Chapter 4

Act 2: Stand not upon the order of your going

Scene 1: Awkward moments

The first half hour at work on Monday was just like a normal day, almost. I stopped for longer than usual at reception to talk to Pat about her children. Alice is six and she had been upset on Saturday morning when her father called to collect her and Brian for their weekend with him and his new girlfriend. The new woman bombarded the little girl with nasty remarks about her mum and she hates spending the whole day on a couch in front of the television set. Brian loves that part although he does not enjoy the food.

I ask after her children every morning and she has shown me photographs before, but this was the first time she had confided her uneasiness about them. It was a rushed conversation interrupted by other employees arriving for work, so I hardly had time to understand the whole story and no time at all to offer an opinion before Eric phoned to demand my presence. He and I spent the next hour polishing his presentation for the meeting of team leaders, but I thought over what Pat had said after he joined the others at ten.

For some reason I cannot explain, I gave no thought to my inevitable meeting with Molly. We had not spoken since I stormed out of the spa hotel leaving her half naked in the arms of another man. I spent Saturday night with Morag and Hector. He said very little, but she was vociferous.

“She is just like some of my clients, Mark – totally self-absorbed. She’s beautiful, I’ll grant you, but she has done nothing to earn that, so why does she expect us all to admire it as if it was an achievement? This new guy will have flattered her, and she thinks it’s Ok to screw him because she has you dangling on a string like a puppet.”

I pointed out that she was highly intelligent and had achieved great success as a scientist.

“And don’t we all know it!” Morag snarled. “How she single-handedly overcome insurmountable obstacles and in the teeth of opposition from mere men, reached the giddy heights of team leader in a wee laboratory that hardly anyone has heard of.”

I had rarely seen my friend so angry. Hector suggested that Molly had ended my period of living like a monk and deserved some credit for that, but Morag was not to be pacified so easily. I was pushed into the unwanted role of defense counsel; I was the injured party, but I found myself making excuses for Molly’s behavior. By the time I left Hector after a grueling Sunday in the gym, I had had more than my fill of the topic.

Now I had an hour or so on Monday morning to think about the future of my relationship. Morag had assumed without question that I was finished with Molly; she could see no possible future for us. I mostly agreed with what she said but there was a little part that wondered if Molly and I could find a way back to the heady days just after we began dating. It was her betrayal of trust that I found impossible to forgive. If she had told me that she wanted to broaden her experience before settling down, I would have reluctantly considered the idea. Telling me lies to go off with another man was another and deeper level of betrayal.

It is not my style to make extravagant gestures. I will not storm at Molly, and I will probably walk away if she tries storming at me. If she wants to talk calmly, I will listen. I managed to focus on Molly for about fifteen minutes before I allowed my conversation with Pat to replace thoughts of my former girlfriend. Instead of the artificial problems generated by Molly, the pretty receptionist had a real dilemma to resolve. The courts had awarded her custody of her children with their father having rights of visitation.

There were so many things I did not know, so it was impossible for me to give a balanced opinion. I stopped short, astonished at myself, when I realized that I was planning to ask Pat out so she could tell me the whole story. I had not met her children and I knew nothing of her life outside the office. Why was I interested on this particular day after weeks of only the most casual interest? Even stranger was the fact that Pat had chosen today to reveal so much more of her private life. Was I giving off an aura that enabled her to detect that I had suddenly become available for romance?

Whether or not Pat sensed something, the secret of my break-up with Molly did not last beyond lunchtime. After the team leaders’ meeting, she came down to the canteen with Peter and the pair shared a table for two, leaning so close that their foreheads almost touched. There was a good deal of laughter and a substantial amount of hand touching, by Molly initially, although it was Peter who eventually claimed and held possession.

The word was all round the lab by early afternoon and I expected it was the reason for the summons to meet Paul that Kate brought me around three o’clock. She was characteristically blunt.

“I’m sorry you found out the way you did, Mark, but I’m glad it’s over. She was never right for you. Her and Peter deserve each other.”

