Chose Read online

  When the much-anticipated cream paper letter with the gold crest appeared in my letterbox a few days ago, inviting me to the third round, I swept Bubblesqueak up in my arms and twirled around the kitchen in my pyjamas, singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ while she clung on for dear life, meowing piteously.

  We get out on the last floor and Aileen leads me to a conference room overlooking the city. A huge mirror reflects the view, giving the impression that we’re surrounded by the city’s rooftops. I tear my gaze away from the windows to look at the twenty or so people clustered in small groups around the room, and realise with a chill that these strangers are my competition.

  Tea bags and mugs are set out in a corner, so I walk over to stand there and observe the candidates quietly. A man wearing a pinstriped blue suit that’s too tight is talking loudly, making a woman laugh. His cufflinks are garish and his trousers slightly too short. He’s bulging out of his shirt collar and his hair is stiff with gel. He looks down at the girl, hunching slightly to get close to her.

  She’s on the plump side but wears it more confidently than I do. Her dyed blonde hair is straightened and split on either side of her neck, dangling past her large breasts, making her look like a basset hound. Her orange-coloured arms protrude from a sleeveless dress, as she tiptoes on vertiginous platform heels. Obviously, she’s also got bubblegum pink gel nails. Mmmh. These two seem made for each other. They turn to look at me and she laughs at something he whispers in her ear with a smirk.

  A striking, statuesque, light-skinned black woman is checking her Blackberry, her thumbs flying on the small keyboard. I glance at her beautiful profile, feeling completely inadequate. She’s at least five foot nine and wears a pair of impeccably-cut black trousers with a simple white blouse and a statement monochrome necklace. Her black pumps are elegant but sensible and her long hair cascades down her back in a shiny, straight style. She radiates authority, charisma and power.

  She puts away her Blackberry and turns from the window to accept a cup of coffee from a blond hunk. Her ‘thank you’ has an American twang to it. The buff guy is the sort who can’t lower his arms completely because of the size of his biceps. He speaks to her in confidential tones, his hands clasped behind his back, legs shoulder-width apart.

  His eyes roam, as if making a note of the escape routes and evaluating each of the participants’ physical strengths. His gaze slides over me like I’m not even here. I guess I haven’t made it into his competitor assessment top ten, then. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m wearing pink. Unless he has X-ray vision and can detect cellulite through my tights and skirt. Oh, get a grip, Olivia, I admonish myself, before I risk breaking into a fit of giggles. That would be catastrophic, given the company I’m keeping. All these people obviously take themselves much more seriously than I do.

  Sitting at one of the tables, a tall, dark-haired Indian man is deep in conversation with a round, short black man. The tall man’s ankle bounces slightly up and down on his knee despite his hand being clasped around it.

  Opposite him, leaning forwards in earnest conversation, the black man with the full cheeks is explaining something, his hand gestures forceful. He’s wearing crocodile shoes that seem too long for his feet. His suit is very good quality but his body is so rotund that it doesn’t make much difference. His tie is shiny and a gold tie bar with a small cut stone clips it to his shirt.

  Others are dotted around the conference area, mostly looking like professional soldiers.

  At another table by herself, a woman sits deep in her own thoughts, pencil in hand as she sings to herself in Japanese and jots down notes in a small notebook. Her hair forms a curtain on each side of her face every time she bends over her work.

  A large, freckled woman waddles over and offers the quiet one a cup of tea. The overweight woman sits down, raising her elbows to position her cup and saucer above her large belly, and starts to talk right away, barely drawing breath between sentences. Her daydreaming counterpart seems quite taken aback; I gather she didn’t ask for a tea and has no idea why she’s being lectured.

  ‘You shouldn’t sit here by yourself, you’re supposed to show that you’re a team player, I’m sure that’s what they’re looking for, you know. Once I interviewed for another position and…’ the freckled woman goes on and on.

