About a Girl

‘The company no longer has a position available for you.’ Raquel scratched her nose delicately. I resisted the urge to slap it. Only just. ‘At all.’

‘So when you say the creative director role has been restructured out of the business …’ I took a deep breath and tried very hard not to vomit. ‘What you are actually saying is that I have been restructured out of the business?’

‘The creative director role,’ she repeated with a nod, ‘is no longer viable in the current business plan. You are the creative director.’

‘But I haven’t even started the job. How can I have been restructured out of it?’ I was aware that my voice was starting to get uncomfortably high. I was even more aware of the fact that I was going to cry. I blinked twice and stared hard at the Oxford mug, trying to regain my composure.

‘I understand you are bound to have some questions.’ Raquel’s shark eyes had already glazed over. ‘Perhaps you’d like to schedule some time to go over them on the phone tomorrow.’

‘Or perhaps I’d like you to stop being a dick and tell me why I’m being fired?’ I shouted.

There was no stopping the tears. Between the blisters on my heels and my blind rage, there was nothing I could do to stem the sobbing. It was neither ladylike nor professional, but apparently I no longer had a profession, so who gave a toss whether or not I was being ladylike?

‘Perhaps you could explain to me why I’m being “let go” when you’re supposed to be promoting me? Perhaps you could explain to me who exactly is going to lead the creative team? Perhaps you could tell me who is going to win all of your business and lead all of your campaigns and who is going to work on New Year’s Eve so you don’t lose an account for a toilet cleaner?’ I grabbed the cardboard envelope and bashed it against the desk to punctuate my every word before flinging it across the room. ‘And it was crappy toilet cleaner.’

‘No one is disputing your commitment to the job,’ Raquel said without even flinching. ‘And we will be very happy to give you a reference when you find a new situation.’

‘A new situation?’ There was a chance I was screeching. ‘This isn’t Downton fucking Abbey. I’m not a scullery maid. I’m the best creative you have here and you know it. Where’s Michael? Where is bloody Michael?’

Michael was my boss. Michael was a cock. When Michael spilled a glass of wine down my top at the Christmas party every year, I laughed it off. When Michael referred to me and my breasts as ‘his three favourite employees’ in front of a new client last summer, I let it go. When Michael tried to cop a feel under the pretence of performing the Heimlich manoeuvre when I had hiccups every time I had hiccups for seven years, I kept my mouth shut. And now where was he?

‘Mr Donovan isn’t in the office this morning,’ Raquel replied, actually sounding bored. ‘I do understand you’re upset, but really, this isn’t a personal issue. It’s just a matter of corporate restructuring.’

‘Well, I think you need to restructure your face,’ I yelled. Not my best comeback ever. ‘This is ridiculous. I run that creative team. All of the accounts are working on my ideas. All of them.’

‘This conversation really isn’t relevant to the decision that has been made.’ She stood up and opened her office door. I took this to mean I was supposed to fuck off through it. ‘Your role no longer exists within the company. I will forward all your personal belongings and the details of our very generous package to your home address and include my direct line. I’d be very happy to discuss any questions you might have once you’ve had some time to reflect. We should probably do it over the phone.’

For the want of something else to do, I grabbed the Oxford University mug from her desk and threw it, as hard as I could, onto the floor. It bounced once on the beige carpet and then sat there sadly, a tiny trickle of coffee pooling beside it.

‘Feel better for that?’ Raquel asked, one eyebrow raised.

‘Not really,’ I admitted, my chin up high and arm stretched out to knock a stack of files off her desk. Stamping a sore foot, I swiped a Pritt Stick off the shelf and brazenly stuck it in my pocket.

‘I’m taking that,’ I explained with added petulance. ‘You can knock it off my generous package.’

It was strange where your mind went when you were in shock.

Seven years of work and my boss hadn’t even had the decency to come in on time to fire me himself. I’d missed weddings and birthdays and dates to meet deadlines, deliver projects, give presentations, and I’d done it all with a smile. While all my friends were out puking in the street and snogging strangers, I’d spent last New Year’s Eve sat in the meeting room, throwing a stress ball at a wall for three straight hours while I attempted to come up with an innovative campaign for knock-off Toilet Duck. And I bloody well did it. My flat was full of books I’d bought but never read, DVDs that had gone unwatched and CDs I hadn’t got round to listening to. Good God, it had been so long since I’d listened to music, I still had CDs. But it hadn’t mattered before. Because this was the plan. No matter how often my two remaining friends had told me to ease up, that work wasn’t everything, I hadn’t listened. I was happy. I wasn’t missing out on my life; my job was my life. And now I had neither.

