The Happiness Recipe

She nods. ‘How’s Jonty getting on?’

Aaah, Jonty. The I-d-iot she’s allocated to help me out with print ads. The lazy, cocky red-jeaned idiot who is Berenice’s best friend’s godson and therefore couldn’t possibly be an idiot.

‘Yup. I think Jonty’s enjoying himself.’

‘Glad he’s helping you out. Now. I know you’re looking to progress by year end.’

‘Yes, absolutely,’ I nod. ‘I’ve been an account director for six years now, so I’m definitely ready …’ And have been for the last two years since I first asked you for a promotion and you first waved a little carrot near me, before smashing me with a stick of Fletchers pizza.

‘And I believe Devron at Fletchers has mentioned Project F to you already.’

‘Briefing’s tomorrow. What’s it all about?’

She flinches. ‘I can’t share that information, I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement.’ I bet if I asked her where her PA keeps the Earl Grey teabags she’d say she’s signed an NDA on that too.

‘Berenice, can I just check, it is still a pizza brief, isn’t it?’ It had better be. Pizzas are bad enough. (I’ve also done time on Jumbo Pasties and Asian Cuisine, which for some reason included Polish dumplings.) Just please, please, please don’t put me on Dog and Bog. The worst possible fate for anyone here is to be moved to Dog and Bog. (Household department: pet food and loo roll.)

She sighs. ‘Basically it’s their biggest launch of the financial year. Super-high-profile, game-changing, mega-strategic. Lots of … fun.’ She says the word ‘fun’ like other people say the word ‘herpes’. She squints at something on her notepad. It’s the only thing on her desk other than a white porcelain vase with a narrow neck that is currently strangling a single pink orchid. My desk looks like a crime scene. Berenice associates messiness with stupidity, which might explain why she always talks to me like I’m nine years old.

‘Susannah. This is your opportunity to prove yourself. It’s time to put clear blue water between you and your peers. That’s if you want to notch it up to the next level. You’ve got people like Jonty at your heels, champing at the bit for projects like this.’

My peers? Jonty thinks spaghetti grows on trees. He actually does.

‘This project will define you,’ she says. ‘If you get this right …’ She looks at me with almost a smile. Of course she will not say ‘If you get this right I will promote you’ for that would amount to a sentence (in mid-air, if nowhere else) for me to clutch onto in my darkest hours. Two years ago Berenice said ‘If you prove yourself on pizzas …’ She never finished that sentence and I never pinned her down; cowardice stopped me. Well, cowardice has not served me well – it’s time for a change of tack.

‘Are you saying that if I get this right then at Christmas you’ll promote me?’ I say, as softly and gently as a human voice can deliver a sentence.

Her almost-smile disappears instantly. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

‘I don’t mean to push you, but I’m just trying to be clear what I need to do to …’ What was her awful buzz-word? Mirror her awful buzz-word, speak Berenice back to her. ‘What I need to do to notch it … to the next level …’

She stares at me as if she’s trying to decide between two identical shades of white paint, neither of which are satisfactory. ‘I need you to exceed my expectations. I need to see a step-change in your performance. I need to be convinced you’re ready for this. You are ready for this, aren’t you, Susannah? I need to see that you’re hungry. Are you hungry?’

‘Oh I’m hungry, Berenice. I’m hungry.’

I’m always hungry.

I’m the hungriest.

‘Can we go and eat?’ I say to Rebecca as I hover over her desk at the end of the day. Rebecca and Sam are the only two reasons I’ve stayed borderline sane at NMN and arguably that border has been crossed a few times of late.

‘Not bothered about food but I could murder a drink,’ she says, pointing to a presentation on her screen titled ‘Shlitzy Alcopops – Nurturing The Brand Soul’.

‘How can you always drink on an empty stomach?’ I say.

‘I’m a professional,’ she says, shutting down her computer and grabbing her coat. ‘Where’s good on a miserable rainy Tuesday?’

‘Hawksmoor? Killer cocktails and their burgers are meant to be amazing.’

‘First round’s on me,’ she says. ‘Let’s make it a double.’

Is Rebecca a Leftover then? She’s thirty-three, single, does a bullshit job, drinks a little too much. She happens to be gorgeous: she has huge brown eyes with naturally long, thick curly lashes. She never needs to wear mascara, but when she does, people just stare at her as if her eyes can’t be real. Plus she’s curvy, and leggy! Honestly, if I didn’t know her I’d hate her. But I do know her. So I know that along with being naturally beautiful, she’s also funny, kind and loyal.

