Secrets and Lies - Harry's Secret

Secrets and Lies

  Part 1

  Harry’s Secret

  By R L Stephens

  14 June 2013

  Acknowledgment – book cover image imagerymajestic FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This is a work of speculative fiction that based around a ‘what if’ scenario. While the author does acknowledge that the contents of this e-book may offend some people, this is not the author’s intention, nor does he condone some of the actions portrayed. While certain events are portrayed in graphic detail, the author contends that these are a necessary for the full rendering of the events portrayed. If readers have any complains to issues with this they should take these up with

  Chapter 1

  “I think that’s all we need for now Mr. Wright,” the man said looking down at his notes. “You certainly seem to have excellent credentials,” he added taking another look at the resume that was sticking out from under his notepad.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Wright said nervously rubbing the palm of his right hand with the fingers of his left hand. “Oh and please call me Harry,” said having always had a dislike for such formalities and wanting to feel more ease with the situation. It wasn’t that he always felt so nervous at job interviews it was just that this was the first one he’d had in a very long time and really wanted to come and work for this particular bank.

  “Well then Mr. Wright, I mean Harry, I think we can say that unless there is anything else you wish to add then we are done here,” the man said looking at the woman sitting to his right, who nodded the required confirmation the man was looking for. She had been more or less silent during most of the interview, but she introduced the two of them and then had let the man take the lead through most of the interview. During the introductions Harry thought she had said her name was Amy Ellis or something like that, but Harry hadn’t really been paying much attention at that point. He also thought that she had said she was from the Human Resources department and that Richard Scott, the man who was sitting almost directly in front of Harry as the head of the department that Harry would be working was going to lead the interview.

  Despite being really quite anxious at the start Harry had soon found himself settling down and relaxing enough to be able to be able to answer Richard’s questions as articulating as possible. Even though he found that he hesitated his way through answers far more than he would have liked, and hoped that he didn’t come across as some kind of gibbering idiot. But he did think that he was coherent enough in his answer to get his main point across.

  “Just one last thing,” Richard said as he replaced the top on his pen and slid it neatly into his top shirt button. “May I ask how old you are?” He then asked as he organized his pile of papers and notes in a tidy pile and slipped them into the hard back notebook he had brought with him. Harry could see that there were several other loose bits of paper hanging out untidily from the edges of the notebook.

  “That’s not part of the interview, but I was just wondering,” Richard then added as he pushed his chair to back from the table so that he could stand up and seeing the look on Harry’s face must have appeared to be a mixture of both surprise that the question was asked and suspicion as to why the question was being asked, after all companies weren’t supposed to discriminate on the grounds of age.

  “Oh 29,” Harry said as casually as he could manage in the circumstances. But I'm a good few years older than that, but that’s not the only thing that I'm hoping you don’t find out about, thought to himself behind the guise of an awkward smile as he too rose to leave.

  “Ah I thought that was the case,” Richard said as he offered out his hand for Harry to shake and he could feel the soft smoothness of Harry’s hand that seemed to be quite a bit smaller than his own. Harry on the other hand could feel the roughness that came with age of the older man who must have been at least in his late forties.

  With the pleasantries completed Harry strode as confidently as he could, trying to leave one last impression on the two people he left behind him. Hoping that he had done enough to persuade them that he was the man for the job, and that if they did they wouldn’t dig too deeply into his past as they may not have liked what they found.

  “What do you think?” Richard asked turning to face Amy Ellis as the door to the meeting closed behind Harry.

  “I don’t know, he seems to be more than suitable,” she said as she straightened her skirt that was just a little bit too tight around her amply proportioned thighs and hips.

  “Yes I know,” Richard replied, “that was my impression too.”

  “You sound doubtful,” she replied her voice sounding higher in tone than you might have thought given her size.

  “There's just something, I don’t know, like he's hiding something,” Richard said his face twisted as if he were trying to figure what it was that he couldn’t quite out his finger on. That one thing about the young man who had just left that seemed to elude him at the moment and continued to do so regardless of how hard he tried.

  “Whatever it is,” she said in her surprisingly high pitched voice that seemed to ring with glee at the thought of unraveling this duplicitous young man, “it’ll come out in our usually pre-employment checks.”

  “Yes just like that guy last year who embezzled almost a million pounds from and it turned he’d done it before at his previous employer,” Richard said skeptically as if he doubted the thoroughness of such queries.

  “He came back clean,” Amy said a little defensively as she turned to leave the room.

  “We’ll see,” Richard said more to her back.