The Woman Who Met Her Match

by Fiona Gibson

  Realising I’m sweating profusely, I take off my jacket and drape it over the back of my chair.

  ‘So,’ Sonia starts, fixing me with a level gaze across the table, ‘as you know, there are going to be some big changes with La Beauté as a brand. We wanted to invite you here to talk about that, about your performance and goals in the immediate future …’

  I nod, trying to radiate calm. Sonia shifts in her seat.

  ‘We do think it’s important,’ Dennis offers, picking up her thread, ‘to establish gateway markers for goal-oriented development.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I realise I’m digging my nails into my palms.

  Sonia sweeps back her dark bob. ‘The thing is, Lorrie – and this is why Dennis and Nigel are here too – to make sure everything is handled fairly and properly …’ She glances at the men – Dennis beside her, Nigel next to me – and goes on: ‘We’re taking the brand younger, aren’t we, guys?’

  ‘Much, much younger,’ Nigel says with a nod.

  ‘How much younger?’ I ask. I mean, are we talking mascara for toddlers here? Night cream for babies in utero?

  ‘Teens, twenties,’ Sonia says airily, ‘and because of that – and please bear in mind that this is absolutely nothing to do with your performance …’ My performance? What the actual hell? ‘We need to consider our image, what we’re saying to girls who come into our stores with money to spend – no dependants, no responsibilities, just lots of lovely cash to blow on themselves …’

  ‘Can I just say something?’ I interject.

  All three of them stare at me. ‘Yes, of course,’ Nigel mutters.

  ‘Well … of course younger customers are important because hopefully, if we treat them well, they’ll stick with us throughout life. But, you know, it’s the older – I mean, our properly grown-up customers who are more inclined to treat themselves. They value quality and care about their skin – what’s going on underneath, I mean. It’s not just a quick fix they’re after—’

  ‘Yes, but these older women …’ Dennis shudders visibly, as if having trouble grasping the concept. I’d guess he’s late twenties, early thirties tops. Probably spends his weekends plugged into his Xbox. ‘What I mean is, they get to an age when – oh, I don’t know how to put this delicately …’ He emits a high-pitched giggle that’s at odds with his executive image.

  ‘… Where there isn’t any point?’ Nigel suggests.

  ‘Well, yeah!’ Dennis exclaims. ‘I mean, once they’re in their sixties, seventies, whatever …’ I stare at him, hardly able to believe what I’m hearing. Mum shimmers into my mind, looking lovely in that cobalt blue dress we chose for her wedding day. ‘… they’re going to stop spending anything on themselves because …’ He pauses.

  ‘Because what?’ I manage to blurt out.

  ‘Well, being realistic, women need to accept there’s a point when nothing’s going to work for them anymore,’ he concludes, fixing me with a cool stare.

  The room falls silent. I thought we were about to discuss gateway markers – whatever they are – and now we seem to be building up to the annihilation of all women over thirty-five. Sonia clears her throat. I am conscious of an insistent thudding against my skull.

  ‘But these women do spend money on themselves,’ I mutter.

  ‘Yes, on coach trips and knitting patterns,’ Dennis remarks with a gravelly laugh.

  How bloody dare he! He guffaws at his own joke, and Sonia smiles tightly.

  ‘I think what Dennis is trying to say,’ she adds, ‘is that we need our key counter staff to reflect our new, more youthful demographic and because of that …’ Her smile seems to set. ‘Well, we have a proposal for you.’

  I shift uneasily and try to ignore the nausea that’s rising in me.

  ‘You’re obviously very passionate,’ Dennis offers, rubbing at an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I reply, willing myself to hold it together. ‘I love my job. I’ve been doing it for ten years and I can’t imagine ever wanting to do anything else, to be honest.’

  A hint of pity flickers across Sonia’s cool grey eyes. ‘Yes, well, ten years is a long time and we don’t like to see anyone becoming stagnant …’

  ‘But I don’t feel stagnant!’ I sit bolt upright in my chair so as to appear as alert and un-stagnant as possible.

  ‘No, but the thing is, we feel – we all think, don’t we, guys? – that you might be better suited to one of our other, less youth-oriented brands.’

