Page 16 of Pride and Privilege

“Have you ever…” Roscoe rubbed a hand over his eyes, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose. He dropped his hand to his lap, wrapped it around his coffee again,feeling the faint warmth through the insulated card. “Have you ever realised you were completely wrong about a situation? Specifically, um, with a girl?”

“Jesus. Is there a lawsuit coming? Do you need my father?”

“No! No. Nothing that bad. Thank God.” But what if she hadn’t stopped? What if she’d gone through with it, and all the time she’d…not really wanted it? He cringed, sick at the thought. “Just… There was a girl… I thought she was into me. But it turns out she was trying to use me to get a job or something. I guess she thought I could get her a role? Put in a word with HR? I have no fucking idea what she was thinking, to be honest.”

“Mm.”

“What?”

“Emily Malcolm. That’s probably what she was thinking.”

“Who the hell is Emily Malcolm?”

“That little brunette in research. Christmas party?”

He cast his mind back. Got nothing but the fuzziest recollection. He’d gone home withsomeone, sure, but… “I don’t know! That was months ago. Wait… Em? Emmy?”

“According to the gospel of the BG rumour-mill, you went home with Emily Malcolm. And when we all came back after Christmas, she was promoted to Senior Analyst.”

“And people thinkIhad something to do with it?”

Aubrey’s silence spoke volumes.

“That’s ridiculous. If she got a promotion, it was all her own doing. Aubrey… Just what kind of reputation do I have here? Am I fucking blind?”

“Your reputation…” Aubrey busied himself for a moment, switching on his computer. “Let’s see. Golden Boy. Irritatingly good at everything. But too irritatingly nice to hate for it. Precocious. Workaholic. Slightly insufferable. Enthusiastic supporter of…erm…interdepartmental liaisons.”

Roscoe snorted. “You’re no monk, Aubrey.”

“But I don’t sleep with anyone I hold authority over.”

“Neither do I!”

Aubrey gave him a flat look.

“What?”

“You’reyou. You have authority over every single person here except one. And he’s your father.”

“A week ago I was basically an intern!”

But Aubrey just rolled his eyes.

“Seriously?” demanded Roscoe. “You think I go around handing out promotions in return for…favours?”

“No. Not personally. But it’s BG. Rumours abound.”

“Well this specific rumour is pissing me off.”

Aubrey pulled a non-committal sort of face and sought refuge in his screens. Roscoe sagged back in his old chair, glaring at his old desk, fingers tapping on his coffee cup.

It had shaken him badly to realise his instincts could be so off. He relied on his intuition. All that rapid analysis and pattern abstraction that went on at a subconscious level, somehow intuiting trends and making predictions when confronted with vast amounts of complicated data… That was his job. Any event, anywhere in the world, could shift the market. And he had to be one step ahead of that—guess what was about to happen. There were predictive models, reports, stats, analysis. But at the end of the day, he relied on his gut more than he’d care to admit. And he needed to be confident in that. In this game, you absolutely had to be confident. Millions of pounds—people’s entire fortunes—were at stake. And when the markets were moving, he had to react quickly, no second-guessing, because things literally changed in seconds.

And he couldn’t even tell if a girl liked him.

Jesus Christ. Had he been blinded by lust? How had he read things so wrong? In the lift, the way she had looked at him, the breath she took when he touched her…

“I don’t abuse my position,” he said. Stated. Informed the world.

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