His Girl Monday To Friday. Linda Miles

which, Barrett have just called to say they want to move things up by two weeks. It should still leave plenty of time for fine-tuning, but you’ll need to get a move on. How’s the bid coming along?’

      Mike looked so tired he couldn’t really have looked worse, but Barbara could have sworn he turned pale. He stammered, ‘Well, it’s getting there.’

      ‘Getting pretty close to the wire now,’ said Charles. ‘I’d like to see what you’ve got so far.’

      ‘It’s...it’s...it’s in half a dozen different pieces. You can’t really get an idea—’

      ‘Well, whatever you have,’ said Charles. ‘Look, I’ll have your secretary bring the stuff up.’

      He picked up a phone and dialled an extension.

      ‘Mallory here. Look, could you dig out the Barrett files and bring them up? Mike’s going to walk me through them. The Barrett file. Barrett. That’s right, and don’t take all day, will you? Thanks.’

      He hung up and began to take Mike over some points relating to the Polish clients.

      About fifteen minutes later a secretary came into the room, carrying a single slim file.

      ‘I’m afraid this is all I could find,’ she said apologetically.

      Charles took it and leafed through. It was just a few sketches of proposals.

      ‘This must be the preliminary file,’ he said impatiently. ‘I want the more recent stuff. Mike, why don’t you bring it up for me?’

      Barbara saw the look of desperation on Mike’s face. Impulsively she said, ‘I haven’t sent it back down yet, Charles. Sorry, I hadn’t quite realised what you were talking about.’

      Both men stared at her blankly.

      ‘I did a couple of extended assignments at Barrett as a temp,’ Barbara said fluently. ‘They have some pretty rigid ideas of how they like things done. Mr Carlin gave me his drafts, and while they looked attractive in themselves there were some things which wouldn’t go down well with their head of services—and at the end of the day that’s who will probably have the deciding vote. I said I’d go through and make suggestions.’

      ‘Well, let me see what you’ve got,’ said Charles.

      ‘Don’t be absurd,’ Barbara said firmly, while Mike and his secretary stared at her in awe. ‘You’ll have to see them anyway after my suggestions have been processed; there’s absolutely no point in wasting time looking at them twice. You’re much better off looking at something that has the responses to company policy in place—otherwise you could end up just changing things that would change anyway.’

      ‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Charles.

      ‘They’ll be ready Friday,’ said Barbara.

      ‘I’d like to see what you’ve got tomorrow,’ said Charles.

      ‘I’ll be happy to see what I can do,’ Barbara said pleasantly. ‘I take it you won’t be needing me for the rest of the day.’

      ‘I can’t possibly spare you for the rest of the day,’ said Charles. ‘I’ve got a stack of things that got put to one side because of this meeting which have got to go out today.’

      ‘Fine,’ said Barbara. ‘I’ll get the Barrett proposal to you on Friday, then.’ She smiled at him angelically, then added, ‘I have a few questions for Mr Carlin so I’ll just follow him down to his office, if that’s convenient.’

      She raised an eyebrow at the hapless Mike, who nodded weakly.

      Downstairs, with his door closed, he collapsed at his desk and held his head in his hands.

      ‘Thanks for coming to my rescue,’ he said, ‘but he’ll have to know sooner or later. There’s no way I can do it in time. Better he should know now...’

      Barbara had opened the slim folder. There were a few sheets of paper, not much more than random jottings.

      ‘Hasn’t the company made any other bids?’ she asked.

      ‘Sure, but nothing this size, and anyway there just isn’t the time. If I dropped all the Polish stuff and did this I’d just end up dropping all the balls.’ He closed his eyes, succumbing for a moment to the tiredness which had been sapping his strength for weeks.

      ‘You’ve got some material from Barnett, presumably?’ said Barbara, ignoring his defeatism.

      ‘Yes, but you don’t seem to understand.’ His voice sharpened at last in exasperation. ‘There simply isn’t the time—’

      ‘For you to do it,’ said Barbara. ‘Of course I understand that. But it’s not too late for me.’ She smiled at him encouragingly. ‘I really did work for them once, you know. I think I know how to package it so they’ll like it. I’ll throw together a rough draft. Once he’s got that you can just tell him you think the Polish side needs a hundred per cent attention. Tell him the groundwork’s been done on Barrett and he should get somebody else to polish it up.’

      He looked at her dully. ‘Pass off your work as mine?’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

      Barbara shrugged. ‘You know you do good work.’ she said. ‘Next time you’ll stand up to Charles, instead of letting him give you more than you can reasonably handle. So in the long run the company’s better off. Isn’t that the main thing?’

      He frowned, drumming his fingers on the desk. ‘I don’t know...’ he said. ‘I know Mallory says you’re brilliant, but—’

      ‘He says what?’ said Barbara.

      ‘Have I got this wrong? He told me some story about the Vendler Morris report on the single currency...’ His eyes closed briefly, then opened wearily again. ‘Typical Vendler Morris fiasco. They kept putting people on it and then taking them off whenever a major client asked for them—whole thing a shambles, serial nervous breakdowns among the secretaries. Then they got in a temp who turned out to be some kind of crazy linguist with a head for numbers and was on the project, unlike their own staff, for three consecutive months...’

      Barbara suppressed a shudder. She’d been lured into the assignment with an iron-clad assurance that it would be for no more than three weeks. She’d gone into it with the plan of going off to Crete at the end of the three weeks. She’d been given one of the documents as a simple proofreading job, but had seen problems with the numbers and had started cleaning things up.

      Before she knew it the three weeks had become four, then five, then six, and still Vendler Morris and the agency had insisted that if she could just stay ‘one more week’ they’d have everything under control. She hadn’t realised Charles knew about it, but he’d developed some software for Vendler Morris a few years back—he must have heard about it then.

      Carlin looked at her sceptically. ‘Well, we’re not talking three months—we’re talking a couple of days.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘but in this case I really do have some idea of what you’re up against. At least it’s worth a try.’

      He didn’t really look convinced, just too tired to argue the point any longer. ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind...’

      ‘I’ll probably enjoy it,’ Barbara said truthfully.

      She took the materials away with her, and for the first time since she’d started working for Charles she deliberately took a lunch-break away from her desk.

      Barbara went to the cafeteria and loaded her tray with a slice of chocolate cake, a slice of cherry cheesecake, a slice of peppermint white chocolate mousse cake and a cappuccino. There was nothing like dessert for stimulating the mental processes—unless it was three desserts.

      She went to a corner of the cafeteria and looked through the previous bids and the materials they’d been sent from Barrett. Then