When in Rome... (10 page)

THREATS: Mike

MIKE MARSHALL

STRENGTHS: absolutely gorgeous, successful business, cool, sexy, is taking me to Rome

WEAKNESSES : doesn’t keep promises; bad with money—at least he used to be; dumped me by leaving a note; flirts with other girls—although he hasn’t done that recently either; could be changed character; calls me at inopportune moments

OPPORTUNITIES: well, Rome has to be a pretty big one. I mean, I suppose we’re going to be sharing a room . . .

THREATS : David

I didn’t know that so many people get to work a whole hour before they have to. What is that all about? I have an excuse: I haven’t been able to sleep, and when you’re up at sixA.M ., and there’s nothing good on the telly, you may as well get some brownie points and come into work early, right? But all these other people—I’d say half the people who work on my floor at Leary are already at their desks, and it’s only 8:15A.M .

I place my freshly made cappuccino down on my desk and sit down. My weekend has been a complete disaster. All I’ve been thinking about is the argument with David and going to Rome with Mike. I want to go so much, but every time I shut my eyes I see David’s face looking all cross and upset.

Nigel is looking at me suspiciously.

“Decided to make up for all the late mornings, have you?”

I can’t even be bothered to answer, so I grunt and sit down.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re in on time, because we’ve got a departmental meeting at nine-thirty sharp,” Nigel continues. “Guy wants to talk to us about a new project.”

“Can’t wait,” I mutter and swallow two white pills with my coffee. Coffee and painkillers. What a great start to the week.

At nine-thirty, we all troop dutifully into the third-floor meeting room. I thought it was going to be just our team, but there are about thirty of us, including Gary, the head of IT, who I snogged in my first month here. It was more than five years ago now, but I still feel mildly uncomfortable every time I see him. It was my first proper “drinks after work on payday,” and I was so excited to have some money to spend that I went a bit over the top. I remember going back into the building with Gary quite late in the evening because I’d left my keys on my desk, and the next thing I knew, we were being woken up by a rather bemused cleaner. We were kind of tangled up under my desk. At least I had all my clothes on. From that day on, I have never called the IT help desk for anything, just in case.

Gary is grinning at me, and I manage a smile. He’s married with two kids now. We are both mature, responsible adults, I tell myself, and take out my notepad. I start doodling. Georgie Marshall. Georgie Marshall. It has a nice ring to it. Georgie Bradley. Hmmm, that’s not bad either.

Guy clears his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he starts in faux-formal tones and then grins. “Guys and gals.” Okay, now too jovial. Can’t he just get on with it?

“Globalization has made the world a smaller place. As more and more process-driven functions are outsourced and taken over by enhanced technology, firms around the world are refocusing and joining forces to produce a real value add proposition for their customers. The business-to-business sector is no different, and so I am very excited to tell you today about a proposed partnership with a great business-to-business publisher in the States, Horowitz and Gold. HG are based in New York, and they are pioneers in the enhanced client interface and Web-based profiling, and through our partnership we will be able to strengthen and develop our portfolio of products, ensuring that we are at the forefront of business information in this new millennium.” In other words, “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

I start writing a list of things to take to Rome on one side of my notepad. On the other, I’m writing a list of things I’ll need to buy.

Guy has started showing us a whole bunch of slides with charts and diagrams. I approach this sort of thing on a need-to-know basis. If I need to know any of it, I reason, Nigel will tell me. So, black trousers because they go with everything, black polo neck, obviously; orange halter neck top in case I manage to get a tan . . .

“And this paradigm shift in cultural and emotional intelligence can only improve the working of our great team,” Guy is saying. “I hope I can bank on your support. It’s going to be hard work over the next few months, but I think we can all be sure it will be worth it.”

He stops talking and I look up with what I hope is an attentive look on my face. There is a deathly silence in the room.

“Are there going to be any redundancies?” asks a man I haven’t seen before. I think he might be in marketing.

“There may be some reshuffling of the pack, some essential maneuvering of personnel to ensure peak performance and integration throughout all our business units, yes,” says Guy.

