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  “You better not. It will be bad enough if you get this job. She’s young and attractive.”

  He swept his hand down Sky’s hair, loose, thick and glossy, it fell to her waist. Audrey was attractive. Even with drool stains on her shirt and something orange and sticky in her hair, squinting in the sunlight. Thinking about it, she was, maybe five, ten years older than he was, but she was classically beautiful, he’d noticed it the moment he saw her and dubbed her Ms Bates.

  “Audrey isn’t interested in me. The whole being me physically is a turn-off for her. It’s the reason I won’t get the job.”

  Sky kissed his throat. “I’m sorry about that, baby. Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “No fair you’re so beautiful and no one else gets to have you but me.”

  “Sweet talker. There’ll be other jobs come up, but you know I think this is the universe telling you something.”

  “The universe, that’s heavy.”

  “You should be aiming higher. You know I think that.”

  “So this is you, not so much the universe.”

  She smiled. “You’re nearly thirty. Time to stop mucking around. Time to stop dreaming.”

  He frowned and dropped his hands. She could add to that. Time to stop your family running you around. Time to move in with me and get serious. Time to show some ambition. Time to grow up.

  He’d heard variations of those themes from her over the last six months in particular. And she was probably right. In comparison, he was a loser. Sky owned her flat, it had a hefty mortgage, but she managed it alone. She drove a new Peugeot. She had a great job and pulled the kind of salary he could only dream about. She was fun to be with, stop a room sexy and scary smart. Plus she loved him.

  He was proud of her. He had long-term designs on her that involved half a wardrobe, a cupboard in her kitchen and a fight over who got the car space.

  Didn’t stop him resenting her.

  “This is my dream, remember.”

  She sighed. “Baby, it’s not enough for you. You can do better.”

  “Teaching in a classroom. Roofing for the Pollidores. I could earn more, but it’s not what I want.”

  “It’s not about the money. I earn enough for both of us. It’s about you building a career you can be happy in. Are you going to want to be a nanny when you turn thirty, when you turn forty? When you’re a dad yourself?”

  He could barely think about what he’d be doing in a month, let alone a decade. “Jesus, Sky. Do we have to do this now?”

  She pouted and he usually liked to kiss the sulk off her plump lips. “Would you rather we talk about how I don’t like the idea of you sleeping in that woman’s house.”

  “I’d be sleeping there when she wasn’t.”

  “I get that. I still don’t like it.”

  He tapped her nose with the tip of his finger and she blinked. “Are you jealous of a woman who’s ten years older than me?”

  “No. I trust you.”

  “Then why raise it?”

  She pouted. “You won’t move in.”

  “You are jealous.”

  “No, I’m lonely.” Sky twisted to get out of his arms.

  He sighed. He wasn’t going to get to have Mia and Audrey in his life. He had a standing offer of his old room at Polly’s, but that’d put an end to Polly’s playroom with its enormous TV and multiple games consoles, and he did love Sky, so it wasn’t that complicated, but there was no way he was leaving his restored Monaro on the street.

  “About your parking spot.”

  She stilled, then threw her arms around his neck and squealed in his ear. Easy as that, he had a new bedroom and back home the territory war was about to begin.

  8: Failure to Win

  Chris had her locked and loaded. He gave Audrey his patented what’s going on look, a combo of lowered chin, right head tilt and raised eyebrows. There was no way she was leaving the team meeting without an explanation, or the not so casual disinterest of her colleagues who knew the look and were grateful not to be its recipient.

  “Incoming,” muttered Les, collecting her job folders to leave.

  Audrey turned her face towards Les and hissed, “Don’t go. I’ve no idea what he wants and he won’t get stuck into me in front of you.”

  Les started shuffling through a folder, trying to legitimise hanging around. “The things I do for you,” she said, two seconds before Chris aimed and fired.

  “Audrey, a word.”

  She smiled at him, then checked her watch. She had nowhere specific to be for the next hour except making that one phone call, but he didn’t know that.

  “I won’t keep you long.” He came across the room and stood in front of her. “You don’t look happy.”

  “Oh.” She flicked a confused glance to Les. Chris was your basic no-nonsense, tailor-made grey suit, blue tie, chief operating officer of a construction company. He met with the team of project directors and managers once a month to assess the company’s position on their infrastructure development programs. He did action plans and deliverables, profit margins and secured pipelines. He didn’t do emotions or mental states.

  Chris was her boss when Audrey was the most senior manager in the team and the only female. Now his desk was on the executive floor and Audrey was still the most senior project manager. When she returned from maternity leave, Chris had promoted two other managers to director and Audrey now reported to her colleague, Jonathan, who’d started at the firm after she did and had less industry experience. It’d sucked then and it hadn’t gotten any easier to live with.

  “I’m happy.” It seemed the smartest thing to say, without knowing the agenda.

  “Les, can I have Audrey to myself for a moment?”

  “Of course. I’ll see you in your office to go over clause twenty-two,” Les said, on her way out.

  Chris watched Les go. Audrey had spent a long time angry with him, but he was fundamentally a good guy, talented, deserving of his success, a strong leader. He simply believed that in the infrastructure construction business, men made better directors.

