Jackie Oliver’s new colleagues changed her life in ways she could never have imagined.

This story is fiction. There is no sex and no pornography, and medical diagnoses are not claimed to be accurate. Any similarity to, or difference from, reality is coincidental. Global Synthetic Developments (UK) Ltd is a fictitious company.

The Boss - 2 of 8 — Occupation

Day followed day as they tend to do. Over the next few weeks, I met all the team. I quickly put faces to names, and names to faces, for whom I booked travel, hotels and appointments; slotted files into drawers and shelves; collected coffees; collected buns - the edible variety, usually sticky and with either fresh cream filling or icing on top and used regularly for birthday and other celebrations; ordered stationery; prepared, proofed and bound presentations and reports; liaised with other departments; provided a first-line computer helpdesk; did basic computer training and acted as a human calendar. I even managed the odd bit of shorthand and typing; there wasn’t much call for it as everyone in the team had their own laptop PC, but it did come in handy at team meetings.

I’d also enlarged my circle of friends, with whom I indulged in lunches, dinners, drinks, shopping, theatre visits and so on and was kept very busy indeed. After a month, I was beginning to wonder just how many people I’d replaced.

My first payslip arrived, and I took great delight in pointing out my job title - Marketing Administrator — to my friends when we met that evening at “The Globe”. They all came along to share in my good fortune. I say all because where Richard is, you can be sure to find Anthony. If they didn’t work in separate places, I’d swear that they were glued at the hip, or somewhere unmentionable.

Then there was Nick Latham. He wasn’t a sociable animal; he seemed - ‘socially distant’ is about the only thing I could come up with. He never, to my knowledge, took work home; he was too good a manager for that, and delegated virtually everything. He wasn’t unfriendly; he just didn’t mix with the rest of the team. I soon came to the conclusion that he was very shy.

The more I got to know her, the more I noticed certain things about Cathy Hungerford that seemed to confirm that she was not the Significant Other in Nick Latham’s life. And it didn’t take me much longer to decide that Nick had no Significant Other. There was something about him that was both intriguing and puzzling. He just didn’t relate to any of us women as had other men that I’d known; he didn’t seem to have any traditional male interests either — you know, beer, sport, cars and women. If he did, he kept them outside the office. He was as different from Eddie as a tomato is from a potato.

The first Saturday of August threatened to break all sunshine and temperature records and one word immediately sprang to mind - BEACH.

Chrissie, one of the sales executives, with whom I’d spent a few evenings over the past month overdosing on rock guitar legends and Chinese food, decided that we ought to ”show the men of Bournemouth what they were missing”. I was still bruised from my disastrous brush with Eddie. Truth be told, I now couldn’t be bothered about relationships; far too much trouble to sort the crap from the rubbish, far too much risk of damage and far too much, too soon, of anything involving putting my feelings in the public arena. Against my better judgement we went to Bournemouth.

Oh well, if push comes to shove, I can always play the stuck up bitch - and I should be safe enough on a day trip, with Chrissie to help me fend off unwanted attention

We chatted amiably while waiting at the rail station. Then, with one minute to go, the talking computer announced that the train was late. As we now had twenty five minutes to wait before the new departure time, I suggested coffee.

You know; it still winds me up that some jumped-up overpaid moron thinks that we’ll settle for a computer apologising for their shortcomings. Imagine; you go to use your microwave or your cooker and get a message like “Bing-bong Hello, I’m having an unscheduled day off; come back tomorrow Bing-bong ”

On our way to the coffee shop, affectionately known by us natives as Slurp Central, I thought I spotted a familiar face. She looked to be in her early-twenties, had blonde hair with a pair of sunglasses perched on top, and curves in all the right places. She was wearing a cerise strappy top and a white, summer skirt with a pattern of cerise roses. A pair of sling-back white sandals, a white shoulder bag and simple but tasteful, and by no means cheap, jewellery completed the look. She was towing a small silver-coloured suitcase on wheels and heading towards the London train.

I spent much of the journey to Bournemouth trying to work out where I might have seen her before.

Chrissie noticed that I was distracted. “You’re not with me, love, are you?” she astutely observed after twenty minutes.

“There was a woman at the station, and I can’t lose the feeling that I’ve seen her before; it’s driving me nuts.” I resolved to put the matter out of my head and just enjoy the day.

