The Confidence Woman Extract

A darkly funny debut novel about blurred online identities and striving for success (or just security) in a rigged system - read on for a free extract of The Confidence Woman.

Christina is a single mother living in the Melbourne suburbs, but to her online clients she is the esteemed Dr Ruth Carlisle, an 'executive coach and mindset expert, specialising in high-performing individuals'.

Dr Ruth gains her clients' trust through her coaching business, discovering their secrets and deepest fears. Through this elaborate scam, she's saving money for the ultimate unobtainable Australian dream: a home deposit. But when she blunders, and her worlds begin to collide, suddenly everything is at stake ...

'The wicked Australian lovechild of Sally Rooney and Aubrey Plaza.' Chris Flynn, author of Mammoth

Start reading now ...

Julian's head was looking extra large today. It was partly because of the angle of his screen and partly because he was wearing a puffer vest that swallowed his shoulders. Behind

his head, I could see a few elements of a tasteful home office: a lamp, a succulent, a window with the curtains drawn.

He was waiting for me to speak, but I let the silence simmer.

I looked down, brushed a crumb off the keyboard, looked back up at the screen. Now he was scratching the inside of his ear with his pinkie. Julian was English— not in a good way— with a snooty accent and fine, fair, floppy hair. He sported two cowlicks and one pair of chunky black glasses.

To fill the silence, he continued.

‘It’s just this subtle sort of . . . negativity,’ he said. ‘Nothing really blatant, just something about her vibe.’

His glasses were statement glasses, almost Buddy Holly-style, but what statement were they making, exactly? They were supposed to announce a maverick braininess, I guessed, but they instead conveyed a scrambled message: something about wasted mid-life effort and lightweight polymer plastics.

‘Have you tried speaking to her about it?’ I asked.

‘Not directly,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried a few things to improve morale in the team generally, so I’m hoping people are feeling more empowered, more invested.’

Julian leaned back in his chair. Several long seconds ticked by.

It was my fourth session with Julian. At the start, he’d been a giant pain in the arse, complaining about the price of the Evolve Package and trying to build in a ‘get-out clause’ in case he decided early on that the coaching process wasn’t constructive. He caved in the end, but we both had to pretend he’d cut a deal, so I offered him bonus reading materials and emailed him two PDFs I downloaded from psychology.com: ‘Thought, Emotion, Sensation’ and ‘Power of Breath’.

‘I’m a storyteller by trade, Ruth, but I drive a hard bargain!’ A lofty chuckle. ‘I’m a tough negotiator.’

He was the director of a production studio in Sydney called Blaze Productions. It was a company that lived and breathed brand stories, according to its website. Most of their work was for luxury property developments. They made 3D architectural visualisations, fly-through videos, animations and virtual tours.

Fortunately, four sessions in, I could see that Julian was more interested in creating a Blaze workplace cult than in achieving any kind of quantifiable goal. Most of the time he just wanted to vent about his rivals and subordinates. Or crap on about his daily habits and routines. Or whine about the lingering impacts of Covid on business. Or throw around new ideas for talent recruitment and retention, like staff-wellbeing initiatives, laser-skirmish outings, virtual-gaming sessions.

Was he finding our sessions constructive? It was hard to tell. He was obsessed with Blaze company culture, but cagey when it came to more personal questions.

‘I’m not into the “tell me about your mother” stuff,’ he’d announced, with air-quote fingers, during our first session. ‘I’m all about the here and now.’

Maybe he did want to get deep and disgusting, but needed more coaxing. There was something about his appearance (wet lips, busy Adam’s apple) that suggested monstrous tastes in pornography, but you can never really tell.

‘You’ve talked about Astrid more than anyone else at Blaze in all our sessions together,’ I said finally. ‘She seems to be often in your thoughts. I wonder if there is something about Astrid apart from the negativity you perceive— something Astrid represents, perhaps— that’s also at work here.’

Julian sighed and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. ‘Well,’ he said, after a moment, ‘it was Tom who brought her into the team. I said, “Pick your own people, Tom, I want you to have that autonomy”’— he had a way of jerking his head back when quoting himself; I could almost see inside his nose— ‘but now Tom’s gone and he was the connective tissue, as it were. He’d worked with Astrid before and he convinced me to offer her a very good salary to get her on board. And, look, he was right. She has a great aesthetic, her work is great, it’s just that she creates this distance between herself and the rest of the team. She creates this kind of atmosphere.’

