Katriona works as a professional copywriter for the tech sector. Her poetry has been published in Magma, Butcher’s Dog, Under the Radar and The Lighthouse. Her flash fiction was shortlisted for the 2020 Bridport prize.
Her novel-in-progress, Hold Your Own, is a fast-paced exploration of gambling addiction and sibling rivalry. Set in the liminal dockland spaces of Southampton and Gibraltar, it examines the lengths to which people will go in order to succeed in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world.
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Hold Your Own
Mark Silver. Here he comes, gliding into the open air car park in his midnight blue Audi RS5, chrome wheels spinning like shuriken stars. He swings into a space, opens the car door and unfolds into the afternoon air. His blonde hair glows under the overcast sky.
He reaches into the back seat for his gym bag, slings it over his shoulder and strides across the tarmac. Look how his jeans dance over those hips. His legs move underneath him like poetry. There’s a man who wants to be watched. He knows where he’s going, he knows what he’s at. Ask him what he does and he’ll tell you he’s a businessman. Press him and he’ll give you one of his cryptic statements, along with a radiant smile. ‘I make people happy.’
He’s a man you want to be near. Someone you can get caught up with, someone who reassures and inspires, someone who makes you forget all the bad shit going on, someone who lives so much in the moment that when you’re around him you feel you’ve got it all figured out and you have no idea why you’ve ever been sad. Because life is clear when you reduce it to simple terms. And Mark refuses to engage with life any other way. I ask you, who would want a man like that dead?
He bounds up the three concrete steps and disappears through the door to the gym. The car park settles back into greyness.
He’s a businessman, it’s true, but he treats business like a musical performance, an interaction between many different parts, something to be elevated to an art form, harmonious, transformative and lucrative for everyone involved. And we’re all involved, he’ll tell you. From the cloth wrapped around us in the maternity ward, to the coffin we’re laid in. We’re all part of the symphony of business. It’s up to us how big a part we play. And make no mistake, Mark wants the biggest part he can get.
He’s coming out of the gym now. He carries the warm fug outside with him and pauses at the top of the steps. The September wind finds and chills the drops of water that linger in his ears. He runs his hand through his damp hair and saunters back to his car, thinking about the meeting he had that afternoon. He knows he made the sale. That’s the third this month and he takes it as a personal compliment. Sure, the team’s good, the offering’s great, but it’s him they buy. Every time.
‘Why should we go with you?’ the woman had asked at the end of the meeting, after the presentation, after all the usual questions about platforms and scalability, timeframes and guarantees, when they were just about to leave.
He stopped, jacket in hand, and looked her directly in the face for a full five seconds. ‘Because we’re the best,’ he told her. ‘You can go with one of the others, but you’ll regret it.’ Then he turned around and left.
She laughed, half outraged, half delighted. Dave took care of the handshaking, the ‘See you next time’s and scampered after him. Job done. The sale was in the bag. He’d dropped Dave at the office and gone straight round to the gym.
Confidence had powered him through the workout. He’d killed it. Bench pressed a hundred kilos, dead lifted one fifty. Now back to the office to show willing.
He drives through twists of roundabouts that take him past the warehouses, the casino, the scruffy line of shops that he and Barry used to haunt on summer Saturday afternoons. A scattering of pre-WW2 buildings stands in a miraculous cluster, an inverse Bermuda Triangle that escaped the bombing. He passes Ocean Village, Southampton’s shopping mecca of the nineties, newly converted to blocks of flats that already show white bruises of water stains on the fresh brickwork.
He pulls into Dale’s Yard, a jumble of buildings around a central courtyard. It had once housed horses, metal workers, carpenters. Noisy, half-outdoor trades. Now it’s a collection of design agencies and hi-tech start-ups, plus a hemp clothing company and, tucked into a corner, a vacuum cleaner workshop, the closest of any of them to the yard’s roots.
Mark’s office comes with two dedicated parking spaces at the far end of the yard. One’s reserved for visitors. He swings into the other one, pulling up so his radiator noses the high brick wall that slants away from the buildings towards the Victorian cemetery on the other side.
Two years ago, when Mark came looking for office space, he’d liked the way the white painted building stood out from the red brick buildings around it. The first thing he’d done was to get the company name stencilled on the large end wall. The bold black letters greet him now: LIVE EDGE, the words stacked above each other in large capitals to form a rectangle, contained by a thick black border. After he’d had them painted he’d waited to see if anyone complained but no-one had. After all, why should they? It looks great.
Inside, glass doors open on a light room containing two islands of desks filled with computer monitors and workstations. Windows run along the far wall. A small counter area holds a sink, a stainless-steel kettle, a collection of mugs and spoons in varying states of cleanliness, assorted packets of herbal tea and an expensive coffee machine. On the far side of the office there’s a meeting room with a large wooden table, seats for twelve people, an enormous screen, a state of the art overhead projector and a series of framed awards on the low counter that runs along the back wall.
There were only three of them when Mark started the company, but he’d set the office up for a much larger team. ‘Our people mostly work from home,’ he’d explain when clients came to visit, waving his hand at a dozen empty workstations. ‘Programmers are like creatives – they work better on their own schedules.’ He’d shrug to identify with the workaday brand of existence to which the rest of us, himself and the clients included, must resign ourselves. The world of alarm clocks and rush hours, predictability and routine. ‘They do the work on time though,’ he’d reassure them. ‘Otherwise they don’t stay working here for long.’ He’d laugh with them as he held the meeting room door open.