Bournemouth seemed to attract more than its fair share of families. We made our way to the beach, and must have walked the best part of half a mile to find an area that wasn’t occupied by most of the population of Dorset. A strategically placed ice-cream stall and our picnic lunches kept us fed and watered for the day and we spent a very pleasant time in and out of the water, alternately swimming and tanning.

It was during the journey home that the resemblance hit me. I had no idea whether or not Nick Latham had a sister but, if he did, Miss Blonde at the train station could easily have been her. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was. But could I ask him? Was it really any of my business? No, on both counts.

“Morning Jackie, good weekend?” chorused the assembled company as I carefully balanced the team’s post and my contribution to the occasional product quality test of the local baker’s shop, and gingerly made my way to my desk.

“Saturday was great,” I replied while receiving approving lip-smacking noises for my choice of elevenses. It was nobody’s birthday but I’d been working there for near enough three months; I decided that a little celebration was in order, so I treated them to a gooey cake each.

The weather was still quite hot, and was I ever glad that Global Synthetic Developments had efficient air-conditioning in their United Kingdom headquarters building. The temperature dropped from an oppressive ‘melt you in an instant’ to a ‘pleasant summer breeze’ the minute you walked through the main entrance.

I fired up my computer and, while the overgrown calculator and its licensed virus - sorry, operating system - decided whether or not they would talk to each other, I glanced towards Nick’s office. There he was in one of the armchairs: legs tucked under him, a clipboard in his lap and surrounded by papers. As Team Administrator I looked upon it as part of my job to ensure that he was well supplied with the plastic coffee that was dispensed by the machine near the lift. There wasn’t a cup on his table so I got up, negotiated with the vending machine and knocked on the open door.

“Morning Nick, coffee?”

“Oh, hello Jackie, thank you very much. Did you manage to take advantage of the glorious weather over the weekend?”

I thought about the mystery woman at the station but settled for “Yes: Chrissie and I went to Bournemouth for the day on Saturday. We spent the day swimming and sunbathing.”

“That’s good, I’m so glad that you are settling in and making friends. I’m impressed with how quickly you’ve become an asset to the team. Would you please take care of a booking for me? I’ve e-mailed you the outline. You’ll find details of the hotel and my usual travel arrangements on file.”

I took that as dismissal and returned to my desk. I still couldn’t get the woman at the station out of my mind but, gradually, over the next few hours, work inevitably got in the way of my thoughts.

On one of my daily trips to the staff restaurant - the food was good, plentiful and cheap - I’d spotted an advertisement for someone to share a house. When things in the department had run down from manic to simply breakneck speed, I keyed the number, introduced myself, and we agreed to lunch the following day.

Judy Miller was about my height, was slim, dark-haired and wore spectacles. She had a lovely smile that showed a couple of rows of perfect white teeth. She wore a white round-neck tee with green lettering which assured me that “I’M LIVING PROOF THAT DREAMS CAN COME TRUE,” grey slightly flared trousers and low-heeled sandals.

“It’s a modern two-bedroom place with a small garden,” she explained, “but the rent is too much for me on my own. Lindsay was with me for a couple of years. She was working towards her doctorate, but decided to throw all that away and marry some stockbroker from Surrey. I ask you!”

I laughed; while thinking that there was no way that I would ever again get myself hooked up with a bloke.

The house sounded like a great improvement on rent-a-dump, so I went that evening to give it the once-over. The result of all this was my giving notice at Guildford Road and moving in with Judy as soon as I could.

Autumn weather was very kind to us. I loved my job, and Judy and I were getting on famously at Winter Road. From a rescue centre, we got a tom-cat called Spook. I was content. Judy was out most evenings with her boyfriend. I spent some time with the gang, but otherwise stayed at home and watched television. When he wasn’t trawling the neighbourhood and seducing the local feline talent, Spook would often leap onto the sofa and favour me as his cushion. I loved it when he chose to stretch out on my lap, his soft white paws tucked neatly underneath him, while I gently stroked his silky black fur. He was the only male I could bear so close to me, other than Richard and Anthony — and they didn’t count.

My mind was in serious relax-mode as, one weekend, Sally, Judy, Chrissy, Richard, Anthony and I all went up to London to see the musical show ‘Mama Mia’. ABBA was definitely not Emmy’s scene; anyway, she was working. We planned to travel by train on the Saturday morning, stay overnight at a posh hotel, and return after a bit of sight-seeing on the Sunday.

