Ramsey Campbell - Midnight Sun

Something you may not know about Broads Best, she'd scribbled on her pad, and then Ten things you may not know… On Monday Sid hadn't seemed particularly impressed but told her to come back to him if she managed to develop the idea. On her way home on Friday she'd seen a jigsaw in a toyshop window and had realised how the campaign could work, and she'd been so eager to show him that she'd arranged to meet him in the office on Saturday morning. She'd let him hug her to express his enthusiasm for her idea, but when he'd tried to give her breasts a clammy squeeze she'd poked him in the stomach. "Let me see your work when it's finished," he'd said like a spinsterish schoolmaster, flinching out of reach.

Her growing anger at her memories of him made her open the folder on the desk. Her designs still looked as impressive to her as they must have looked to Sid. This man once said it was England's proudest ale was the first thing people might not have known about Broads Best, printed above a tenth of the picture which the other nine slogans gradually assembled, her portrait of Henry VIII with a tankard in his hand. But when she'd taken it to Sid he'd grimaced at it. "I used to think it would be clever to advertise tartar control with a toothbrush getting rid of Genghis Khan. Too clever by half," he'd said, and she had felt so disappointed and vulnerable that she didn't wonder why he told her, as if he was doing an undeserved favour, that he would show her idea to their boss.

She ought to have realised what Sid was up to. Nathan would undoubtedly have warned her, but he'd been on holiday in Marrakesh that week. A few days later, when the junior partner had congratulated her on helping Sid visualise his idea for the Broads Best campaign, she had been too stunned to argue, and by the time her rage had been clamouring to be articulated it would have seemed too like an afterthought, a lie. Besides, she had seen enough of the partners to be pretty sure that they would have regarded the Saturday incident as negligible and would probably have dismissed her accusation as an attempt at revenge. Worst of all, Sid's self-righteous look had made it clear that he would have treated her more fairly if she had given in to him.

She'd let herself believe that the whole sordid incident had become irrelevant once Sid Peacock had moved to an agency in London and she had become pregnant with Margaret, but now she saw that she ought to have laid claim to her work for later use. Perhaps she still could, she thought as she took the folder to show Ben. "Would you hire me?"

"You bet I would, and so would anyone with any sense."

"Yes, but you're married to me."

"Anyone with any sense would be," he said, and made a face at having contradicted himself. "As soon as my aunt's home and can sit with the children we'll go out for dinner. We'll have plenty to celebrate."

In the morning Ellen walked the children to school, Johnny racing ahead to each intersection and glancing back for her to tell him he could cross, Margaret holding her hand and chattering about fashions, records, changing schools next year, a classmate who was rumoured to have been off school with her first period… The children were plenty to celebrate, Ellen thought, and so long as the family was happy, what else mattered? Sometimes she worried that they wouldn't grow up normally with a writer for a father and an artist for a mother, but they kept reminding her that it seemed unlikely. At the school gates they each gave her a fleeting kiss and ran off to join their friends, and she walked home to prepare dinner before heading for the interview.

Ben had left her the Volkswagen with a note on the driver's seat: IF YOU'RE HALF AS PROUD OF YOURSELF AS I AM OF YOU YOU'LL SLAY THEM.

She smiled at that and drove into Norwich, and had time to stroll from the car park through the pedestrianised streets to arrive at the long new building of yellowish stone near the cathedral less than five minutes before she was due there.

A lift which smelled scented and which hummed to itself on one note eased her up to the third floor. Past an accountant's office where women were typing what headphones told them and another door which looked as if whatever name its pane once displayed had been frosted over, she found the reception area of Ballyhoo Unlimited beyond glass doors as wide as the room. Fat blue settees dwarfed by posters almost big enough for billboards faced each other across a floor padded with blue carpet. The two men waiting on the settees glanced at Ellen and then resumed their nonchalant expressions as the receptionist behind the desk between them greeted her, raising her face as if her eyes and her cherry-red smile were fixed. "Mrs Sterling? You're first in," she said.

Ellen smiled apologetically at the men as she sat down. Her companion on the settee, a man who was approaching middle age and who wore a spotted bow tie and a tweed jacket slightly too large for him, was staring at his stubby fingers as if they might somehow count against him. The other man, who couldn't have been more than thirty, was gripping his portfolio with his bony knees and folded hands as though he was either praying or restraining himself. Ellen listened to the awkward silence and the sounds it amplified, the creak of the tweedy man's new shoes as he flexed his toes nervously, a faint heartbeat which was the younger man's left heel drumming on the carpet, the receptionist proclaiming "Ballyhoo Unlimited" to callers in exactly the tone of a game show hostess enthusing about a prize. Presumably that constant repetition was inaudible wherever Ellen would be working if she got the job. "That would be our Mr Rutter," the receptionist was saying now. "He's in London unexpectedly. Can our Mr Hipkiss help you? What was it concerning? I'm going to ask you to hold for a moment

…" Ellen was still waiting for her to do so when she resumed: "I'm afraid Mr Hipkiss is tied up just now. Shall I get him to ring you? I'm afraid Mr Fuge and Mr Peacock are in a meeting. I'll tell Mr Hipkiss you rang just as soon as he's free."

She switched off the call and ducked her head as if challenging her audience to prove that her blonde hair was dyed, and Ellen had to begin her question twice before the receptionist would look up. "Who did you say – who did you say were in a meeting?"

"The partners except for Mr Rutter. They'll be ready for you any moment now," the receptionist said with a briskness that suggested faint reproof.

"Mr Fuge and Mr…"

"Peacock. He used to work locally, then he went away until Mr Rutter tempted him back. Why, do you know him?"

Ellen was taking a deep breath when the switchboard buzzed and addressed the receptionist in a small sharp voice. "They want you now," the receptionist said. "I'll take you in."

Ellen stood up. She could walk straight out of the building and leave Sid Peacock wondering – but she wouldn't let him off that easily; she wanted to see how he would conduct himself. She followed the receptionist down an inner corridor, past a large office where several men in shirt-sleeves were working at drawing-boards, to a conference room.

Two men were seated midway along the extensive heavy table which took up much of the room. One of them, a ruddy man whose waistcoat buttons appeared to be in danger of snapping their threads, came to meet Ellen. "Mrs Sterling," he said in a voice thick as a cigar. "Sorry we kept you waiting. I'm Gordon Fuge, and this is Sidney Peacock."

So he was Sidney now, Ellen thought, growing tense as Peacock put aside the papers he was scanning and extended a hand to her. His wide face looked worn, his tan was turning purplish with veins. When she gave his hand a single hard shake he peered at her as if confused by her brusqueness and then let his gaze drift over her breasts. "Pleased to meet you," he said.