Under My Skin Read online

  I had to say something quickly so we could pretend it hadn’t happened. “I hope it’s a mistake.”

  Thankfully, she just let the whole thing slide. “I’m sure that’s it. But, hey, if it’s not and you are in trouble, me and some of the girls from Risk are going for drinks at Harbour View tonight,” she offered. I knew the girls she was talking about; they were basically a catalogue of fully-clothed Victoria’s Secret models who’d been friends since university, and Sarah fit right in with them. My face must have shown my hesitation, because she added, “I swear, Min, one of these days I’m going to get you to come with us. You can’t work 24/7.”

  “Is that a double dare?” I asked as jokingly as I could, not really wanting to explain what it felt like tacking along with a group of people who knew each other really well. I’d rather let her assume it was purely because I was a workaholic. It had been four years since I moved to Sydney and somehow I still felt like the new exchange student.

  We said our goodbyes and I went over to the rep, who was sighing heavily and impatiently fidgeting with the handset. “Took you long enough,” he said, passing it to me over the partition and sitting back in front of his emails. I heard him mutter something about women and talking, but resisted the urge to make a dry comment about the extreme importance of catching up on the latest celebrity goss.

  “Hello, Min speaking,” I said, putting the phone against my ear. I glanced over towards Sarah’s desk, but she’d sat down and was chatting with the rep sitting opposite her.

  “Min Lee?” I didn’t recognise the voice, but I made an affirmative noise anyway. “If you’re free, Diane Frost would like to see you for a moment in her office.”

  That made me pay attention to the phone; my stomach dropped as soon as I heard her name. Diane Frost wanted to see me? Fuck, were my brochures really that bad?

  I looked up at her office, but all I could see were the bun and perfectly coiffured hairline peeking over her monitor as she worked. She just looked busy, not angry, but that didn’t stop me from being able to feel my pulse thumping in my neck. I looked around to see if anyone else was listening in; they weren’t. “I’ll be right there,” I said, passing the handset back to the rep that it belonged to. Then I started to panic.

  The voice ended up belonging to Diane’s personal assistant. She must have been new because I hadn’t seen her around, but she already looked like she was about to have a nervous breakdown. Her desk was covered in manila folders. She stopped what she was doing with them to smile professionally at me and indicate the door to Diane’s office, which was open. “Go right ahead, she’s waiting for you.”

  Behind the girl were floor-to-ceiling windows, showing a spectacular view of Sydney, all the way down to the road 36 stories below. I stared bleakly out of them as I walked past; jumping out of them was probably out of the question. Pity, because it was preferable to having to tell Mum that I’d lost my job.

  I’d never actually been inside Diane’s office before. It had the same big and airy feeling as my apartment, with the same lack of furniture. In this case, the only pieces of furniture were the bookshelves that lined a wall, and a mahogany desk with matching leather chairs in the centre. There was the same amazing skyline outside, but I couldn’t pay any attention to it because Diane was seated in front of it and I was too distracted by what was about to happen.

  She glanced up from the screen as I entered. “Min,” she said, gesturing at the leather chairs facing her desk. “Take a seat, please.”

  Shit, she sounded really cold. I couldn’t tell if she looked cold, though, because I didn’t want to get caught staring. I just smiled and sat across from her, pretending to be unfazed about the CEO wanting to see me. The muscles in my legs were shaking. I don’t think she could tell, though.

  She was looking between the screen of her computer and a manila folder in front of her. With some horror I realised it was my personnel file; I recognised the terrible photo taken of me when I was twenty and a new intern. I stared at it. What was the CEO doing with my personnel file?

  “How long have you been with us, Min?”

  The fact she was asking that question made me really nervous, since I was sure my file had dates in it. “Nearly five years,” I said. “I was in Melbourne for a year to begin with, and have been here for four.”