We again all met at the train station and made for the London train. Sally, walking closely behind me, bumped into me as I suddenly stopped, sucked in my breath and said to myself, “You again; I wish I knew who you are.”

For there, wearing a red dress and jacket, and heading for the first-class carriage, was Miss Blonde. She’d changed her hair style a bit but it certainly looked like her.

“Oomph! I do wish you’d give me notice next time you stop to admire the scenery.” Sally pointed to a tall, dark-haired man half-way down the platform.

I muttered an apology and picked up my pace. By the time I was halfway along the platform, Miss Blonde was lost in the crowd.

In London, we headed towards the Tate Modern gallery for some serious culture shock. That’d be Anthony’s idea; paintings, pots, bits of twisted metal and weird mechanical things that did a lot and achieved nothing.

Such things left me cold, but Anthony fairly drooled.

The painting was called “Bottle in a Lake”. I couldn’t see a bottle and I think the lake must have dried up years ago. To me, the whole thing just looked like a child’s building brick set that had fallen out of its box.

Anthony, of course, raved about it. If it had been for sale, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it hanging on their living room wall next time I visited.

Still, it was fairly warm weather and we soon adjourned to a pub by the Thames to eat, drink and become slightly merry as the day progressed. My thoughts kept turning to Miss Blonde; who the hell was she? She bore more than a passing resemblance to Nick and I became more and more certain that I was experiencing irregular sightings of his dear sister. Then I mentally slapped myself. This was stupid; why was I so obsessed with a total stranger? What did it matter anyway? I resolved to forget her.

We eventually arrived at the theatre and took our seats. The unashamedly romantic plot cleverly weaves together nearly two dozen numbers by ABBA, Sweden’s Eurovision song contest winners in 1974.

I watched the young actress on stage as the lights dimmed. A single dim spot softly lit her face and, as the first bars of the chorus started, my eyes teared up. “The winner takes it all; the loser’s standing small….” The song could have been written for me. My previous relationships had been doomed to failure, but I still was an incurable romantic.

What a stupid expression; did I want to be a cured romantic? Sounds like something you do with ham; cured ham is preserved in some way, often by smoking (no, not tobacco). Oh, I give up; look it up in Wikipedia.

Much singing along later, we fell out of the theatre and into our hotel. After a leisurely breakfast, we set off down Piccadilly to Green Park and Buckingham Palace. We had lunch in Mayfair, then made our way back towards Waterloo Station and the train home. It wasn’t a cheap excursion by any means but, what the heck, we needed to party and this was the way to do it.

Those of us Global Syntheticists - is there such a word? — re-hashed the weekend over lunch the following day. We agreed that we’d had a super time and, when funds permitted, we’d do the whole thing again. Well, the weekend, not the same show.

Life went on and all was fine until an incident in late November upset the balance of my simple life.

Chrissie, Maggie and Sue, all from the sales team, together with Emmy, Judy, Sally and I, decided that the place to do Christmas shopping was London. We picked a Saturday in late November — YES, I know, no-one in their right mind shops in London that close to Christmas. We didn’t have a lot of choice. Before then, I had no money; Chrissie, Maggie and Sue had been away on business; Emmy had been busy, and I don’t know what Judy’s or Sally’s excuses were.

Anyway, we all headed for the early train and, amazingly enough, found seven seats together. Girl talk occupied us for the entire journey to London and, when we arrived, thoughts naturally turned to Starbucks, where we would plan the day. Space was tight so Chrissie, Emmy, Sue and I stood in the queue while Judy, Sally and Maggie were sent off to grab a couple of adjacent tables.

We were just working out where to start, have lunch and so on, when I became aware of a conversation at a table near the wall. I recognised the voice and, over the background noise, I caught —

“Where shall we start, Debbie, Oxford Circus?”

“That sounds good to me. We could go to Selfridges for gifts for Mummy and Daddy.”

I shivered as I thought of my parents, and old feelings threatened to re-surface.

The adjacent conversation continued.

“Yes, I suppose that we could.”

“Nikki, I was wondering if…”

They continued talking about their plans for the day. I turned slowly in my seat and was astounded to see two identical Miss Blondes.