Unperfect
: Chapter 1

Mia

I gritted my teeth as the pain shot through my ribs like a knife. Holding my breath I waited for the pain to slowly subside, all the time trying desperately to stay awake. But the office space, even though it was open plan, was warm. Warmer than any environment I’d been in for the last week. So, despite the pain, my eyelids started to feel heavy. Digging my nails into my hands, I sat straighter in the chair – the last thing I needed was to fall asleep now. I just had to hope that the adrenaline from my interview nerves (and the double shot expresso I’d bought with my last fiver this morning) was enough to keep me going.

Eyes open, I chanted to myself. Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake. Pain is just a chemical process. You don’t have to focus on it. You can choose to ignore it. Stay awake …

But it was so warm and the chair I was in was so comfortable, even with the pain in my ribs and shoulder. Just for a moment, I thought. I’ll close my eyes just for a few seconds.

“Ms Lantum?” I felt somebody shaking my shoulder gently, but couldn’t seem to work my way up to consciousness. Who was Ms Lantum?

“Ms Lantum?” Another gentle shake. “Mia?”

My eyes flew open and I flinched in my chair sending fresh stabs of pain through my ribcage. Cripes. I was Ms Lantum. That was the name I’d given these people. I had to get it together. I had to get this job. The 27p in my pocket, and the bread and peanut butter in my backpack were all I had left. Ignoring the pain from my ribs and shoulder and straightening in my chair, I forced a smile for the woman hovering over me. My heart sank when I realised that it was Verity Markham, a partner at this firm and one of the most intimidating people I’d ever met.

When I’d popped in last week to check if my application had come through, one side of my face had still been slightly swollen and my arm was in a sling. The receptionist (a beautiful blonde who I swear was wearing a surfing rash vest with her ripped jeans) had taken in my injuries and, before I could say anything, started recommending a variety of herbal remedies and explaining how a plant-based diet combined with some sort of crystal healing could accelerate my recovery. When I thanked her but said I was there to ask about the job advertised her face fell and she apologised. Apparently they no longer needed anyone. I had been all set to leave, but that was when Verity Markham strode over to us, her sky-high heels clicking across the floor of the office. Everyone in the office broke off what they were doing to watch her: perfectly tailored shift dress, expertly styled hair and a laser-focused look in her eyes, which was directed straight at me.

“Interview next Wednesday, two o’clock sharp,” she’d told me in her posh, cut-glass accent.

“Oh, that’s great! V, you should–” the receptionist started.

“Set it up, Yaz,” Ms Markham clipped, turning back to me and barking, “Don’t be late.”

It was all business and efficiency, but I hadn’t missed the way she’d scanned me top to toe, or the cogs that had been whirring behind those sharp eyes. All I could do at the time was nod. And now here I was at the interview – fast asleep.

“Ms Markham, I’m so so sorry,” I said, my face flushing as I stood and extended my hand I managed to ignore the wrenching pain in my shoulder as she shook it.

“It’s fine, honestly and please, don’t give me any of that Markham bullshit,” the other woman said, her accent so outrageously posh that from anyone else it would have been ridiculous, but from her it seemed so natural and carried such authority that it was anything but. “My parents are complete fuckers – I don’t much care for the reminder. Call me Verity.”

“Er … okay,” I said, a bit taken aback by her rampant swearing and direct manner, but also kind of loving it. I’d never been confident enough to swear like that, and Nate would never have tolerated it anyway – it wouldn’t have fitted with his vision of perfection. I decided to take it up as soon as I could muster the ladyballs required.

Verity’s sharp gaze settled on my face for a moment. “Are you … ?” she trailed off and her forehead puckered in a small frown of concern. “Are you feeling better?”

I forced a smile. “Yes, yes of course. Totally back to normal. Last time I attempt stairs in heels though.” My small, fake laugh sounded forced, even to my own ears. Verity gave me a polite smile but I didn’t miss how her eyes narrowed on me just a fraction. Her scrutiny made me feel edgy. I dug my nails into the palm of my free hand to keep from fidgeting.

“Okay,” she said, dropping my hand and stepping back. “If you’ll follow me, you can look at our system. Have you worked with design programmes before?”

