“Get out of my sight,” she said, and Octavia did, because she couldn’t control her mouth and couldn’t control her behaviour, despite every effort that had been made for her, despite every opportunity she’d had, she seemed to think she didn’t have to try.

*

LeFay Gems referred to themselves as a “jewellery powerhouse,” and from the way they all talked, you’d think they held the fate of the world in their hands.  Their upcoming product launch had been described as “a watershed moment” and “an epoch-defining event.”  They weren’t just drumming up interest in their new line of bracelets, they were “ushering in a new era of beauty and class.”  And if that was the case, Octavia thought, then they really ought to get around to spending some money on it.

“It’s the caterers, mainly,” Octavia explained to the CEO, a beefy little git with no neck to speak of, “They don’t want the whole fee paid up front, but they do want a deposit putting down.  And the same’s probably going to be true for the musicians.”

The CEO, sitting at the opposite end of the long glass table, raised his chin, as if he was willing himself to grow taller so that he could tower over Octavia.  “Maybe you should impress upon them how much LeFay Gems values loyalty.  How grateful we’d be for their services.  We don’t forget the people who go the extra mile for us.”

Yeah, that’s what I’ll tell them.  “You should take this job because then the guy who’s too stingy to pay a deposit will owe you a favour.”  “And they will go the extra mile, but you need to do your part first.”

The CEO’s nostrils flared.  George Chandler, his name was, and he’d made his first million by the age of forty (after his parents had already lent him ten million or so to get his company started).  “Miss Lambton, I’m sure that if you told them how important this event is to us, they’d be able to work something out.”

“You might have to convince them that it’s important to them, too.”

You’d think she’d just kicked him in the balls.  “Convince them?”

“They need to eat,” said Octavia, “They can’t pay their rent with gratitude.”

“Let me explain something to you,” said Mr Chandler through gritted teeth, “There are catering companies who would jump at the chance to work for us.  It wouldn’t even occur to them to ask about the deposit.  If you were willing to spend five minutes of your time looking around, you’d have found that out already.”

“Well, feel free to get in touch with one of those companies yourself,” Octavia said breezily, “but the ones I work with like to be paid on time.” 

He stood up, his chair legs audibly scraping against the floor as he pushed it backwards.  “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

Octavia smoothed down her skirt.  “Sort of assumed that you thought that as well.  Otherwise you wouldn’t have hired me.”  There was a chance that that was exactly what he wanted to hear, but only a small one.  Men like him said they valued ingenuity and frankness, but most of the time they only valued it in themselves.

“I took a chance on you,” Mr Chandler spat, “I thought, young woman, little company, why not give her a chance to prove herself?”

In other words, I was cheaper than the others, thought Octavia.  Maybe LeFay Gems was going through some money troubles that hadn’t been made public yet.  Or maybe Mr Chandler had his hand in the till.

“But you’re an amateur.  A complete amateur.  You’re like a little girl trying to play with the grown-ups.  I don’t know what you were doing before, but maybe you should go back to that.”

Octavia rose from her seat, picking up her files from the table.  “I think we’re done here,” she said with a smile.

“People are going to hear about this!” he called after her as she left the office.  But by then, Octavia was thinking about something else.

A man who’d try to get out of giving caterers the deposit they’d asked for would probably have tried to get out of a few other things in his time.  If Octavia got in touch with some of LeFay Gems’ suppliers and ex-employees, she’d probably hear a few stories about being paid in gratitude from them, too.   If the papers got hold of that, George Chandler would be in for an uncomfortable couple of weeks, especially if her hunch about embezzlement turned out to be true.

It was a shame she wouldn’t actually get to plan the event, although she relished the idea of Mr Chandler having to sweat a bit to put something together at short notice.  This sort of thing happened sometimes- it was a side-effect of working with people who found it impossible to process the idea of not getting their way.  And in some ways, the look on their faces when you stopped sucking up to them was more satisfying than anything they could pay you.

*

Octavia wandered the streets, her eyes and cheeks and nose sore enough to bleed, the rain from earlier soaking into her shoes, the wind blowing through her as if she was barely there at all, because she had nowhere to go, no place in the world that wasn’t a constant reminder of how wrong she was, how she’d been OK when she was born but had let herself be degraded a little more every day since, how it was terrible to imagine how she’d be if she lived to twenty.

*

Mr Ashley’s house was a little way outside of Torquay, in a tiny cul-de-sac surrounded by trees.  The house was old and somehow kindly-looking, but it was possible that Octavia only thought that because she associated it with Mr Ashley himself.

Two decades ago, Mr Ashley (first name Christian, but Octavia had never been able to bring herself to use it) had been Octavia’s music teacher.  Sometimes it seemed as if all the adults who’d had a positive influence on Octavia’s childhood had been paid to be there.

This afternoon, she got to the house before the girls had finished school, which meant that she and Mr Ashley got to sit in the kitchen for an hour, drinking tea.  Octavia didn’t know why the tea Mr Ashley made tasted so much better than any other kind, but it did.

“Amber’s been in a bit of trouble at school,” he told her.  For a man in his sixties, Mr Ashley was remarkably fresh-faced.  There were faint creases around his eyes and mouth, but that was all.  “Apparently she kept trying to climb the fence at breaktime.  She apologised, for what it’s worth.  She said she wasn’t trying to escape.  Apparently, the fence was just calling to her.”

Octavia sighed.  “She’s her mother’s daughter, alright.  I’ll talk to her.”  The kitchen was decorated in warm browns and yellows, and probably hadn’t been updated much since the Seventies.  Definitely not since they’d bought the house, and that had been over a decade ago.  “Speaking of Amber, have you thought any more about what we’re going to do for her birthday?”

“She mentioned Finch’s Amusements, but I don’t know if the weather will be nice enough.”

“Have to get her to come up with a backup plan, yes.”  She pretended to shudder.  “Just not a disco this time, alright?”  That had been what they’d done for Saffron’s birthday back in March, and it had been a nightmare.  Sixteen nine-year-olds bouncing up and down to three hours of the most irritating songs they could find, while Octavia and Mr Ashley had nervously eyed the dangerous-looking power cables attached to the equipment the “MCs” had brought.  To make matters worse, Octavia got the impression that Saffron would have been just as happy with a trip to Pizza Hut.  Next time, she’d suggest that first.

If Octavia’s mother knew that her only two grandchildren so far were named Amber and Saffron, she’d have kittens.  She considered herself an authority on what names people should and shouldn’t give to their children.  “Classless,” she’d proclaim upon hearing that someone she knew had had the gall to name their new baby Samantha or Nicola (as opposed to her own name, Josette, which her parents had given her in one of many attempts to trick people into thinking they were French and therefore cultured.)

Amber and Saffron’s last name was Zane, which was Octavia’s married name.  Her late husband hadn’t been the father of either of them (for one thing, he’d died about seven years before they were born, and for another, he and Octavia had never had sex), but out of the two names she could have passed down to them, she thought it was best to pick the one that wasn’t shared by her parents.  It had seemed cruel to shackle two children to the Lambton family before they could even walk.

(To Be Continued)