But what really stung, I realized as I rode down to my floor for the last time in the lift that always smelled ever so slightly of cat food, what really stung wasn’t the loss of the actual job, it was everything that went with it. Most importantly, it was the dream of moving into my own place and leaving my demonic flatmate behind. Because once I was in my own flat, living would really start. I’d buy fancy dinnerware and nice curtains and learn how to make sushi and buy a cool TV with an amazing audio system. And then I’d invite Charlie round for dinner and we’d end up drinking a little too much and watching a movie which would almost certainly be something starring Emma Stone, and just when she was being her most endearing for the ladies and sexy for the men, I would rest my head on his shoulder and he would realize that I was his Emma Stone and we would kiss and then we would be together for ever. But no. That couldn’t happen now. Because I didn’t have my job. So there wouldn’t be a flat. And there wouldn’t be a dinner or an Emma Stone movie night or a kiss or any happiness ever again. Poof, it was all gone.

Having never been fired, let go or otherwise excused before in my life, I wasn’t sure what the correct protocol was. For the first time, I was thankful everyone else in the office were such lazy bastards. There was no one to see me snivelling and shoving my belongings into a reusable Tesco shopper, except for a terrified-looking intern and the graphic designer who everyone knew sniffed Bostick in the toilets. The company was going under and I was being let go, but the glue-sniffer kept his job. It was perfect.

I picked up my stapler and stared at it for a moment. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have a plan. Whether it was setting up the girl’s football team in junior school because I had declared the PE teacher sexist, turning a profit on the refreshment stand at the village panto, or making sure I was sitting next to Jason Hutchins on the year ten bus trip to Alton Towers, I always had a plan. And the Cloverhill Panthers had come third from last in our local division, watering down the Ribena at the panto until it was basically pink piss had made exactly four pounds and seventeen pence, and for two precious hours and thirteen minutes, Jason Hutchins had been all mine. I always had a plan and that plan always worked. I dropped the stapler in my bag and walked out the door.

After a ten-minute wander down Theobalds Road, I found myself in Bloomsbury Square, shopping bag in one hand, dignity in the other. Hobbling over to an empty bench, I kicked off my new shoes without worrying what the British summertime mud would do to the gorgeous nude suede and stared vacantly at two dogs running up and down the park. They always looked happy, I thought, as I pulled all the pins out of my elaborate updo one by one. Dogs were always happy. Dogs didn’t have a plan. Dogs hadn’t been climbing up a career ladder for the last seven years. Dogs hadn’t been hopelessly in love with their best friend for the last ten. Well, I couldn’t hand on heart say that was definitely true, but it seemed unlikely.

I rifled around in my Tesco bag looking for something to spur on an emotion that wasn’t pathetic. All that was in there was my stolen stapler, three framed photos, a brand-new box of Special K cereal bars and about seventeen different pens. (Lots of highlighters. I liked a highlighter.) That was it. Seven years and I’d erased all evidence of my very existence from the office in one half-full environmentally-friendly shopping bag.

I pulled the photos out, one by one, and laid them on my black-clad knee. The first was of me and Amy, little-girl versions of me and my best friend, dressed up as princesses and hugging desperately for the camera. The next one was a more formal shot of me, my sisters, my mum and my grandmother, looking considerably less chipper. We weren’t huggers, the Brookeses. Someone basically had to die to convince my mother to go further than a stern pat on the shoulder. When my first granddad had passed away, she had ruffled my hair. It was intense. The third and final photo was of me and Amy again, this time all grown-up and joined by Charlie, my co-worker, best boy friend and the man I had been in love with for the past decade. The three of us were slouched on a sofa in some random Parisian hotel in front of a huge mirror with another one behind us. My face was obscured by the camera that had gone everywhere with me that summer, but my denim cut-offs and stripy T-shirt echoed endlessly in the reflections of the two mirrors. Charlie and Amy’s reflected faces smiled back at me. Amy was on my left, deep in her Amélie phase, black hair cropped close to her head and legs stretched out, draped across me and Charlie. To my right, the love of my life rested his head on my shoulder and held a lit cigarette off to the side, so as not to drop the ash on my bare skin. Even though you couldn’t tell by the photo, I remembered I was smiling. We were the three musketeers. Rock, paper, scissors. Amy was the scissors, Charlie was the paper and I was the rock. I was always the rock.

