THREE
When Eleanor got in to work on the following day, she hadn't been at her desk long before she got a call from Clara, the secretary of her boss Robert. He wanted to have a word with her if she was free. Naturally, she was always free for Robert.
He gestured her towards one of the easy chairs and took a seat opposite her. It was clear that this was to be an informal kind of chat rather than a strictly work-related discussion. Robert, who was still, in his early fifties, a handsome man, with a mop of dark hair which he liked to wear in a rakish fashion, as if he were a late eighteenth century roue, chatted with Eleanor about the progress of her various projects, but in a desultory manner, which confirmed the impression that something of an altogether different nature was to be the focus of their little chat.
Finally he got round to it. His wife, Soria, would be coming into the office on Friday to distribute gifts to the staff as part of some Persian rite or ceremony. Apparently, this was something which she did every three years. The practice was for Robert to accompany her round the office and introduce her to each staff member, who would then receive a 'personalised' gift from his wife. Robert didn't give any details, and Eleanor didn't ask for any, but she assumed that Robert must have given his wife a list of his staff with a pen portrait and perhaps a photo in advance of the visit.
Since Robert had a meeting of the audit committee, which he chaired, later on that Friday afternoon, he would like Eleanor to be on hand to entertain his wife for the hour or so that the meeting would take, if Soria so desired. Otherwise, she would just get on with whatever she wanted to do in her husband's office. Of course, Eleanor was only too happy to do her bit. Robert seemed more pleased with Eleanor than the granting of such a small favour warranted, but Eleanor didn't give the matter much thought until Friday afternoon came round.
The first she knew of the visit was when she heard Robert's voice outside her office. Looking up from her desk, she got just a glimpse of a scarfed head, as the person she took to be his wife turned the corner towards the area where accounts and marketing had their offices. The one thing she could tell for certain was that she was considerably shorter than Robert, who himself was a little shorter than Eleanor's own five foot ten and a half inches.
Eleanor went back to the work she was doing on her PC. It must have been a good hour before there was a knock on her door. Eleanor bade whoever it was to come in, and it turned out to be Clara, bearing a message that she was required in Robert's office. As Clara went back to her desk nearby, Eleanor couldn't help noticing that the blinds had been drawn on the inside of the window looking into the main office area from Roger's office. Although this was by no means uncommon (if, say, he was meeting with important clients), it was unusual enough for Eleanor to make a note of.
Knocking on the door, it was a female rather than a male voice that responded. When she entered, the woman in the scarf had her back to her. She didn't bother to turn even when Eleanor came in, which meant that Eleanor had to announce her presence for a second time, this time vocally.
'Ah,' said the figure, turning slowly round to reveal a face much younger and far lovelier than Robert's. 'You must be Eleanor.'
Eleanor drew near, dazzled by her beauty, and accepted the kiss that Soria landed on her cheek.
'Robert has told me so much about you and your value to the company, but he never told me how beautiful you were.'
Stumped for a proper response, Eleanor muttered something about flattery not getting her anywhere, but Soria was having none of it.
'Maybe he hasn't told me everything about you and his relationship with you,' the Persian woman went on, smiling beguilingly.
'Oh, no, it's nothing like that,' Eleanor coughed out, as if she had been caught red-handed.
'I couldn't say I would blame him,' Soria said without emphasis.
'But I know he hasn't had you,' the exotic woman continued. 'He would have told me. I make him tell me everything. And he does nothing without my permission.'
'I'm glad that's settled,' said Eleanor, breathing more easily. 'I would hate to get off on the wrong foot with you.'
'Anyway,' Soria continued, 'I know you prefer the company of women.'
'How could she know?' Eleanor asked herself.
She had been the soul of discretion at work. In fact, in the 18 months she had been at the company, she had only had a relationship with one member of staff, and that was more than a year ago and the person in question had left the company soon afterwards. Not because of their fling, either, but because she, Aidra, had married a millionaire Greek Cypriot businessman and settled down to be a good 'Greek' wife and mother.
Memories of the blonde woman who favoured a pixie look with her beautiful locks cut short came flooding back to Eleanor. What an unexpected turn that Friday evening out with a bunch of girls from the office had taken! Eleanor wasn't even going to join them: she was expecting to go out with an old university friend, but he had contracted appendicitis and was undergoing emergency surgery in the Royal Manchester Infirmary. So it was very much a last-minute decision to join Elaine, Julia, Connie, Dee and Aidra. None of them were of management grade, but Elaine and Julia were older, married and fun, while Connie and Dee were younger and typical marketing types - confident, outgoing and uncomplicated. That left Aidra, who also worked in marketing, in whose honour the evening was being held, since she had just announced her engagement to her long-time boyfriend, Costas, with whom she lived in a beautiful property a few miles outside the city limits.
The group piled into an Uber a little after six o'clock and headed to their first stop, a favourite haunt of Connie and Dee's: a pub that did live music at the weekend, with a postage-stamp dancefloor, where the girls liked to strut their stuff. Eleanor had left her car at home that morning, since she was expecting to be drinking (albeit with Adrian), so she was quite content to just go with the flow and then head off home by taxi when she felt she had had enough.
