‘I was having a terrible day,’ she said defensively. ‘His bloody email was the last thing I needed and you weren’t speaking to me.’
So it was all my fault now.
‘I sent him one back, except . . .’
‘What did you say?’
She went very quiet, opening her mouth once before thinking better of it. ‘I told him to fuck off and leave me alone.’
‘Subtle,’ I said sarcastically.
‘What was I supposed to do, Miss Goody Two Shoes? He wasn’t very nice and I was having a very stressful day. Miranda is being quite difficult. You have no idea how hard it is working with celebrities.’
‘Spare me, please.’ I leant down to study the screen. ‘So you think this is from him?’
Her eyes scanned the room and she lowered her voice. ‘Well, who else is it going to be?’
‘I don’t know. Who else have you upset recently?’ I tried to be funny but it didn’t go down terribly well. She glared at me.
‘Sorry, Emily.’
‘What am I going to do? How did it get here? Do you think it’s some kind of virus?’
I only had one answer to all her questions. ‘I haven’t a clue. Check your emails,’ I said, seizing on something practical to do.
Sure enough, there in her inbox was Peter’s name. His response to Emily’s ‘get-a-life-you-sad-loser’ email was a rambling, nonsensical rant about the faithlessness of double-dealing women and their evil wiles. His personal philosophy seemed to be based on a mix of misogyny, Greek mythology and homespun chauvinism. Unfortunately, no handy confession, ‘By the way, I’ve messed with your computer.’
‘He’s not a happy bunny boiler, is he?’ I observed.
‘That’s not even mildly funny.’
‘Oh! I don’t know.’
‘Do you think he hacked into the system to do this?’
My approach to modern technology was strictly need-to-know. I had no idea but I did remember at the speed-date Peter had said something about working with computers.
‘I think you’d better give Dom in IT a call. He’ll know.’
‘You do it. Dom likes you.’
Only because I always asked for his help nicely, instead of screaming at him down the phone as most people did when their computer threw a wobbly.
I made the call. Dom, our office IT boffin, spoke in another language most of the time about mainframes, motherboards and Ethernets. Once I spilt a whole glass of Ribena over my keyboard and he gave me a new one without reproach, after he’d stopped laughing.
‘Dom, its Olivia.’
‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess? If it’s Coca-Cola you don’t stand a chance—’
‘Dom, it’s urgent. Please could you pop up to Emily’s desk? No... it can’t... can you come and look now?’
He agreed to come straight up from his little, cramped cubbyhole down in the gloomy basement. His choice — apparently he liked it down there. There were days when I was tempted to join him.
When he arrived, the first thing he did was that irritating ‘I don’t like the look of this’ head shaking, flicking his long wispy hair over his stooped shoulders.
‘Nasty.’ He was a man of few words. We looked expectantly at him. He looked back at us. It was one of those moments when you want to crank someone up. Insert a clockwork key in his back and give it a couple of sharp twists.
‘So,’ I asked eventually, ‘has someone hacked into Emily’s computer to do this?’