Slowly but surely, I felt my breathing return to normal and the tension in my shoulders ease ever so slightly. Just in time for me to realize someone was sitting beside me on the bench.

‘Morning.’ An incredibly average-looking man with a shaved head and a black bomber jacket gave me a sideways nod.

‘Morning,’ I replied, carefully placing the photographs back in my bag. No reason not to be polite. This was my life now, after all. Just sitting around, talking to the other non-workers-slash-vagrants in London’s parks while I lived vicariously through the dog ownership of others. I wondered if the Tesco near Russell Square sold White Lightning. It felt like the day was missing a bottle of White Lightning.

‘Don’t make a scene,’ the man said, moving down the bench towards me and looking straight ahead. ‘Give me your wallet and your phone.’

‘Sorry?’ I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard him properly. Was I being mugged? After seven years in London, was I actually being mugged? Not bloody likely.

‘Phone and wallet. Now.’ He pulled a small Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and gave me as scary a look as he could muster. ‘Don’t make me make you.’

Still not quite with it, I tilted my head to one side and stared. I couldn’t help but think he’d be scarier with hair. He looked like an overgrown baby.

‘I haven’t got a phone,’ I replied. This was actually happening. I was being mugged by a giant baby in a bomber jacket. ‘And you can’t have my wallet. There’s nothing in it anyway and it was a present.’

‘Everyone’s got a phone.’ He sounded a bit taken aback. ‘Give it to me now.’

‘No, really.’ I opened up my handbag and tipped it upside down, emptying the contents out onto the bench between us. Three lipsticks, a powder compact, my keys, more tampons than anyone could ever feasibly need and even more pens clattered against the wooden slats. I picked up my wallet and stuck it between my knees. I meant what I said – I’d already told him he couldn’t have that and I wasn’t about to go back on my word to a criminal. ‘See? No phone. I just got fired. They took my phone. Have not got one.’

‘You haven’t got a phone at all?’ The would-be mugger was visibly shocked. ‘That’s bollocks, that is.’

‘It really, really is,’ I agreed.

We sat in silence for a moment.

‘Haven’t got a job either,’ I said as I started scooping up my belongings and dropping them back in the bag. It seemed he wasn’t nearly as interested in highlighters as I was. Probably didn’t have much call for them in his game. ‘Phone’s not such a problem.’

‘Me neither,’ he replied, grabbing a couple of tampons and popping them into my handbag for me. ‘Had one. Lost it. Fucking Tories, innit?’

‘I suppose the recession has been hard for everyone,’ I sympathized. ‘It’s a tough time.’

‘Do you need to call anyone?’ the big baby asked. The man dug his hand into his non-knifey pocket and produced a brand-new iPhone. ‘You can use my phone if you want.’

‘Actually, that would be amazing,’ I said, readily accepting the handset but ignoring the controversial cover design. Pretty sure they didn’t sell Swastika iPhone cases in Carphone Warehouse. This was definitely home-made. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you a bit of privacy.’ He nodded curtly, stood up and wandered a couple of feet away. I watched as a worried-looking middle-aged lady in a waxed jacket and an Alice band took a very sharp and sudden detour. I looked away as he followed her.

‘Hello?’

‘Amy.’ I would never answer the phone to an unknown number. Amy always would. ‘It’s me.’

‘What phone are you on? What’s going on? Did they give you a new phone. Did you get an iPhone? Have you got Siri? Can I ask him a question?’

‘It’s not my phone.’ I cut her off before she could come up with anything filthy to ask the omniscient Siri. ‘Are you at work?’

‘Yeah.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘Until five.’

‘Oh. I got the sack and I thought you might want to get very, very drunk.’

‘STELLA!’ I snapped my head away from the handset as Amy bellowed at her boss without moving the phone away from her mouth. ‘I’ve got a migraine. I’m going home. All right?’

‘I don’t think you can shout that loudly if you’ve got a migraine,’ I pointed out.

‘Be at yours in half an hour,’ Amy replied, ignoring me. ‘Don’t kill yourself before then, OK?’

