“Hello, Miss Robinson. Do sit down. I’m Mrs Stevens, but you can call me Nathalie. How’s it going?” She towered over a wide desk cluttered with paper and folders, her hair as blond and her eyes as blue as on the day I’d met her.
“Nice to meet you, Nathalie. It’s going great. What can I do for you?”
“We have a bit of an emergency. I usually have two colleagues working with me, Linda and Sue. Linda had to start her maternity leave earlier than planned and Sue has fallen ill this week. We’re getting a replacement for Linda next Monday, but with Sue out of the picture, I need someone extra this week. Of course, I have cleared this with your immediate superior, Mrs Clarks. So as of this afternoon, you’ll be working with me.”
“Sure, if it’s fine with everyone else it’s OK with me.”
“Wonderful, are you ready for a crash course then? Things can get quite busy here, but it will give me a chance to show you the ropes.”
“I’m all yours.”
“I suggest you finish your work downstairs and bring whatever you can’t finish with you. I’ll meet you here at two o’ clock.”

The first afternoon nothing happened. She told me to be present at eight-thirty AM sharp the next morning, all the while treating me like a perfect stranger. I, in fact, started hoping she had forgotten about my dramatic teenage shenanigans, but the tiny tremors in my fingers and the knots in my stomach warned me to know better. The next evening, after we had spent the day running around like rabbits on crack, and I had gotten my first taste of what work was really like − so damn exhausting − she wanted to take me out for a drink, to make up for having to skip my lunch break on my first day working for her. I gladly accepted. When I saw Nathalie again, all those years, a university degree, and a couple of semi-broken hearts later, I instantly felt like a smitten fifteen-year-old again. All the reasons why I had spent so many nights thinking of ways to kill her boyfriend, and heroically rescue her from sadness and loneliness, became very clear to me again. How was I supposed to rationally turn down this invitation? It was just a drink anyway.

Of course, in these circumstances, a drink is never just a drink. Well, it could have been, if it was just one drink. But one drink turned into several and ended with too many − and Nathalie hardly seemed a stranger to downing much more than the recommended units of alcohol per night. I suspected her of wanting to drink me under the table, like she had done on multiple occasions when we were younger. Somewhere around the fifth drink, she asked, “What kind of a name is Lee Harlem anyway?”
“It’s my name. I like it.”
“I used to know a Lee Harriet, strange girl, that one.”
“With a name like that you can’t really blame her.”
“I don’t think it was the name, do you?”
“Definitely not.”
“So why did you change it?”
“I thought Harlem suited me better.”
“I can’t argue with that.” Her blue eyes sucked the life out of me for the hundredth time that night. “You do know I should have picked someone more experienced to help me this week? But when your name popped up, I couldn’t resist.”
“Oh yeah, why’s that?”
“You’re seriously asking me why?”
“Yes, Mrs Stevens, why?”

And thus the cat was out of the bag.

To be continued…