  I blink at her, not sure that I’ve heard her correctly. ‘But I’m a beauty counter manager,’ I manage to croak out. ‘It’s what I do, it’s what my contract says—’

  ‘Yes, but that’s the thing about Geddes and Cox,’ Dennis chips in. ‘It’s our ethos to be broad-thinking and fluid, so we encourage key team members to move across brand …’

  ‘Encourage or force?’ I snap my mouth shut.

  Sonia leans forward, her face set in a frown. ‘We never force anyone, do we, guys? That’s why we’re here today – to offer you choices – and I promise we won’t make you do anything you’re not a hundred per cent happy about.’

  My breathing seems to have shallowed to that of a small rodent. I sip some water, dribbling a little down my chin, which I try to blot surreptitiously on the cuff of my carefully pressed tunic.

  ‘So,’ she continues, forcing a smile at Nigel, ‘perhaps you’d like to run through the options, Nige?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says eagerly, delving into a brown leather bag on the floor beside him and extracting a clear plastic folder containing several sheets of A4 paper. He flips quickly to the second page, angling it so I can’t read it. ‘Firstly, we have the option of a very generous settlement which, given the current climate, I’m sure you’ll agree is fair and proper …’

  ‘You’re paying me off?’ I exclaim, my fist knocking against my water glass so its contents swill perilously.

  ‘Oh, we wouldn’t use that term. In fact, the other option – and I do hope you’ll consider this as we all feel your passion, your energy, could be a real asset to one of our other brands …’

  ‘Which brand d’you have in mind?’ I glare at the three of them, no longer caring about appearing keen and un-stagnant.

  ‘Crumble Cubes,’ Nigel replies, in a put-out tone as if I have insulted one of his children.

  ‘Crumble Cubes? You mean those stock cubes that come in little yellow packets?’

  Dennis beams at me. ‘They’re the ones. Do you use them?’

  ‘No! I mean …’ I pause, conscious of sweat sprouting from my upper lip. ‘I don’t cook much. I’m not really interested in—’

  ‘Oh, you’d need to be familiar with the market,’ Dennis says, assuming a headmasterly tone. ‘But we are excellent at training, keeping our key staff up to date with the latest developments …’ Why do they keep referring to me as one of their ‘key staff’ when they clearly want to give me the boot? ‘… Cookery courses,’ he goes on, as if this might lure me, ‘and visits to the cutting-edge production plant where Crumble Cubes are manufactured …’ He thinks I want to watch a stock-cube-making machine?

  ‘And where is that?’ I snap.

  He looks down at the table. ‘Warrington.’

  A hush falls on the room. The thudding has amplified in my head and has been joined by a needling pain in my chest; I can’t have a heart attack now, not in front of Sonia and Dennis and ‘Nige’ – the guys – when Cam and Amy still need me.

  I clear my throat and take several deep, calming breaths. ‘So, what sort of role would I have, within Crumble Cubes?’

  ‘PR and marketing,’ Sonia says brightly. ‘Just as an assistant at first, of course – Lindsay Newlands heads up the department, I think you could learn a lot from her.’

  I nod, horrified by the wetness that’s welling up behind my eyes. ‘Could I, er … have some time to think about this?’ My voice seems to have shrunk to a tiny peep.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Dennis says, reaching an arm towards m
e; for one awful moment I think he might pat my hand.

  ‘Thank you.’ I get up from my seat and pull on my jacket. Dennis checks his watch ostentatiously and gets up too, while Nigel makes a big show of shuffling his sheaf of papers together.

  ‘Don’t go to the store today,’ Sonia adds, her voice syrupy now as she tips her face towards me. ‘In fact, take a week off, Lorrie. Think things over. The main thing’ – she beams simperingly across the table – ‘is that you make the right decision for you.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I leave Geddes and Cox clutching the clear plastic folder of documents in which, apparently, Sonia and ‘the guys’ have detailed the choices on offer to me. And what choices they are: redundancy, or being shunted off to the world of Crumble Cubes. I stop by a vacant shopfront and flip through the papers, my eyes landing upon the amount they are offering me to quietly go away. It’s a lot. It would certainly keep me and the kids going for a few months, but after then, what next? Of course, I could apply for jobs with another beauty company; despite Sonia’s disparaging view of me, I have a wealth of experience and an excellent track record. But do I really want to start all over again, with a brand I don’t feel any affinity with?

