Chapter 8

8

Nadja Sideris [email protected]

To: Anna Sherwood [email protected], Dylan Thurgood-Jones [email protected], [email protected], Edward Burnley [email protected], & seven others

SUBJECT: VISIT TO LABS—THIS WEDNESDAY

Hello, interns!

Hope this email finds you well—or at the very least, not crying in the toilets because we've scared you off already.

I've arranged a trip to the Arrowmile labs and factory this week to meet with some of our product development, testing, and research teams and to get a firsthand look at some of our products. If you're lucky, you'll get to test-drive something. If you're unlucky, you'll end up breaking it and live in shame for the rest of the summer.

The minibus will collect you all from the office at 9a.m.—please be prompt. To those of you cc'd, we encourage you to come along, but as your roles don't directly interface with the work in the labs, it's not mandatory. If you are interested in joining, please let me know by end of day TODAY.

KR,

N.

—

Not two minutes after I finish reading Nadja's email late on Monday morning, I get a reply-all from intern Freya with a profuse apology that she won't be able to make it but to please let her know of any future opportunities.

The group WhatsApp lights up on my phone immediately as Monty calls her out for being the first Reply All of the summer with a string of laughing faces. I snort, then look at the email again, then type "KR email sign off" into Google and find out that it stands for "kind regards," which, duh, of course it does.

My own email sign-off has gone through a few turns, seeing what other people are using and what feels right for me. Apparently, this is a mark of my personality and professionalism in one fell swoop. I know it will form part of people's first impressions of me this summer, so it matters.

"Cheers" doesn't feel very like me, and "best wishes" is cringey and cutesy.

I'm not bold enough for Nadja's "KR" and single initial, which I think must require a certain degree of daring that I definitely do not possess.

"Sincerely yours" has a nice ring to it, though. That's what I've settled on.

I drag the attachment Nadja sent with her email into my calendar, wincing when I realize it clashes with a few things, including my lunch with Molly (the former marketing intern who is now running the department). I know it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but she's the person I want to be. She's someone I could learn from—maybe even ask to mentor me, if I'm lucky.

Dejected, I send Molly a cancellation with a note explaining why, and ask as politely as I can to let me know another time she might be available. When she pops up in the bottom corner of my laptop screen with a message on Teams a few minutes later, my heart actually skips a beat.

Molly Phelps

Hey, Anna! I'm free for the next hour if you are?

Anna Sherwood

I am—sounds good! Thank you so much. Sorry again for the inconvenience.

Molly Phelps

No worries. See you at the twelfth-floor breakout area in five?

It's only after agreeing that I realize maybe I should double-check with my boss, Michaela, if she minds, so I walk over to her desk, nervousness gnawing at me. It feels like being in school and asking the teacher if I can go use the toilet in the middle of a lesson, which only makes me feel younger and more out of place than I already do.

But Michaela nods aggressively in a way that makes me think I've done something right. "Of course! Excellent stuff, Anna—Molly was one of the best in her cohort of interns, and she's made some great strides here. I think you'll really learn a lot from her. It's so good to see you taking initiative! Before you go, though, did you get the chance to go through that spreadsheet I sent you this morning?"

"Yes! I made all those updates you asked for, so it's ready for your meeting this afternoon." It was a hard few hours battling through the spreadsheet, but I got there in the end.

"Great. Thanks, Anna—I know it's a bit of lackey work, but it's so annoying to have to update it every week, especially with the formatting issues."

"Can't you automate it? Pull the data from the master file and set the calculations to run each time you refresh it, rather than having to plug it all in manually each time?"

Michaela's eyes light up. "Brilliant! That would be so helpful. You can sort that out, can't you? Shouldn't be too tricky, I'm sure."

Shit. Did I volunteer? I definitely didn't. I limped through my extra computing module at college, and it didn't even cover Excel formulas. My abilities there begin and end with summing up some cells. The work Michaela asked me to do today, mainly filtering out values based on dates and calculating how much they've changed compared to a budget, took the entire morning. I wouldn't even know where to begin to automate it.

But for some reason, I tell her, "Absolutely! I'll have it finished by this time next week."

"Excellent. Thanks, Anna. Enjoy your meeting with Molly!"

I hurry off before I sign myself up for something else I don't actually know how to do.

Upstairs, I find Molly at one of the tall, small round tables in the little breakout area near the kitchenette. There are also a couple of sofas, and while there's a TV and a bowl of free snacks (including KitKats), there's no pool table or anything. I'm kind of relieved. I'd had visions of trying to ask questions between ping-pong serves.

Molly, dressed in chic beige trousers and a plain black top, waves me over with a broad smile. She's wearing a full face of makeup and her hair is in a pretty, effortless updo, with an orange Sharpie sticking out of it. I wonder if she knows it's there.

She sets her phone facedown on the table as I take a seat opposite her. "Hi! Lucky you messaged when you did, I was just about to deal with some admin stuff."

