Ruthless Boss, Dream Baby. Susan Stephens

If you weren’t bald when you started your evening out, you certainly would be by the end of it.

      And yet it was a genuine sixties product, Magenta mused, leaning her cheek against her folded arms as she stared at the unappealing hairpiece and waiting for inspiration to strike. She’d been so enthusiastic up to now, seeing only the good, the fun and the innovation of the sixties. But, realistically, how many other things about that time would have got right up her nose?

      ‘Magenta…Magenta! Wake up!’

      ‘What’s wrong? ‘ Magenta started with alarm as someone grabbed hold of her arm and shook her awake. Well dressed in sixties style, the girl looked smart and bright—and totally unfamiliar. Magenta felt like she had the hangover from hell—and, not having had a drop to drink, that was a serious concern. ‘How long have I been asleep?’ Her neck suddenly didn’t seem strong enough to lift her ridiculously heavy head from the desk.

      ‘Magenta, you have to get out of here now.’

      ‘Why? Is there a fire?’

      ‘Worse—Quinn,’ the girl explained with what sounded like panic in her voice. ‘He mustn’t find you here.’

      ‘Why not?’ Magenta stared in bewilderment around her office, which seemed to have been cleared of all her creature comforts while she’d been asleep. But it wasn’t just the flowers, the coffee machine, the bottles of water or the family photographs that were missing. ‘Hey, where’s my laptop?’ she said, shooting up. ‘Has there been a robbery? ‘

      ‘Magenta, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do know you have to get out of here now.’

      ‘All right, all right!’ Magenta exclaimed as the girl took her by the arm and physically dragged her towards the door. ‘I’m sure I locked this door last night.’

      ‘I used my key.’ The girl shook a spare set in her face.

      ‘What’s the rush? I’ll need my mobile phone, and where’s my tote, my handbag, my briefcase?’ Magenta demanded, glancing back at the vastly changed room.

      ‘No more questions,’ her new friend hissed frantically, tugging at Magenta’s arm. ‘We don’t have time. Quinn will be here any minute.’

      A multitude of thoughts and impressions were slowly percolating through Magenta’s sluggish brain. This was a new girl, possibly someone Quinn had brought in. She seemed nice, though, confusingly, she seemed to know Magenta when Magenta was certain they had never met before. ‘Did Quinn get my list?’ she said, clinging on to priorities while her brain sorted itself out.

      ‘What list? You didn’t give me a list.’

      ‘No, that’s right—I gave it to Tess.’

      ‘Tess?’

      This girl didn’t know Tess? ‘Sorry, uh…’

      ‘Nancy,’ the girl supplied, looking at her with real concern. ‘Magenta, are you sure you’re okay?’

      ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ This was growing stranger by the minute; if she hadn’t felt so heavy-headed she would have been faster off the mark. ‘I gave a list of the list of things Quinn should implement immediately to one of the girls in the office.’

      Nancy huffed. ‘If you had given me a list like that, I would have seriously lost it on purpose.’

      ‘Has Quinn been bullying you?’ She forgot her own con- fusion; bullying in the office was one thing she wouldn’t stand, and Magenta’s concerns soared when Nancy refused to answer almost as if she was frightened of being overheard. ‘Well, no one’s going to bully you while I’m around—especially not Quinn.’

      Nancy hummed and started tugging on Magenta’s arm again. ‘I’m not joking, Magenta, we have to get out of here.’

      ‘But where do you want me to go?’ This had been Magenta’s office since—well, she could hardly remember; it had been hers for so long now.

      ‘You work in the typing pool, remember?’ Nancy told her urgently, poking her head out of the door to check the coast was clear.

      ‘The typing pool? ‘ Magenta laughed. ‘Is this some joke of Quinn’s to get us all in the right mood for the sixties campaign?’

      Nancy gave her a funny look.

      ‘To be more accurate, you used to work in the typing pool,’ she finally replied, nudging Magenta towards the door. ‘The guy who ran the place before hotshot Quinn arrived from the States took his office manager with him, so Quinn promoted you.’

      ‘Why didn’t Quinn text me? And what’s this?’ Magenta demanded as Nancy bundled her towards a mean little desk set to one side of her office door—a door she now noticed with outrage that already bore the legend, ‘Gray Quinn’.

      ‘This is your desk now, Magenta,’ Nancy explained. ‘It’s a great improvement to the typing pool, don’t you think?’

      ‘Do you want to hear what I think? No. I didn’t think so,’ Magenta agreed as Nancy shook her head. ‘I don’t know what’s happening around here, but this isn’t my desk—and Quinn definitely can’t take over my office.’

      ‘But, Magenta, you used to work in the typing pool—you’ve never had your own office,’ Nancy insisted, looking increasingly concerned about Magenta’s state of mind. ‘Don’t you remember anything? ‘

      Magenta swept a hand across her eyes as if hoping everything would change back again by the time she opened them again. But, to make things worse, people she didn’t even know were staring at her as if she was the one who was mad.

      But how could this have happened? She gazed around and felt her anger rising. Quinn had to be some sort of monumental chauvinist; men occupied all the private offices while the women had been relegated to old-fashioned typewriters—either in the typing pool, where they sat in rows behind a partition as if they were at school, or at similar desks to this one outside the office doors. Ready to do their master’s bidding, Magenta presumed angrily. She remembered her father telling her how it used to be for the majority of female office workers in the sixties. ‘Why are all the girls typing?’ she asked Nancy in a heated whisper.

      ‘It’s their job!’ Nancy said, frowning.

      ‘But why aren’t they working on the campaign? ‘ Magenta noticed now that many of the women, some of whose faces were adorned with heavy-framed, upswept spectacles, were pretending not to look at her.

      ‘What campaign?’ Nancy queried, stepping back as a keen teen brushed passed her.

      ‘Wow, Magenta, you look really choice!’

      ‘I do? ‘ Magenta spun on her heels as the young man she had never seen before gave her a rather too comprehensive once-over. ‘Why, thank you…?’

      ‘Jackson,’ Nancy supplied, having cottoned on to the fact that Magenta needed all the help she could get.

      ‘Jackson.’ Magenta raised a brow. ‘Stop staring at your Auntie Magenta and go find yourself a girlfriend.’

      Jackson laughed as if Magenta could always be relied upon to say something funny. ‘You’re a gas, baby.’

      Had Quinn changed all the personnel? Of course, he was perfectly entitled to, Magenta reasoned. Quinn ran the show now. But what had happened to her friends? And what had happened to their working environment?

      So many questions stacked up in her mind, with not a single answer to one of them that made sense.