Feeling elated after her successful meeting, Grace decided to swing by the agency while she was in the neighbourhood and catch up on any news while relaying her coup of getting Steve Boyd on board.

However, her heart sank when she walked into the big open-plan area where staff hung out to relax, chat, talk through ideas, or work away from their hubs, and heard the fast, high-pitched, nasal whine of Spencer’s voice.

Spencer Campbell was the new young chairman of the agency and most of the staff considered him a hotshot with too much attitude. He’d been ruffling feathers in his sweep through the company to rev things up. While he considered himself a hands-on chairman and not a ‘conference room chief’, his arrogance and gung-ho, new-broom persona had caused a lot of angst.

Grace, and many of her colleagues, found Spencer irksome, to put it mildly. He’d had one clever idea once, which had become a popular campaign, and he’d milked it for all it was worth ever since. Some of the senior staff saw him as a Wunderkind, whereas he was more of a one-hit wonder in the eyes of the creative staff. Grace was glad she kept out of office politics as she worked virtually independently of the agency. However, she knew Spencer was annoyed by her ‘wilful freedom’ and had been attempting to rein her in by requesting that she base herself in the head office. She was relieved the assignment to Bali would take her even further from the sphere of Spencer.

‘It was just awwwwwful, one of the worst campaigns I’ve eeeeever seen. Talk about a frog going off in a sock . . . he thought it was bloody marvellous. It was the pits! I would’ve fired the director on the spot . . . Oh, look who’s here, Gracing us with her presence!’

‘Hello, Spencer,’ said Grace serenely. Then she turned to greet Allison and a small group lounging on a sofa, spreadsheets and drawings on the table in front of them. ‘How’s it going, guys?’

‘Pretty good. How’re you going with the Bali job?’ said one of the young producers.

‘Yes, what’s Steve Boyd like? I love his work,’ said Allison.

‘Oh man, I’d kill to work with him. What’s happening, Grace?’

Spencer turned on his heel towards her, his tight skinny jeans and leather jacket out of step with his pale skin, thinning yellow hair and pinched features. Grace noted he had new tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a glittery stud earring. Real or fake? she wondered idly, before deciding it was fake. Spencer was too mean to spend actual big bucks on something that might not be noticed. He wanted people to know when he was splashing money around, mostly on his expense account.

‘Report to me about the film crew and director before you leave,’ he said coolly, tapping one high-heeled tooled cowboy boot loudly on the floor.