I’m getting the feeling I may have missed something big. Redundancies? What has Guy been talking about? He is always talking about strategic business propositions and win-win partnerships—he and Nigel use that language when they are discussing what they ate for dinner last night, for heaven’s sake. So why is everyone looking so shell-shocked?

We all troop back and I immediately corner Nigel.

“Nigel, what was he talking about in there?”

Nigel looks at me mournfully. “Well, under the merger with Horowitz Gold there’s going to be some inevitable structural realignment,” he says.

“Structural what? And what merger? Nigel, tell me what’s happening in proper English. Why were they talking about redundancies?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Nigel looks as if he’s about to give me a lecture and then a sort of “oh, what’s the use” look appears on his face. “We need to be able to compete on a global scale, but we haven’t got the capital or resources to enter the U.S. market, so we’re merging with HG, a U.S.-based company. We do broadly similar things.”

I still don’t really get it. “But why redundancies?”

“Look, Georgie,” Nigel says slowly. “You’ve got two companies, and they merge. In each company you’ve got marketing people, IT people, research people, salespeople, and you’ve got products. Now, what you want to do is combine the two companies’ strengths and sell more products to all the customers, but without spending so much. Which means that you won’t need as many salespeople or IT people or marketing and research people.”

Shit. This sounds quite serious. What if they have really good research people in the States who know what they’re talking about and don’t spend their time surfing around on the Internet?

“And when will we find out? If we’ve still got a job, I mean.”

“Not till the merger’s gone through,” says Nigel. “If it does.”

“So it isn’t certain then?”

“Nothing’s certain till signatures are on a legal document. But it’s unlikely they’ll call it off.”

I long to call David and ask his opinion—he knows all about this sort of stuff and will be able to tell me first who HG are, and second what I should do about it. But we’re still not talking after Saturday night’s argument—at least he hasn’t called to apologize and there’s no way I’m going to be the first to call him. So instead I do a search on the Internet for Horowitz and Gold. There’s a lot of stuff.

“They’re huge!” I exclaim. “They’ve got offices all over the world! I thought Guy said they were based in New York?”

“That’s where their head offices are.”

“So will we get to go over there? For research purposes, I mean?”

For a moment, the whole merger thing starts sounding a bit more interesting. Monthly meetings in Manhattan, that sort of thing. I visualize myself stepping off a plane, being met by a group of serious-looking people in suits. Going to HG’s amazingly cool offices and giving major presentations on the latest research techniques and developments. I wonder if I’ll get any time to go sightseeing—I’ve never been to New York and I’ve always wanted to go up the Empire State Building.

“Georgie, by the time the merger has all gone through, we’ll be lucky if there’s still a research department in the U.K.”

“You don’t mean that. Tell me you didn’t mean that.”

“Sorry,” Nigel says. “I didn’t really mean that, you’re right. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

No one does any work for the rest of the day. We’ve all been sworn to secrecy, but word spreads pretty quickly. Denise spends the afternoon applying for jobs, and everyone else seems to spend their time lurking in corridors having hushed conversations. All anyone wants to talk about is: did anyone know about this; what is the management team planning to do; and who’s in the firing line. Most people seem to think IT will be the first to go, but I think that’s because IT aren’t on our floor, so people can say that without risking offense.

Guy has asked us to do some in-depth research on HG’s brand in the U.K.—how well they are known and whether their products are rated. According to Nigel, we need to skew the research to show that no one has heard of them; that way, they’ll have to keep the U.K. brand and operations. If HG products are really well known, they’ll just start replacing Leary products with the HG ones and that’ll be that. I start digging out names of our customers to start calling them, but then Nigel comes over.

“I think Denise can probably do that,” he says. Oh great, so he’s trying to get rid of me already.

“I’m perfectly capable of making phone calls, you know,” I say crossly and pick up the phone, just to prove my point.

“No.” Nigel takes the receiver and puts it down. I look up, shocked. Nigel never does things like that. Are all the men in my life turning into tyrants?

