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‘Subecka! Sounds Japanese! Well anyway, say hi from me.’
‘Will do, got to go!’ I say, heading back to Devron, who is arranging with the waiter for his two bottles of wine to be re-corked and put in a bag for him.
‘Bit young for you, wasn’t he?’ says Devron, as I sit back down. ‘It’s good ice cream, have some,’ he says, poking his spoon at my sundae glass.
‘I’m stuffed,’ I say.
‘Right: see Tom and Jeff end of the week and get scripts to me three weeks on Friday.’
‘That soon, Devron?’
I’m pretty sure the Amish can erect a wooden house in twenty-four hours. Apparently God created the Universe in seven days. But it takes our creative teams one month to write a few piddly scripts.
‘That timing’s too tight, Devron.’
‘You said it was OK a minute ago!’
I have zero recollection of agreeing to anything of the sort. And if I did it was only because I wasn’t listening to a word he was saying … OK, let me think: if I brief a team early next week I might manage it, if Robbie gives me one of the more amenable, mature creative teams. Maybe lovely old Andy Ashford.
‘Theoretically it’s possible …’ I say.
‘We’re good, right?’ he nods.
‘It does depend on the team’s availability and workload, I’ll do everything I can …’
‘You’re late on this project already.’
‘To be fair we haven’t had your brief yet. And we haven’t got a name for the range. And we haven’t seen the products either.’ So technically, Devron, I should be the one sitting across the table giving you a menacing look, not the other way round …
‘So that’s a yes then,’ he says nodding again. (Last year Devron spent a week on a ‘How to Influence People’ course. He spent five days glued to YouTube videos of Tony Blair and Obama. Now whenever he wants something unreasonable he nods like a plastic dog in a car. Horrifically, this technique seems to work.)
I nod back at him. ‘Yes, Devron,’ I say, ‘yes, that’s totally fine.’
I have a nasty feeling in my head, heart and guts, that I shouldn’t have just said that.
The first thing I do when I’m back at my desk is fill out my expenses – two hundred and forty quid with that second bottle of wine! Just once before I quit I’d like to do what Steve Pearson, Board Director on pessaries, does regularly: take the person I’m having an affair with out for lunch and bill it as a client lunch. (Sam – premier source of intel, as per usual.) I’d never actually fake my expenses; more to the point, there’s no one here I’d have an affair with. What am I even talking about? I would never have an affair full stop. Why can’t anybody ever leave anybody without another body to go to?
I wander down to the mail room to see if Sam’s around. I fancy a coffee and a gossip but he’s nowhere to be found. He’s probably in the pub with Jinesh from IT, swotting up on some dodgy new computer software that can read your emails from outer space.
Finally (and this should have been first, but I’ve put it off because it’s the least fun) I take the lift up to the creative floor to visit Robbie Doggett’s secretary, Alexis. It’s impossible for me not to associate anyone called Alexis with Alexis Colby Carrington from Dynasty. So even if this Alexis wasn’t already a cold, manipulative bitch, I’d probably project that onto her anyway. She’s lying on the leather sofa outside Robbie’s office, wearing sequinned hot pants and her favourite Patti Smith t-shirt. Sam’s the only man in the building who doesn’t think she’s the most beautiful woman in W1. As a consequence she hates him. She hates him even more since last year’s Christmas party when he asked her – in front of her new pop star boyfriend – to name a single Patti Smith song.
She’s deep in concentration, studying Grazia.
‘Alexis. Have you got a sec?’
She puts her magazine down on the floor and checks out my outfit. Her gaze lingers briefly on my belt, then moves swiftly back to the mag. ‘Hi babe,’ she says wearily.
‘Can you please ask Robbie to allocate me a team for the Fletchers brief asap?’
‘Babe, he’s shooting in New York, not back for a week.’
‘Yes. I know.’ And as far as I’m aware they do have telephones and the internet in America. It might just be a rumour but I’m pretty sure it’s true. ‘He knows the brief’s urgent.’
