Chapter 1

Penny Walters, our sexy teenage office junior, looked at me with her head tilted slightly. It was the ‘Question’ look that most men are familiar with, the one that can mean just about anything, yet we are always expected to know which particular anything. In this case, I’d said that decent music had stopped being made after the late seventies; an exaggeration, I know, but close enough in my biased reckoning. I was also inclined to wind Penny up a little.

She went on to name a few recent groups and solo artists, unsurprisingly all male.

“Pretty boys!” I laughed, before adding. “Girls buy their stuff because of their looks, not the music. Every generation has them, including mine, but musically not a chance. Ask yourself how many boys buy their records.”

Just then Sally Higginbottom, my department’s Office Manager called Penny over to her. Sally was a short, handsome woman in her early thirties, always wore a boring dark business suit to work, but once in party mode, she loved the brightest colours around. She was quite young to have attained her current role, but it was a position that she totally deserved. Most of the time she was easy to get on with, as long as you didn’t cross swords with her. Then she was ruthless, although she never appeared to bear grudges, whatever the outcome of any disagreements. She was liked by virtually all the staff and more importantly; she was just as well respected. I’d always said that I would much prefer to work for somebody that I respected but didn’t like than the other way around. With Sally I was lucky enough to do both.

Sally was married to Bob, an accountant with a local partnership, working his way up, he hoped, to becoming a partner. He was a few years older than his wife, but due to a prematurely white head of hair, looked far older. Always dressed immaculately, he looked every inch the accountant. His wicked sense of humour and sarcasm belied that. He always attended any office do that went on and we had become quite good friends. He was almost as tall as my six and a half feet, which meant that he was well over a foot taller than his wife, making for an amusing sight, but as Sally said, ‘we’re all the same height lying down.’

She was quiet close to my young friend and it appeared to me, that Sally, for reasons best known to her, had decided to mentor Penny.

“We’re not finished yet,” Penny warned, trying to look serious.

As she turned away and strolled back to her desk, which was next to Sally’s, I couldn’t help but admire the view. She was eighteen or nineteen, at 5’9”, she was tall for a girl, with a slim but not skinny figure. I’d once seen her wearing a white tee-shirt, sans bra, proving her medium sized breasts were firm. Make-up was limited to eyes and lips, though, according to my daughter Amy, the art of make-up was to look like you weren’t wearing any, go figure! Her green eyes, usually sparkling with humour, contrasted with her dark brown hair, which just fell short of her waist and had such a wonderful sheen to it. I often wondered how long she spent each night brushing it. With two daughters, now in their twenties, I remember well how much hard work that natural look, which we men love, actually takes. As my gaze moved down from her firm derrière to her long legs which her short black skirt displayed admirably, I heard her laughing comment.

“Dirty old man!”

“Guilty as charged.” I responded as Penny stood besides Sally. The contrast was almost comical as Sally was barely five foot tall, yet I guessed still weighed the same as the younger girl. Sally’s short-cropped, dyed blonde hair competed the disparity. I smiled to myself before returning my attention to my computer screen. Just as I did, the screen saver popped up, requiring those extra few keystrokes and a few seconds doubt as I struggled to recall my latest password. ‘How does it always know when I’m about to restart?’ I mumbled to myself.

Just before lunch, Penny came round and asked if I wanted anything from the shop. One of her duties was the office’s ‘gofer’, which included the lunchtime sandwich run, usually just to the local corner shop.

“Please! Anything except...”

“Cheese!” Penny finished for me.

“Ah! Mind reading another one of your skills then.” I laughed.

“Just one of many.” She winked, as I handed her my money.

Twenty minutes later she pushed aside my notes and sat on my desk, handing me my sandwich. Coronation Chicken was today’s choice and I started to unwrap it. Thirty seconds later, that complex task achieved I looked up to see Penny still at my desk opening her own sandwich.

“What do I owe the honour of your company to, then?” I asked.

“We haven’t finished our discussion on modern music.” She looked over to where a couple of our younger male colleagues sat, then back at me. “Plus, you’re less hassle than some in this office.”

“Penny, the way you look, you are always going to get attention from half the adult population, that includes this office. However if anyone takes it too far, then have a word with Sally, she will stop it dead, I can assure you of that.”

“I can believe that.” Penny acknowledged with a teenage giggle.

Trying to lighten the conversation a bit, I said. “Anyway, what about my attention, surely a ‘Dirty Old Man’ is far worse than a couple of nice looking lads.”

She smiled at that. “You know I was only joking when I said that, and I know you are just acting and that don’t really fancy me.”

I raised an eyebrow and very deliberately felt my pulse. “Yes there is a pulse so I’m alive, I’m male, which I already know without the need to check.”

As intended, this brought an even louder giggle.

“And you can take my word for it that I’m not gay. The result is that, of course, I fancy you, but I’m also three times your age so just a bit too old for you, hell I’m probably too old for your mother, let alone you.”

“But you never come on to me. I know you always look when I leave or approach you, but you do it in such an easy way I never feel offended. I just assumed it was an act.”

“To be honest Penny, its probably because of my age. Understandably, you never consider us ‘Old Farts’ in the same way you do men of your own age. I look at you because I appreciate beauty. You can lay me to rest the day I stop appreciating the feminine form. Now before I scare you away let me put that into context. I consider you in the same way as I do, say, a Ferrari. Fabulous to look at and admire, makes me wish I was young again, but, would I want one? Definitely not! This decrepit old body couldn’t even get into one these days. Anyway before I embarrass myself too much, let’s get back to music, a subject I know about and you obviously don’t.”

That was it for the rest of our lunch break, a tongue in cheek debate on the merits, or in my opinion, the lack of them, of modern music. I had to smile when a couple of those on her ‘modern’ quality list, were actually covers of an earlier artist song. I took delight in pointing this out. I was surprised though when I received a kiss on the cheek before Penny returned to her desk. The rest of the day flew by as I became engrossed in my latest project, or at least it did until ten minutes before leaving time, when I was called into the CEO’s office, alongside Sally. As the senior developer on the team, this was the norm. Stephen, never Steve, McMahon was an arsehole. If I liked and respected Sally, then I had nothing good to say about Mr. McMahon. He often called these meetings with minutes to go in the working day, scared that we would prolong a project if they were to be held during the actual day.

“Why are you behind on the Adnams project?” He demanded as soon as we sat down. Our CEO wanted everyone to know that he was the most important man in the company. I say man, because under his ‘leadership’ no woman would ever lead. He was dressed in the best money could buy, his shirt alone probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. He’d even started to stand and walk like he’d seen international leaders doing, trying to make himself look wider, more powerful. Whether this worked for prime ministers and presidents, I don’t know, but on this CEO, it looked pathetic.

“You keep changing the specification,” Sally protested. Everywhere I’d worked in development, feature creep was a recurring problem. Here it was consistently bad, Mr. McMahon never seemed to say no to any client request. The price always went up but the deadline never moved.

“That’s your problem, you should know by now that these small changes occur and build that into the time line.”