What I don’t know is why she’s single. Other than that she’s playing a numbers game and hasn’t found that mythical ‘one’ yet. And with Rebecca it definitely isn’t for lack of trying. Well, who knows what’s around the corner?

‘Best Piña Coladas in London, hands down,’ I say, fishing a yellow cocktail umbrella from my glass and sticking it behind my right ear. Perfect! A little friend for the pink one behind my left.

‘Try this,’ she says, holding out her Martini glass. ‘It says on the menu that it’s an anti-fogmatic, and that in the 1820s, doctors recommended it be drunk before eleven in the morning.’

‘And you’d be drunk before eleven in the morning, Berenice would love that … Did the barman say he uses coconut sorbet in this?’

‘I wasn’t listening to him, I was just looking at him.’ She grins. ‘Did you see his body?’

‘Becka, he’s like twenty-two years old.’

She shrugs. Rebecca has no qualms about letching over younger men. I don’t do it for fear of looking like a cougar, but Rebecca’s not yet old enough to be branded a cougar. Besides, the barman couldn’t keep his eyes off her either.

‘Let’s do Piña Coladas every Tuesday,’ I say, taking another swig of my drink. ‘This is almost like being on holiday!’

‘This place is great,’ she says, taking in the dark wood panelled walls and old-fashioned table lamps.

‘Isn’t it? We’re two minutes from all that tourist crap in Covent Garden but we could be in a New York speakeasy. Where’s my burger, how long since I ordered?’

‘Never mind the burger, I think we’ve got company,’ she says, smiling her perfect Juicy Tubed smile at someone behind me.

Bingo. It never takes more than a couple of drinks in any social setting before Rebecca has attracted male attention. She’s the perfect wing-man. (Wing-woman sounds weird, like a low-budget super hero; Wing-Woman! She has wings and she’s learning to fly!) ‘Pulling partner’ isn’t right either technically, as Rebecca invariably pulls and I don’t. But that’s because she always gets the hot guy and leaves me with the sidekick. Fair enough, I guess I’m the sidekick too. Still, even the leftovers don’t want other leftovers.

And here we go again.

‘Can we buy you beautiful ladies a drink?’ says the better-looking one to Rebecca.

‘Have a seat,’ she says. ‘I’ll have a glass of champagne, my friend Ella Umbrella over there will have another Piña Colada.’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ I say. I’m tipsy already – two strong cocktails on an empty stomach have done me in.

‘And a couple of Jäger Bombs too,’ says Rebecca, giving me the look. The look that says ‘Don’t complain your life is boring if you refuse to join me in Living It Up and Getting Pissed On A School Night. Booze! Boys! What more could you want?’

‘Rebecca! You know they don’t agree with me …’

Sixty minutes, two Jäger Bombs and another Piña Colada later, I’m trying to work out where to stick my new green umbrella.

In Danny, the handsome guy, for droning on about the transfer window?

In Rebecca, for faking interest so brilliantly, thus leaving me stuck with The Douche Bag?

Or straight into The Douche Bag? I mean, come on: we both know the deal. We’re meant to politely chat and let the other two get on with flirting. But no.

I now know Jason is forty, a Virgo, but on the cusp and actually way more Libran.

He works in equities at a small Swiss firm near London Wall. He’s not being arrogant or anything but he’s bloody good at his job – it’s just a fact.

He lives in Putney, drives a BM, doesn’t much like films or books unless they’re about real life crime.

He listens to XFM, thinks Katy Perry’s got nice tits but Adele should lay off the doughnuts.

He goes down the gym – David Lloyd, Fulham – three to four times a week and does forty minutes on the treadmill at fourteen kilometres an hour ’cos he likes to look good. It’s where he met his last girlfriend, Megan, twenty-five, who was super hot, beautiful blow job lips, ri-di-culous body (the greatest arse in London), but after two years she was pressuring him to commit and he just wasn’t sure she was enough for him and he doesn’t miss her ’cos London’s full of fit birds. Mind you, you don’t want to be dating a woman who’s over thirty. There’s a reason why they’re single.

I am yet to find Jason’s redeeming features.

He thinks my name is Ella, and I haven’t bothered to correct him. Partly because he’s done nothing other than talk about himself for an hour. And partly because I’m now severely drunk. My burger hasn’t turned up and all I can think about is how hungover my Wednesday morning is going to be. I’m a little dizzy and I really should have a glass of water but Jason is now desperately chatting up the tattooed, red-lipsticked waitress and I don’t want to interrupt. She’s humouring him, playing along, because the cocktails here aren’t cheap, and if Jason orders a few more then her tip might reach double digits.