  She nodded. She wasn’t even listening to my answer. “In marketing the whole time?” Again, she didn’t look at me as I answered her. It was unnerving. “Mmm,” she said, flipping through some papers. “There’s a note here that you’re not to deal with our HR manager,” she observed. “The word on the street is that you’re in a relationship with him.”

  Shit, is that what this was about?

  It knocked the wind out of me; I hadn’t even considered that might be an issue. “That’s right,” I said, trying to prevent my voice from wavering. I mostly succeeded. “I know it’s against policy, but—” My brain went at a million miles an hour and I managed to not fumble with my words. “If it’s a problem, I’m sure we can work out a solution.”

  She did the slightest of facial shrugs. “It’s not a problem in itself,” she said. “Unless it becomes a problem for business, that is. It certainly wouldn’t be the first relationship at Frost.” She sat back in her deep office chair, resting her elbows on the arms of it and lacing her fingers. She spent a few seconds watching me. “Min, I have a question for you and I want you to answer me honestly.” There was only one correct response to that. I nodded. “Your career plan says that you’re interested in management. Being a manager at Frost isn’t a walk in the park, Min,” she said, gesturing towards the floor. “You know the kind of commitment we expect from leaders here. My cohort has a family, but he doesn’t spend much time with them.” She couldn’t have chosen a more unattractive word to refer to her brother, the co-CEO. “Are you prepared to make that sort of sacrifice? Of course, we have the statutory maternity leave arrangements for staff. However, it’s very difficult for a company to replace managers for short periods of time without some interruption to business.”

  Right, don’t get pregnant, got it. “Are you asking me if I’m prepared to make sacrifices for the sake of a promotion?” I couldn’t imagine what sort of sacrifice they’d ask me to make; I basically did nothing else other than work, anyway. Having any sort of life was a distant memory. When she nodded, I answered automatically, “Of course I’m prepared.” I felt as if I were regurgitating textbook lines fed to me by my career counsellor. “That’s why I moved from Melbourne to Sydney. I’m prepared to do whatever I need to in order to progress my career.”

  Diane smiled slightly, and I think I saw a measure of approval in her face. “Good,” she said, and as she pulled a stack of printed photos out from underneath my personnel file she added, “There are no management positions free at present. But I do like to have candidates in mind.” She slid the photos across the desk and I took them, looking down at them curiously. They were macro shots of pink and champagne diamonds, in several variations and cuts. While I was leafing through them, she asked, “Do you know what they are?”

  These? They were a house. A big house, and early retirement. They were the most expensive and rarest diamonds in the world. “Argyle diamonds,” I answered immediately. “From the Kimberley.”

  She let that sit for a moment, and then her smile broadened. “What I’m about to tell you is confidential: Frost has just purchased the rights to mine a pipe of diamonds like these in Western Australia,” she said. “It’s a small project but, potentially, an extremely valuable one, and of special interest to me. I’m looking to put together a group of people who can keep their mouths shut to work on it.” I didn’t miss her glancing out towards the floor. “That particular attribute is something that is surprisingly difficult to come by.”

  I knew what she meant. In any other circumstance I might have laughed at such a diplomatic way of calling the marketing department a rumour mill, but this didn’t seem like the appropriate time. I put th
e pictures back on the table.

  “Are you interested? It pitches in just a few weeks and I’m not exaggerating when I say there’s a lot of work to do; I don’t want many people on it.”

  Was she kidding? The less people, the better. “Yes,” I said without hesitation.

  “Great.” She closed my personnel file and whatever she had been looking at on her screen. “I haven’t picked the exact composition of the team yet. Jason or I will let you know.”

  Since the conversation was clearly over, I stood. Politely, she stood as well and gestured towards the door. “Thank you for coming so promptly,” she said. She was the epitome of professionalism. She was terrifying, but I supposed this was as ‘nice’ as she got. That woman is a billionaire, I thought, and as I turned to leave, I glanced down at her sparkling watch. It was surreal to be standing a metre away from someone who could practically buy Australia.

  As soon as I was out of earshot of her office, I exhaled audibly and put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

  Wow.

