I lock eyes with him and he holds my gaze.
“My method?”
“At work.”
“Be prepared.”
“That’s not a method. That’s a principle.”
“Fine. Be more prepared than everyone expects you to be.”
His pen pauses.
The room goes quiet around the sentence. Outside the office, someone opens a cupboard, laughs, shuts it again. The station carries on. My own words sit between us, too specific to pretend they are general.
AJ’s voice is careful when he says, “Because you’re Watch Manager?”
“Because I’m me.”
He does not ask immediately.
That matters.
He gives the answer a second to exist. It makes it harder to take back.
“Because you’re a woman in the job?” he asks.
There it is.
Not thrown like bait. Not softened so much it becomes useless. Just placed where we both have to look at it.
I could give him the media answer.
I have one. Every woman in a job like this has one. You keep it polished for panels, events, school talks and anyone with a microphone. You say the right things about progress and representation and brilliant colleagues and the importance of encouraging girls into the service. You mean it too, which is the complicated part. You can mean every word and still know it is not the whole truth.
“Yes,” I say.
His pen moves.
Then stops again.
I frown. “You’re not writing?”
“I can. I just thought you might want to finish the answer first.”
That gets under my ribs.
Not in a romantic way.
In an irritating, human way.
I look at the desk. The forms stacked in the tray. The pen Josh chewed during a budget meeting last month and left here like evidence. The mug Amanda bought me that saysCALM IS A SKILL, which I keep turned towards the wall because it feels judgemental.
“You learn early that mistakes are not always allowed to stay the size they are,” I say. “For some people, a mistake is a mistake. For others, it becomes proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That you were promoted too soon. That standards were lowered. That someone wanted a headline. That you’re too emotional, too hard, too soft, too ambitious, too bossy, not confident enough, too confident. Depends on who’s talking.”