"Oh God, I'm sorry. Please don't feel like you have to—I mean, it's…we can do this some other time."

"Nah, it's just some expense claims and stuff. It'll keep. So! One week down, eleven to go! How's life in PD treating you sofar?"

I don't bore her with the novel-length report I offered Dad on Saturday afternoon, but as I go through what are probably pretty rote responses, I'm busy reminding myself of the things I want to ask her.

After a little small talk, Molly dives right in. "You wanted to do some Q&A about how I got this role and found my internship and stuff, right? Well, weirdly, even though my degree was in marketing, I got put on the B2B team—you know, business-to-business, client-facing—with Nadja. Obviously, you've met Nadja already, yeah? Great, well…"

I've already looked Molly up on LinkedIn, so I know most of the backstory she gives me. She got a first in her degree from Leeds (it's nice to have some common ground in attending the same college), then went on to do the Arrowmile internship before getting her master's at St.Andrew's, where she graduated with distinction. She speaks three languages and worked freelance doing graphic design and copywriting and as an SEO specialist while she was a student. Her CV must be bursting at the seams. She's got more endorsements on LinkedIn than anybody I've ever seen.

And she made head of department (sorry, "senior partner") by twenty-five.

And, as I discovered with a quick stalk of her Instagram, she's just bought a house with her partner and has two cats. Her life looks like a dream. It's picture-perfect, completely intimidating…and exactly the kind of thing I want for myself when I'm her age.

I need to know all her secrets.

"I need to know all your secrets," I blurt out, interrupting her midsentence, so in awe that I can't contain myself. I'm even a bit jealous, which is ridiculous. There's no reason I couldn't have her kind of life one day.

Molly laughs, looking flattered but also like it isn't the first time she's heard this.

"I wish I could give you some kind of how-to handbook, but I don't know what to tell you. Some of it is sheer dumb luck. Some of it's that I'm good at what I do. I have a flair for this, and some things you just can't teach," she tells me—not arrogant, only self-assured. She gives a small shrug. "I can tell you how the sausage gets made, but after that, it's up to you. No guarantees, you know?"

"I know," I say, trying to hide my disappointment. It was naive of me to think there really was some kind of secret.

"I will say that one of the best things I did on this internship was push myself outside of my comfort zone. Way outside of it. Working on Nadja's team gave me such a good view of what the customer is seeing that it ultimately helped me sort of reverse engineer my way through stuff in marketing. But you know when I was on the internship, I actually asked HR if I could move teams in my first week. I think I asked every week for the first month." Molly laughs again, this time punctuating it with a self-deprecating eye roll. "I thought I knew everything, but that's rule number one, Anna. You might have a super-crazy-awesome-cool CV and be a whiz kid at college, but here, you don't know jackshit."

Molly stares at me so hard that I lean back in my chair.

I resist the urge to wipe my hands on my skirt and instead very slowly, very deliberately pick up my pen and say aloud as I pretend to write in my notebook: "I don't know jack shit. Got it."

She lets out another peal of laughter, which gives me a warm glow in my chest, and I relax a bit. For all her impressive background, Molly seems like the most easygoing, down-to-earth person I've met at Arrowmile. Friendly in a way that makes me feel like if we'd met at college, we might actually be friends. "Seriously, I mean it—learn as much as you can about everything, from everyone. You might want to carve out your niche and focus only on what your manager tells you to do, but make the most of this experience. Even if you don't end up here afterward, it'll give you some perspective to take with you. Oh—and pro tip, if Nadja sends out one of her invites for shadowing opportunities or visits to the lab or whatever, even if she says it's not mandatory, do it anyway. If you want to get a job here after you graduate, showing enthusiasm really gets you in her good books."

"I kind of guessed. We're going to the labs this week, and her email didn't make it sound very optional. "

"She's a real force of nature, believe me, but she's also amazing to have in your corner. She really knows her stuff. Don't take it personally if she's a little blunt, though."

"Or if she makes me cry in the toilets?" I joke.

"Or that," Molly says, and then stage-whispers, "I was one of those. I thought I'd ruined this huge contract renewal worth three million pounds. I mean, obviously I messed up big-time, so of course Nadja wasn't happy about it, and she was only criticizing me to teach me how to do it better next time. But, you know, I was this fresh-faced intern thinking I was single-handedly destroying the company and my manager hated me and was going to give me the sack, so I had a complete breakdown in the toilets."

"Oh my God. I'd die if that was me."

"I wanted to, believe me. But Nadja came to find me when I didn't come back to my desk after a few minutes and talked some sense into me. She was really nice about it, actually. Although, don't let her know I told you that—I think she likes the whole hard, scary exterior vibe she's got going. It'd totally undermine her with the interns if you all knew she was a major softy underneathitall."