  Well, I guess being considered for a promotion and invited to work on a secret project was a little different from losing my job and my life as I knew it. Just, wow. I grinned. Those idiots on my old team would go nuts if I got a promotion. As completely ungrateful as it sounded given how much money I was being paid, it felt so good to finally have my years of dedication acknowledged with something other than an enormous paycheque. Even just hearing that she would consider me felt like a huge step. When I walked past the workstations of my hung-over team, I felt completely superior.

  There were seven or eight new drunk guy photos in my inbox when I got back to my desk. I wondered if the rep making them knew that it was this kind of crap that was interfering with his career progression. I was tempted to tell him that in a reply, but as usual I held my tongue.

  Before I read any more messages, I checked my phone. I really wanted to tell Henry about the conversation I’d just had with Diane, but I knew I couldn’t. Diane had said the project was confidential and that she wanted someone who could keep quiet about it. I suppose that meant I needed to celebrate quietly on my own. I laughed to myself; now there was an evening unlike any other. A bottle of red and a hundred rounds of Free for All. I’d never done that before...

  Sarah had BCCed me in an email to her friends in Risk about when they were meeting up. I clicked on it, remembering that weird touching thing and feeling stupid all over again. I needed a day or two to get over it, and the last thing I wanted to do tonight was be surrounded by gorgeous, perfectly relaxed women talking about Sex in the City or whatever its replacement was these days. I had a hard time imagining what people who didn’t play video games did in their spare time, but I thought it was probably boring. Not wanting to ignore her, though, I replied with an excuse.

  By the afternoon, I’d archived my material from the previous project, gathered Michelangelo and a sad-looking bamboo plant of dubious health, and was ready to sit with my new team, whoever they were. The office was basically empty, though, because everyone else was already in project meetings, probably arguing over who did what and establishing the pecking order. I literally had nothing to do, so I spun my chair around in slow circles and planned my evening. There were actually a couple of new games out that I’d been meaning to buy and play—maybe I could grab those on the way home.

  It was 4:30 a lot sooner than I’d expected it to be, so I packed up early for once and went to brave the lift. It didn’t fail to disappoint: I discovered my stockings were navy instead of black. I then spent the rest of the ride down wondering if Diane had noticed and judged me.

  Outside it was still sunny and that made me worry even more about my black skirt and navy stockings combo. I knew I’d be home soon, though, and that meant I could just take everything off, burn it all in a ritual fire, and put something comfortable on. I was waiting at the traffic lights trying to decide which game I was going to play first when I heard a girl’s voice say, “Look, that’s definitely her.” After some frantic whispering, another voice agreed, “Oh my God, you’re right, it is! I can’t do this. Okay, I can. I can.”

  I twisted a little to glance over my shoulder. There were two girls in Cloverfield Ladies’ College uniforms hunched over a mobile and looking directly at me. I quickly looked forward again, and for some reason my heart was pounding. They both giggled, and that made it worse. It didn’t matter that I was 25 and hadn’t been in high school for seven years, those girls were the type of girls who used to make surfboard jokes about my body and call me ‘telegraph pole’ behind my back. I really didn’t need this, especially not from school kids, not after I’d finally heard some good news. I quickly punched the pedestrian crossing button a few more times. Come on, lights…

  “Min Lee? It’s you, right?” One of the girls called out while the other one was hysterically giggling. When I heard my name, the blood practically drained from my face. How the hell did they know who I was? I stared in front of me, deciding to try and ignore them. Maybe they’d stop.

  Some older woman had been standing beside me at the lights. She threw a glance behind us to see what the fuss was about and then peered up at me, too. I’d never wanted to just fade into invisibility any more than I did at that moment.

  “Miss Lee!” the other girl called out again, leaning heavily on my surname like it was four or five syllables. Her voice sounded muffled as if she had a hand over her mouth.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you, Courtney. Oh, my God. Okay. Min!”

