Sarah could almost see Emily visibly deflate as she took in the words. Yet the young woman persisted.

  “Is there any advice you can give me on how I can improve my chances for a future role? I really want to grow with this company,” she asked. She was determined, Sarah would give her that.

  Sarah leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms.

  “Well, for starters, stop being so eager to move up the ladder. Focus on your internship for now and learn from the others. Then do something that stands out. Make yourself indispensable. But let’s be realistic, Emily. There are no guarantees,” she stated with cool bluntness. It was time to close the conversation down. She wanted to be out of the front door of the building before the clock made it to six. The best of the ready meals in the reductions section were always taken if you weren’t first to the chiller when they started slapping the stickers on.

  “Okay,” Emily smiled again, as though Sarah had given her some good advice. “I will do that, thank you.”

  Focus on the internship. Keep learning. It was obvious, really, but with no guarantee of a future, it was all she could do. The enthusiasm that she had brought into the room with her had been replaced with disappointment and frustration, but there was still a glimmer of hope.

  “Okay,” Sarah said, tapping on her keyboard, to clarify that the unplanned meeting was over. Emily couldn’t see that she had opened a web browser and was checking out a dress on eBay that she wanted to bid on.

  “Thanks,” Emily said again. She wasn’t sure whether to call the HR manager Sarah or Ms Collins, so she decided on neither. With a heavy heart, she turned to the door and left her positivity behind her.

  The seed of doubt had been firmly planted in Emily’s mind about her future at InnovaTech. Would she ever be taken seriously or given a real chance to prove herself?

  FOUR

  Mark expected the bomb to drop overnight, and to arrive at the office to find the aftermath. Jackson was sitting at his desk already when Mark logged in, just before nine. There was a fresh coffee on his coaster, no doubt prepped for him by simpering Emily. His post was stacked neatly on his mouse mat. Everything looked the same as it had every other day that he had worked at InnovaTech. The same dull routine. The precise pattern of monotonous morning greetings and the same shitty view across the low divider between him and Jonathan Jackson.

  “Any news?” he thought about asking and then changed his mind. Mark knew what the news was going to be. If it had already landed, there was no way that Jackson would be sitting across from him, sipping his ridiculous hot water and lemon. If it had already landed, Jackson would most likely not be sitting across from him at all.

  Instead of speaking, Thompson slumped in his chair and opened his schedule.

  When he had left the previous evening, his calendar for the morning was blank, which left him time to work on his own client accounts. Now, there was a sneaky nine fifteen meeting, red flagged, nagging at him from his screen.

  “Fu…” he spoke aloud and cut the word off before the expletive reached anybody’s ears. Thornicroft had a zero-tolerance policy for what he described as ‘uncouth language’ in the office.

  “Keep it couth,” Mark muttered to himself.

  There was a note tagged on the appointment request.

  Need to touch base ASAP. Minor hitch with the Agrana project. K.

  K was Karen Atkins, software engineer, and the minor hitch was no doubt a lot more serious than she was letting on if she had the audacity to blindside him with a nine fifteen.

  “Little b…” Mark checked himself again.

  He looked over the desk divider at Jonathan, who appeared engrossed in whatever he was working on, but still undisturbed. Perhaps he had realised his mistake the night before and somehow managed to send the proposal through to Tursten Mitchell. Could they possibly have high enough regard for Jackson to allow him to submit late?

  “Can you stop that?” Jon said, without looking up.

  “Hmm?” Mark said.

  “That,” Jonathan pointed, still without raising his eyes.

  Mark hadn’t even realised that he had been tapping his pen on the desk in a staccato rhythm.

  “Right, uh, yeah.”

  His mind was elsewhere, and it wasn’t on whatever Atkins wanted to drop on his doorstep. He wanted to be present when Jackson got word of his mistakes. Everything else could wait.

  He started to write an email to the software engineer to cancel the meeting.

  No can do. Busy all morning. Touch base later.

  Without suggesting an alternative meeting time, Mark clicked send and let the bad news wind its way across the room to where he could see the back of Karen’s blonde curls flattened against her chair. From behind, she almost looked attractive.

  Mark smirked to himself, and took a long sip from his coffee, before instantly spluttering it out, showering his screen.

  “Emily! How many times…” he yelled.

  “I made it,” Jackson cut him off. “I’m in a good mood today. Thought I’d be neighbourly.”

  “I don’t take sugar,” Mark replied, his voice gruff and not at all neighbourly. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks, yeah,” Jon said. “Sorry. Just shows how often I make the coffee around here. I don’t drink it so…”

  “I know, I know. Protein power or that limp…” Mark checked himself and changed direction. “Sorry, man. Thanks, really.” He tipped the cup in a nod towards his coworker and took another, smaller sip. “Other than the sugar, it’s great.”

  It wasn’t, but Jackson was going to have enough to deal with as soon as Tursten Mitchell were in touch. Adding to his rapidly impending misery by moaning about the coffee was pointless.

