Offer To The CEO

Tuesday, continued...

Once Anna ended the call, and packed up her laptop to secure it, before heading up to Hou Yi's office for lunch and an appointment with Phillipa.

After a leisurely lunch, with Hou Yi, Phillipa walked into the office right on time at 2:30 pm, shutting the door behind her and taking a seat on a chair. "Hello Yi and Anna."

"Hello Phillipa," responded Anna.

Hou Yi smirked and responded "Pip, right on time as usual."

"I want to get right down to business with respect to matters. The first and most important thing, is did you follow the advice from yesterday, in not to sleep apart?"

"Yes, Pip, and you have a dirty mind"

"Yi, you are my friend, and I owe you a lot, but please be serious, as you will make Anna run for the hills, which will not help either of you."

"Yes Phillipa, we did."

"Anna, how did you feel when you awoke this morning, and how did you feel that Yi slept?"

"Actually I awoke feeling generally refreshed, and that I had a good night's sleep. As to Yi, I felt that he had a good night's sleep."

"Yi, and to the same question how would you respond."

"I hate to say this, but Anna is not telling the full truth. She awoke at some stage during the night with a nightmare, calling out 'Jinhu, do not hit me, please do not hit me.' and was frightened. She had her eyes open, but did not realise what was happening. It was when I calmed her down did she drift off into a peaceful sleep. As I was worried about her, it took me some time to settle back to sleep. Once I realised that she was OK, I then was able to go back to sleep."

"I did not realise I did that. I just felt so rested."

"Anna, do not worry. It is just part of the process of dealing with matters. It appears that you had some nightmare about an event, triggered by what we talked about yesterday, but it did not wake you. Yi's calming of you down let you go back to sleep."

"Now, I will not get into all the technicalities, as I know you Yi, and suspect you are the same Anna, you will want to understand the technical side and the reasons. The simple answer is that there is no real reason. I simply sensed yesterday talking to the both of you that you needed the other nearby to be calm, and able to face matters. All that is important is that this needs to continue."

"Do some activities separately, but make sure that there is time that you spend together. It will be the only way that you both can open up, importantly for you Anna that is about facing the past as you have supressed a lot of what happened to you as a means to cope. Yi you need to be open to helping Anna with what she is needed. I suspect as Lu Jinhu visited his family on a regular basis here, while with Anna, as I know I met him at events when I went as your guest, that you overheard things he said. Those things have to come out, but not now."

Phillipa paused, and then looked at both of them. "Now enough of me going on about this. What I need you to focus on is what we are going to address today. Yesterday, you both told me things separately. I need you to each pick three things, and we will talk about those points."

With that, they all went into deeply discussing things that Hou Yi and Anna had picked.

At 4:30 pm Phillipa looked at her watch and realised the time. She stopped the discussion and recapped with Hou Yi and Anna what they had been talking about. As she stood up and was getting ready to leave she said "You two better make sure that you are on time for tonight. I do not want to deal with my stressed out parents alone. You two have to help me."

"Just get going Pip, and I promise we will be as close to time as possible." With that Phillipa left Hou Yi's office.

Hou Yi, looked at Anna, and said "Just give me 5 minutes, and I will be ready."

"Yi, I'll go and collect my stuff and we can meet at the car."

"Are you sure"

"Yes Yi."

With that Anna left, and collected her belongings from her office. She met Yi at the car for the drive home.