Daydreamer

Lucy

I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. The office temperature had been just about bearable in my thick jumpers, but in my current silk shirt, fitted suit and four-inch-heels combo, it was freezing. Plus, my ankle was throbbing from when I’d savagely twisted it earlier on the way into the lift. Unfortunately, I’d arrived there just as Will the Slimeball was getting in – he’d spotted me coming through the large double doors this morning and insisted on holding the lift for me, even though there were two others I could have gone in. I’d tried to wave him away with a smile, telling him I’d catch another, but he just ignored me, keeping his foot shoved against the automatic doors to keep them open.

Will was just plain mean and gave me the creeps. He had even less patience than Felix with my daydreaming. I was mostly relegated to office gopher-slash-tea-maker, which, to be honest, was probably for the best. When I’d been making the tea for him and his clients last week, after he’d instructed me not to “fuck it up like you always do” right in front of them, I’d overheard him telling the others that I was “total shit as an assistant but pretty fuckable for someone who dresses like a tramp”. This was met with a ripple of contemptible boys’ club laughter, which made my flesh crawl. I’d had to slink back in there, completely mortified with a tomato-red face, and serve those dickheads their tea. I cursed my blushing habit again as I moved around the room; some of them did look deeply uncomfortable when they glanced at me – it must have been pretty obvious that I’d overheard them. Will, however, did not seem in the least bit uncomfortable with the situation. The bastard seemed to revel in my discomfort in general. He’d even cornered me by the kettle two days ago on the pretence of reaching for his favourite mug in a cupboard above my head. The process of reaching for it seemed to involve a fair bit of side-boob contact. When I scuttled away, he actually laughed.

“You’re a skittish little thing, aren’t you?” he’d said in that self-satisfied smug tone. “Don’t worry, my taste doesn’t extend to scruffy country bumpkins.”

Well, that may have been the case, but it didn’t seem to stop him grabbing me this morning as I fell into the lift after going over on my ankle, and then hauling me up against him as he dragged me inside. I did not want to feel my boss’s junk against my stomach at eight in the morning. The whole thing made my flesh crawl. When I scuttled away, he laughed.

“Just making sure you stay upright,” he said through his smug smile. “First time in heels? Must say I like the new look. Always suspected those jumpers were hiding a passable body.”

I was ashamed of myself. I should have been able to tell him to fuck off. But in reality, I was a country bumpkin. Navigating an urban predator like Will, who was soon to be a junior partner in the firm, was beyond my capabilities. So I just ran out of the lift as soon as the doors opened like a frightened rabbit, twisting my ankle again.

The day had deteriorated since then. I’d been thinking about a really annoying plot hole in my latest book (how was Astrida, the Queen of Light, going to get from the Black Kingdom to the Fae underlayer and still retain her powers?) when fingers snapping in front of my face brought me back to the present.

“Do you think she’s had a stroke?”

I blinked, and my heart sank as I looked up at the CFO of Moretti Harding. How she made it to the top with the level of misogyny around here was a mystery, but Victoria Harding was properly terrifying. Completely emotionless. I don’t think I’d ever seen the woman crack a smile. She rarely actually condescended to speak to anyone. Usually, everything was communicated via her assistant Lottie. Now, Lottie did smile. To be honest, she seemed to be the friendliest face in the office and the only one who didn’t seem to fit the corporate vibe completely. Pretty with caramel, curly hair and an easy smile. Don’t get me wrong, she wore the same power suits and heels, but her multiple ear piercings, the small tattoo behind her ear and the neon trainers I saw her change out of when she arrived at the office yesterday told a different story. But then Lottie could get away with anything because of how powerful Victoria was. I didn’t have that luxury.

Weirdly, I actually knew Victoria from childhood. My brother’s friend Ollie was her half-brother. But I’d only seen her a few times when I was growing up, seeing as she was the product of Ollie’s dad’s affair and so lived with her biological mother. This was quite the scandal as Ollie’s dad was the Duke of Buckingham at the time (he’d since died and Ollie had inherited the title). Mum said that aristocrats had affairs all the time, so it wasn’t really that shocking. One of the few times I’d met Victoria had been at our small cottage when I was seven and she was nine, although she didn’t speak to me. Mum told me that Victoria didn’t actually speak to anyone back then – selective mutism or something. She certainly wasn’t mute now, though.