‘OK,’ I said. It hadn’t actually occurred to me before she brought it up, but the Thames was awfully close by and it would save me from having to sign on. I didn’t actually know where the job centre was. Maybe my new friend could tell me. Or maybe I should just kill myself. Amy had hung up before I could ask her opinion and I noticed the phone’s owner hovering nearby. I hung up, smiled and held it out to him.

‘You know what?’ He waved my hand away. ‘Have it. I can always get another one.’

‘Oh no.’ I tried to press it back into his tattooed hand. ‘I couldn’t possibly. Really, I couldn’t.’

‘No, take it.’ He pressed it back into my hand and stood up. ‘How are you going to get another job without a phone? Just have it.’

‘Well, thank you very much.’ I gave him my cheeriest smile. ‘That’s really lovely of you.’

‘No worries.’ He held up his arm in a salute I vaguely recognized, and not from Brownies. ‘And don’t worry yourself. Fit bird like you? You’ll be fine. Just remember, fuck ’em all.’

‘Yeah, fuck ’em all,’ I repeated, trying to reconcile the fact that his compliment made me happy with the fact that it came from a man who was clearly some sort of neo-Nazi.

I watched my fairy godmugger wander off across the park, the edges of my stolen, swastika-emblazoned phone cutting into my palm, and just as it started to rain, I started to cry. And I did not know how I was going to stop.

CHAPTER TWO

The girl I met in the mirror at home was not the same girl who had left my flat three hours earlier. Her smart chignon had turned into a tangled mess of sodden curls, and the carefully applied but terribly subtle make-up was all gone, either cried or rained away. The brown eyes that had been so sparkly when they left the house were dull and rimmed with red. My simple black shift dress was wet through, now considerably less office chic – more black-latex-condom-frock with a Pritt Stick still in the pocket. At least now I understood why that little boy had burst into tears when I’d smiled at him outside Superdrug. I was still staring at my reflection, willing what I believed to be three new wrinkles on my forehead to go away, when the front door flew open and a tiny black-haired woman blew inside, hurling herself at me before I could even draw breath.

‘Oh my God! What happened? What did you do?’ Amy leapt up onto her tiptoes and crushed me in a bear hug. ‘Did you punch someone? Did you photocopy your arse? Did you embezzle them for millions?’

‘Downsizing,’ I choked, disengaging my soggy self from her arms. ‘There was a “restructure”.’

‘You know I hate when you use air quotes,’ Amy said, slapping my hands down by my side. ‘And that’s really, really disappointing. You didn’t punch anyone? Not even Charlie?’

Amy and I had been best friends since we could speak. Before that, I’m assured that we got on very well. Born six weeks apart, our mums had been besties ever since they’d bonded at an aerobics class in the village hall. We had marked every major milestone together – from first words and first steps right through to most recent snogs and latest hangovers. We were always there for each other in times of need, whether that need was me running out of teabags before there was such a thing as a twenty-four-hour Tesco in East London, or Amy walking out on her fiancé, Dave, three days before her wedding. She never had been good at making a decision and sticking to it. In the past two years she’d had three jobs and four zero percent credit cards, but when it came to me, she was as dependable as Ken Barlow and fiercely loyal. I couldn’t fault her.

‘I didn’t get a chance to punch anyone.’ I still couldn’t quite believe what had happened. I was redundant. I’d been called a lot of things in my time, but the ‘R’ word was the worst. ‘HR called me in. I thought it was just paperwork stuff for the promotion, and then they told me they were letting me go.’

The words stuck in my throat.

‘Nothing dramatic. Nothing exciting. Just restructuring.’

‘Are you OK?’ She eyed me cautiously, as though I might suddenly lose my tiny mind and bust up the entire apartment. It was fair. If I had been capable of feeling anything at all, there was a chance I might have. ‘Your job is, like, your everything.’

Just what I needed to hear.

‘I’m not anything,’ I said carefully. My mouth felt thick and the words weren’t coming out quite right. ‘I don’t feel anything.’

‘Nothing?’ Clearly I’d given the wrong answer. ‘Not angry or sad or confused or, I don’t know, stabby? Sometimes I feel stabby when I get the sack.’

Amy got the sack a lot.

‘Nothing,’ I repeated. ‘Just … a bit blank. A bit cold.’

‘Emotionally cold?’ She was far too eager for my liking. ‘Do you feel dead inside?’

