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Naomi Berg wanted the invoice stopped before it left the building with a blank where the work should have been . The quarter was closing . Hugh Parnell , the finance director , wanted the fee booked to the sister company before the night was over . He came to her office with the paper already printed , and with a message to the sister company waiting on his screen . The total was filled in . The description was not . It said management services , which was a phrase and not a fact . He said the sister company had the cash , the group needed the charge in this period , and everyone understood what it was for . Naomi had heard that sentence in other corridors . Understanding between colleagues was not something an auditor could read . She wanted one thing from him . Not a smaller charge , and not a clever home for it . She wanted the line to name work a person had done . If nobody could name it , the fee should not go . Hugh said the work was obvious : the shared finance team , the shared systems , the advice his people gave through the year . Naomi said obvious was not a description . She asked him to say , in words a stranger could follow , what had been provided and who had provided it . He disliked being slowed . He said the business needed a closed quarter , and that perfect sentences were a luxury . She did not take up the argument . She turned the invoice around , read the empty line aloud , and waited . Hugh looked at the ceiling , then at his notes . He began to talk about a system change the sister company had asked his team to run , and about a contract review that had gone on through the late summer . Naomi wrote those things down in ordinary words . She did not add a rate . She did not add a speech about treaties or group structures . She handed the page back and said she would sign when those words were on it and the phrase management services was gone . Hugh took it to his desk . He came back with the line filled in , short and slightly grudging , and with the empty phrase crossed out . Naomi read it once , signed , and put her copy in the file . She let him go back to closing the books .
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