For the first time, he looked at Ellen instead of looking through her.
Jamal stayed in his office long after the marketing staff went home. Outside the glass wall, the city turned from pale afternoon to copper evening, and then to the blue-black color of office towers after most of the lights had been switched off. He had the board's meeting notice on his screen, a list of items he had approved without reading closely, and a strange pressure behind his ribs he did not want to call fear.
He had noticed the older cleaner's voice before, but he had dismissed the feeling as irritation. Something about her confidence made him uncomfortable. She stood in rooms as though she did not need permission, yet she wore a cleaning uniform and moved a cart. He had spent his life surrounded by people who approached him carefully, asking what he wanted, waiting to learn which answer would please him. Ellen never seemed to wait.
The photograph on his office shelf showed his grandmother in her fifties, wearing an apron beside a kitchen table covered in components and handwritten diagrams. He had kept it because the story made good material for investor presentations. A company started with one woman's hands, one family's ambition, one borrowed room. He had repeated that version of the story so often that he rarely considered the woman inside it.
He had been nine when he last saw her. His father was angry after a dispute over expansion financing. They moved, stopped visiting, and eventually made the separation sound like something the entire family had agreed to. Jamal remembered his grandmother sending birthday gifts, sometimes accompanied by notes about ordinary things: how tall he was, what he liked at school, whether he had fixed the wheel on the toy truck. His father usually placed the notes in a drawer. Jamal learned not to mention them.
As an adult, he could have repaired the distance. He told himself there was never time. When he became chief executive, their calls revolved around forecasts, product development, and board appointments. She asked whether he liked working with the people he had hired, and he answered with staff retention figures. She asked whether he still built anything with his hands, and he told her about a new production line.
Now he stared at the photograph and tried to remember her speaking his name. It had been gentle, with a little humor behind it. The cleaner had spoken the same way, but thousands of people in the world could share a voice. He told himself he was imagining the resemblance because the week had been exhausting.
His phone rang. Shenine's name filled the screen. He answered before the second ring.
"Are you coming over?" she asked.
"I have board papers to prepare."
"You never used to put the company before me."
He closed his eyes. "The audit has become serious. Police came to the office today."
"Because that accountant set us up. She is trying to ruin me."