Dark Avenging Angel (5 page)

Chapter Six

“Carly.” Stuart Campbell shook his head. “Sure you wouldn’t prefer Fizz?”

“No, Fizz doesn’t feel like a proper name, and it’s not really me.”

He frowned. “No?” He leaned back in his chair. “I used to work with a woman called Fizz. When I met you I saw a lot of her in you. She was lively, bubbly, and she went on to be my deputy ad manager. My second-in-command. At my previous paper, of course.”

A wistful look in his eyes hinted at so much more. I squirmed. Whatever that Fizz had meant to him, I certainly wasn’t following in her footsteps. He hadn’t mentioned a wife, so I assumed he wasn’t married. Even more reason to refuse to adopt her name.

I smiled, but said nothing. An old sales ploy. The first person to speak in that sort of situation is the one who gives ground.

“Well okay then,” he said at last, “Carly it is. Do a memo letting everyone know. Then we need a press release for
Campaign
. I’ll take care of that. One of the photographers will shoot the accompanying photo. I’ll have a word with Chris.”

Chris McKenzie was the forty-something Scottish editor of the paper. I’d met him on my first day and liked him. His handshake was warm and firm and his blue eyes sparkled. From the laughter and buzz in the newsroom, I could tell his staff enjoyed working for him. Quite a contrast to the advertising office where the exclusively female telephone-sales staff whispered in small clusters at breaktimes and clammed up every time I walked past.

Two days later, I opened our paper to find a headline, my photograph and an accompanying work of fiction.

Carly Powell Joins the
Evening Telegraph

Twenty-seven-year-old Carly Powell has recently been appointed Deputy Advertisement Manager with the
Baileyborough Evening Telegraph
. A former advertising executive for the
Yorkshire Chronicle
, Carly brings ten years’ experience and is looking forward to her new role.

“I’m really excited to be here,” she said. “Baileyborough is such a vibrant and upcoming town, and I can see great times ahead for my team and for the people and businesses in the area. Everyone has been so welcoming and I’m delighted to have been given this opportunity.”

The only thing I recognized was my photograph. He’d even managed to add two years to my age, and exaggerate the number of years of experience I brought with me.

Stuart saw me and came out of his glass-paneled office. He sauntered over to me. “Like it?”

“I don’t remember saying any of that.”

“A little poetic license never did any harm.”

I skipped over that, the inaccuracies and the downright lies. I had something much more serious on my mind. “You’ve changed my name.”

The frown appeared again. His forehead wrinkled, and when he spoke this time, his voice had dropped a few tones and decibels, “No, Carly,
you
changed it.”

“But I thought that was just for around the office. To avoid confusion, you said.”

“Well there wouldn’t be much point in that, would there? Carly sometimes, Jane other times. People would get
very
confused. No, you chose Carly, so that’s who you are.” He wandered off, out of the office, leaving me staring after him.

“Nice photo,” Rick said. He set his briefcase on my desk and leaned on it.

It felt like an invasion of my personal space and I wanted to shift my chair back. I nearly did so too, but a voice in my head stopped me. If I did that, he’d win a small but significant victory over me. I couldn’t let that happen, so I stayed put.

His lips twitched in a slight smile. “Ten years’ experience, eh? And there was me thinking it had only been five. At ten years, you’ve one more year on me, and Steve, come to that. He and I both started at the same time.”

“Oh?”

“Yep. Of course he’s ten years older than me. At least.” He paused. “Advertising executive.”

“Pardon?”

He tapped the article. “You were an advertising executive. Sounds very grand.”

My slight laugh sounded vaguely hysterical. “Oh, they went in for fancy titles at the
Chronicle
. I was basically just a rep.”

“Who can’t drive.”

That bloody lie again. I swallowed. “The
Chronicle
covered a much bigger area than the
Evening Telegraph
. We worked in teams. Not all of us drove, and those who didn’t went out with those who did. It was all a matter of organizing our schedules to make sure there was someone going nearby when we had an appointment. Then there was always public transport.”

