Dear Santa, she read, I want an X-Box and a pink DS and some games, especially Nintendogs, and my brother wants a Transformer...
The list went on and on, written in her daughter's childish scribble. Even though she was smiling she felt her eyes filling with tears and blinked exaggeratedly - rubbing at them with the heels of her palms. Things had just been so hard since the divorce, and this Christmas seemed likely to be no different. If only the useless prick would pay his maintenance on time for once.
Laughing now, she folded the notes carefully, placing them on the kitchen worktop, ready for 'posting'. Perhaps she could try writing to Santa. Mind you, she thought, I don't think he'd be able to cope with my list. For some reason that seemed really funny.
Three hours later, curled on the sofa with her two children asleep upstairs, halfway through some drivel starring Angelina Jolie and a decent bottle of Chardonnay, the idea seemed to take on a compelling merit. What harm could it do?
Laughing softly to herself, feeling more than a little fuzzy with the wine, she took up the pad and pen Isabelle, her daughter, had been using. Okay, what did she want?
Dear Santa, for Christmas this year I would like...
She felt silly. What did she actually want? She chewed the end of the pen absent-mindedly.
I would like to meet a man.
Okay...good start. Definitely a man, a nice man. Somehow that idea left her disappointed. She sipped her wine. No, not a nice man. She giggled. No, not a nice man, at all.
I would like to meet a dangerous, sexy man.
Yes, that was more like it. What else...
I would like to meet a dangerous, sexy man who fancies me...
No, not fancies, too weak. Somehow this note seemed to be taking on something of a life of its own, a strange intensity hovering over her words. She gulped her wine, filling her glass mechanically.
I would like to meet a dangerous, sexy man. Someone who desires me, who wants me, who'll treat me right, who will love me and isn't afraid to take the initiative.
Unlike that useless prick of an ex-husband, she thought. No, no - her thoughts turned more sexual - I know...
I would like to meet a dangerous, sexy man. Someone who desires me, who wants me, who'll treat me right, who will love me and make love to me. Someone who knows what I want and is willing to be sexually dominant. And who will make my sex life more interesting.
She read the note through. No, not 'more interesting', she thought, crossing it out. She chewed the end of the pen reflexively. I know, she thought. Quickly she scribbled 'edgy and exciting' in its place. Well, hey, to be honest any sex life at all would be nice. She looked at the note once again. Hmm, pretty good, she thought. Then, for good measure she added:
And I want my ex-husband to be humiliated. Publicly.
Laughing, without really thinking, she added the note to the posting pile in the kitchen.
Dear Santa
I would like to meet a dangerous, sexy man. Someone who desires me, who wants me, who'll treat me right, who will love me and make love to me. Someone who knows what I want and is willing to be sexually dominant. And who will make my sex life edgy and exciting.
And I want my ex-husband to be humiliated. Publicly.
Ha. Fat chance. That selection will screw Santa up, she thought.
It was only after packing her kids off to school the next morning that she realised that her note was in with the kids'. By then, though, she was already late for work. Shit, she thought. Well, they probably wouldn't read all the kids' notes anyway...although she felt her conclusion was touched with a little hysteria.
******
There could be few things, she thought, as humiliating, as guaranteed to destroy your self-confidence, as working for your ex-husband. In her case, the fact that he had left her to run off with Miss Tits and Curls, his secretary, was a real double whammy.
It was with little enthusiasm, then, that she received her summons to a meeting with him at eleven o'clock that morning. Normally, working in Media Relations, her meetings with him were restricted to the daily nine-thirty group management meeting, a largely pointless affair from her point of view, and the occasional departmental strategy meeting. Special meetings like this were unusual and, she felt, only gave The Prick an opportunity to humiliate her in some subtle or novel way.
With growing trepidation she ran the gauntlet of Miss Tits and Curls, waiting awkwardly in the foyer as the little tramp fiddled with papers and smirked at her when she thought her attention was elsewhere. Fucking airhead. Eventually, just long enough for her to understand her subordinate position, she was called into his frosted glass palace.
The Prick was sat behind his hideously expensive, impossibly elegant ebony desk. Charcoal grey suit with matching tie, white shirt open at the neck. Blond hair expensively coiffured above his slick perma-tan. Body toned by squash and 'rackets': all courtesy of Achilles Corporation. Behind him, over his shoulder, the view of the city through his picture window was breathtaking: the sun reflecting silver from canyons of glass and steel, stretching away out of sight. The kind of view, she thought, that only angels should have. Again: courtesy of Achilles Corp.
"Hi, John," she said, unconsciously straightening the cream skirt of last season's Dior business suit. "You wanted to see me?"
"Kate, yes, come in," he pointed to the matched black leather sofas in front of his desk. "Have a seat."
In the sofa on the left she recognised Mr Saldana, executive director of the hi-tech wing of Achilles Corp - The Prick's boss - so she sat right, crossing her legs with a sigh of nylon. Saldana smiled at her, but it was The Prick that spoke, steepling his fingers before him.
"Kate," he said. "Mr Saldana and I were discussing recent coverage of the company in the professional media, it hasn't been positive. That's your area, right?"
"Uh...yes, part of it anyway," she said. What professional media? She wanted to ask.
"Bottom line, Kate, where are we going wrong?" Saldana asked.
She looked at him again. Expensive black Italian suit, Gucci loafers, diamond ring the size of an aspirin, silver tiepin in the shape of a fir tree. Short, blocky - not fat, squat - early fifties, sandy, reddish hair cropped short, the hint of a beard. Hard grey eyes. Not someone you'd want to upset.
"Okay," she started, launching into a reasonably well-informed breakdown of Achilles' hi-tech division's performance problems.
After that it was fairly easy, a quick strategy drawn up for a renewed assault on some professional publications, a few ideas bounced around, and either adopted or rejected, and the meeting wound itself up. She sighed with relief, gathering her papers and standing to leave.
"Oh, Kate," The Prick said. "You're still single aren't you?"
