Chapter 6: Moves

The next morning started more normally. I got into work early and by the time everyone else was arriving, I had finished coding the module. The preparatory work for testing the module probably took longer than the actual testing. Starting with the project test build, I had to make quite a few changes to link in the new module.

I was deeply engrossed in the edits when there came a voice from behind me, “Michael?” That was definitely ceiling dent-worthy. When I had recovered my composure and saved the edit I had been making, I swivelled around and found Caroline, holding a large cardboard box in front of her.

“I baked you a cake as a thank you for your help on that fault report,” she said. “You said you’d share it with your colleagues so I made a large one. You made me look good to the customer so I wanted to make you look good to your colleagues. There should be enough for everyone.” Caroline lifted the lid to reveal the large, attractively-iced cake inside.

“I think I’d better get Ms Altropolina because there are rules about eating in the office,” I said. “I hope you’ll wait and join us in sharing it.”

“Of course,” she replied.

Ms Altropolina was in her office and the door was open so she wasn’t in a meeting. I knocked on her door and, when invited in, explained about the cake and invited her to join us.

“Food in the office is officially frowned upon so we’’ll need to take precautions. Give me a couple of minutes and don’t start without me.”

When Ms Atropolina arrived at my desk, she had a stack of paper plates, a knife and a black bin bag. She slammed a folder on a desk a couple of times to get people’s attention then, “If I could have your attention please. Michael helped Caroline fix an urgent fault report last week and Caroline has baked a cake to say thank you. Michael would like to share this good fortune with his colleagues so come and grab a slice before it’s all gone. I’ve got some paper plates from the cafeteria - make sure you use them. Anyone making a mess on the carpet will be made to lick it clean.”

Then Ms Altropolina turned to Caroline, who by this time had removed the cake from its box and placed it on a spare desk. “Since you made the cake, please would you do the honours,” she said, handing the knife to Caroline. “And my waistline hates you,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

From the sounds of appreciation, everyone seemed to enjoy the cake. I certainly did.

“This is really good,” said Ms Altropolina to Caroline after finishing her slice. “You could do this professionally.”

“Thanks,” replied Caroline. “I do commissions for friends and family as a hobby but there’s not enough money in it to earn a living. I’m better off doing support work here than I could ever be baking cakes.”

“Would you mind sharing your recipe?”

“Not at all. I’ll write it down for you. I would normally add a little Guinness too, to add weight to the flavour. Although there wouldn’t be much of the alcohol left after cooking, I decided to leave it out because Michael had warned me about his low alcohol tolerance.”

By the time the cake had been demolished and people had drifted away, leaving their paper plates strewn haphazardly on the desk, I reckoned nearly half of those who had partaken had solicited Caroline’s contact details so they could commission cakes from her.

“Thank you,” Caroline said to me. “It looks as though I’ll be busy baking at weekends for the near future.” Then she gave me a cakey kiss on the cheek and went back to the support team.

“How are you doing on the new new module?” asked Ms Altropolina.

“I’ve finished the initial coding. Now I’m linking it in to the test build so I can test it. It might be a small module but it’s called from a lot of others. I think updating the documentation will take longer than the coding,” I admitted.

“I’ve contacted Mr Shah. He was receptive to your reasons for the change and is going to investigate more thoroughly then get back to me.”

“So it’s okay for me to continue?”

“Yes, but don’t bust a gut on it.” Ms Altropolina turned towards her office then stopped and turned back. “Your mess, you clear it up,” she said, pointing to the paper plates. “Put them in the bin bag and take them out to the rubbish skip, and take the knife back to the cafeteria. Then give the desk a good wipe down.”

“Okay.”

By mid-afternoon I was able to start testing. Being such a small module, there wasn’t a lot that could go wrong with its internal logic. The real test would come during beta testing

Ms Altropolina announced her presence again by gently brushing the top of my hair again.

“Caroline caused another dent in the ceiling this morning,” I mentioned, after I’d slowly swivelled around.

Ms Altropolina make a big show of looking critically up at the ceiling and making tsk tsk sounds before getting down to business. “I’ve heard back from Pervis Shah, the contractor,” she said. “He said he reused elements of a previous project without thoroughly checking the spec. While his version would work, he agrees with you that the two module structure would be better. He even asked permission to back-port your idea to the previous project because of the likely performance improvement.”

“Did you agree?” I asked.

“I thought about asking him to pay for it, but on balance it’s better to have him owing us a favour in case we need his expertise him again. I did say we’d give him an updated version of our specs once you’d finished them. I think that’s something you should prioritise, because they’ll need to be signed off by me and the beta test team. And if the Ministry of Defence and Kevin Nicholson come through, you might have to hand over the larger module to someone else to code, and they’ll need a revised spec.”

Ms Altropolina was right: if I had to abandon the work in its current state, it would be very difficult for someone to take over from cold. “Hopefully I’ll be able to tackle that tomorrow,” I said. “I wasn’t planning to work late tonight because I’ve arranged a squash match.”

“Is that with the girl with family issues?”

“Sadly no. I’m thinking of conceding that one.”

“Why?” Ms Altropolina asked.

“Because promotion means more to her than it does to me. Samine plays to win but I play to meet new people and have a good run around. I’m currently vying for promotion but I think players in the next league up are likely to take their matches too seriously. I play squash to get fit, they get fit to play squash.”

“Yet again I’m amazed at how your mind works,” said Ms Altropolina. “Perhaps I should take up squash, with the damage you inflicted on my waistline this morning.”