Paul was looking down at a report open on his desk when I was shown in.

“It’s about Molly, Mark,” he announced, looking up at me.

His expression was bland at first, but as I explained what had happened, he looked increasingly baffled, finally holding his hand up to stop me.

“I knew you and she had a bit of a thing going, Mark, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Really, Mark, I’m surprised at you. This is a place of work and when you enter the door, late again, I hear, you are expected to leave your private life behind you. Now, how close are you to being finished with Eric?”

That, I thought, was why Paul is the director and I am a wage slave rushing round the countryside catching my partner in a sordid affair. Concentrating on work was like standing on a hillside in the early morning as the sun drove away the mist. I admitted that Eric could probably go on without me although I had planned to spend another couple of weeks with him. Paul nodded, only half listening, and tapped the report he had been reading when I entered his office.

“I was concerned about Molly before you had your abortive time with Peter. Things got better for a while, but this latest quarterly report is alarming. I had a chat with David, and he basically thinks she has lost the plot although he did not come right out and say so. What are you going to do about it?”

I asked questions to which Paul supplied comprehensive answers, some of which were surprising. David is a very clever scientist with low self-esteem and no social graces; no one seems to know what he does outside the lab – except Paul, who not only knows but has an excuse for meeting David socially. Both enjoy building and flying model aircraft although Paul admitted that he had taken no active part in the hobby for twenty years. He had kept up some contacts so he knew where David would spend his Sunday afternoon. An hour spent chatting about aero-engines and ailerons softened up the younger man so he would have parted with his darkest secrets. I had had the treatment from Paul in the past.

There remained a number of unanswered questions. For example, if he knows so much about David, one of the least of his employees, why did he look so surprised to find that Molly and I are, or were, an item? Then again, since he did not see the alarming report until this morning how did he know to bump into David the day before? David is notorious for not offering an opinion, making it clear that he has never even considered forming one, and yet he has convinced Paul that Molly is no longer in control of her research project.

I left Paul’s office, armed with all the reports of Molly’s group from her arrival in the lab. I also had a catalogue of unsubstantiated concerns and a good deal of innuendo. How did I feel about being ordered to snoop on my former almost-fiancée? Very wary indeed, I promise you.

“Don’t even think of making a move on Pat,” Kate warned me as soon as the door to Paul’s office was securely closed. “She’s had enough trouble without you hitting her on the rebound.”

Before I could reply, Eric came in looking worried. He had been called by Paul and was concerned that he had slipped up in some unsuspected fashion. I assured him that all was well but that Paul wanted me to undertake an emergency investigation that had to remain top secret in the meantime. He would be, I promised, the first to know when my new job was made public; in the meantime, I would continue to work from my desk in his department.

In normal circumstances there was no chance of keeping secret my detailed look at Molly’s team, but I hoped that the breakdown of our personal relationship would help to disguise my professional interest. I shut myself in the office I shared with Sinead and Patrick, two other members of Eric’s team, sitting at my empty desk wondering what to do next. I would take the next couple of days off to immerse myself in the reports, but I first had to make my exit from the laboratory this evening. I considered making a pretense of working on until everyone had gone home; like all the senior staff I had a key for the main door. The problem was not Molly, who had already signaled her response to the events of the past weekend.

It had hardly needed Kate to remind me that I had to tread warily with Pat. Reviewing my talk with her when I arrived, I was satisfied that I had said nothing that was out of the ordinary. I had asked about her children in the past, particularly on a Monday when she often had a story of what they had done over the weekend. On the other hand, she had confided in me to an unusual degree this morning. If she was responding to some signal I was unconsciously transmitting that I was back in circulation, then I had to behave with extreme caution.

Did I have feelings for Pat? There was no doubt in my mind that, if we had both been ten years younger, I would have asked her out on a date to get to know her better. She is no longer a teenager but an adult woman who has been hurt at least once before. Not only that, but she also has two children and must consider them even on a casual date. There was a danger that she would read too much into an invitation to get to know each other better.

