Can you keep a secret?

I remember the day I got my licence to practice vividly. Harrison called me away from the Scarston account, and I went up to his office with all my little doubts and suspicions coalescing into a cold hard mass of dread in the pit of my stomach.

Sue and Freddie were there before me, nervous as hell. It reassured me a little that they must have picked up the same little cues of wrongness that I had.

Harrison sat us down with a show of bonhomie, and took us through what he called the secret history, all the narrowly averted scandal that naturally builds up round any organisation, over time. Then he rounded on us.

“I’m an accountant in private practice. I account for things; that’s my job. What kind of dread secrets did you expect?”

Sue giggled in relief, and Freddie looked close to the same. I didn’t share it. I met Harrison’s eye with an uneasy feeling that there had been some kind of test, and, worse, that I had passed it.

I was proved right the next day, when I found myself junior partner with special responsibility for what Harrison refers to euphemistically as the overseas accounts.

With thanks to the Monday Mixer for tempting me back.