‘He didn’t mention it to me,’ she says, flicking over the page. She pulls her head back as if she’s seen a burns victim. ‘Look at this cellulite!’ she says, her fingers tracing the thighs of some poor A-lister as if the paper were her own skin.
‘And tell him Devron wants scripts three weeks on Friday.’
‘You’ll never get that,’ she says.
‘I’ll call him myself and explain?’
‘Babe, you know that I’m The Gatekeeper. Leave it with me.’ End of conversation.
It’s pitch black outside by the time I finish, and a particularly cold March evening with no sign of spring in sight. All I want to do is head home and have a large glass of wine and a curry, but I’m trying not to drink every night. Plus I can’t justify splashing out on a mid-week take-away when I’m meant to be saving for my eventual escape.
Theoretically I should go home via Sainsbury’s. Try to be good, buy something healthy and full of beta-carotenes and Omega 3s. Is it Omega 3s or Omega 6s? Can’t I just eat double the 3s? A piece of salmon, some leafy green veg. I could make some form of cleansing broth. If I slipped in some udon noodles, it’d be almost like pasta … I should also pop in to see my neighbour, Grumpy Marjorie. I try to see her once a month and I haven’t been round for a while. The guilt is building up.
Then again, The Apprentice is on tonight. If I go straight home I could be in bed with Sir Alan on iPlayer by 9pm. Not in bed with Sir Alan, that wouldn’t work at all.
Decision made, I walk quickly to the tube station. I promise myself I’ll go round to Marjorie’s this weekend. Or maybe next weekend. And I’ll eat green leafy veg another day.
Right. Let’s start over. Stressful day, happy pasta shape needed. Farfalle! Butterflies are happy! And there’s the other half of that pack of bacon from Monday. I was planning a vegetarian dinner after watching Devron demolish a piece of bone marrow with his fingers earlier. Still bacon’s not really meat-meat. Pigs are more like chickens than cows, when you think about it.
And I’ll chuck in some frozen peas, they’re definitely vegetables … and there’s that carbonara recipe that doesn’t need cream – just one egg and an extra yolk – but it still tastes mega creamy: easy, peasy carbonara! Perfect. Crispy bits of bacon, little bursts of fresh, sweet peas, topped with lovely salty parmesan.
My stomach is rumbling on the tube and the minute I walk through my door I start the pasta and pour myself a little glass of wine. It’s just one glass. An hour later I’m in bed and I’m content. This is the best way that this day could end. I have three things that I really wanted. Good food. Good wine. Good TV.
I am thankful for these nights, when I am so exhausted, I can almost forget that I’ve ever been in love. I can almost forget the whole concept of having another person to share my life with. The good stuff, the bad stuff, a photo of ballerinas, the story of Devron and his wine. I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to fall asleep next to someone and wake up the next morning feeling happy and calm. I’ve almost forgotten all of these things. Except in these moments in the dark before sleep comes. And who ever really does forget, really?
Jake, my ex, used to have this thing about foreign catchphrases and quirks in other languages. For example, he thought it was hilarious that the English call condoms ‘French letters’, but the French call them English hats, ‘capotes Anglaises’. He’d often try to amuse my male friends with this fact, to the point where I’d have to leave the room from sheer repetition.
Another phrase he loved was ‘Metro, boulot, dodo’. Metro = subway. Boulot = French slang for ‘the grind’, i.e. the day job. And dodo = sweet slang for ‘dormir’ = to sleep; like you’d use to a child, i.e. sleepy time. The line is taken from a poem by a French writer, Pierre Béarn, about the tedium of monotonous work: tube, the grind, sleep. Welcome to my world.
Some mornings when I’d be struggling out of bed at 5.30 a.m. for a pre-meeting with Berenice where my sole purpose was to lay pencils for her in Boardroom Two at perfect right angles to the pads, Jake would grab my hand and try to pull me back into the warmth.
‘Why do you do that bullshit job? It’s Metro Bullshit Dodo, Susie, I don’t get it.’
‘I’m thirty-three, it’s the only job I’ve ever done. I’m not qualified for anything else.’
‘Your skills are totally adaptable, there’s loads of other jobs you could do.’