  Jackson held his smile for a few seconds longer, then turned his focus back to the computer screen in front of him. He was wearing black-rimmed glasses, Mark noticed, and wondered if they were a recent addition or whether he just hadn’t been paying attention. Five days a week, eight, nine, sometimes ten hours at a time, the two of them sat opposite each other, and Mark still wouldn’t have put money on whether Jonathan had always worn glasses.

  Jonathan probably wouldn’t have wagered on his colleague setting him up for the pile of crap that he was about to find himself in either, so the men were competing on roughly equal terms.

  As Mark Thompson pushed his coffee cup away and tapped out the complex password to log in to his computer, the office door burst open.

  It was Thornicroft. Richard Thornicroft, head of InnovaTech. Their manager. Their employer.

  The time had come.

  Flicking a glance over at Jonathan, Mark turned his focus back to his screen. He could feel his pulse quicken and didn’t want to give off any sign that he knew what was coming.

  “Try to make it look like you’re working,” he told himself. “You don’t know anything.”

  He internally cursed Jackson for ruining the coffee that he could otherwise have used as a prop and considered for a moment picking up the mug anyway. Mark was trying his best to feign an air of nonchalance. Jackson was fixated on their employer, his face flushing, swiftly walking towards their desks.

  “Sir?” Jackson straightened himself in his chair in an almost automatic response to his boss’s presence.

  Richard Thornicroft pulled up beside the two men’s desks and stood by the divider like an umpire at a tennis match.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say anything, Jackson.”

  “Sir?” Jackson said again, the word sounding more like a question than a greeting on its repeat.

  Thompson slowly raised his gaze to watch the exchange of words. Tursten Mitchell must have spoken to Thornicroft. The storm was about to break.

  FIVE

  Jackson had never been summoned into the CEO’s office before. He had expected, of course, that when Tursten Mitchell virtually signed the contract, Thornicroft would want to congratulate him personally on the deal. From the look on his boss’s face, though, Jonathan doubted he was going to get a pat on the back and a measure of the twenty-year-old whiskey that sat beside the cut crystal glasses in Thornicroft’s office.

  What had gone wrong? What had he missed? The proposal was perfect. Jackson was certain of that. He had attended to every element of Tursten Mitchell’s brief. No corners cut; no expense spared. Jonathan had even factored in some of the unpaid overtime that he personally would have to put in to deliver on the account.

  The submission was watertight.

  So why did Thornicroft look as though their ship had hit an iceberg?

  “Jackson,” Thornicroft said, as they reached his office. “This was your shot.”

  Jonathan looked at the seat facing Richard, across the desk that now divided them.

  “No need to sit,” Thornicroft barked. “This won’t take long. Don’t want you getting too comfortable.”

  Jackson couldn’t conceal his gulp reaction.

  Was this it? Was he about to be dismissed?

  What had he done? What had he not done?

  “Three months, you’ve had. Three months to get it together and come up with something to impress our biggest client. What could have been our biggest client. Of course, you’ve blown it. I’ve been on the phone with Malcolm for two hours already this morning, trying to placate him.”

  Malcolm was Malcolm Mitchell, and two hours ago was half past seven in the morning. No wonder Thornicroft was pissed. But why? Why had this happened?

  Thornicroft twisted his computer screen round so that Jackson could see the email that he had sent the previous evening.

  I present for your approval, blah blah blah.

  Package to be personally delivered, blah blah blah.

  Jackson scanned every line and then looked back up at Thornicroft, like a dog staring at his master, wondering where the ball they just pretended to throw went to.

  “Sir?” he asked, eventually, when Thornicroft didn’t say anything.

  Richard Thornicroft leaned forwards, jabbed his finger at the screen and then at Jackson, prodding him in the chest so hard that Jackson was sure there was going to be a circular bruise on his right pectoral.

  He jerked back in stunned amazement.

  “Did you get anyone to look at this for you, before you sent it off?”

  Did Mark Thompson hovering over his shoulder count as a second opinion? He thought not. Still, perhaps if he mentioned Thompson’s name now, some of the blame for whatever had happened might be shared.

  Jackson shrugged slightly, checked himself, and stood tall before speaking.

  “Thompson checked it over for me,” Jonathan said, boldly.

  “Thompson,” Thornicroft nodded, as though it was obvious. Of course it was. Mark Thompson was the only other project manager in the organisation, and the only other person who Jackson could have asked.

  Had he though? Not really.

  “And neither of you noticed you had failed to send the actual bloody documents?”

  Jackson visibly deflated, crumbling towards the desk and staring at the screen for the evidence of his omission. There was no friendly little paperclip icon. No attachments added.

  “Fu…” Jackson began and caught himself just before he added cursing in front of the head of the company to his misdemeanours.

  “I’d say, Jackson.” Richard’s face was tomato rage red. “Do you know what this contract meant to us?”

  Jackson could only nod.

  “This would have made us. Our reputation. Our finances. Everything.”

  Jackson knew. He knew.

  “And you and your colleague out there have blown it. You couldn’t get it together between the two of you. I should have asked that bloody intern, Shawcross, to work this up. She would have done a better job than the two of you combined.”

  Jackson almost laughed in derision, but it wasn’t the time. Instead, he nodded like a man who had just been told that his dog had to be put down, and himself along with it.