‘Coffee?’ he’d offer. ‘We have the good stuff, of course. The programmers practically run on it.’ Another laugh, and the customer’s at their ease. He speaks their language. He knows how to make things work, how to work out what people want and make sure they get it.
Today the office is almost full, but the only noise is key taps and computer hum.
‘Hi guys,’ he calls.
Joe, his project manager, lifts a hand in response. Dave nods from his chair. He’s probably writing up the meeting notes from earlier. A few pairs of eyes emerge from super-structures of monitors then duck back down.
Mark goes through to his office, a glassed-off corner filled with a white birch desk, as large as the space allows. The few objects resting on it are artfully arranged. An espresso cup, straight-sided, porcelain-thin, appears to float above its saucer, thanks to a raised lip that holds the cup in place. A metallic blue fountain pen rests next to it. An enormous white Apple monitor sits across from the black leather chair. Metallic blinds give the impression of a window in the solid end wall. Mark pulls out his laptop and has just started checking email when there’s a knock on the door.
Joe ambles in wearing t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. He looks worried, but then he often does. ‘Have you got a minute?’ He squeezes into a chair on the other side of the desk.
‘What’s up?’
Joe exhales slowly. ‘I’m worried about the Angelis project.’
‘Tell me what’s going on.’ He knows to go gently. Joe usually takes a while to get to the point. ‘Have they changed their minds again?’
‘No, it’s not that.’ Joe looks towards the blinds, where the window would be.
Mark waits.
‘We’re having a bit of trouble with their system.’
‘Have you asked Eva to take a look?’
‘She says she hasn’t been paid for the last two jobs we sent her. She won’t do any more work till it’s sorted.’
‘And it’s holding the project up?’
Joe nods. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of Darrell, but he’s not answering.’
‘OK. I’ll have a word with him. I’m due to go over the accounts with him anyhow.’ Mark’s eyes drift back to his email.
Joe doesn’t get up. He sighs, looks down.
‘Is there something else?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Is the Vakeda project going OK?’ Mark tries.
Joe perks up. ‘It’s great. We’re ahead of schedule.’ He slumps again.
‘Is everything OK at home then?’
‘Yeah, fine. It’s just – ’
‘Go on.’ Mark leans forward in his chair, steeples his fingers, furrows his brow, concentrates on the end of Joe’s nose.
‘Should I be looking for another job?’
‘What? No way. You’re my right hand man.’ It’s hard to recruit enough new people, without the old ones leaving. ‘Where has this come from?’
Joe’s thighs make sucking noises as he shifts his weight in the leather chair. ‘The marketing people said their payment’s late.’
‘The agency? As well as Eva?’ He realises a note of surprise has crept into his voice. He evens it out. ‘Joe, this business is solid.’ Mark holds his eye. ‘I will sort this straight away, I promise you.’ His hand’s already on his phone, but Joe doesn’t get up.
‘There’ve been a few other calls about late payments.’
‘What? Who from?’
‘The server people – they said the last payment didn’t arrive. I was going to mention it sooner, but you weren’t around –’
Mark thinks back – he has been out of the office a lot lately. Meetings, lunches, gym sessions – they all take time. But you’ve got to look after yourself. No use looking after everyone else then finding you’re middle aged, fat and broke. Who’s going to love you then?
Joe’s words come out in a rush. ‘Helen and I have been looking at houses, and if things are about to go belly-up here I don’t want to sign anything.’
Mark opens his mouth in amazement. Sure, these things needed to be sorted out, but the sky was hardly falling down. ‘Joe, I will get this sorted,’ he says firmly. ‘We are water-tight.’
Joe still looks unsure.
‘Come on, Joe, you’ve been with me from the start. Have we ever missed a payroll?’
‘No.’
‘That’s right. I look after my people, you know that.’
Joe nods.
‘OK, Joe?’
‘OK,’ he says at last.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll get it sorted.’ Mark shepherds Joe out of the office. ‘And send me those house details. I’ll run them past my old man, let you know if they’re giving you a fair price.’
‘Thanks. Thanks, I will.’
Coders, thinks Mark, you simple creatures. Coffee and technology and you’re blissfully content. But oh, how I need you, caffeinated, calm and happy.
He calls Darrell. ‘This voicemail is full.’
He hangs up and tries again. Still no answer. Shit.
He calls Eva.
‘Eva, how are you?’
‘OK. You haven’t paid me yet.’
‘That’s what I’m calling about. Can you email me everything we owe you?’
‘Sure.’
‘Put it all in one email and send it to me. I’ll get it sorted for you. All future invoices, send them to Darrell but copy me in, OK?’
‘OK. Shall I copy Jules too?’
‘Jules? No, why?’
‘Darrell said to send them to him.’
‘My brother Jules?’
‘I don’t know who he is.’
‘No, just send them to me.’
‘OK. But no more work till I’m paid.’ She hangs up.
That’s Eva. Blunt but brilliant. No-one’s indispensable, but he’d be pushed to replace her.
Thirty seconds later her email comes in. No message, just £3567.87 followed by her bank details. There are four attachments. Mark doesn’t bother to open them.
He logs on to the company bank account to pay her. The balance shows £524.34. He blinks and looks again. He logs out and logs back in. The numbers are the same. His stomach lurches. He checks the list of transactions. He recognises about half the names. The others are a mystery.
He tries Darrell again. Still no answer. Fuck. He grabs his stuff.
‘I’m off,’ he calls to the office in general.
There might have been a ‘See you,’ or a ‘Bye,’ as the doors swing closed, but the words meet an empty eddy of air.
He jerks the Audi into gear and guns it across town to find Darrell.