Past Secrets by Cathy Kelly Page B

marble floors, or the enormous modern-art canvas that dominated the reception. Faye thought the picture looked like what two amorous whales might paint if they’d been ‘covered in midnight-blue emulsion and left to thump around for a while on a massive canvas. But having an artistic daughter, she understood that this was probably not the effect the artist had anticipated.
    ‘People are scared of modern art,’ Grace said gleefully when the painting had first been hung. ‘It can be intimidating,’ Faye pointed out bluntly. ‘But this one’s a bit dull, to be honest.’
    ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ sighed Grace. ‘But it says we’ve arrived. We’ve come a long way from that awful dive of an office we started out in, remember.’
    Faye remembered. Ten years ago, Faye had been broke after a series of dead-end jobs, and was desperately trying to get her foot on an employment ladder that didn’t involve latenight bar work.
    She’d been so grateful to Grace for taking a chance on her in the fledgling recruitment business she
    had made sure Grace never regretted it. Nobody in Little Island worked harder than Faye. The two had forged a professional friendship that grew stronger every year.
    ‘The ex-barmaid and the ex-banking queen, who’d have thought we’d make it?’ Faye used to say, smiling. She didn’t let many people past her barriers, but Grace was one of the few. What if Grace was a social butterfly, was married to the obnoxious Neil, and could air-kiss with the best of them? Despite all that, she was a real person. True, kind, honest. Faye trusted her, which made Grace part of a very small and exclusive club.
    ‘You should say “ex-beverage administrator”,’
    Grace chided. ‘Besides, you should have been running that bar. If you’d had the childcare and the opportunity, you would have been.’
    Grace knew Faye’s history and how she’d worked in dead-end jobs so she could take care of Amber herself. She knew most of Faye’s secrets, but not all.
    Faye took her messages, walked past what was now dubbed ‘Flipper Does Dallas’, went up to her office and got ready for the afternoon meeting.
    At three in the afternoon, on Mondays and Wednesdays, there was a staff meeting in Little Island Recruitment. Grace said it kept everyone in touch with what the whole company was doing.
    They’d been holding it for nine years and it was a marvellous idea because it made every single member of staff feel both personally involved in the company and valued by it.
    ‘We’re only as good as our last job,’ Grace would remind the staff at the meeting, where there was always a buzz of conversation, until the apple and cinnamon muffins came in. ‘This is the think tank where we come up with ideas to improve what we do.’
    The staff all believed the idea for the meeting had been Grace’s. After all, she’d been a banking hotshot for years before starting up the agency, and could write a book on how to get ahead in life.
    It could be called Who Moved My Emery Board?
    joked Kevin who was in charge of accounts. Grace’s nails were things of beauty: ten glossy beige talons that clacked in a military tattoo on the conference-room desk when she was irritated.
    Clack, clack, clack.
    In fact, Faye had suggested the staff meeting shortly after she joined.
    Grace felt that some benign presence had been on her side the day Faye walked into her life. Grace may have been the one with the financial acumen and the qualifications as long as her fake-tanned arms, but Faye was the one who’d made the agency work.
    On this afternoon, nineteen members of staff sat around the conference table and worked their way through the agenda.
    Today’s meeting focused on the few sticky
    accounts where the jobs and the jobseekers didn’t match. There were always a few. Little Island had an ever-growing client roster, with just three companies who created the problems, people for whom no applicant was good enough and who went through staff