  “Why don’t you piss off out of my sight? Thompson and you should have a talk and come back to me when you have something to say.”

  “I’m sor…” Jackson began to apologise.

  “That’s the last thing I want to hear from you, Jonathan. Get the hell out of here. Go.”

  Thornicroft moved to step around the desk towards him, and Jackson thought for a split second that the two of them were about to come to blows. Thornicroft seemed like a pleasant enough chap, but the kind of balls-up that he and Thompson had made was like a red flag to this bull of a man.

  He and Thompson. Of course, Mark could share the blame. Thompson would have no qualms about throwing him under the bus. Why should he correct Thornicroft’s assumptions that he and his colleague were partners in this mess?

  First, though, before he went back into the office to drop the bad news off at his coworker’s door, there was one other person who might help him.

  Instead of stepping through into the main office area, Jackson turned into the stairwell and made his way down to level B – the basement, the broom closet, the home of the IT department.

  SIX

  The IT department at InnovaTech consisted of one thirty-four-year-old man, the only staff member who didn’t have to adhere to the otherwise strict suit dress code. Liam Foster’s regular wardrobe comprised jeans and a range of T-shirts that ranged from comic book heroes to borderline offensive slogans. That day, he sat with his feet on the desk beside his mouse mat, leaning back on his chair displaying a bright blue long-sleeved shirt that read ‘sounds like a you problem’.

  “Hey,” Jackson said, trying to sound as upbeat as possible under the circumstances. “I’ve got a little…” He stopped, looked at Liam’s shirt, and picked a different word to end his sentence. “…issue.”

  “Well, of course you have,” Liam laughed. “Why else would you venture down here into the pits of the building? Not like you’ve come for a friendly chat, is it?”

  Despite his smile, Jackson could hear the snide sarcasm in the techie’s voice.

  “You know what it’s like,” Jonathan said. “It’s one thing after another on the floor. I wish we had more time to…”

  Liam raised a hand to stop Jackson mid-sentence, shaking his head.

  “Save it,” he said, never dropping his grin. “You don’t have to give me all the foreplay. Let’s just get to the fun part.”

  Jackson swallowed hard and ran one hand through his dark hair.

  “I messed up,” he said.

  At this, Liam’s smile widened, and he swung his legs off the table, sitting forward in his chair.

  “And I thought it was going to be another dull day,” he said. “So, what have you done, and why is it anything to do with me?”

  Jonathan let his breath out in one long sigh. Liam appeared to be revelling in his misfortune, and however he described what had happened was only about to compound that.

  “The account I was working on. The big one.” No point naming names. Liam didn’t know one client from another, and almost certainly didn’t care. “I was meant to send over the contract and all the pre-account work up and…”

  “Stop. Let me guess,” Liam interrupted. “It’s too easy. Really it is. You wrote a lovely email and forgot to send the attachments, right? That’s it, isn’t it? From the look on your face, it’s got to be.” Again, he gave a hollow laugh. “You idiot!”

  “Yeah, sure. Hilarious. Can you do anything about it?” There was no way that Jackson could find the internal strength to make light of the situation that was threatening to end his career at InnovaTech.

  “So, you wrote the email?”

  Jackson nodded.

  “And sent it without adding the attachments?”

  Again, he nodded.

  “And…” Liam paused and made a grand show of thinking about what to say next. “It’s too late to send the documents now?”

  “Yes,” Jackson confirmed, with a hiss of impatience. “The hard deadline was yesterday. They are pissed.”

  “Makes sense,” Liam replied. “I would be. And…oh…” He laughed again. “Thornicroft is pissed too, huh?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “I know this is terribly amusing to you, but this is my career. I need…” He didn’t know what he needed. He didn’t know what he thought the IT guy could do to help him. He was just praying that there was something that could be done.

  “Obviously I can’t time travel, so there’s no way we can erase your balls up,” Liam smirked. “And you don’t need me to send those attachments on to them now. You can send another email, give them what they need and…” He made a hand gesture in the air that didn’t mean anything to Jackson.

  “And everything would be perfect in a perfect world, sure. But they’ve already lost faith in me as a project lead and with InnovaTech as a company. They’ve gone with bloody Si-Nova, and it’s too late to do anything about that. I’ve lost them. I messed up and I’ve cost this company thousands. Maybe millions. Probably millions.”

  Jackson cursed under his breath and looked away from the IT expert, unable to face another bout of laughter at his personal expense.

  “Oh, mate,” Liam said in a tone that didn’t sound anything like that of a friend. “That’s some oversight, huh?”

  Jackson finally raised his voice, stepping towards Liam. “Can you help me or not?”

  With a gesture, Liam lifted his arms and pushed his chair backwards, away from Jackson.

  “Settle down, suit,” he said, finally dropping his smile. When Jackson moved back, Liam gave him a nod, and tapped at the computer. “Change some time stamps, maybe? Make it look like you sent the attachments and, uh, something went wrong? Some kind of tech issue instead of your mistake?”

  Jonathan leaned towards the screen, animated. “You can do that?”

  The excitement in his voice was palpable and uncontrolled.