“From one slice of cake?”

“A second slice might have fallen on my plate and I didn’t want to waste it,” Ms Altropolina confessed with a smile.

My squash match that evening was an older man named Dave. I’d played him before and beaten him comfortably in two sets, but that didn’t mean I would take him for granted.

The first set was comfortably mine. But the in second set, Dave played like a man possessed. He raced into the lead and I struggled to stay in contention, eventually losing by three points.

The deciding set started as the previous one finished, Dave edging ahead with me hanging on. Then he suddenly seemed to run out of steam and I went on to win by a deceptively comfortable margin.

“That was a good match,” said Dave in the bar afterwards. Dave was nursing a pint because dinner would be waiting for him at home, whereas I was taking advantage of a chef working that night to have chicken and chips.

“It was,” I agreed. “I thought you had me after the second set.”

“I don’t have the stamina of you youngsters,” said Dave. “But I enjoy playing against you. You don’t lord it over me when I lose, unlike some. What’s the story with you and that Indian girl? You haven’t posted a result yet.”

“We were dead level when we got the dreaded knock on the door. One set each, exact same number of points. We had such a great game we agreed to play again rather than use some artificial means of deciding a winner. Unfortunately she’s dealing with family issues, and hasn’t been able to give me a firm date yet.”

“That’s a shame. I’ve been following her results and she’s doing well.”

“I’m also playing Barkley out of turn this Friday evening. That means I won’t be under any pressure to fit games in and Sami can pick a date which suits her.”

“Sami, eh?” said Dave, winking suggestively at me.

“She’s interested in joining the company I work for, CornerStone Systems, when her university job runs out of funding. I gave her an informal sounding-out in the bar afterwards.”

“Sorry for the insinuation. She’s a nice girl, from what I’ve heard. And I hope you beat that prick Barkley.”

I didn’t know what Dave’s beef with Barkley might be: he’d seemed okay to me. “I’ll try, but I’ve played him once before and he beat me.”

Dave declined my offer of a refill, then wished me luck for Friday before setting off home for dinner. I quickly polished off the rest of my chicken and chips then made the short walk home.

When I got home, I found a message from Jardine on my answering machine asking whether Sunday afternoon would work for collecting old lady’s clothes. I immediately called her back.

“Hello, Bottomly Hall, ground floor. Who are you calling for?” came a girl’s voice. That appeared to be the standard way the students answered that phone.

I asked for Jardine Flemming and she was tracked down quite quickly this time.

“Hi Michael, I was working on my project.”

“Sorry for interrupting you.”

“No problem. I was about to take a break for a caffeine infusion anyway.”

“Sunday afternoon is fine,” I said. “How long should I ask the agency to book you for?”

“Don’t be silly, the girls and I are doing this out of the goodness of our hearts. Plus the other girls are looking forward to taking their pick from the clothes before the rest are donated to charity. We were hoping for some time around three. We’ve got the use of a box van, which is probably an overkill, and your reserved parking spot will be very handy.”

“Three o’clock will be fine,” I confirmed. “Out of curiosity, how firm do you like your mattresses? I’m thinking of replacing the one in the old lady’s bedroom because it’s got a couple of small stains, and I’d like the replacement to be female-friendly.”

“That’s a tricky one,” mused Jardine. “My princessy side likes a soft mattress for sleeping on: I had a soft mattress when I was young. But I prefer a medium mattress when indulging in horizontal terpsichorean activity.”

“Thanks. See you Sunday,” I said, then I reminded Jardine of my new flat’s number before we said our goodbyes.

I could no longer detect Jardine’s presence on my bed linen and I debated whether to change it that evening or wait until I moved flat. I decided to leave it on the principle that enough of Jardine’s essence might remain for a homeopathic effect. It may have worked: I slept like a log.

Thursday morning I got into work at my usual early time. I quickly finished testing the small module then set about editing the specs to separate the module from its much larger sibling.

Mid-morning Rolf Magnusson made his presence known at my cubicle. Rather than approach from the rear, he entered a cubicle adjoining mine, whose occupant must have been temporarily absent, and he draped himself on top of the partition. No ceiling dent!

“Christina Altropolina said you still worked out of a standard cubicle but I have to admit I’m a little surprised to find it’s true,” he admitted.

I explained to Mr Magnusson about wanting to be viewed as a peer by my co-workers, and how convenient it was for sharing their knowledge base and manuals.

“In that case, you’re probably not going to like my news. We’ve identified a secure office for you. It’s on my floor. It’s a bit broom-cupboardy compared to the other offices on the floor, but it’s larger than the one Christina has down here and it has an outside view. And no, you can’t swap with Christina. The upstairs office has the logged key-card entry than the Ministry of Defence insists on, and like you, she likes to be accessible.”

I didn’t have anything to say, so I just nodded, silently thanking Mrs Fairbairn. That was one of the strategies Mrs Fairbairn’s had taught me to simulate empathy; if you don’t know what to say, just nod.

“If you’re not too busy at the moment, I can show you the office and get it all set up for you,” continued Mr Magnusson.

Not too busy? Was he serious or was that sarcasm? I had no idea. “Now’s fine,” I lied, quickly saving my edits.

I followed Mr Magnusson to the lift. I never used the lift, I always used the stairs, but this time I didn’t have a choice. Mr Magnusson pressed the button to go up two floors. When we got out of the lift I felt disorientated because I’d never viewed the floor from this position before.

“Are you coming?” asked Mr Magnusson at my hesitation.

The lift doors started to close but I slipped through just in time.