He maintained steady eye contact throughout my improvisation. For the spur of the moment, it wasn’t bad. Of course, now I would have to stick with that and credit the
Yorkshire Chronicle
with a method of operation unheard of in any other newspaper. Did Rick believe me? He wasn’t letting on either way.

He picked up his briefcase. I remembered I hadn’t yet arranged which day I would be going out with him on his calls.

“Is Thursday of next week a good day to dual call with you?”

“I’ll sort it out with you later. I’ve got to get to an appointment.” He strode out of the office and I felt heat rush to my face, swiftly followed by resentment. Less than two days into the job and I had never felt more uncomfortable or lost.

The next days and weeks saw no real improvement on that score. And a growing catalog of reasons why I needed to find another job.

Stuart had promised me training. Both for my role as deputy advertisement manager and in the area of display, which remained a mystery. Instead, he repeatedly put me in situations where I had to make decisions for which I was hopelessly underqualified. He topped it off by arranging a meeting with an important advertising agency account executive and then, mysteriously, had to be somewhere else.

“You can do this for me, Carly. Just stand firm on the thirty percent discount and don’t budge from that, understand? No matter what, don’t budge from that.”

“But I’ve never dealt with ad agencies before. How do I handle it?”

“You’ll be fine. Just listen to what they say, offer thirty percent—less, if you can get away with it—and seal the deal. I’ll look forward to hearing how you got on when I get back the day after tomorrow.”

“You’re leaving me in charge for the next two days?”

He sighed. “Yes, Carly. You’re my deputy. That’s what you do.”

I was floundering, flustered, hot and scared. “Sorry. I thought you were going to train me first.”

He sighed as if he were dealing with a recalcitrant child. “Jumping in at the deep end is the best way to learn. Sure, you’ll make mistakes, but in the long run, you’ll thank me for not spoon-feeding you.”

Spoon-feeding? Not much chance of that. Not much chance of even an hors d’oeuvre of information to work on.

Five minutes after Stuart left, a cloud seemed to lift off the office. The telesales staff became more animated as they chatted with clients on the phone. Rick marched back into the office. The property rep—Sylvia—said something to him and they both looked over in my direction as I sat in Stuart’s goldfish bowl of an office. Rick laughed.

I looked down at the file Stuart had just handed to me. It contained a portfolio of full- and half-page advertisements placed on behalf of various clients by the agency I would be meeting in less than ten minutes’ time. Clearly this company was worth a lot of money to the paper. Interesting they should choose to visit us, rather than the other way around.

At the very least, I should offer the account executive coffee. And biscuits. And it would help if I knew his or her name. A business card for Martin Stanton was stapled to a full-page advertisement for a gleaming, new Jaguar. Would he want a tour of the building? God, I hoped not. I wouldn’t offer it, anyway. If I took him round the rabbit warren of offices, the chances of getting hopelessly lost were just too great.

The door opened and Jane Marshall showed in a smartly suited man with a dazzling-white smile and collar-length, brown hair. “Martin Stanton to see you, Carly.”

He extended his hand and I shook it. “Could we have coffee and biscuits, please, Jane?” I kept my voice steady.

Behind my visitor’s left shoulder, I caught a flash of indignation on her face. “I’ll tell Donna,” she said. Donna was the telesales supervisor. Jane closed the door with a smart click. Not a slam, but I’d definitely put a foot wrong there.

That set the scene for the entire meeting. In front of me sat a man who must be a similar age to me, but was way ahead in terms of seniority and self-confidence, bordering on arrogance. Especially when I wouldn’t budge from our offer of a 30 percent discount.

“You know, I hate to mention this, Carly, but the
Evening Telegraph
isn’t the only newspaper in the area. The
Journal
is offering forty percent.”

I kept my hands out of sight under the desk. I knew they were shaking. The man had offered a really good deal. At least, it
sounded
like one. He had offered to virtually double their already fairly substantial contractual requirement for the minimum of a year, but all I could offer was an extra 5 percent on their current discount. Even to inexperienced little me that sounded piss-poor.