  A tall, pale woman enters the room, wearing black from head to toe, her long brown hair tied in a plait. She scans the room and walks over immediately to Aileen, moving like a predator. The mousey admin girl looks startled at first and then placating as the striking woman speaks with intensity but in a voice too low to hear.

  Spotting a stack of brown paper envelopes on a table at the back of the room, I stroll over to have a look. There seems to be one envelope for each person present and just as I spot the one with my name on it, the buff guy swings by, a mug of coffee in his hand. Under cover of chatting with me, he touches the floor-length mirror next to us. He glances at his reflection, then crosses his arms, and, taking a sip of coffee, surveys the room.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whisper.

  ‘Just a small test.’ He sounds Scandinavian. ‘It’s a two-way mirror.’

  His eyes dart to the entrance.

  The chatter dies down and all gazes turn to Andrew Catterwall, who has come into the room and is standing next to Aileen.

  ‘Welcome, everyone. Let’s get started with our third round of interviews, shall we?’

  My Scandinavian neighbour speaks up. ‘When will we know what we’re applying for?’

  ‘This is on a need-to-know basis, Björn. You’ll be briefed if you’re selected.’

  ‘There are twenty of us here, can you at least give us an idea of how many positions we’re competing for?’ the African man asks.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t, Woody. But what I can say is that you were part of a pool of one hundred candidates and only eight of you will move on to the next stage today.’

  Different expressions etch themselves on the candidates’ faces: arrogant, determined, absent-minded, attentive.

  ‘If there are no more questions, let’s get started.’

  Andrew claps his hands together, rubs them together in happy anticipation and puts them on his hips.

  ‘Right, everyone grab a folder from the table behind me. You have an hour to go through the file’s contents. When the hour is done, we’ll ask you to present your recommendations to a panel of judges. This is an individual exercise, so please do not work together.’

  Aileen goes through our midst and collects our mobile phones in metallic plastic pouches, which she seals. Then she and Andrew wish us good luck and close the door behind them.

  We all look at each other and, with a shrug, I pick up the envelope that bears my name. We sit at the chrome and glass tables and the room falls silent, as we become absorbed in our files. Mine contains newspaper clippings from 1909, describing the discovery of an oil field in Turkmenistan, followed by its exploitation. There are grainy pictures of a wellhead erupting in black rain. I rummage through the file and find a glossy magazine article from the fifties about Iran at the height of the Shah’s reign. Little girls in tutus and Western-garbed women look incongruous in light of what happened to their country in the years to come.

  There are photocopies of a homemade conspiracy-theory rag, with eyewitness accounts of various events in mountain ranges and forests with names I don’t recognise. On my table, I spread out old photos, historical and topographic maps of small areas in the eastern part of Europe and the Middle East, and articles about border skirmishes and armed conflicts. It all seems unrelated. Recent medical articles describe research conducted on a population and a test group to detect autoimmune conditions; there’s an estate agent’s analysis of water quality and some balance sheets for a local refinery. Other articles recount the construction of a pipeline by the Soviets.

  At first I struggle to make anything of this jumble of information. It just seems to be a random collection of material. I’m starting to get stressed
as the hour slips away. I wipe my palms on the side of my skirt and take a deep breath. I’m not the only one who’s anxious. The bovine-looking man in his City pinstripe suit seems less than impressed with his file. If his is anything like mine, then I bet he’s wishing it contained financials and annual reports. He could probably interpret those in his sleep. The African-American woman, oblivious to her surroundings, is calmly making neat little piles of paper clippings.

  Woody takes a long glance at his neighbour’s pad and starts writing furiously. I press my lips together and look down again, thinking about who might be observing us behind the mirror.

  I chew on the end of my pen and stare at my watch. I only have about ten minutes left and I have no idea what I’m going to say to the interviewers. Something is nagging at me, though. I wish I had a map of the region. Frustrated, I grope inside the envelope and sure enough, it’s there. Feeling like a dolt, I get the large map out and unfold it. And that’s when it hits me: these articles are all linked.