‘Oy, Danny,’ he says, pulling at his friend’s sleeve as the waitress heads back to the bar. ‘Did you clock that waitress’s mouth?’

‘Saw her tramp stamp,’ says Danny. ‘You dirty dog, Jase.’

‘I think she’s up for it,’ says Jason.

‘I think she’s a good waitress,’ I say, thinking that I couldn’t flirt with this tosser just for the sake of a bigger tip.

‘Those bright red lips! I bet she’s filthy …’ he says, nudging Danny.

‘For God’s sake, just because a woman wears red lipstick doesn’t mean she’s filthy,’ I say. ‘Where’s my burger?’

Jason takes a swig of his drink. ‘Yeah well in my experience red lipstick’s a good indication that a girl knows what she’s doing down there.’ He grins. ‘The more lipstick, the dirtier!’ He winks at Rebecca.

Good grief. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Are you actually suggesting that red lipstick indicates a girl is good in bed?’ Rebecca gives me a warning look: you’re drunk.

He shrugs and looks at his mate with a raised eyebrow, as if he’s said the most intelligent thing short of E = mc2.

‘Because, Ja-son, if that’s true, then why don’t you run off and join the circus?’

‘What?’

‘Go join the circus, Jason. Date a clown. They wear loads of red lipstick – it’s all over their face. By your logic that makes them at least twice as filthy as that poor waitress. Yeah, Jase, go and date a nice dirty clown with a squeezy plastic flower and those funny stripy trousers.’

There is an embarrassed silence, filled eventually by Rebecca. ‘Sorry guys, maybe those Jäger Bombs weren’t such a good idea …’ she says. Jason is staring at me like I’ve said something … I don’t know, what is that word now … weird?

‘You know what, Jase?’ I say. ‘Maybe you don’t have to wait until the circus comes to town. You might get lucky. Maybe there are some clowns hanging out down the David Lloyd, running on the treadmill with their long slutty clown shoes.’

I see Rebecca shaking her head more violently in my direction.

‘Gosh, clown shoes must make running a real challenge. Bet they can’t do “fourteen kilometres an hour” like you can … Oh! And step class must be a nightmare! So embarrassing, always tripping over their own feet. Poor, sexy, slightly scary clut-slowns.’

‘Clut-slowns?’ he says.

‘Clut-slowns. Clut-slowns, slut-clowns, you know what I mean!’

‘Are you a lezza or what?’ he says.

‘What?!’ I haven’t been accused of being a lesbian since I refused to snog Elliot Johnson at the school Christ-mas disco when I was fourteen. ‘Jason … You know Maggie?’

‘Maggie who?’

‘Hello? Your ex-girlfriend Maggie? Wow, fickle! Two years together and you can’t even remember her name!’

‘That’s because her name’s Megan.’

‘Oh. Was it? I thought you said Maggie? No?’

He shakes his head.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure …’

‘Anyway, “the greatest arse in London” – that one – well, Jason, I’ve got news for you, my friend: you are the greatest arse in London!’

‘Suze …’ says Rebecca, putting her hand on my arm. ‘Let’s get you some food …’

‘I think you should take your mental rug-munching friend home – get her back on her meds,’ says Jason, heading to the bar in pursuit of the waitress.

‘Yeah, send my love to …’ I rack my brain for the name of a famous clown … er … how come I don’t know any famous clown names? Now that really is embarrassing. ‘Send my love to … to Coco!’ I shout after him. Yeah. Coco. That’ll do. He was a boy clown. I think.

Danny whispers something to Rebecca and follows his mate to the bar. Rebecca just stares at me.

‘What?’ I say, twiddling my umbrella and checking whether the up-down mechanism on it works. Cool, it does! I love the fact that these umbrellas could actually function as mini parasols, for ladybirds or something …

‘Bloody hell, Suze,’ she says. ‘You need to stop doing that.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Being insane and aggressive when hot men are chatting us up.’

‘He wasn’t that hot. Anyway you fancy the barman more than you fancied him.’

‘Not the point.’

‘Come off it, he was booooring. And his nob-head friend was rude about Adele. I’m standing up for womankind. And he made that moronic comment about lipstick and I was merely trying to explain to him that … you know … you shouldn’t objectify women, and lipstick doesn’t make a girl sexy …’

‘Shall I tell you what else doesn’t make a girl sexy, Suze?’