“Yes, of course.” At least this wasn’t a lie unlike minor details like my actual name. I bit my lip as I followed Verity across the office space, trying to ignore how each step jarred my ribs and blinking against the bright light. A whole wall of the office was glass and there were skylights all over the place. Some people were working at computers while others were drawing at huge easels. One of the non-glass walls was lined with long racks from which a load of bikes were suspended, like a cycling work of art. There were large green plants dotted between the tables and hanging from the ceiling, and a large table in the centre of the office was covered with models of buildings – all made of white materials with clean lines and a unique, modern beauty. I wasn’t an artistic person, but even I could tell they were exceptional.

“Yo, V!” I heard shouted behind us, and turned to see the receptionist I remembered from last week jogging across the office. “Soz about that. Fell down on the old reception gig again. Mark needed an urgent spot of reiki.”

Most people in the office were dressed casually. Architecture was a creative industry and I wasn’t surprised by the lack of suits. But this girl was, yet again, taking casual to a new level. She no longer had the rash vest on, but was now sporting a sloppy jumper which fell off one shoulder revealing what looked to be a bikini top tied behind the back of her neck, along with jeans and flip flops. Her wavy blonde hair fell around her tanned, make-up free face. It looked as though she’d been swimming in the sea not long ago and had let her hair air dry, without making contact with a brush once.

“The ‘reception gig’ is in actual fact your job, Yaz,” Verity replied, not breaking her stride across the floor. “Mark did not need urgent Reiki. Nobody has ever needed urgent Reiki, because Reiki is a bunch of bullshit. What Mark wants is to get into your knickers. Why on earth the man would think that you rubbing his feet will naturally progress to polishing his knob I have no idea.”

We arrived in Verity’s office where Verity attempted to shut the door on Yaz, but Yaz pushed past her.

“Reiki is not bullshit and Mark does not want me to polish his knob,” Yaz said, giving Verity a grumpy look before her expression softened. “You’re terribly cross today and your balance of oestrogen to progesterone is off. I think someone needs a good shot of oxytocin … aka a hug.” Arms open, she took a step towards Verity who retreated rapidly behind her desk with an alarmed expression on her face. Yaz sighed and rolled her eyes, then directed her attention at me.

“Well, I wanted to come and say hi,” she told me. “Sorry I left you to dragon lady. You never know when another complementary therapy emergency might crop up. I had to give Dan a back massage in the copy room yesterday after his egg and bacon bap got taken by a seagull on his way back from Greggs.”

I blinked. There was a lot to unpack there, and I thought Verity may be right – Mark and this Dan most definitely wanted Yaz to polish their knobs. She was the most naturally beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life.

Verity cut in. “Yaz, I will remind you that I am, at the present time, your employer, and you cannot call me dragon lady, tell me I have a stick up my arse, or comment on my hormone levels.”

“Whatevs, V.” Yaz turned back to me. “So, you here for the interview? Whatcha do? Bricks-and-mortar-loving-design-monkey? Money-fiddler?”

“She’s here for the tech support role,” Verity said. “Now if you can–”

“Hurrah for tech support!” Yaz shouted, punching the air. Punched the air … for IT? Was she on drugs? “I’ll need your number so we add you into the WhatsApp. Monday is vegan curry night at The Raj just across the road and we can …”

“Yaz,” Verity cut her off, her tone indicating that her patience may be waning. “I’m just interviewing Mia. We don’t even know if she’ll take the job yet. Slow down.”

Yaz frowned. “Why wouldn’t you take the job?” she asked, looking genuinely bewildered. Little did Verity know that I would take any job at this point. I’d gone beyond desperate a couple of nights ago. “Well,” she said, her smile back again, “have a pre-interview hug.”

“I–” Before I could say anything ,Yaz had launched herself at me and I was engulfed in a tight hug. My arm and ribs protested and I felt the blood drain from my face but I managed to keep myself for emitting a low moan of pain.

“Yaz,” Verity clipped, having gone beyond annoyed now, that laser focus back on my pale face again. “Get. Out.”

“Okay, okay, it’s back to boss-lady-mode. Yeesh,” Yaz said as she pulled back, much to my relief. Her smile dropped when she took in my ashen face. “Hey,” she said, her tone now softer, “you okay there, love? Your aura’s gone all wonky.”

“Yaz,” Verity snapped.

“I’m fine,” I managed to get out, giving Yaz a small, probably unconvincing smile.

“Hmm,” Yaz said, tilting her head to the side as she studied me. “Do you–?”

