He glanced up as she approached, his expression startled. His fingers flew over the keyboard and as she rounded the corner of his partition, she had the impression of a computer screen quickly refreshing. It looked like Tellit resembled everywhere Marie had worked, with employees who liked to feel they were scoring points by doing their own thing in company time with company resources. Human nature, the same all over. It was a tendency that didn’t bother Marie, so long as productivity was acceptable and nobody took the piss.

‘Hi. I’m Marie Mather. The new marketing director.’ She held out a hand.

Gareth accepted the handshake with no enthusiasm. His hand was cool and dry, the pressure firm but not aggressive. ‘I figured that’s who you must be. I’m Gareth Taylor, one of the screen and phone grunts.’

‘I prefer to think of you as frontline staff.’

Gareth raised his eyebrows. ‘Doesn’t change the reality.’

‘You’re in early.’

He shook his head, sighing. ‘Look, I know Rob will have given you the bullet points. Coming to work is the only consistent thing in my life right now. I don’t want sympathy. I’m not like him with his “pity me, my wife left me” shtick. I just want to be left alone to get on with things, all right?’ His voice was tight with frustration. She could only imagine how hard it was to deal with other people’s well-meaning interference on top of such a devastating loss.

Marie leaned forward and peered at his screen. ‘Message received and understood. So what are you working on?’

She’d hoped he might at least smile. Instead, he scowled. ‘It won’t mean anything to you till you’ve got your feet under the table. I’m implementing a strategy to switch silver surfer customers to long-term contracts. And I think we’re doing it wrong, so maybe you might want to come back and talk to me about it when you’re up to speed.’

There were two ways of taking Gareth’s brusque response. For now, Marie elected to avoid confrontation. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’ She sipped her cappuccino. ‘I’m always happy to hear from my team.’

Tonight, when she relaxed with a glass of white wine while Marco cooked dinner, she’d enjoy telling him about this encounter. As they often did, they’d set up some light-hearted wagers about how it would go with her new colleagues. Would she win Gareth over or would he be determined to remain alienated? Would Rob’s obvious desire to flirt cross the line to the point where she’d have to bring HR into the picture? She and Marco loved to play their little game of speculation, sometimes even using their fantasy workplace lives to spice up their own bedroom games.

It was harmless fun, Marie thought. Completely harmless.

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