‘What?’

‘Verbally attacking random men.’

‘Random dipshits more like …’

‘Whatever. Either way, you come across as angry.’

‘Becka, I’m only angry when I’m provoked.’

‘Look, I know you’ve had a drink …’

‘That’s your fault! You’re a bad friend! You made me have five drinks on a Tuesday night and you know I don’t get along with Jägermeister at the best of times, hideous Alpine medicine …’

‘Hang on a minute …’ she says.

‘What?’

‘The lipstick thing …’

‘No, it’s not what you’re thinking!’ I hold up my hand to stop what she’s about to say.

‘Isn’t Jake’s girlfriend a …’

‘Rebecca, it has nothing whatsoever to do with that.’

‘You’re not still looking at her stupid blog, are you?’

‘No.’

She looks at me.

‘Not really,’ I say.

‘You are. Oh Suze, why are you doing this to yourself?’

‘I’m not. There was some stupid piece in ES Magazine last week about Spring’s New Make-Up Looks. I saw her name, and then there was a little photo of her with her bloody Birkin bag like some wannabe Victoria Beckham, doing some model’s lip gloss at a show … I wasn’t Googling her, I really wasn’t.’

‘Oh Suze, she is so irrelevant.’

‘They’re still together, Rebecca. She’s posted some new pics on Facebook. God, I need some carbohydrate, I feel dreadful.’

She shakes her head and puts her arm round me. ‘Come on, you drunken, crazy fool. Let’s get you home for your meds.’

‘Only if by meds you mean two McDonald’s cheeseburgers for the road? Please, can we?’

She nods, resignedly.

She’s a very good friend.

Wednesday

I will never, ever let Rebecca order me a Jäger Bomb, ever again.

I wake up in my clothes with half a pink umbrella in my hair, a splitting headache in my left eye and the taste of McDonald’s dill pickle in my mouth. It’s fine. I’m not late for work or anything. But as I lie here in bed, talking myself out of chucking a sickie, I can’t help but think ‘Why, oh why am I still working at NMN?’

I’ve been there for six years. I moved there from BVD, an even crappier agency, where I worked on a yellow fats account. (Yellow fats = butter, anything that behaves like butter, or that you’d say was butter-y-ish if you had no taste buds/someone put a gun in your mouth. In fact a gun in your mouth would taste more like butter.) I moved agencies because I thought the problem was BVD and yellow fats. But I’ve come to realise that the problem wasn’t my old agency. It wasn’t the spreadable butter-replacement solutions. It’s this business full stop.

Oh I know what you’re thinking: daft cow, of course advertising is full of tossers! Since the 1980s, ad ‘folk’ have been second only to estate agents as figures of hate. But in recent years two things changed all that. First, bankers and politicians (never high on your Christmas card list), made a running sprint, like at the end of the Grand National, for Public Enemy spots number one and two. The guys from Foxtons slipped down to third place, and ad folk – well, we fell off the podium.

And second: Mad Men came on TV. The men were chauvinists but sexy chauvinists. The women looked like actual women. Everyone smoked and drank and had sex with everyone else in the office. The industry suddenly looked glamorous and grown up and intellectually stimulating. And suddenly people seemed to forget that Mad Men is a made-up TV show rather than a documentary, and started thinking maybe advertising wasn’t so bad after all.

Friends began asking if it was anything like Mad Men at NMN. To which the answer is surprisingly twofold: a bit, and not at all. A bit: the men are still chauvinists. Everyone drinks. Some still smoke. Everyone still has sex with everyone else in the office (apart from Sam and me). But glamorous? Grown up? Intellectually stimulating? See ‘not at all’ for details. And as for women who look like actual women? I’m one of only four females in the building who’s bigger than a size eight, and two of the others are pregnant.

Anyway – I think, as I force myself to crawl out of bed – it’s all going to be fine because I have THE plan: execute this new brief perfectly, stay out of trouble with Berenice, get my bonus and promotion at Christmas, then go and find something fun and fulfilling to do in the world of food instead. And no, I will not be serving fries with that.

It could be a lot worse, I figure as I head to the tube. At least I don’t work at Fletchers.

Fletchers is a rubbish supermarket. They’re the seventh biggest in the UK. They used to be fourth, but they’ve steadily cut the quality of their food and staff. If you go into a Fletchers after 2 p.m. on a weekday, chances are they’ll have run out of milk and bread and you’ll be lucky to find a chicken in sell by date. They’re plagued by bad PR stories: the guy on the meat counter filmed by an undercover Sun reporter picking his nose and then touching the pork belly; donkey meat in the burgers; the relabelling of mutton as lamb; the job-lot of tomatoes from China that were genetically modified in an old nuclear plant.

