I did not shout. I went upstairs, chaired the ten o’clock board session as the incoming chief executive, and had the elevator policy struck from the building rules before lunch. The following morning, the whole staff used the same lift. Rian Sohee resigned within the week rather than sit through the audit of her expense authorisations, which had been irregular for three years. Haneul asked me to see it as a mistake. I told him the mistake was thinking I was small.
The divorce took nine months. I kept the role and none of his assets. The woman from the hallway, Boram, runs the operations division now, and she was the only person in that corridor who tried to help a stranger she thought was nobody.
The watch came back in an envelope with no note. I gave it to his mother, who cried, and who still telephones me on Sundays.
They spent an entire morning deciding what I was worth from four feet away, and not one of them thought to ask. I have stopped needing to be recognised by people who never looked. I know exactly who walked into that building, and she is the same woman who walked out.