  As soon as the door clicked closed he said, “If you’re not happy you can talk to me.”

  “I’m happy.”

  “You’re doing that thing where you make your mouth tense.”

  “I do a thing where I make my mouth tense?” She put her index finger to her lips and felt silly for letting him get to her.

  “You didn’t know that?”

  Her lips felt perfectly normal, if a little dry. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s your tell. Good thing you don’t play poker.”

  He could talk about tells. She dropped her hand to her side. “Am I in trouble? I feel like I’m in trouble. Everyone is going to think I’m in trouble.” Les would be having kittens.

  Chris buttoned his suit coat. “You’re not in trouble. Is clause twenty-two the same as wait five and follow?”

  “Kind of. You don’t exactly fraternise with manager plebs unless they’re in trouble.”

  He wiped a hand over his face. “I know.” He unbuttoned his suit coat. He fidgeted. It was such un-Chris-like behaviour it was unnerving. “There are a lot of things I don’t get to do. But I want you to know if you’re unhappy you can talk to me. I don’t want to lose you.”

  Audrey tried to stop her mouth doing anything to give her thoughts away. If he didn’t want to lose her he could’ve promoted her three years ago. She didn’t have to wait for a spot to open. Her portfolio of projects was weighty enough to sustain a director position.

  “I’m fine. I promise. I still have a voodoo doll of you, which I periodically stab more pins in. If you’ve been having random crippling knee pain, that’d be me.”

  Chris’ nose wrinkled. Another of his tells. He was amused. “Some back pain. I thought it was from too much sitting, but if that’s you too, I’d appreciate it if you could move that pin a little to the left.”

  “So I’m not in trouble?”

  “Not from me. I do
n’t mean to pry, but you looked worried from the time you entered the room, Audrey. And you’re doing that thing with your lips again.”

  She sucked her lips into her mouth so they weren’t doing anything other than mashing her non-existent lipstick against her teeth. The problem wasn’t the lack of a promotion in three years, it was the four hours. Four whole hours since she’d left Mia alone with New Cameron for the very first time.

  There was the first hour when it was simply too lunatic to call and check-in and the three hours she’d been in this room where she couldn’t make contact without excusing herself from the meeting and making a thing of it. She could tell Chris that, but then she was simply reinforcing his view she was a mother before she was an employee and if there was ever a possibility of promotion it was about as real as the voodoo doll.

  She made a show of twisting her lips this way and that until surely he’d think she was demented. “I’m good.”

  “All right. Look, I.” He broke eye contact. “I want you to know how much I value your work.”

  He looked so uncomfortable off spreadsheet, in the touchy feely world, she almost laughed at him. It twitched on her lunatic lips to ask him to put a dollar value on that value, call it a promotion and add an additional clump of money to her salary packet. But that’s not the way it worked. You didn’t go over your own boss’ head to ask the company COO for a promotion because he was once your boss. Even if your boss was a moron who was on a twelve month sabbatical mountain climbing to find himself, and you were in reporting limbo.

  There was a process. It protected both of them from claims of nepotism. And the last thing she needed was other people thinking she’d only gotten promoted because of her prior association with Chris. And since he was divorced, and she was a single mother, prior association gossip could be a career limiting move for her. He’d probably be regarded as a hero. So she thanked him, with a minimum of annoyance in her tone, jammed her back teeth together, collected her gear and turned to open the door for them.

  “What I want to say is I’m sorry.”

  She spun to face him. Her lips were likely wobbling all over her face, telling him how surprising she found this.

  “You haven’t received the advances you deserved.”

  That was true, but the open acknowledgement was a shock and a problem. Her failure to win a promotion on three separate occasions, once pre Mia and twice after, had always been couched in language that made it plain she was lacking in the killer instinct directors needed. This is the first official hint she’d heard of having been robbed.

  Officially, she’d been told she was overly consultative and too easily influenced. That she was a poor negotiator because she was too emphatic and needed to make more commercially robust decisions. In real terms that meant she was measured where the other directors were loud and forthright, and she favoured consensus over beating suppliers into submission. The fact that her projects always came in on or under budget and on time where others failed regularly on those statistics was somehow irrelevant. What wasn’t irrelevant when it shouldn’t have been, for a company that prided itself on equal opportunity, was sex and parenthood.

  To be truly successful in this environment she’d gotten both of them wrong by having a uterus, a vagina and baby.

  As if those body parts, and being a mother, had anything to do with her ability to wrangle a multi-million dollar infrastructure project into submission, and oversee the financing and the construction of roads and schools, factories, retail complexes, and whole new suburbs.

  Except for some reason they did. For some reason her non-uterus, non-vagina bearing colleagues, even the divorced dads, did it better.

  And that, for some inexplicable reason was behind Chris’ un-Chris-like behaviour. He smoothed his tie, put his hand in his pocket and took it out again, and she made the strategic decision not to rescue him. She should’ve been sticking rusty disease carrying pins in the voodoo doll.