My ankle twinged with pain again as I shifted in my seat to look up at Victoria and Lottie. Victoria was looking at me with a curious expression, her head tipped to the side like I was a bug in a microscope. The way she’d asked if I was having a stroke in that emotionless manner summed her up perfectly. As did her outfit – a winter-white trouser suit with high heels, blonde hair scraped back into a perfect bun, make-up on point. Where Lottie was pretty with a girl-next-door vibe, Victoria was intimidatingly beautiful in an untouchable way.

“Shit,” I muttered. “I mean… sorry, I’m fine. I must have just drifted off for a minute.”

“You are Lucy Mayweather,” she told me, and I nodded slowly. I’d been in the office for a month, but it was as though this was the first time Victoria had actually seen me.

“Your mother was Felix’s nanny.”

I nodded again. This conversation didn’t seem to need much input from me anyway.

“She is a kind lady.”

I blinked in surprise and then felt my face soften. “Yes, she is.”

“Do you have a condition?” Was what Victoria blurted out next.

“Er…” I blinked at her. “Well, I⁠—”

“Vicky,” Lottie said, flashing me a smile and then looking up at her boss. “Remember we talked about being blunt and being rude?” Victoria nodded, her attention still on me. “Well, this is one of those times where you’ve edged into rude. You can’t really ask people if they have a condition like that.”

Victoria frowned. “But if she has epilepsy, then her inattention at her desk could be explained by an absence seizure.”

“I don’t have epilepsy,” I rushed in to say.

“Then why were you staring into space, not aware of your environment?”

“Vicky, give it a rest,” Lottie muttered.

“It’s okay,” I said, my face heating. “Sorry, I was daydreaming.”

“Daydreaming?” Victoria said in a confused voice as if she was only just hearing about this phenomenon for the first time and found the entire concept too bizarre to be real. “Well, that’s a shame. Epilepsy absence seizures have potential treatments. I don’t think the same can be said for daydreaming.”

I pressed my lips together to hold back a laugh. Meanwhile, Lottie was rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry,” I reassured Victoria. “I don’t need treatment.” In fact, daydreaming was pretty much essential to my real career, but I wasn’t going to tell these women that. I shivered again, still feeling the cold and Victoria’s sharp eyes took that in as well.

“You’re cold,” she stated.

I bit my lip and slowly nodded.

“It’s eighteen point five degrees in here,” she went on to tell me, and I blinked. Point five… was this woman for real? “That is not a low ambient temperature.”

I looked left and right for some sort of out from this weird conservation, but the office space around me was deserted. Where was Slimy Will when I needed him?

“Why are you cold?” Victoria pushed.

I shrugged. “I have cold intolerance. It’s been a problem since I was small. Everyone else will be in t-shirts and I’ll have to wear two jumpers. I think my own personal thermostat is a bit screwy.”

“Let me see your hands,” she commanded.

“Honestly, Vicky,” Lottie said in a hushed voice. “Leave the poor girl alone. We’re going to be late for the meeting.”

“They’ll start without us. William has clearly gone ahead. He should be capable of introducing the scheme.” Lottie sighed and mouthed, “I’m sorry,” as Victoria turned back to me. “Now, show me your hands.”

I lifted my hands up onto the desk. The tips of three of my fingers had gone white.

“You have Raynaud’s,” she said; again, not a question, but I nodded anyway. The Raynaud’s had developed in my mid-twenties in addition to the cold intolerance. “Fascinating.” Wow, calling someone’s painful medical condition fascinating was cold.

“Vicky, come on now,” Lottie said in a gentle voice, and I wondered why she had to be gentle with such a seemingly spiky woman. “We do need to get to that meeting. Will might be capable sometimes, but he’s also perfectly capable of pissing everyone off too.” Then Lottie reached over and put her hand over Victoria’s wrist. This gesture seemed to be some sort of trigger to pull Victoria away from her focus on me.

“True,” Victoria acknowledged. “Goodbye,” she said to me, making a sharp turn on her heel and walking briskly down the corridor towards the conference room.

“Sorry,” Lottie said to me through a wide smile. “She can be a bit much. I better catch her up before she goes in there. Who knows what she’ll say otherwise? See you later.” And off she went at a jog after her boss.

I stared after her, thinking that Lottie was probably more my type of person, but I was simply too shy to approach her, and besides, she was always with Victoria. I tried to imagine myself finding her later and asking if she wanted to go out for a drink or something, but just couldn’t see it happening. I jumped as the phone next to me rang. Like an idiot, it was only after five rings that I thought to pick it up. Seriously, I was the very worst assistant in the history of the world.