The pub was filling fast when they got there, but Connie and Dee managed to use their clout or their charm (probably both) to get a table which appeared to have been reserved for someone else. This table was right at the heart of the action, near the dancefloor and in a place where there was waiter service. Or at least that was how it turned out: they didn't need to queue up at the bar for drinks even once during all the time they were there. And they didn't roll out until after eleven o'clock.
When Elaine and Julia joined Connie and Dee on the dancefloor, two men moved in on Aidra and Eleanor. Without so much as a word to Eleanor, Aidra turned to her and kissed her full on the lips. The men got the message and moved off, muttering darkly about the lesbian bitches they were letting in this place these days. Eleanor blushed scarlet. Her discomfort didn't go unnoticed by Aidra, who placed her hand on Eleanor's knee - just below her dress - as she whispered in the older woman's ear.
'I'm sorry about that, but it seemed the easiest way to get rid of those douchebags.'
Eleanor's mind was racing. What was clear was that (celebrating her engagement or not) Aidra was into women. What wasn't so clear was how she knew that Eleanor was. Or did she know? Maybe she was just having a bit of fun at her expense. Maybe she just enjoyed making a member of the senior management team uncomfortable. Rumour had it that she was going to leave the company soon - she hardly needed the money - so she had no reason to fear the consequences of her actions.
But in that case why was the hand still on her knee? Why was she still whispering in her ear? Okay, in a jokey manner, which was unlikely to draw attention to them. Now, she was toying with Eleanor by 'apologising' to her for sending the men packing without checking with her whether she wanted to accept their offer of a drink. She would quite understand it if Eleanor decided to go and find them and tell them there had been a misunderstanding: her friend had just been having a bit of fun.
Eleanor couldn't trust herself in the position she found herself in right in the middle of a public place, where all eyes could turn on her at any minute. She looked to the dancefloor and even waved at the others, as they bopped about, having a great time. She was pleased at any rate that Aidra had stopped whispering in her ear, even though the hand remained on her knee. It was when that hand began to edge under the hem of Eleanor's dress that she suddenly got up (not easy to do, given how close she was sitting to the table) and headed off to the cloakroom without a word to Aidra.
'I hope she doesn't follow me in,' she thought, as she made her way through the crowds, going the wrong way until someone put her right and pointed her in the correct direction.
'She might be waiting for me in one of the stalls,' she thought. 'I think I'll wait until I see someone else going in and then follow them.'
But she had got to the door already and it would look very odd indeed if she hung around there now. Entering, she looked around nervously to check the place out. One woman was at the handbasin and another was in a cubicle. Approaching the other cubicle, whose door had swung back so that it was only slightly ajar, Eleanor used her foot and kicked it in. The door banged against the divider before returning to the place from which it had been launched. There was of course no one inside. The woman at the basin gave Eleanor a long, hard look, which she caught in the mirror. Turning away quickly, she entered the stall, lowered the lid and tried to compose herself. After a few minutes, she raised the lid, pushed the flush button and made her way to the basins. She washed her hands, applied some lip gloss, rearranged her hair and used a couple of towelettes to dry her hands. Then, she returned to her seat.
By the time she got back, Elaine and Julia had returned from the dancefloor, and Aidra had joined Connie and Dee. Eleanor heaved a sigh of relief and - the weight having fallen from her shoulders - was at her most affable as she chatted with the two women about their families, and listened to their stories about their husbands and their domestic struggles with builders and decorators and so on. Finally, Connie and Dee returned to the table, but without Aidra, who Eleanor assumed must have gone off home, when she had been absent for fifteen minutes or so.
Part of Eleanor wanted to ask where Aidra was, but another part thought she'd just wait it out: she was sure to learn what had happened to her in due course. Another fifteen minutes went by, with the seat where Aidra had been sitting remaining glaringly empty. At least, that was the way it appeared to Eleanor. Unable to stifle her curiosity any longer, she was on the point of enquiring about her, when she suddenly returned. She had, she said, run into an old friend in the other bar and they had been catching up. This friend (Angelica or Veronica, or something like that) had wanted to buy her a drink to celebrate her engagement, and of course she had had to get her own round in and then they all wanted to see the engagement ring (a vulgar lump of gold, as far as Eleanor was concerned, inlaid with an oversized diamond that screamed 'This cost a lot of money!')
At this point, Elaine or Julia suggested they got their food orders in before the kitchen closed, and Eleanor surprised everyone (apart from Aidra, it seemed) by ordering a chicken salad. Connie and Dee had steaks, while Elaine and Julia chose fish, which left Aidra, who kept the waitress waiting while she sent through various options, each of which she rejected after what seemed to Eleanor like an unnecessarily detailed consideration. In the end, she said she'd have what her friend was having, indicating Eleanor.
By the time they had finished their meal, it was past eleven and Eleanor was ready for bed after a particularly busy week.