  The Soviet Empire used to occupy Turkmenistan, where the oil was found and which has a border with Iran. The pipeline originated in Russia but it crossed several borders. Remembering the articles about border skirmishes and conflicts, I trace the pipeline’s route with a marker pen and reach the town where the medical research was done about autoimmune diseases. A picture starts to emerge in my mind about what is really going on here. Andrew comes back into the room and announces that time is up. I haven’t had time to prepare a presentation but a narrative is forming that explains all of it, like a red thread linking the file’s elements together.

  Each of us is guided to a separate interview room. It takes me twenty minutes to paint a picture of what happened from 1909 to today for my two interviewers. I pin the map to a white board and use it as the backdrop to my presentation, producing each article chronologically, as supporting evidence for my narrative and use a marker to annotate the map and draw the links between each article, photo and event. Once I’m done, the interviewers thank me and, without further comment, invite me to return to the main room.

  Pinstripe East Ender and his Towie Barbie are already there when I get back. Woody is sweating profusely and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. The Japanese woman is also back early and sits absentmindedly staring out of the window, as we all trickle in.

  Aileen joins us and announces that we’ll have a one-hour break as she points us to a trolley of sandwiches and drinks, so we all tuck in. I make a point of talking to everyone. The daydreaming woman, Yuriko, is a visiting scholar and is quite excited about meeting Theodora McArthur. Chatting to the Japanese candidate, I realise that the Professor’s actually more accomplished than I thought and her achievements in the field of quantum physics are mind-numbingly impressive.

  The tall, seemingly self-confident Indian guy is an IT engineer who’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here. But whatever this job is, he assures me he’ll compete to succeed.

  Woody has joined us from Switzerland where he works at the United Nations. He tells me funny stories about meeting famous politicians. I’m probably imagining it but I think he steals glances from time to time at me as if he thought I were credible competition. His smiles and jokes are tinged with a sort of anxious envy.

  The pinstriped guy, Frank and his lady friend, Marjorie, are nowhere to be found and the African-American woman, whose name I learnt is DeAnn, is sitting in a corner typing furiously on her Blackberry. I’m about to bite into an egg sandwich when the freckled woman walks over with a plate piled high and starts to talk to me about what I should do about hydrating my hair and how she knows a great product I should use. She’s annoyingly condescending but actually I completely need to know this.

  Björn returns a few minutes before the end of the break, looking sweaty and bearing a protein shaker; he inspects the sandwich trolley but doesn’t take anything. Instead, he sits in a corner, feet on a chair, and looks out of the window into the distance as he drinks big gulps of the vile-looking liquid. Andika, the intense woman in black, is standing alone in a corner, observing everyone.

  Frank and Marjorie come back a good ten minutes late and both look flushed and slightly tousled. Maybe they went to a park for lunch, didn’t see the time and had to run back. It’s a fairly nice day outside, for a change.

  A few minutes later, Aileen walks in, this time accompanied by Agent Critchlow, who explains the next stage.

  ‘We’re now going to take you through a more interactive exercise. This is a war game. You’re each going to be given a role and you need to accomplish two things: first, behave as if you were really the person in your brief, and second, ensure that you learn as much as you can about the other players’ objectives. At the end of the game we’ll evaluate you on these two variables: whether you reached your character’s target and how much information you gathered about the system and its stakeholders.’

  Oh great! The nerd in me is delighted at the prospect of a role-play. I have elf ears and a full-blown Arwen costume at home and I love to indulge in the odd renaissance fair now and then so this is fun for me. However, some of the others seem slightly taken aback and less than happy.

  Aileen spreads out paper envelopes on a table again and gives us thirty minutes to read our brief. The memo explains that there’s a war brewing and we’re heads of state, trying to take advantage of the situation for our respective countries. I’m the President of North Korea and my objective is to build up my country’s nuclear capabilities while avoiding detection and sanctions. My secondary goal is to try to form a regional alliance with Asian countries despite our political differences.

