The Dark Side of Miss Fairbrass

Jenny could not believe her eyes when she entered the office. The place was a tip. She was so surprised that she had to check the piece of paper Miss Fairbrass had given her. Yes. This was it. Number six.

This was the first time that the prim and proper Miss Fairbrass, Head of Personnel had summoned Jenny to her office, and it was nothing how she had imagined it to be. Files and documents were scattered willy-nilly about the room, and half-obscured the top of an old desk that had long since seen better days. In fact, the base of one of its legs had been replaced by a thick volume of the Oxford English Dictionary to keep it steady. The pallid wall, cracked and stained, was bare, except for the grimy window behind the desk. The air was thick and musty, and dust was beginning to settle on some of the more unused books and folders.

Jenny, more than a bit interested, took a closer look at the desk. There was an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts perched precariously on its edge, and an empty box of matches lying beneath on the grubbily carpeted floor. To think that the pristine Miss Fairbrass was a smoker, especially after imposing all those rules of cleanliness on the rest of the staff. Jenny smirked to herself. Just wait till she told the other girls!

Jenny looked at her watch. She was early. Her appointment was for five o'clock. Miss Fairbrass always turned up on the dot, so that gave Jenny another five minutes in which to indulge her rapidly growing curiosity.

She glanced at the door, and furtively opened a desk drawer. "Well. What have we here?" she whispered to herself, and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Bell's whisky. "So, she's a secret drinker too!"

Jenny carefully put the bottle back, and opened another drawer. Leafing through some untidy documents she came across a glossy magazine. "Oh my god!" she gasped, putting her hand to her mouth, as she realized it to be the latest edition of 'Penthouse' monthly. So, that's why Miss Fairbrass never married. She's a lesbian!

"What on earth are you doing in here?" demanded a stern voice.

Jenny froze, and saw a bespectacled grey-haired woman poking her head round the door. It was Miss Fairbrass!

Jenny tried to surreptitiously shut the desk drawer. "Err...I came to see you...just as you asked me to," she stammered, just wishing that the floor would swallow her up.

Miss Fairbrass came into the room, and glared at Jenny in that way of hers which made her hapless victims somehow feel they were six inches tall. "Miss Prescott," she snapped. "You're in the wrong office."

"But...you wrote down number six." Jenny fumbled for the piece of paper in her pocket, and showed it to her tormentor.

"You silly little girl!" retorted Miss Fairbrass, humourlessly. "You have the number the wrong way round. I'm in number nine. This is the accountant, Mr. Dryden's office!"