After checking the sneaky middle buttons of my white shirt and gently tapping the false eyelashes that seemed like such a good idea when I was doing my makeup that morning, I checked my watch once more to make sure. It was time. I rapped hard on the door, flickers of excitement sparking in my arms and legs, my entire body humming with a dangerous cocktail of adrenaline and the caffeine from three extremely large coffees.
‘Come in.’
I opened the door. Inside the tiny, low-ceilinged room was a desk, and behind the desk, sat a woman.
‘Hi,’ I said with big smile and bright eyes. ‘I’m Francesca Cooper?’
She looked me up and down, glanced at her computer screen, and made a small, confirmatory noise as if to let me know that yes, I was, in case I was the one who wasn’t sure.
‘Sarah Pierce,’ she replied. ‘Come in.’
Parking my suitcase by the door, I sat in the only available seat on my side of the desk and searched the room for clues. The office was extremely small and her large, modern desk looked extremely out of place, taking up more than its fair share of space. The floors were dark wood, the walls were whitewashed, ancient-looking beams supported the very low ceiling and all I could smell was coffee. A small window at the back of the room was the only source of natural light, and behind the desk, a narrow staircase wound around itself, disappearing into the ceiling. It felt old in the way that only London ever did, as though it had always been here. I wondered how many different people had walked into this room in the centuries since it was built, and how many of them had been forced to pee in a Costa Coffee cup, due to the absolute state of the train toilet.
‘We’ll keep this brief because I don’t have a lot of time,’ Sarah said. She was all business, just the way I liked it. ‘Obviously, I’ve got your CV and you answered the questionnaire quite well, so this meeting is to see whether or not you personally meet my requirements.’
I gave a terse smile and nodded sharply to show I understood. Understood that I was great on paper and if I didn’t get the job, it was entirely because I was shit in person.
‘Believe me when I say we’ve seen half of London for this job,’ she went on. ‘It might seem simple, but if you want to do it right, there’s a lot to learn, and fast.’
Just like fishtail braids and blowjobs, and I was really only good at one of those things.
‘I am always up for a challenge,’ I said, flipping my perfect fishtail braid over my shoulder. Hadn’t Rose said the face-to-face was just a formality? It certainly didn’t feel like a formality. It felt like Sarah Pierce was looking for reasons not to employ me.
Her forehead creased into deep furrows as she picked up a piece of paper from her desk, and I immediately recognized the font. It was my CV. I pressed my clammy palms against the leg of my smart black trousers and cleared my throat. Once upon a time, I’d enjoyed the challenge of an interview – it was like trying to act against someone, only you hadn’t seen the script and you had to guess all the right lines. But today I was more nervous than I was prepared to admit. I really, really wanted this job. I needed it. I had something to prove.
‘I’m very capable,’ I added, silently trying to communicate that she could absolutely trust me, that I respected her, and that I also really liked her top. ‘I pick up new skills very quickly and I’m extremely reliable.’
‘Yes, it says all that here,’ she replied, giving absolutely no indication she believed me. ‘The things I need to know aren’t on your CV. Tell me, Fran, are you capable of discretion and do you have common sense?’
‘Oh yes. Me to a T.’
There was no need for her to know about the time I tried to iron my shirt collar with my hair straighteners. While I was wearing it.
‘Did you know the “T” stands for tittle?’ I asked, my right leg bouncing up and down. Sarah arched her left eyebrow without moving any of her other features. ‘And tittle is an old English word for the tiniest amount? I love words, I love language. Reading is one of my favourite things. You can’t go wrong with a book, can you? Unless the book isn’t very good, I suppose, but you can always learn something from a book, even a bad one. I didn’t love Fifty Shades of Grey but I doubt there’s anyone who read that and came away without learning anything, even if it was only about contract law.’
She stared across the desk, cool, calm and even.
‘Anything else you’d like to share?’
I opened my mouth and then closed it again, shaking my head instead. Silence was, after all, golden.
‘Good,’ Sarah said, pushing aside my CV and clicking at something I couldn’t see on her computer screen. ‘Let’s get down to it. The NDA you signed gives us legal protection against leaks, but I’d rather not have to sue anyone else out of existence. Quite frankly, it’s a lot of paperwork and I’m busy enough as it is.’
I pressed my palm down on my knee, trying to calm my jitters. This was starting to sound less and less like your average assistant job. Who exactly had they sued out of existence? I felt a sudden longing for one of Suzette’s morning muffins, slightly concerned I might be getting into something out of my depth.
‘I’ve already run a background check and everything came up clean. Either you’re very good at keeping out of trouble or very good at keeping trouble away from you. Which is it?’
‘The first one?’ I replied as I rubbed at the gold band on my right hand. ‘Sorry, you ran a background check? On me?’
‘Standard procedure,’ Sarah said, as though it was a perfectly normal thing to tell someone. ‘Don’t worry, we didn’t find anything incriminating.’
Make that two morning muffins and a vanilla slice chaser. Was this an interview for a temp position or was I being vetted to join MI5? I was good at languages and very much enjoyed listening in on other people’s conversations, but I was a shit poker player and couldn’t be in the sun for more than ten minutes before I turned into a lobster, and they both seemed like factors that would get in the way of my obtaining double ‘0’ status. When was James Bond not titting around on a beach somewhere?
‘You’re not very active on social media, are you?’
‘More of a lurker than a poster,’ I replied, wondering if she had found that photo of the two sheep doing it as funny as I had when I posted it in 2016. ‘Could we talk more about this background check?’
‘No.’
Well, that answered that question.
‘If you saw a celebrity on the street or at a restaurant would you ask them for a selfie?’
I sat back in my chair, horrified. ‘Oh my god, absolutely not.’
I couldn’t even tap a woman on the shoulder to say her tag was showing without breaking out in a rash.
‘Let’s say your employer asked you to do something you weren’t comfortable with,’ Sarah said with careful diplomacy. ‘How would you feel about that?’
I was definitely being recruited as a spy. Time to cue up some YouTube poker tutorials and crack out the factor 50 sunscreen.
‘It would depend,’ I replied slowly, visions of me racing a speedboat through the Venice canals and immediately crashing into a gondola roaring through my head. ‘As long as it wasn’t illegal and didn’t put anyone in danger, I’d deal with it.’