The BlackBerry crisis may have been disastrous for businesses across Europe, but it has been good news for us.   The Boss is away and unable to bother us with his usual bombardment of messages.

“No arsy e-mails all day!” Jane announces. “I think I shall call these BlackBerry people and tell them to keep that server on the blink for as long as possible.”

“Oh please do,” I agree.

Without that constant stream of “urgent” dispatches, I have actually been able to do some work, take a lunch hour and speak to my friends. It’s as if I have a normal life.

But it doesn’t last long and then we’re deluged with all the backed up messages which have been lurking in the system. I get almost two hundred; most of them from The Boss demanding to know why I haven’t responded to all his previous arsy messages.

“Sorry,” we tell him, “The BlackBerry server has been down, we have not received any of your (arsy) messages until just now.”

“I don’t care if the server was hijacked by aliens!” he replies. “These instructions must be actioned as a matter of urgency.”

So now we have to stay up half the night dealing with the BlackBerry backlog; marvellous.

One of my delayed ‘instructions’ is from Carlton: “Helen, would you be so kind as to give Margaret a call? I’ve arranged a meeting with her to follow up on the Risk Assessment work. As I mentioned, she wants to take it to the next level. As do I. Kind regards Philip.”

Thankfully Margaret’s definition of the ‘next level’ differs quite substantially from his: she wants to hear what progress I have made in protecting myself from him! To be honest: none, but she doesn’t want to hear that; she wants to hear that I’m halfway towards striking a major blow for feminism in The City.

“Have you been keeping a record of his behaviour?” she quizzes me.

“Yes,” I nod; if she counts some scratchy notes I’ve made on the back of a pocket book.

“And have you approached Personnel?”

“Yes,” if she counts a quick call I had with Veronica, where I mentioned that I was concerned about being asked to work for the Corporate team……..

“And what have you done with the list I gave you?”

Aha! “I have made secret copies and hidden them. I also Googled some of the women on it.”

“Good,” she nods. “Has he tried anything recently?”

“No, but only because I’ve been distracted by another case so he hasn’t been able to. Now he’s ramping up this Risk Assessment thing again, so I assume that’s the start of another assault.”

“I’m afraid that’s my fault,” she bites her lip. “I thought I was doing a good thing, telling him what a useful exercise it was; but it seems I have added to your problems.”

I shrug. “Even if you hadn’t said that, he would have found some other way to get to me.”

“You’re right,” she agrees. “He is very manipulative; that’s one of the classic signs of psychopathy, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I’ve been reading all about it.” She points to a pile of text books on her desk: “Snakes in Suits”; “The Psychopath Test,” and “Psychos in The City.”  “My bedtime reading,” she smiles.

It suddenly dawns on me that Margaret is basically Jane, but twenty years older.

“You really think Carlton is a psychopath?” I ask.

“He has several of the classic signs,” she nods. “A grandiose sense of his own importance, a smug/glibness of manner; a propensity to manipulate others; a lack of empathy or remorse and the urge to do absolutely anything to stay on top.”

Wow, she’s right!

“Do you know anything about his childhood?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“It would help if we knew about that; psychopaths tend to show signs of their illness in adolescence: bullying friends, torturing animals, that sort of thing.”

I bet he was the kind of boy who liked to fry ants with a looking glass; or tie cats to the back of cars; or take pot shots at squirrels….

“I’ll see what I can find out,” I assure her.

“Good,” she nods. “Of course, if he is truly psychotic, he is capable of virtually anything; abuse, violence, torture….”

“Murder?”

“Even that. Ted Bundy; Geoffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson; were all psychopaths.”

Oh, great. If it isn’t bad enough that he’s a known sexual harasser I now have to worry about him being a serial killer too.

“I’m sure he’s not,” she sees my troubled expression. “But it’s better to be safe than sorry. Never volunteer to work late with him and never give him your home address.”

“He could get that from Personnel,” I point out.

“Oh yes,” she frowns, “then you must tell them you’ve moved.”

I vow to do just that as soon as I get back to the office!

“Anyway, back to the purpose of your visit,” she changes the subject. “I’m hoping that I may be able to rectify some of the problems I have caused. I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing terrible,” she’s smiling as she says that, which is so unusual an occurrence, it makes me doubt the sincerity of her assurance. “It’s exciting; at least I think it is. We would like you to come and work here on secondment.”

“Secondment?”

“Yes! We thought you could do a couple of days a week to supervise the implementation of the Risk Assessment recommendations. What do you think?”

I think I do not have enough hours in the day for my present job without taking on another….

“Wow,” I say, “What a great opportunity.”

“It is,” she agrees. “We have never had a secondee before. It took me a while to persuade the MD that it was a good idea, but he gave in the end.  You can come and sit in here and learn all about what we do and help me with the more technical aspects of the compliance rules. What do you think?”

“It sounds marvellous.”

“It does, doesn’t it!” She’s so excited I haven’t the heart to tell her otherwise. “This is a great opportunity for you, Helen, it’s the start of a whole new journey.”

To complete nervous exhaustion.

And, it seems, social exclusion. I return to the office with my announcement and find the others are even less than pleased to hear about than me.

“How will I cope when you’re not here?” Jane demands.

“The same way you cope when I am: by being totally bloody minded.”

“It’s not the same without a sounding board,” she grumbles.

“You’ll have Liz and Alex.”

“Alex is a wimp and Liz is obsessed with being bride of the year.”

“It is only for two days a week.”

“A lot can happen in two days! Besides, who’s going to take on your excess workload?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to The Boss yet.”

“Well, don’t think it will be me. I am not being dumped with all that Malcolm crap! I will not work for a man who only changes his underpants once a week.”

“You have no proof of that,” I tell her.

“Oh yes I do, and I shall produce it if I am forced to do so!”

There is no reasoning with her when she’s in one of those moods. But it seems she isn’t the only one upset with me. Alex is annoyed because he has to take over my pro bono slot; Liz is irritated because I can’t accompany her to WeightWatchers;  Simon is cross because he thinks I’ve stolen ‘his’ secondment; Tarquin thinks I’m trying to upstage him and Melinda starts crying because she’s allocated to the float pool for two days.  Only The Boss seems pleased.

“It’s win: win as far I’m concerned,” he tells me. “You will keep up with your present work load here for which I shall continue to bill our clients and I shall get paid handsomely for the work you do other there.”

“I can’t possibly keep up with all my work here and spend two days a week over there!” I plead.

“Nonsense,” he sniffs. “Lots of people keep down two jobs. It’s just a case of planning.”

Planning how long I can last without sleep?

“That’s not very fair,” I point out. “No one else is being asked to do anything like this.”

“No, you’re right,” he smiles, “You are the only one in the entire department to have this special privilege. Lucky you.”

Lucky lucky me, indeed.