‘Physically cold.’ Maybe calling her had been a bad idea. ‘And like I need a wee.’

‘Yet more disappointment.’ Amy dragged me through the tiny living room and into the kitchen to pop open one of the three bottles of cheap fizzy wine that were clinking together merrily inside a Sainsbury’s bag. ‘I don’t get it. Surely they can’t fire you. Everyone knows you’re the only one who does anything at that place. Have you gone mad? Did they fire you because you’re mad? What did Charlie say?’

‘He wasn’t in when I left.’ I accepted a Snoopy mug full of cava and gulped it down. Cheap fizz burned. Burning was good. ‘I don’t know if he knows.’

Of course Charlie would know. Everyone would know. Everyone would know that I had been fired. Every. One.

‘He hasn’t called?’ Amy topped me up before helping herself to a packet of Pop Tarts from my flatmate’s cupboard and sticking them in the toaster. I didn’t have the energy or inclination to stop her.

‘HR took my phone,’ I said, rummaging around in my handbag for my new-to-me iPhone. ‘Happily, I was the victim of a reverse mugging in the park and someone gave me this.’

My tiny bestie snatched the phone out of my hand and examined it carefully without asking me to elaborate. ‘Ooh, it’s a new one. Good result. Weird case.’

I took it from her, removed the offending cover and handed it back. ‘I can’t keep it. It’s stolen.’

‘Swapsies, then? You can have mine.’ She pressed several buttons and coughed before speaking. ‘Siri, why are Donovan & Dunning a bunch of wankers?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean by that,’ he replied. Very diplomatic for an inanimate object.

I leaned against the kitchen wall, sipping my second, surreptitiously refilled mug of cava and staring out over the East London rooftops. They were exactly how I’d left them this morning. As I concentrated on the unchanging chimney pots, stupid things kept popping into my mind, like what was my mum going to say? What was I supposed to do when my alarm went off tomorrow morning? Would I end up homeless? I didn’t know how to go about getting a job. I’d been at Donovan & Dunning since I’d left uni. Before I left uni even – I’d interned there my entire final year. I was going to have to write a CV. Did people still have CVs? Was there something I was supposed to tweet? Maybe there was an unemployment app on my new phone. Most upsettingly, all of the unfinished jobs I’d been doing at work were bothering me. Someone needed to proofread the final air freshener presentation. And who else would take care of the copy for the new baked beans advert? Maybe they’d just lift it from an episode of Mad Men, save some time.

For the want of something better to do, I pressed my back against the cold kitchen wall and slid down to the floor. Ahh. That was better. Amy sat on the kitchen top, phone in one hand, Pop Tart in the other, gazing down at me with concern. It didn’t feel right. I was supposed to be the one who looked after her.

‘Tess,’ she said. I peered at her over the edge of my Snoopy mug with wide eyes. ‘You’re sitting on the kitchen floor in a piss-wet-through dress.’

‘I am.’ She was not wrong.

‘Your head is on the bin. And the bin smells.’

‘It is.’ Again, stellar observational skills. ‘And it does.’

‘Do you think you should maybe go and get changed?’

I didn’t think I should get changed. I was scared that if I took off my work dress I wouldn’t have anything to put on but my pyjamas, and if I put on my pyjamas I might never, ever take them off again. Had Michael remembered about lunch with that awful man from the car company? Eventually, Amy took my silence as a no.

‘How about a bath? You must be freezing?’

A bath sounded equally depressing. There was nothing to do in a bath that didn’t involve sobbing or razor blades. I wondered if Sandra the designer had remembered to change the colour of the squirrel in that paper towel concept.

‘Tess, I’m going to need some verbal feedback from you.’ Amy put down her breakfast long enough to snap her fingers in front of me. ‘What do you want to do?’

I looked up, pushed my scummy hair out of my face and shook my head.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I honestly don’t know. I don’t know anything.’

For the second time that day, I started to cry. My mother would be mortified.

With a sad sigh, Amy hopped down off the worktop and curled up beside me and the bin. ‘I know it must feel like shit,’ she said, sliding her arm between me and the wall and forcing a hug. ‘But you’re better than this. You know you’re amazing at your job. Whatever reason they have for whatever they’ve done, it’s going to be their loss. That place was killing you. You’ll have another job, a better job, at a better agency, this time next Monday. You know I’m right.’