Trilemma by Jennifer Mortimer Page A

return to my desk, which looks increasingly like a rubbish dump. My office is no longer simple and uncluttered. The days seem to start in crisis and end in crisis.
    â€œDo you want me to get you a sandwich?” asks Helen. But when she brings the sandwich, I take a couple of bites and leave the rest.
    â€œClevaco are downstairs,” she says.
    While she goes to collect them, I rise and rub my neck, then pace back and forth across the carpet, worrying about whether we can get the switch through customs and commissioned in time for the interconnect tests. While Hera will have its own network and its own customers on that network, you have to interconnect with the other telco networks in order for your customers to talk to everyone else, and that means a tense and formal agreement with Kiwicom, our competition.
    On Saturday morning I wake abruptly from a vivid dream in which I was sitting with a bunch of hobbits and I’d forgotten to put on any clothes. The hobbits had enormous cocks sticking out of their breeches and they were arguing about systems integration—and then I woke up.
    The sky is clear and the sun beats in. Indolence washes over me, that wonderful feeling of lassitude when you don’t have to do anything in particular or be anywhere at a definite time. No one is expecting you to make a decision or do something forthem, or put on a smile and act in the way they expect you to act.
    I think it’s called freedom, or maybe it’s just called the weekend.
    Ah, I say to myself as I stand by the window, gazing at the glistening harbor, and waiting for the coffee to finish gurgling its way into the little jug.
You can’t beat Wellington on a good day.
And I decide not to go into the office today.
    There is a knock at the door. For a mad moment my heart leaps in shock when I see a hobbit standing there, but then I realize it is a human child.
    â€œMichael!”
    He holds out a damp and soggy twist of white cardboard and brown paper. Inside are two battered chocolates.
    â€œI am very sorry,” he says. “This is all that’s left.”
    â€œYou don’t have to share your chocolates with me,” I say, handing them back.
    â€œThey’re not mine, they’re yours. Polly got them.”
    â€œPolly got them for me?”
    He sighs. Definitely, a stupid adult. “Polly ripped the bag open and ate them. Sorry.”
    â€œOh.” We both stare at the two dark brown truffles. “Was there a card?”
    He shuffles. “I’m not sure. Polly might have eaten it. But Mum said your name is on this bit,” and he shows me a chewed piece of brown paper with the words “L Mere” and the house address, scrawled in black felt-tip pen.
    â€œSomeone sent me a congratulations present, I guess. Oh, well, never mind,” I say and pat him on the head before closing the door.
    But as I drop the remnants in the rubbish, I hear what sounds like something being murdered in the front yard and I hurry down the stairs.
    Outside, Karim is sitting on a sheepskin rug that wrigglesbeneath him. Not a rug, no, it is the truffle thief herself. Sally crouches beside Karim pouring something down the dog’s throat. Polly struggles, but Sally holds her mouth closed and massages the dog’s throat.
    Sally looks up and sees me and frowns. “Release her,” she says and Karim starts to rise.
    Polly shoots out from under him, stops, vomits, and then vanishes down the path toward the back of the house. Another retching noise can be heard.
    Sally and Karim smile at each other. “Mission accomplished,” says Karim.
    â€œYou’d better wash your hands,” Sally replies.
    I am having a very stupid day. I don’t understand what they were doing.
    â€œPoison,” she says.
    â€œWhat! Polly’s been poisoned?”
    â€œShe was hyperventilating. Dogs aren’t allowed chocolate. It’s poisonous for them,” Sally says sternly, as if