But Stuart had forbidden me to offer any more.

Martin Stanton left an hour after he arrived, no new deal done and just the previous arrangement still in place, but with an extra 5 percent discount. I breathed deeply for the first time since he arrived. I’d survived. But then the worry demons kicked in.

They were still kicking me two days later, when Stuart returned. At ten o’clock he summoned me to his office. By the look of thunder on his face, it wasn’t to tell me how well I’d done in his absence.

“I can’t believe what I’ve just heard. Is it true that Martin Stanton offered to double their contract and you turned him down?”

All of a sudden I was my seven-year-old self again, back in that dining room, facing my father’s wrath.
Keep calm,
I told myself.
Don’t lose it, and for God’s sake don’t burst into tears.
I blinked hard and clasped my shaking hands behind my back.

“He wanted forty percent. He said the
Journal
had offered them that—”

“Then why, in God’s name, didn’t you match their offer? He wasn’t asking you to better it. For fuck’s sake, he was handing you all that business on a plate, and you turned him down. And on top of that, you never offered to buy him lunch or show him around the building.”

“I didn’t know that was required of me.” It sounded as feeble as I felt.

Stuart thumped his fist down on his desk. Two pens jumped out of their holders. “Why did you think he came here? Didn’t that say something to you? He wanted to be given the red-carpet treatment and you just sent him away with a flea in his ear.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m new at this. And you told me not to go over thirty percent.” Now I really had to fight back the tears. I gritted my teeth and hoped he wouldn’t notice. I forced my head to stay up. I couldn’t afford to look downcast, especially as I sensed the whole office watching the exchange. Hell, his voice was loud enough. They’d probably heard every word as he lay into me.

“You’re supposed to use your common sense, Carly. Fizz would have done. Fizz would have matched the
Journal
’s offer, or she would at least have offered some other incentive to entice him.” He stopped short of going into detail as to what the incomparable—and, no doubt, sexy—Fizz would have offered, but the inference was obvious. If I hadn’t been so dependent on that job right then, I would have walked out.

Stuart blinked a few times. Rage still filled his eyes, along with disappointment. “Maurice was having a drink with George Gresham, my opposite number at the
Journal
yesterday. He took great delight in telling
my
boss how
my
deputy let thousands of pounds worth of guaranteed advertising slip through her fingers because she wasn’t prepared to offer an extra ten percent. Martin Stanton went straight from here over there and signed the deal with Gresham. It could have been ours, Carly.”

My anger boiled over. “If it was so important, why weren’t you here?”

He glared at me and an apology lurked in my throat. I forced it to stay there.

“I left
you
in charge.”

“You
ordered
me not to go above thirty percent, so I didn’t. The
Journal
had their top man there. He had the power to authorize any increased expenditure. I didn’t. You gave me the maximum I could go to. I stuck within those parameters. I obeyed your orders.”

He blinked and stared at me.

Inwardly I felt proud of myself. I’d stood up to him. He didn’t like it. Not for one second. But I had done it. And I could do it again.

He continued to stare. His eyes bored into mine and then he looked away as if he’d seen something that unnerved him. He picked up his pen.

“Go back to your desk. I’ve a lot of work to catch up on.”

No one met my eye as I marched out of his office, my head held high. I grabbed my bag and kept on walking too. Out of the office and down to the ladies’ room.

Fortunately no one was in there. I gripped one of the sinks with both hands and burst into tears.

Five minutes later, I blew my nose and set about repairing my ruined makeup. I was just putting the finishing touches to my lipstick when the lights flickered and buzzed. Then they dimmed. In the shadows behind me, I caught a movement reflected in the mirror. I jumped.

My angel stood a few feet away from me. As I stared at her, she produced her ledger and pen.

Now, Jane? Or later?

I had already chosen one of my three. Even though I was still waiting for my revenge. Right now, I did want to add Stuart, but maybe someone worse would come along. Then I’d be down to just one with, maybe, two-thirds of my lifetime ahead of me. So much could happen in a few months, let alone decades.

I shook my head and she faded from sight.