Read A Room Swept White for Free Online

the promotion and the money? Resign? Lock myself in a toilet cubicle for a good cry? Does he feel at all guilty about what he’s just done to me?
    Why the hell do I care how he feels
?
    I march back to my office, slam the door, grab the damp towel from the top of the radiator and wipe away condensation until my arm aches. A few minutes later, the window is still sopping wet and now so is my jumper. All I’ve succeeded in doing is flicking the water all over myself.Why doesn’t someone think to put an end to world drought by collecting condensation? My window alone could irrigate most of Africa. Why doesn’t Bob Geldof sort it out? It must be Bob Geldof I’m angry with, since it can’t be Laurie. I’ve got a typed document buried somewhere in my desk, instructing me, among other things, never to allow myself to get angry with Laurie.
    I used to look at it all the time when Tamsin first gave it to me. I thought it was hilarious, more hilarious still when she told me she gave a copy to every woman who came to work at Binary Star. About a year ago, it started to lose its appeal for me, and I stuffed it in my desk, underneath the flower-patterned lining paper that someone who worked here before me put in all the drawers.
    No point trying to kid myself that I can’t remember which drawer it’s in; I know exactly where it is, even if I’ve spent much of the last twelve months pretending it isn’t there. I pull out the files and the drawer-liner, and there it is, face down. Steeling myself, I pick it up and turn it over.
    It’s headed, in capitals, ‘ TAMSIN ’ S SEVEN COMMANDMENTS ’, with a subheading in italics,
‘To be borne in mind at all times in relation to Laurie Nattrass’
.
    The list reads as follows:
    1) It’s not you. It’s him.
    2) Have no expectations, or, alternatively, expect absolutely anything.
    3) Accept what you can’t change. Don’t waste time getting angry or upset.
    4) Bear in mind that it’s only because he’s a man that he’s got a reputation for being ‘brilliant but difficult’. Ifhe were an equally talented woman who behaved in exactly the same way, he’d be ridiculed as a mental old bat instead of head-hunted for all the best jobs.
    5) Beware of imagining that he has hidden depths. Assume his true self is the bit that you can see.
    6) Don’t be attracted by his power. Some people are powerful in a good way, enhancing the confidence of others and making them believe anything is possible. Not him. Get close to him and you’ll find that, as his power seems to grow, yours rapidly diminishes. Look out for a feeling of helplessness and the growing conviction that you must be fairly rubbish.
    7) Whatever you do, DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM.
    According to at least one of Tamsin’s criteria, I have failed spectacularly.

2
    7/10/09
    ‘Unusual, yes,’ said DS Sam Kombothekra. ‘Suspicious, no. How could it be?’ If trying to be fair to everyone ever felt like too much effort, Sam hid it well.
    He and DC Simon Waterhouse were on their way to today’s second briefing. It had probably started by now. Sam was walking a little too fast, trying to look as if being a few minutes late didn’t make him nervous.
    Simon knew it did. Lateness belonged to that vast superset of things that displeased Detective Inspector Giles Proust, known unofficially as the Snowman because his regular avalanches of disapproval descended as tangibly as boulders of ice, and were as hard to shake off. After long years of trying, Simon had finally succeeded in insulating himself against Proust’s condemnation: the inspector’s opinions no longer mattered to him. Sam was a newer addition to Culver Valley CID and still had a long way to go.
    The incident room was packed by the time they got there, with nowhere left to sit and hardly any space to stand. Simon and Sam had to make do with the doorway. Between the bodies and over the heads of dozens of detectives, most of whom had been drafted in from Silsden