From my point of view, there was another elephant waiting to get into the room. It was true that I wanted children, but was I prepared to bring up Pat’s children as my own? Perhaps she would be unwilling to have more kids with me, and I would still be left childless. That raised the thought that I might have been more committed to Molly if she had wanted to carry my offspring. Would she have sought the company of another man if I had not withdrawn from her a little after she totally ruled out becoming a mother?

I was brought back to the present by my office mates preparing to leave. I let them go, exiting the office at ten minutes after five. Pat is employed until half past that hour so I knew she would still be on duty. She was chatting to one of the girls when I reached the foyer, but they parted as I arrived. Pat flushed when she saw me, giving me a rather strained smile. I had to say something.

“I’m a bit confused at the moment, Pat,” I told her. “I really wanted to hear more about Alice’s problem.”

She reached forward and touched the back of my hand with the very tips of her fingers.

“I can’t offer you anything, Pat.” There was an awkward pause. “Well, nothing but my friendship, if that means anything.”

Her tentative smile blossomed into a great beam of pleasure, then tears began to form, and she dashed past me without a word, closing the toilet door behind her. I was wondering whether to stay or go when David stepped out of the lift and I took that as an omen. I held the outer door open for him, asking how the work was going as we strolled to our cars.

He did not, of course, become a great communicator in response to my overture, but he did express his regret that Molly and I had split up,

“There were a few weeks when it looked as if everything was going to be Ok,” he told me as we parted.

Even after all the exercise I had done to strengthen my upper body, I was feeling the strain of carrying a brief case filled with quarterly reports going back over four years, so I paid little attention to what he said as I staggered the last steps to my car. At home, they filled the dining table; it took an hour to put them in date order. My feelings as I went through this mechanical sorting process were mixed. Since joining the laboratory, I have discovered the pleasure of seeking out the clues that have enabled me to offer a new direction to the team leaders I have worked with.

I have described myself as a spy, but the truth is that I have made no secret of my interest in the workings of their divisions. Even in my first attachment to Geoff’s team, I was open in my questions and, when I reached a conclusion, I discussed it first with Geoff before I reported to Paul. Leaving aside the brief time I spent on the edge of Peter’s team; my snooping was largely welcomed. This new task will be very different: Molly has been keeping information from me and I expect her to react strongly when I begin to probe.

I spent the remainder of the evening planning my campaign. I knew she would place obstacles in my path, and I am sure that I thought about ways to remove them, but I cannot recall my state of mind: I have discovered so much since that I recall with shame the extent of my ignorance. I had been dating the woman for six months, during which we had talked, I believed, about every subject under the sun with no more than a handful of exceptions. My naivety almost amounted to stupidity. I do remember that I was reluctant to work behind her back; after I finished with the reports, I was going to ask to be openly attached to her team, even if she treated me as Peter had.

The surprises began almost from the moment I arrived at work on the Tuesday morning. I had expected to skim through the early reports since Paul had told me that progress had been smooth and fast in the early years. My aim was to quickly identify the moment when things went wrong so I could concentrate my efforts on decisions that had been made at about that time. There is no manual for scientific detectives, but I had found this method productive with the other teams. My experience was that one or more team member had noted the moment but his or her opinion had been overlooked.

Most teams began with a somewhat nebulous idea, working together to plan their exploration of it. The early reports were full of attempts to find a way forward, recording the failures; the next phase was enthusiastic, and often rapid, progress. I joined the team in the third phase, when progress had slowed, and the team members were unable to find an alternative path. Molly’s team began in an altogether different way.

I knew, even before I talked to her at the leaving party in the canteen, that she had joined the laboratory straight from university, where she had been researching for a doctorate. What the earliest reports made clear was that she brought with her the idea around which the team formed. There was none of the uncertainty that marked the early months of the other teams I had worked with; Molly’s team set off at full speed from the first day.