“Now, Yaz,” Verity snapped and Yaz put her hands up in surrender, backing out of the office door.

“Don’t worry, Yaz isn’t a regular feature of the office,” Verity told me once we were alone. “She helps out when we’re short, or when she feels like the atmosphere in the office needs ‘readjusting’. You get used to her. Right, shall we start?”

After a few questions about my background (all the information was technically true, it was only the names of my old employer and, in fact, my name that were altered) Verity asked me to sit at her computer. The desktop was crowded with files and completely disorganised.

“What … er … what would you …?”

“We need an overhaul of the system and advice on how to upgrade. The way we store all the old projects, our referencing system, our payroll, leave rota, it all needs to be … oh!”

I had started tapping away at the keyboard as Verity was speaking and brought up the document filing system. I reorganised it, formulated a new system for accessing the files, downloaded a programme to sort the leave rota and made a start on the payroll. It took two minutes and fifteen seconds. Verity blinked at the transformed screen and then at me.

“Ah … I–I thought that would take a bit longer if I’m honest.” She laughed. “That was supposed to be your first week of work. The desktop looks unrecognisable.”

I bit my lip and waited, aware that I may well have typed my way out of a job. Sorting this entire system was less than an hour’s work, tops. I looked down at my hands and took a deep breath, despite what it cost me pain-wise. Verity cleared her throat.

“Right, jolly good,” she said, her bright, no-nonsense tone back as she recovered from her surprise. “Let’s go through to the conference room and have an actual bloody interview shall we? I’m sure we can tweak the job description a bit so that you have some work to do.”

*****

“V, what the fu– ” the huge man who’d burst into the conference room started to say, then glanced at me and cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he muttered, then turned back to Verity.

Max Hardcastle – eco architect of the moment. He’d made waves recently after appearing on Dream Homes, the most popular architectural design programme in the UK, with an affordable eco house and telling Dermot McWilliam, the show’s famous host, that designing affordable, environmentally friendly homes ‘wasn’t rocket science’ and that most of the other projects featured on the programme were for ‘reight poncy bastads who want to spend a grand on a shite tap’.

Dermot actually seemed to take to Max, as did the country as a whole – well at least the female half (maybe even some of the men if they were that way inclined). It didn’t hurt that Max had the whole Sean Bean gorgeous-but-rough-around-the-edges Yorkshireman vibe going on. That clip of him talking about ‘poncy bastads’ and ‘shite taps’ had gone viral. Apparently, by unwittingly making architecture sexy Max had caused a huge increase in school leavers applying to study it at university. It was called The Max Effect.

But, despite his huge popularity, Verity had taken over most of the other interviews during the rest of the programme, telling Dermot that Max ‘wasn’t a people person’. I’d loved that episode of Dream Homes even though it always put Nate in a bad mood. He hated Max. Didn’t have any time for “all that eco-design idiocy’.

“What the chuffing hell is going on?” Max bellowed, his deep Yorkshire accented voice a stark contrast to Verity’s. “I thought we discussed this in the last meeting?”

“Max,” Verity said in a warning tone. “I’m in the middle of an interview. Can we talk later?”

Max threw his hands up in the air and I stifled a flinch. I wasn’t good with large, aggressive men, or sudden movements. Irrational fear crawled its way up into my throat and I choked it back down with some effort.

“It’s the bloody interview I want to talk about!” he said, scowling at Verity as he towered over the table. Up until then I had thought things were going pretty well. The name on my CV may have been false, but the CV itself was not: I could easily back up all my claims. I had my real documents with me in my backpack (along with all my other belongings – but nobody needed to know that). If Verity asked for them I would give them to her, but so far that hadn’t been an issue. Verity had suggested that I could take on other duties as well as IT support (it had become clear that there was not enough work for just this). Although I was not keen to be facing the public in any capacity, I would do it if it meant I had an income. At this stage I wasn’t ashamed to say I would do just about anything.

“We don’t need owt IT support. I can do the IT support. It’s a waste of bleeding money.”

“Max,” Verity said and I marvelled at her bravery. Her tone was more like that which you would use on a recalcitrant teen than a fully grown, pissed off, very adult man. “You are too busy to do that. We jolly well need you on the creative side exclusively and you know it. We–”

“Ugh!” he spat out, his head tipping back to look at the ceiling and his hands going into his thick, dark hair. I stared at him. Everything about him was so intimidating. He wasn’t just tall, he had muscle bulk to him; you could see it, even under the scruffy jeans and ill-fitting jumper he was wearing.

