Her eyes glisten with unshed tears.
She’s about to cry over basic professional feedback. Any other company in London would chew her up and spit her out if she cracked every time someone suggested improvement.
I remember her at sixteen. Awkward and shy, face going red if I so much as said hello. Sweet kid who’d offer everyone tea and remember how they took it. But she’s not sixteen anymore, and the corporate world doesn’t give a damn about her feelings.
If she worked at Ashbury Thornton, if she made it past Liam’s recruitment gauntlet—which she wouldn’t—she’d be sobbing in the toilets by lunch on day one. My brother makes me look like a teddy bear.
She clearly doesn’t like Craig’s style compared to Ravi, who ran the IT department like a group therapy circle. I don’t like Craig either, but he delivers every objective I throw at him.
I exhale heavily. “Whatever resources you need, tell Craig. I’ll approve the budget. I’m trying to help here. But you’ve got to articulate what you need. Improvement only happens if you want it badly enough to fight for it.”
She opens her mouth, probably to deliver another soft, noncommittal response, but a knock on the door cuts her off.
Thank Christ. I can’t endure another minute of those wounded doe eyes looking at me like I’m the heartless bastard who’s personally ruining her life.
“That’s all the time I’ve got. Don’t let me down, Georgie.”
Her mouth tightens. Soft, full lips pressed into a hard little line. Trying to transform something meant for softness into armor. Like watching a rose force itself into barbed wire.
Get your head straight, you pillock. Stop noticing her mouth.
“I’ll try not to be any more of a disappointment than I already have been,” she says, with just enough bite to make me frown.
I’m trying to do the right thing here. I’ve shown her more patience than I’d extend to any other employee on the payroll. More than she deserves, considering her performance.
But still.
There’s something about the way she sits there, shoulders curved inward like she’s trying to disappear, that digs under my skin.
And I absolutely hate that some treacherous part of me wants to lean across this desk, tilt her chin up with my fingers, and strip that devastated expression clean off her face.
FOUR
The hot granny on my desk
Georgie
Three months later
The thing about oldpeople dying is that everyone expects you to be fine about it.
“She had a great run,” they say, like Riri was a cheerful marathon runner who almost crossed the finish line but stumbled at the last second.
She wasn’t my mum or my gran, so apparently her death doesn’t qualify for proper grief. Great-aunt? Please. You might as well say your hamster died.
A peripheral relative, by most people’s standards. Not someone whose absence is supposed to break you.
But Riri wasn’t peripheral. She wascentral.
When Mum and Derek buggered off to their Spanish retirement paradise, sure, I dutifully visited three times a year for paella and obligatory poolside photos, but it was Riri who was there for me.
I nudge the photo tucked behind my desk calendar until her face peeks out. There she is in that purple coat, rocking her “eccentric duchess” vibe, complete with the lavender streak she put in her hair for her eightieth birthday.
My fingers find the chain around my throat without thinking. It’s the same gold necklace she’s wearing in the photo. Each link is slightly different, handmade, with a tiny iris flower charm at the center.
Riri’s husband gave it to her before he shipped out to the war. She lost it somehow, before he died. Five years after his death, she walked into this dusty charity shop in Brighton, and there it was, sitting in a jewelry box with her initials carved in the lid. Like the universe decided to return what she’d lost.
She wore it every day after that. Now it’s mine.