While the initial idea was hers, she faithfully recorded the contributions made by other team members in those early reports. She made it clear that she did not have all the answers when she arrived and her gratitude for the work of her team. David’s name was very prominent for the first year although it appeared less from then on. A quick check of the reports for the latest year showed no mentions at all of the contributions by other team members. Switching from the early to the latest reports was a shock: where Molly had used ‘we’ and ‘us’ at first; she was now using ‘I’ and ‘me’.

Before I got to know her, Molly had been described to me as a queen bee. This jibe came to mind as I compared the reports. The impression I had was that she is no longer the leader of a team of scientists but has now become a queen surrounded by worker bees, who do her bidding but do not make any personal contribution to the health of the hive. I wondered if my role was the drone, kept in luxury to impregnate the queen. I missed the other consequence of extending the analogy comparing her team to a colony of bees.

Once I realized that Molly brought her great idea with her, I called the lab asking for the history of her education. Kate sent an email that arrived just before lunch. It told me the facts, adding very little to my knowledge of my prey, until I read the name of the professor who had been her mentor when she began her research. He was named as Jeremy Witherstaff; and Jeremy is a sufficiently unusual name to get my hackles rising. I fired off an email to Kate:

‘Thanks for the facts about Molly’s university career but now I want the dirt. Is the mentor Jeremy the guy in the bathrobe? Was it his research idea she brought to us? Paul will Ok the gossip.’

She replied within ten minutes, giving me the impression that she had been waiting impatiently for me to ask. As I read her new email, I reminded myself never to get on her wrong side: Kate is a fount of scurrilous gossip that includes, I am sure, me and all the others in the lab. A valuable friend but a very dangerous enemy. I was sufficiently shaken to stop my work to phone Pat to apologize for upsetting her the previous evening as I left the laboratory. She told me she admired my honesty, an answer I did not find altogether reassuring.

After studying Kate’s second email, I re-read the reports from the first year of Molly’s reign. By the time I had finished, I had a fairly sound grasp of the events that led us to where we were now; I was not altogether sure of the time sequence, but I had no doubts about the result. That left me with a dilemma, and I struggled to find a way forward throughout the Tuesday evening and for much of a restless night. I had reached a conclusion that I needed to share but I had no proof to back it up – anathema for a scientist.

I was in Paul’s office by ten minutes after nine on the Wednesday morning presenting my unproven deductions.

“Molly is selling us out,” I began, watching Paul carefully to gauge his reaction. “She was seduced by her professor, and she is seeing him again. I think she came to us in the first place because she fell out with him, and I see signs that she is planning to jump ship again.”

It sounded threadbare as I articulated the story. The obvious reply was that it was a bruised ego that had driven me to make a mountain out of a molehill. Paul sat quietly while I spoke and he continued to stare at his desk set for some minutes, while I waited for what I was sure would be a scathing reply.

“I was afraid of this,” he sighed, looking up at me with a worried frown. “I should have put you on to it sooner, Mark. Tell me what you have discovered.”

I was about to begin when he stopped and asked if I minded if Kate took notes, and there was a brief pause while she locked her office door and brought in her pad and pencil.

“Her professor, Jeremy Witherstaff, seduced her when she was an undergraduate,” I began.

“I heard that she seduced him, but it hardly matters now,” Paul interjected. “Whoever began it, they became lovers before she got her first degree.”

“He got her a scholarship, and she started a doctoral degree course. Sometime in the first year, she argued with Witherstaff about the research and finished up joining this lab, bringing her research project with her. It must have been her own idea since the university made no claim on her.”

“There was some correspondence with the previous director, but it centered on poaching their star pupil rather than the research she brought with her.”

“I’m still working this out as I go along, you understand. I assume that Witherstaff wanted her to choose another project and she got stroppy – I know only too well that she likes to get her own way in everything.”

“Witherstaff’s chair is funded by our main rivals in the pharmaceutical business, and he wanted her to work on one of their pet projects; she turned him down and he let her go to teach her a lesson.”