  “I’m sorry you’ve not received the rewards you’ve worked for.” He waited for her to speak and when she didn’t he coughed into his hand. She’d seen him present faultlessly in front of shareholders and media about controversial investment issues, but alone with her in the conference room, he was rattled. It was time to exercise her negotiation skills.

  “That acknowledgement is less important to me than what we might do about it.” She chose to use ‘we’ specifically to show she’d continue to play ball in this maddening game where the rules were written in favour of people who shaved their faces each day and peed standing up.

  “We, ah. We. I’d like to see you promoted as soon as possible.”

  That was vague and lacked specificity. It’d never make it into any contract Audrey negotiated. “Could we put a date on that?” Without a date, it was nothing more than steam.

  “I, er, that’s between you and Jonathan.”

  Technically Chris was right, it was between her and her direct boss, Jonathan, but Jonathan was currently terrorising Sherpa, which might be the reason Chris had chosen to do this now.

  “So if I was to mention to Jonathan, if he ever checks in, that you and I had this discussion and you’d like to see me promoted to director, he’d be on board with that? Would you say he’d be willing to promote me before the end of the year?”

  Chris frowned. “I’m not second-guessing Jonathan and I’m not making any promises. I only wanted to acknowledge your contribution.”

  Distinct back-peddling, earn a jagged pin through the eye. “Why now? I’ve been passed over for director three times.”

  “Look, Audrey.” Chris put a hand to his hair, then pulled on his tie, fidget, fidget. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I didn’t know you were going to make an issue of it.”

  “An issue.” A pin to the lung. Twist. How’s that for an issue.

  “I was trying to be nice.”

  “Nice.” A word that rhymed with ice that matched the way she cut the air with scorn. “Aren’t you the one who told me there was no room for nice in business? Isn’t being too nice the reason I haven’t been promoted?”

  “Well, if it was—”

  “Don’t joke about this. You don’t have a single female director, it took five years to get a second female manager, and you don’t think that’s a problem?”

  His hands stilled. He lowered his chin. Another tell. If he’d been distracted before, he was refocused now. “I think having the right people for the job is the issue.”

  “Even if that means discrimination?”

  “I see I shouldn’t have spoken.”

  Blunt needle to the heart. “No, actually you should’ve spoken sooner, try three years ago when I returned from maternity leave and got passed over because I was too nice and maybe because I had a baby, and that meant I’d lost brain cells.”

  “I can see you’re angry.”

  “And I can see your dealing with difficult people skills showing.”

  Chris’ chin jerked up. Oh, she’d gone too far. Pricked his conscience. Or maybe not far enough, because his heart seemed to be doing just fine while hers was running a marathon and treating it like a sprint.

  “Did you expect me not to be angry? I’m currently holding the fort for Jonathan as well as doing my own job. Last week I had to brief a director on how to approach a public private partnership. He’s paid more than me. Not just incrementally, significantly more, and he’s eligible for a bonus and I’m not. And you think I should take all that calmly. I had no option but to take it calmly when I came back from leave, and then when it’s presented as a failure on my part to have the right skills, all I can do is work harder. But you just admitted it wasn’t about that.”

  “No, Audrey, I didn’t and getting upset isn’t going to help.”

  If voodoo dolls had toenails, under them, is where she’d stick pins. “If a woman gets upset, she’s hysterical and irrational. If a man gets upset, he’s justifiably angry. Why is it okay to slam doors and shout at assistants, but not to cr
y? And woe betide a woman who slams doors—what a bitch. I’ve never understood why women are supposed to be likeable, but a man can be a right bastard.” She took a breath. Chris was stony faced. “Don’t worry, I won’t break any furniture or burst into inconvenient tears. I won’t abuse my assistant or throw my phone against a wall.”

  Chris moved to the door and opened it. He was over this, signalling his intention to leave the conversation and suggesting strongly she shut up.

  “But don’t expect me not to be angry, and if I don’t get promoted this round, I’ll take you up on your offer. I’ll come and tell you how unhappy I am.”

  He gave one sharp nod and gestured to the open doorway, allowing her the courtesy to leave the room before him, too smart to run from the fight. “I’d expect nothing less.”

  She swept past him on a witch’s broom of incantations and barely contained rage, and uttered the words he didn’t expect, “Right before I quit.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  She flashed him a quick smile, an all is forgiven, an everything is back to normal programming look. “I said, otherwise I’d be a silly nit.”

  They both knew that’s not what she said. But she didn’t give him time to call her on it. She left him holding the door and went down the empty corridor to the lift well. Once out of sight she leant against the wall because her knees had turned into hunks of soft, squishy caramel. She’d more or less threatened the company COO with her resignation if she didn’t get a promotion. That would be why it was difficult to breathe and she felt like throwing up.

  She had a huge mortgage, most of her salary went on it and Mia’s care. She not only loved her job; despite the issue of seniority, she needed it, and other companies in the industry had an even worse record for employing women in leadership roles.

  If she was lucky, she wouldn’t run into Chris for another month and by then something more critical would’ve claimed his attention. She tested her knees, the caramel was less gummy. She was a very small cog in the wheel of Chris’ world, and if she kept her head on straight and delivered on her performance measures, he’d have no need to notice her again.