“I want you to help me do some proper research,” says Nigel quietly.

“I always do proper research,” I say. “Usually, anyway . . .”

“Look,” he hisses. “Shut up, will you. I want to find out some more about HG. Find out what this merger is really about. I want you to help me track recent mergers and the fallout.”

“Fallout?” I think I know what he means, but you can never be sure with Nigel. Once he asked me to do some research on the relevance of ABC to today’s accountant. I rung round a whole load of bemused accountants to find out whether the alphabet was really a useful tool for them in their current roles, only to discover (when the report was complete) that Nigel was actually talking about some business tool called Activity Based Costing. I never dared tell him my mistake, and we continued publishing the ABC CD-ROM because everyone in my research report said it was absolutely essential.

“I mean, what happens afterward. What happens to the companies.”

Well, obviously, that’s what I thought he meant.

Nigel and I sit at his desk going back through the last twenty years of publishing mergers. I had no idea there were so many publishing firms. Nor did I know how many publishers are owned by one company. Like, take theFinancial Times . Did you know that they are owned by Pearson, who used to own London Weekend Television? No? Well, neither did I. We put together a big list, focusing on cross-border mergers, then we highlight all the U.K.-U.S. ones.

I take my half of our final list back to my desk, and I’m about to do a search on the Internet, when I suddenly notice something. On the screen from my original search on HG, a name on one of the documents rings a bell.

“Nigel.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

Nigel reluctantly gets up and walks over to my desk. I am looking at a news report on a previous merger—HG and a French book publisher.

“Isn’t this the same company that was involved in the Brightman-Glover merger?”

Nigel looks closely at my machine.

“Scroll down,” he orders.

We search through old news reports looking for information on all the U.S.-Europe mergers in the past ten years. Sure enough, in nearly all of them the same name keeps appearing: Tryton.

“Not a company I’ve heard of,” admits Nigel. I haven’t either, but that doesn’t mean much. I mean, I haven’t heard of any of these companies.

Nigel doesn’t say any more about it, so I assume it isn’t really that interesting after all, and I carry on noting down share prices and collecting information.

By twelve, I’m starving from all this hard work so I go out to get some lunch. When I come back Nigel’s in exactly the same position, hunched over his computer.

I guess it’s because he thinks his job is on the line and he’s trying to demonstrate how hard he works and how essential he is. Personally I prefer theque sera sera approach. If I’m going to lose my job, then there isn’t much I can do about it, so I may as well make the most of it while I’m here. I sit down at my desk and take out my new copy ofMarie Claire to flick through while eating a tuna sandwich.

There’s an article about people who have slept with their boyfriend’s/husband’s/wife’s/girlfriend’s best friends. One girl slept with her boyfriend’s best friend and is now married to him with three kids; one girl slept with her best friend’s husband and is now miserable and on her own. I look at the pictures and can’t understand why anyone would want to sleep with any of them, but it does make me wonder. If I go to Rome with Mike, could I get carried away and end up sleeping with him? The thought has crossed my mind. And as David hasn’t even called or anything, I may not have a boyfriend anymore, so sleeping with Mike wouldn’t even be wrong. But if I did sleep with Mike would I be the happy-ever-after one, or the miserable-on-her-own one? There’s a counselor giving advice in the article, and she suggests looking deep inside yourself to discover whether you are happy, and to see if there’s something else that needs fixing before you sleep with someone else. Well, my curtains still haven’t been put up, but I’m not sure that will have much of an impact on my Mike/David dilemma.

“Got it!”

I look up startled. Nigel has just punched the air. You know, like a footballer or something. Believe me, Nigel is not the sort to punch the air.

“Nigel?”

He looks round quickly. Everyone except Angela, the telesales team leader, is out at lunch, and she’s taking a call—she’s got her headphones on so she won’t have heard his celebratory cry.

He motions for me to come and look at his computer screen. Reluctantly I put down a rather interesting article on plastic surgery and wander over.