And then a year later, ‘Jake: I am thirty-four. That’s too old to change careers. I couldn’t afford to go back to college now, even if I wanted to.’
‘Stop being so negative. People older than you re-train to be doctors or even architects.’
‘I can’t stand the sight of blood, and I’m not smart enough to be a doctor or an architect.’
‘I didn’t literally mean those two jobs. I meant you could do anything – even if it takes a few years to get there.’
And then last year, ‘It’s easy for you, Jake! You’re naturally talented, you love your job and you’re paid loads to do it. I am average at everything. I have no hidden talents. What am I good at?’
‘Food. You just need to figure out a way to make it into a career.’
‘Yeah right, chip shop assistant number three, minimum wage and the boss gets to grope me behind the deep fat fryer …’
‘I don’t know. You could run your own café, do a mix of English and Italian classics, just simple, beautiful stuff. You’re such a good cook, and you love all that.’
‘Do you know how expensive it is to set something like that up? And do you know how many catering businesses fail in their first year? And if you think I’m busy and do horrendous hours now, what do you think that would be like?’
‘You could write a cookbook! Or do a recipe blog, or a blog all about pasta! That girl at work I was telling you about, she’s started doing a blog about make-up …’
‘Which girl?’
‘You know … my friend who does make-up.’
‘Who? Leyla Dempsey?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The one whose dad bought her a flat in Notting Hill and a Birkin bag, and pays all her bills for her, but you say she’s not at all spoiled and she’s really down to earth? That one?’
‘Oh Susie, stop it.’
‘Stop what? No, it’s fine. I’m glad she can afford to spend her days writing about eye shadow, I’m sure it’s deeply enthralling, but you know, my dad didn’t buy me a flat and he doesn’t pay my bills and buy me handbags that cost a year’s salary in the chip shop.’
‘Well actually you do live in a flat that your grandma gave you.’
‘No, I don’t! She did not give it to me, that’s ridiculous. I pay seven hundred and fifty pounds a month to my brother, I have never asked my parents for money since I was twenty-one and I never would. Not least because my parents would tell me to get stuffed, and be a grown up.’
‘Well, why don’t you?’
‘Why don’t I what? Ask them for money?’
‘No. Why don’t you be a grown up?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Man up. Grow some balls. Stop wasting your time in a job you don’t even like. You’ve got no respect for most of the people you work with.’
‘That’s because they’re all letches or bullies. Anyway I do like Rebecca. And Sam …’
‘You’d still be mates with them if you leave. They might leave before you. Have you ever thought about that?’
‘Sam’s never going anywhere.’
‘Sam’s a loser, but he’s not the point.’
‘Don’t call Sam a loser,’ I say. ‘So your friend’s blog, presumably she doesn’t make any money out of it, it’s just some little vanity project? Oh, that’d be a great name for a beauty blog, The Vanity Project …’
‘Stop having a go at some girl you’ve never even met just because she’s got off her arse and is doing what you want to do.’
‘Are you saying I’m jealous of some twenty-three-year-old who writes about bloody lip balm?’
‘I’d say you’re clearly jealous, yes. And a bit vicious as well.’
‘I think it’s a really good idea if I go to work now.’
‘Yeah, I think that’s a really good idea.’
‘Am I seeing you later?’
‘Not sure …’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s a work-drinks thing in Soho …’
‘Oh … the whole company?’
‘A few of us, yeah.’
‘Oh. Well let me know if you pick up any brilliant tips on how to apply mascara. Am I supposed to look up or down? Gosh, it’s all so terribly confusing …’
‘Go to work.’
Sometimes I have an overwhelming urge to call him, to tell him that I’m finally going to hand in my notice, as soon as they promote me. I want him to know that at long last I’m about to be brave, jump off this treadmill, very soon. I am. But then he’ll ask me when, and what I’m going to do instead, and I don’t know yet, so I can’t, and I’ll look foolish.
And also if I call him, he’ll think I want him back. Which truly I don’t. After what happened? I couldn’t forgive him. And also she might answer. And that’s one voice I don’t ever need to hear again.