  I spend an enjoyable hour and a half running from one person to the other, negotiating to obtain uranium from Russia’s black market, poaching nuclear scientists from France, pledging my innocence in front of the US President and generally having a ball. I’m such a do-gooder that playing a rogue statesman is sort of fun and liberating.

  I observe all my counterparts and notice when they lie; I make notes of the deals they’re happy to give me and the ones they refuse. The engineer is quite stiff and never negotiates; his default position is to give nothing and ask for everything. Woody double-crosses a couple of participants, but only DeAnn seems to realise and I hear her call him out on it. Frank bullies his way through the exercise with white-knuckled handshakes and unreasonable demands. Yuriko gives in to nearly every demand and looks increasingly tired. DeAnn does really well, maintaining her professional demeanour and negotiating calmly and efficiently.

  By the end of the game, I have a pretty good handle of each candidate’s hidden agenda and negotiating skills. We all get together for a final meeting, playacting a UN session and manage to avert a world war. After this, each of us is again called into a separate room and asked to list the other participants’ strengths and weaknesses, describe flaws in their personalities and chinks in their strategies, as well as what we’ve surmised from their briefs. I write furiously, shaking my wrist at intervals to loosen it up as I try to remember what I saw and what was said, while making connections between the statements, looks and handshakes I’ve witnessed. It’s so much fun. At length, having written all of it down, I go back to the main room and notice, surprised, that I’m the last one back.

  Björn looks at me curiously, no longer dismissing me. Woody comes by and slides a hand behind my back, walking me to a side of the room. He asks me charmingly what I wrote about for so long. Andika, the intense panther-like woman, narrows her eyes and observes me.

  Uncomfortable with the attention, I escape to the loo and while I’m there, manage to do my IVF injection. My thoughts return as always to my embryo, floating in frozen slumber in one of the hospital’s cryogenic vats. My mind pokes at the image like a tongue unable to stay away from a sore. Soon now, loneliness will end for both of us. Soon both our lives will thaw.

  I’d rather nobody knew about it, so instead of binning the empty syringe, I put it back in its box and hide the whole thing in my Mulb
erry. Then, smoothing my skirt, I walk back to the room, thinking everyone can see right through me and will guess what I did in the loo.

  But as I push the glass door open, the Japanese scholar collapses on the floor, writhing, her mouth opening and closing, lips turning blue. Her frantic jerking has scattered the tables and chairs. Everyone in the room is frozen, still holding their mugs, standing around her.

  My first aid training kicks in; I quickly rush to her side, dropping to my knees. Yuriko is clearly having an epileptic seizure, so I yank my jacket off, roll it up and place her head on it, maintaining it in place and speaking soothingly to her. Björn snaps out of it and ask me what to do, so I warn him against restraining her movements and ask him instead to push all the furniture away, so the woman doesn’t bang herself any further. They follow my instructions and I check my watch. Little by little Yuriko calms down and I place her in the recovery position.

  ‘The last seizure was more than five minutes long,’ I tell Aileen. ‘She needs an ambulance.’

  ‘I’ve already called 999,’ she says.

  DeAnn returns to the room and seeing the situation, checks what I’ve done and says, ‘I’m a doctor, I’ll take it from here.’

  Stroking Yuriko’s forehead, I push her long hair out of the way as DeAnn takes her pulse.

  Who would have known that all those years of volunteering as a fire marshal on my floor would pay off? Well, if nothing else comes out of today, at least I’ll have helped this poor woman.

  The other candidates have formed little groups standing away from us and are all chatting loudly now. As the young woman comes to, I whisper soothingly to her but she hides her face in her hands and starts to cry.

  The paramedics finally arrive and take Yuriko away. As they go, I grab her notebook and pen and tuck them under her, placing her hand on them. She looks at me gratefully, too tired to speak, as the EMTs wheel her out of the room.

  ‘Ahem.’ Theodora McArthur pats her bun. Andrew and Critchlow are standing next to her. Aileen returns, closing the door behind her and comes to stand next to them.