Nate had been fit and had worked at it, but he didn’t have half the physical bulk of Max. And I knew from personal experience just how strong Nate had been. In comparison, Max could squash me like a bug. I suppressed a shudder and shrank further back into my chair. Becoming invisible was a technique I had perfected over the years. “There’s not enough work and we can’t afford to hire another – ”

“Lorraine’s leaving at the end of the month and Yaz it barely here as it is. We can afford it.”

I kept my eyes down and squeezed my hands together in my lap. I needed this job.

Max huffed and started pacing up and down the conference room. He reminded me of a caged tiger: huge, magnificent, and scary as hell.

“I don’t want anyone messing with my system,” he told Verity. “I’ve got it set up just the way I ruddy like it and–”

“There is no system, you stubborn arse,” Verity snapped at him. “It’s total chaos … just like your mind.”

I blinked and froze in my seat. For Verity to snap at a man this intimidating and this angry and call him an arse … it blew my mind. Verity was a freaking Amazon.

Max huffed and threw himself into the nearest chair, crossing his arms over his chest. Despite his size he actually looked like a moody ten-year-old boy in that moment.

“I know where everything is,” he muttered and Verity rolled her eyes.

“We need you actually being an architect. You know, that thing you spent ten plus years training for? I’d rather you concentrated on that.” He huffed again and, much to my terror, focused his gaze on me, his blue/green eyes flashing with annoyance.

“No offence, kid,” he said, and I felt my spine stiffen despite how scared of him I was. I knew I looked a lot younger than my twenty-eight years, but calling me a kid? Granted, I had become even skinnier over the last month, and the fact that my hair was dyed almost black instead of my natural sandy blonde (not to mention the dark eyeliner I’d taken to wearing) did give me look a bit of an emo, angsty edge. But I didn’t look that young. I pulled on the sleeves of high-necked grey jumper, which I’d paired with my black skinny jeans, and tucked my scuffed ballet flats under the chair. The outfit was actually all designer. It had cost a fortune originally. But now the cashmere of the jumper was bobbled and my shoes were scuffed. Unfortunately, I had a sum total of two outfits at my disposal at the moment. And the leggings, hoodie and trainers in my backpack (also designer, but also well worn) wouldn’t have looked much better.

Max narrowed his eyes at me and continued,“But are you trying to pull a fast one? You must know as well as I do that there’s not enough work for a full time employee to do this bollocks.”

Oh God. He wasn’t going to employ me. I summoned up all my courage and took a deep breath in which became stuttered due to the pain.

“I–I can do whatever you need,” I whispered, and then cleared my throat, willing my voice to be stronger. “And you can cut the hourly rate if that works better. I don’t–”

“Have you guys discussed pay yet?” Max asked, his eyebrows going up and his gaze flicking from me to Verity.

“No,” Verity said. Max’s eyes narrowed on me again.

“If you haven’t discussed pay yet then how do you know you’d take less?”

I bit my lip. If I told them I’d take anything then I’d look desperate and a little weird. And I was damn sure they wouldn’t be employing me if they knew that the backpack at my feet contained all my worldly belongings. Or that I’d slept in a homeless shelter last night and a bus stop the night before. The address I’d put on my employment forms was fake, picked randomly from a map of the area.

“Er, I …” I looked down at my hands again and clasped them together when I realised they were shaking. “What about your Building Information Modelling? Do you need help with that?” Building Information Modelling, or BIM, is an intelligent, 3D model-based programme that gives architecture, engineering, and construction people the tools to plan, design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure much more easily. It had revolutionized the industry and companies that didn’t fully embrace it were in danger of being left behind.

Verity tipped her head to the side, her eyes sparking with interest. “We outsource our BIM, but if I’m honest not everyone has taken to it.” She gave Max a strong bit of side-eye. “We could do with more support. Is that something you could help with?”

“I bloody hate BIM,” Max mumbled and my heart sank. It was rare nowadays, but there were architects out there still reluctant to modernise. The only thing left to do was put aside my pride. To be honest I was surprised there was any of it left.

“I really need this job,” I said quietly at my hands. “I don’t have to do just IT … I can do anything else; I will do anything else. Please, please give me a chance.”