I nodded the empathetic nod, switched tabs and typed 41m7s. Astrid hired by ex-GM Tom in the Julian Pitt file.

‘Perhaps it’s not just the way Astrid behaves, but the fact of Astrid that’s taking up the emotional real estate here,’ I said. ‘Astrid represents a moment when you ceded control.’

‘Hmmm,’ he said, frowning.

I waited. An outburst was brewing. I could sense it.

‘Yesterday,’ he began slowly, ‘I had to sign off on a pitch deck for a client and I decided I wanted to make some revisions. I’m the boss, right? I’m allowed to do that, right? And so I went over to her desk with the changes and she just gave me this look’— his voice jumped half an octave— ‘and she said, “Okay”, but she said it with this tone.’

Julian was worked up now. His nostrils were flapping with emotion. His Adam’s apple was ready to jump out of his neck and build a pergola.

‘That does sound challenging, Julian,’ I said, with pastoral concern face. ‘One thing I’d like us to maybe touch on next week— and I’ll give you some reading material about this, because it’s a really interesting area of research— is the link between trust and performance.’

Julian nodded.

I continued: ‘Maybe it’s counterintuitive in some ways, because we tend to think of CEOs and high-performing people such as yourself as very shrewd and sceptical. But humans have evolved to trust and cooperate. Trust is the most beneficial evolutionary path and it bears out in the research. Trust is a common ingredient in high-performance work

environments.’

I paused. Was he going to speak? No. I went on: ‘I think it’s possible that distrust, your own distrust, is creating obstacles for you in achieving some of the goals we’ve discussed.’

Julian took a big, glum swig from his mug. ‘Well, talking to you has been helpful with the stress, I mean it has.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s good to let off steam and stay accountable to my

goals . . .’ He trailed off.

Another silence.

‘I’ve been wondering,’ he said, after a while. ‘Do you ever do this work with groups of people? I’ve been trying to impart some of the stuff we’ve been discussing in our sessions together— some of the frameworks and models— with everyone in my team. A lot of great companies offer private coaching to staff as a way to attract and retain top talent, too.’

It killed me to turn down these kinds of leads. But I couldn’t do referrals, couldn’t do word-of-mouth stuff or group sessions, couldn’t have clients comparing notes.

‘I’m afraid I’m just flat-out with research work at the moment, Julian, and I have a full load with clients,’ I said. ‘I have to be so selective with the work I choose to do.’

He smirked, flattered.

‘But it’s great that you’re seeing results with the breathing techniques,’ I continued. ‘Many of my clients find these techniques helpful for managing allostatic load and retraining the nervous system for optimal resilience and recovery.’

I smiled the brisk, valedictory smile. It was time to end this.

‘We’re nearly out of time. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about today?’

‘Ah.’ He smirked again, cheering up, wagging a finger at the camera. ‘I’ll let you off early this time, but I’ll get my money’s worth next week, Ruth!’

Oh, he was such a fuckface.

With that, I wrapped up the session, closed the window, saved the sound file and shut my laptop. For just a second, I rested my head on top of the computer, enjoying the feel of the cool aluminium against my ear. It was thirty-one degrees outside, even hotter inside our granny flat, which still stank of the kebabs we’d eaten for dinner the night before.

I got up, swapped my professional blouse for a t-shirt and found my shoes under my bed. I rummaged for keys, bag and both phones. The cake for the school fete was sitting in Barb’s fridge in the big house. I locked the door to the flat and was crossing the lawn when my personal phone buzzed.

Hi Christina, it’s Meg Lazlo from the fete committee. Just a reminder to provide a complete list of the ingredients when you drop off the cake at school. Thanks!

Extracted from The Confidence Woman by Sophie Quick.

Available now in all good bookstores.

The Confidence Woman

by Sophie Quick

A fresh and darkly funny debut novel about blurred online identities and striving for success (or just security) in a rigged system. Perfect for anyone who's ever enjoyed a good scammer story.

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