberant squawk.
     
    He turned to Shirley. “Shirley Marshall?” he asked, his voice soft and soothing.
     
    Shirley nodded, made a move to stand and then hesitated.
     
    He stepped aside, showed her the doorway. “Please come in,”
     
    She stood, tried to hide her earlier hesitancy with a repositioning of her skirt and then brushed past him, throwing him a smile as she did so.
     
    There were two other interviewers waiting for her in the room, neatly space behind a rectangle desk with papers in front of them. The man who had greeted her closed the door and joined them, then the oldest one, a man in the middle who had a professional look that attempted to be friendly and informal, but failed horribly, seemed to take control.
     
    They