  The opposing lights were still green, and them calling out was starting to make everyone stare. There were even people on the other side of the road watching. I just wanted it all to be over, so I turned around. “Can I help you, girls?” I asked, trying to mimic Diane’s impassionate tone. If they were going to make fun of me, they should just fucking get it over with so I could go home.

  They both looked at me, then at each other, and giggled. One of them—the one who had been calling out to me first, I think—had very long, very straight brown hair but otherwise looked pretty average. Her friend looked like something straight off the cover of an Enid Blyton book, though. She was tiny with her blonde hair in big rolling curls and already had the kind of hourglass figure that men would probably fight to the death for. Just in case anyone hadn’t noticed it, her plaid skirt was scandalously short and her shirt was a size too small. She pushed her friend in the head, straightened her school tie, and then marched up to me.

  I looked down at her, aware that people all around us were practically reaching for popcorn.

  “You really aren’t a guy,” she said, looking me up and down and making me feel self-conscious, and reminding me of my blue stockings again. She was so tiny she didn’t even reach my collarbones. She noticed that, too. “And, whoa, you’re, like, tall.”

  Shit, really? I’d been wondering why I found it so easy to reach everything. I didn’t really want to get into a fight with them by being a smartass, though, so I just kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t hard, because every moment, I kept waiting for them to drop the impressed act and just dissolve into giggles and make fun of me. I wondered what incredibly unintelligent insult these girls would come up with. The Lee-ning Tower of Melbourne used to be a favourite at my school.

  Courtney was still looking between me and the screen of her mobile. “She does look like that painting. Like, really.”

  Well, there was only one letter difference between ‘man’ and ‘Min’—something no one at my school had figured out despite the fact I’d been a hardcore tomboy back then. Perhaps these girls would, even if I was really careful to make sure no one could describe me as a tomboy anymore. I felt like my mismatched outfit was a dead giveaway about how much I hated wearing these clothes, though.

  “It’s me,” the blonde said, as she gestured to herself. She wasn’t teasing me and hadn’t noticed my stockings, “Hazumichan95. By the way, if you’re wondering, I really regret that username. Like, especially right now.”
r />   Comfortingly, I did recognise that username from Deviant Art. “Oh, you’re the girl who had—” I was about to say ‘friendship trouble’, but then I realised that the person she was having issues with was probably that other girl who was with her. I didn’t get a chance to figure out how to finish that sentence.

  “I’m not Hazumi, though, obviously. I’m Bree.” She gestured at her friend. “And that’s Courtney. But don’t worry; she doesn’t use Deviant Art so you don’t have to figure out who she is.” The way she spoke, it seemed like she was trying to force out as many words as possible in the shortest period of time. Or like she’d had a little too much red cordial.

  She—Bree?—grabbed my hand and shook it. “Min,” I said automatically, before I realised how ridiculous that was because they both clearly knew who I was. At least that made sense now, because my username was ‘MinLeee’. The one with just two ‘E’s was already taken. What it didn’t explain was how they’d sorted through the 4.5 million people in Sydney and ended up on this corner—outside Frost Headquarters. “How did you find me?”

  Courtney laughed shortly. “Bree spent two and a half hours on Google,” she said loudly, pretending to cough at the beginning and end of her comment.

  Bree twisted around. “Oh, my God, Courtney, I’m going to tell my brother you have crabs if you don’t shut up.”

  Did she just… I looked hurriedly around at all the people watching us. A couple of them were smothering their own laughter. I wondered if I looked as mortified as I felt.

  Bree turned back to me. She still had my hand. I looked pointedly at it, but she didn’t notice. “This is so awesome!” she announced, smiling brightly up at me while I struggled with the urge to just spin on my heels and run away. This particular girl seemed like the sort to give chase, and even with my long legs I didn’t like my chances of outrunning her. I was wearing stilettos. “I love your art, you have no idea. It’s amazing. It’s so incredibly awesome to finally meet you!”