Friday
Back to ‘the grind’. Forget jumping off the Boulot, I’d jump on the bloody Metro track if I worked at Fletchers’ Head Office, I think, as I walk into their lime-green reception and develop an instant headache above my left eye.
Whoops. I forgot. As of three months ago, no one is allowed to call Head Office ‘Head Office’. Why not? Because the word ‘head’ would insinuate some sort of ‘us’ and ‘them’ hierarchy among Fletchers staff, with ‘us’ being the two hundred people who work short hours in Head Office and get paid more; and ‘them’being the eight thousand workers who work long hours and stack shelves and work tills and drive trucks and get paid less.
So Head Office is no longer called Head Office. No. It is now called The Building. That’ll fool them. Head Office is now The Building. Executives who work in The Building are ‘Friends in The Building’. The guys who stack shelves are ‘Stretchy Friends’. Guys on tills are ‘Customer’s Best Friends’. And the truck drivers are ‘Friends On Wheels’.
The worst thing about this? NMN came up with all of it over the course of a six-month consultation process, called, oh irony, ‘Cut The Crap’. Cut The Crap involved a lot of digital mood boards and much talk of empowerment. Fletchers paid us a £130k fee. Devron wrote the cheque in the same week Fletchers announced they’d no longer pay their work experience teens a minimum wage for shelf stacking, sorry, make that ‘Stretchy Friending’.
I tell reception I’m here to see Tom, get my security pass, then sit down and prepare for the wait. Regardless of who I’m meeting at Fletchers they will always make me wait twenty-three minutes in reception. I can set my watch by it. It’s a basic power play. I am an agency serf: they are the Client Masters. Therefore they will make me sit there while they’re sitting at their desks on Facebook or laughing about last night’s Made in Chelsea. And when their little egg-timer goes off at twenty-three past Meeting Time, they’ll saunter down, pick me up and never once acknowledge this whole charade. I once made the mistake of asking Berenice why we couldn’t just turn up twenty-three minutes late and I could see her right eyebrow twitching with fury as she struggled to restrain herself from slapping me.
The thing is, I don’t mind waiting. It’s a rare chance to have twenty-three precious minutes to myself. If Berenice were sitting beside me now she’d be on her iPhone, frantically mailing the office about Five Year Plans for World Domination. Thankfully she’s not, so I can relax. I consider trying to source a glass of water. Except that’s an impossible dream because I haven’t got two pound coins on me. Yes, that’s right. If you want a glass of water while you’re waiting in reception, you have to insert two pound coins into a vending machine, which then spits out a small bottle of branded tap water. The trout on the front desk will not give you tap water even if you’ve just run the marathon for Children in Need dressed as Barney the Dinosaur.
No water. So instead I sit and wait. There’s a copy of the Times on the table and I flick briefly to the food pages. In the ‘My Favourite Meal’ column, there’s a recipe from Celina Summer, some pop star’s wife who’s just launched herself as the next celebrity chef. She’s done a recipe for a chicken sandwich: chicken, lettuce, bread – no butter, not even low-fat mayo. Inspiring stuff, thanks, Celina. Oh great, and your new book, Eat Music, Dance To Food has gone straight into the charts. Still, you do look terrific in a bikini, which is ultimately the thing that matters most in a chef.
You know what? It’s all very well Jake telling me to write a recipe book, but unless you’re skinny and beautiful you’re not going to be able to compete with these food celebs. Maybe I should flirt more with Devron, persuade him to put me in the next TV ad. No - I’d definitely rather work in the chip shop than flirt with Devron. Or Tom for that matter. Grim, it’d be like flirting with a teenage boy. And not one of those naughty sixth formers at the back of the bus who smokes and gets someone pregnant. No, like the little red-eyed geek at the front of class who puts his arm around his GCSE physics paper so no one can copy him.
Speak of the devil, here he comes, like clockwork, yep, it’s twenty-three past. Although, hang on a minute, who is that man walking next to him? And I do mean man. (Tom does manage to make everyone around him look more masculine. He’s such a pipsqueak, he always looks like he’s in school uniform when he wears a suit.)