"My lips are sealed." And then I find myself wondering what Molly's opinion is of the CEO, since she's being so up-front, unprompted. So I say, "We met Mr.Fletcher the other day."

"Topher?"

"Right. Yeah. Sorry, I'm just—it still feels weird calling adults by their first names, you know?"

For a second, there's a blank look on Molly's face before she remembers what it was like to be a teenager. "He's pretty cool. Amateur science geek with good business sense and solid people skills. Approachable, but always busy, so good luck catching him for one of these little Q&As."

Good to know, I think, already forming a plan of attack. (Should I email him? Maybe I should try to drop by Freya's desk a couple of times first, suss things out, and bump into Fletcher in person….)

"But hey, if you can't grab Topher for a chat, his son Lloyd is always around. Have you met him yet?"

I've done a whole lot more than "meet" him, Molly, believe me.

"Um. Uh, y-yeah. He came out for drinks with everybody the other night."

"And?"

Molly's eyes bug and she leans toward me, head bobbing side to side as she waits, eager for my opinion this time. I stammer for a moment before managing, "It's interesting how much he wants to be involved and get to know the interns. Does he…make a regular thing out of that?"

I'm fishing for gossip. So sue me.

If anybody is going to spill the tea, I figure it's probably Molly.

"Oh, sure. Wouldn't you? He must've only been—what, fifteen, I guess, when I was doing my internship, so he wasn't exactly meeting us for after-work drinks or anything, but wouldn't you gravitate toward the only people in the office who are remotely close to you in age? He always seemed…" She pulls a face, debating her next word.

"Self-important?" I guess, and instantly regret that I said it out loud.

She shakes her head, still considering—luckily for me, she's too preoccupied trying to pick the right word to judge me for the one I just suggested. Then she shrugs and says, "Mature for his age. Kind of lonely, I guess."

Yeah, well, being an arrogant toad will do that to you.

"Poor guy," I say instead, and then risk adding, "I heard some rumors he got a little too friendly with one of the interns last year."

Molly's eyes bug wide—she's delightedly scandalized. "You could say that! He dated one of the girls. Totally head over heels for her. They called it off at the end of the summer, though. I think it was the distance or something, what with her going back to college…Poor kid was heartbroken. He was majorly on the rebound for a while, went on a bunch of dates. Double-booked himself one night, I heard. Got in a whole heap of trouble with the two girls, who both showed up at the restaurant!"

I must pull a very judgmental face because Molly laughs.

"Right? I think he's over all that now, though, so don't hold that against him. He's a real cutie."

Cutie? Could she undersell his good looks any more? He's almost deliriously good-looking. Not that I care. But I can tell it's my turn to talk, and I have to say something, so I shrug and reply, "He's quite attractive, I suppose."

Confusion flickers over Molly's face before she gives a small breath of laughter. "Sure, but I meant he's just a sweet guy. I forget he's, like, a fully grown adult now. I still think of him as a kid."

Shit. Idiot, idiot. Of course that's what she meant!

"He's been here basically full-time over the last year," Molly adds as an aside—either not noticing my embarrassment or polite enough to ignore it. "So he's probably, like, the go-to guy for any questions you have. Even my cohort relied on him, although it was a little weird having to ask a kid to explain the intricate dynamics of certain client relationships and stuff."

Great. That's just what I need: to have the go-to guy be the one person I'm determined to avoid.

"He spends a lot of time around the office, so he'll be much easier to catch than his dad," Molly tells me.

"Oh, right. Cool. Um, sorry, you…Quick question. You said he's here full-time? Like, he has a job here? Right now?"

"I mean, ‘job' is probably stretching it. He kind of floats around everywhere, you know? As much as I hate this phrase because I think it's super gross, he really does have his finger in a lot of pies. Like, every pie Arrowmile's got to offer."

"You're right. That is a…super gross phrase."

Molly's distracted by her frantically buzzing phone. "Shit, that's my next meeting. I've gotta go, sorry, Anna. But this has been fun! Don't be afraid to reach out if there's ever anything I can help with or if you want to spend some time shadowing us in marketing. And seriously—Lloyd's your guy. Make use of him!"

"Thanks, I will!" I call after her as she hurries toward the lifts, hoping she didn't see my crossed fingers.

Lloyd is anything but "my guy."

NEW EMAIL DRAFT

Dear Lloyd,

I don't know how you've done it, but you've got them all fooled. You've got everyone thinking you're some stand-up guy, with that winning smile and oodles of charm. You just radiate it, and they've all fallen for it.

I did, too.

You fooled me, worse than anyone. How am I supposed to forgive you for that?

Never mind forgive you. How am I supposed to move past it, pretend it doesn't bother me? It does. I'll never admit it to you, but it bothers the hell out of me. I liked you. And now I very much the opposite of like you. Would it have killed you to just talk to me last week?

I just wish I'd known who you really were, before you kissed me.

Sincerely yours,

Anna Sherwood