They’re still pretty popular with shoppers though. Why? Here’s why: firstly, you can feed a family of four for two pounds at Fletchers. Secondly, a large proportion of the British public love the Fletchers ‘brand’. Devron, Fletchers’ Head of Foods and Marketing, is on record as saying ‘If you crossed James Corden with a can of Tango and a Geordie hen night, that’s what our brand stands for: down-to-earth, honest, cheeky fun.’ And all that cheeky fun is down to the advertising we’ve done for them over the last six years. Advertising that I have, in some small way, been involved in. Good job I don’t believe in re-incarnation or I’d be coming back in the next life as a vajazzle.

Fletchers hired NMN as their agency because we are the diametric opposite of Fletchers. We look classy (from the outside at least). We are big. Shiny. Expensive. We do ads for famous beers and jeans; for deodorant that is in every bathroom cabinet in the nation.

Our offices are plush and tasteful. They reek of sobriety.

We’re not wacky, soothe the white walls in reception.

We are solid, reassure the marble tiles in the first-floor client loos. We won’t take your overpriced t-shirt brand and ‘sex it up’ so that next year the only people wearing it will be gypsies on a reality TV show. Gosh no – not our style at all.

Take a closer look, whisper the spot-free windows in the second-floor boardroom. Here, borrow this ruler so you can measure how thick the chocolate on our client biscuits is. See? Isn’t that wonderful? Everything’s going to be just fine.

(It’s a good job clients never take the lift above the second floor. Up on fourth, the creatives inhabit their own little Sodom. Management up on fifth is Gomorrah. The smell of fire and brimstone is masked by copious amounts of Jo Malone Red Roses air freshener but that doesn’t fool me.)

And then we come to my desk, here on the third floor – home of the account directors. It’s a metaphorical floor plan. Below us are the clients, when they come in for a meeting. Above us, the creatives. We are stuck in the middle of two warring factions, the filling in a sandwich that you would be well advised not to eat.

I dump my bag on my chair and take a deep breath. Right: I’ve made a decision. Today is going to be a good day. Yes, I’m hungover, which isn’t ideal. But I have a large white coffee in one hand, and a brown paper bag with buttered white toast and Marmite in the other. Caffeine. Salt. Fat. Carb. Chair. Those five nouns: what more could a girl ask for?

Even better! Jonty’s not here. He’s off on a course all week learning how to manage his workload. Bless, I don’t think he needs any help on that front, he’s given it all to me.

And in other good news Rebecca is out too, on a shoot, so she won’t be able to nab me over lunch break and try to make me talk about last night. Rebecca is one of those friends who thinks it’s important always to confront the truth. Doesn’t she realise no one ever thanks you for telling them the truth? Denial is a healthy psychological state, designed to protect us from ourselves, and should be respected accordingly.

So no lunchtime shaming. In fact, today’s lunch is going to be the start of the rest of my life: Devron’s finally briefing me on Project F and I’ll be on the road to promotion. He’ll phone me in a bit to tell me where he wants to be wined and dined. My mother is always telling me how lucky I am that I get to go to the occasional posh restaurant and not have to pay. Maybe it does sound glamorous. Except it’s not like going somewhere fab with your friends. No. It is going somewhere fab with a compulsive freeloading rude buffoon who is a stranger to the concept of shame.

Sure enough, my phone rings at 10.57.

‘S-R,’ he says. Berenice calls me Susannah. Devron calls me by my initials, S-R. He doesn’t think women other than secretaries should be allowed in the workplace and I figure it’s his subconscious mind trying to pretend I’m not a girl.

‘So Devron, where do you fancy today?’

‘Hawksmoor,’ he says, ‘in Covent Garden. Hello? Are you still there, S-R?’

‘Uh-huh …’ I say, trying to replay exactly what interaction I had with the bar staff last night … Did that waitress overhear any of the clown stuff?

‘I want steak,’ says Devron. ‘Hawksmoor. It’s a beef place.’

More than familiar with it thanks, Devron – familiar with the barman, the waitress, the cocktail menu, the cocktail menu … Actually, playing it all back in my head, I don’t remember embarrassing myself in front of the staff … However, I also don’t remember whether I took a cab or the tube home last night … Not worth the risk. ‘We can’t go to Hawksmoor,’ I say, a little too forcefully.