  A young homeless man looks up at me from the shop doorway. To my shame, I hadn’t even noticed he was there. ‘All right, love?’ he asks wearily.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ I look down at him; an unravelling blanket partially covers his dirty jeans, and his face is so thin, his cheekbones are almost protruding. He looks, I realise with a start, around Cam’s age. I rummage in my purse and hand him a two-pound coin.

  ‘Thanks, darling. You have a good day.’

  I smile, say goodbye and walk briskly to the tube, ashamed at worrying so much about my future in blusher sales while young people are sleeping rough, yet unable to stop replaying the meeting over and over in my head. So much for promotion. So much for staying where I have been perfectly happy for the past ten years. They want to get rid of me. They are only offering the Crumble Cubes option so they can say they have given me a ‘choice’. But I am not a PR person, and I will not take a job that involves promoting those nasty little salty cubes. I would rather clean toilets, thank you very much.

  I step into the tube carriage and take a seat, catching the eye of the middle-aged man in an Iron Maiden T-shirt sitting opposite. He frowns and gives me a concerned look. I realise tears are dripping down my face. I wipe them away with my hands and spend the rest of the journey sitting with a fist bunched at my cheek, as if that will somehow stop any more from spilling out.

  At my station now, I trudge up the steps, seized by an urge to flop on the sofa and eat cake. Maybe Stu has been baking again, if he’s had the time? Hmmm, unlikely; clearly, he has other distractions now. Will he just pop round to Ginny’s place for more biting, or will they go on proper dates – i.e. the pub, dinner, cinema? It’s totally up to him, of course, what he does.

  I turn the corner into our street and check it, instinctively, for any sight of his motorbike. It’s nowhere to be seen. I unlock our front door and pace from room to room; on this bright, sunny Wednesday, no one is home. A flurry of texts reveals that Amy, Bella, Cam and Mo are all in the West End, having managed to secure two-for-one tickets to the opening of a new movie. I need to talk to another human being – Stu, preferably, although he’s probably delivering fregola – or, even better, someone who knows about employment law … like Antoine. He works in HR, but in France, obviously. What if it’s all different there? Plus, I don’t feel entirely comfortable, segueing swiftly from fervent kissing to the rather dispiriting matter of my being shunted off to some culinary graveyard featuring the lower end of the savoury flavourings market. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you brag about on Facebook. Hey, friends, guess what my new job is! Thinking up new and interesting things to do with chicken stock. Anyone have any suggestions of where we might like to STICK those handy little cubes? And then – I know I must be really losing it now – I picture Dennis Clatterbrock lying face down and whimpering on a bed at the doctor’s surgery, the ones they cover with a paper roll to avoid staining, and the kindly doc saying, ‘Try to relax, Mr Clatterbrock. It’ll be far more painful if you’re all tensed up.’

  Mildly cheered by the vision of his agonised writhings, I undress and stand beneath the shower’s blast for longer than I can ever remember. Afterwards, as I pull on old jeans and an unlovely, faded pink sweatshirt, I’m reminded that I have, in effect, been awarded a free week off, during which I could … well, what could I do, and who could I do it with? Amy’s going to Portugal tomorrow, Cam’s usually busy doing his own thing, and as for Stu … well, Kilburn is calling, obviously. I try to push away another wave of despondency and make myself a dismal cheese sandwich, reminding myself that I shouldn’t be dependent on Stu and the kids for company anyway.

  I could join a gym! I reflect, nibbling at my lunch at the open back door. How about that, Mum? Maybe, if I worked out for twelve hours a day – and ate nothing – I’d be lovely and trim in time for her wedding. I might even meet a muscle-bound man while I’m thrashing away on a stationary bike. Someone to accompany me to the nuptials, to save Mum from the shame of having her daughter turn up ‘alone’. Or what about gardening? Don’t they call this ‘gardening leave’ after all? Nigel whatever-his-name-was should have presented me with a ceremonial shovel along with that plastic folder. Handy for digging my own grave, considering I’m past my sell-by date, and far too old to care about looking presentable. Women need to accept there’s a point when nothing’s going to work for them anymore. Well, thank you, beauty expert Dennis Clatterbrock! Why don’t we dish out prettily packaged cyanide pills so our older customers can finish things off once and for all?

  I stare out at the pots of geraniums, the bushy tomato plant – would being offered a job with Tomo-Gro be more or less insulting than Crumble Cubes? I can’t decide – and the explosion of orange nasturtiums in the trough. For once, their vivid colours fail to cheer me. And it dawns on me, as I bat away a persistent wasp, that Sonia and her ‘team’ have effectively given me my whole life off, and I haven’t the first idea what to do with it.

  ‘I’ll come over right now,’ says Pearl when I call her.

  ‘Can we meet in the park instead? I know I’ve only just got home but I’m feeling kind of claustrophobic already.’ Which, I realise as I set out to meet her, doesn’t bode well for the future.

  She is waiting for me at the street corner. When Toby sees me, he starts wagging his tail, which is gratifying; two friendly faces, after the morning from hell.

  Pearl hugs me tightly. ‘God, Lorrie. This is outrageous. They can’t just fire you or shunt you off into another job. What would those French ladies say about this?’

  I shake my head. ‘I assume Claudine and Mimi aren’t in the picture anymore.’

  ‘Okay, but there are rules about this kind of thing – procedures companies have to follow. And if they really don’t want you they have to give reasons …’

  We start to follow the path that loops the edge of the park, passing groups of chattering mums with toddlers and an elderly man fanning his face with a newspaper and chatting to himself on a bench. ‘Well, the reason is that the brand’s going younger and I’m too old.’

  ‘Too old? That’s insane!’

  ‘They don’t seem to think so. Okay, I might be forty-six in normal years, but this is the beauty industry we’re talking about …’ I bend to ruffle Toby’s head. His soft fur is momentarily soothing. ‘How long are dog years again?’

  She shrugs. ‘Seven, I think …’

  Spotting another dog some metres away, Toby scampers towards it for as far as his extendable lead will allow. ‘I’d say make-up years are roughly the same, so that would make me, uh … three hundred and twenty-two.’

  Pearl splutters – ‘God help me then, being fifty next year’ – and raises a hand in greeting as we spot the auburn-haired man in the far distance. Eric, I remember his name is
, with Rosie the spaniel. Eric, whose off-licence is called Tipples and whose daughter has gone travelling. See, Sonia Richardson, my brain hasn’t completely seized up! I am still functioning, still capable of contributing to the business beauty.

  Wearing faded jeans and a washed-out checked shirt, Eric towers above a gaggle of teenage boys as he passes them on his way towards us.

  ‘Hey, this is a nice surprise.’ His face breaks into a heartening smile.

  ‘Hi, Eric,’ Pearl says as the dogs bound towards each other. We all fall into step as we continue our way along the path.

  ‘Day off today?’ Eric asks, turning to me.

  ‘Oh, um, I had a meeting this morning but wasn’t needed after that.’

  ‘A surprise afternoon off? How lovely. Always a bonus, isn’t it?’

  I grit my teeth. ‘Yes, I guess so.’

  ‘I’ve given myself the afternoon off too, left my able assistant in charge for a few hours.’ He pauses. ‘So, what d’you do, Lorrie?’

  He remembers my name. I glance sideways at him, taking in the amiable face – kindness shines out of his light blue eyes – and the slightly gangly walk, the bounding energy he exudes. Don’t they say that owners begin to look a little like their dogs? He has a spaniel-like quality, I decide.

  ‘I work in the beauty hall of a department store.’ I pause. ‘Or rather, I thought I did. We’ve just been taken over by a huge company and I was hauled into head office this morning and offered …’ I pause. ‘Well, I’m sort of being pushed out, but you don’t want to hear about that.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he insists. ‘That shouldn’t happen to anyone in this day and age. So, what’s the story?’

  I hesitate, because I’m not in the habit of blurting out personal stuff to strangers – but something about Eric’s openness makes it feel okay. So out it all comes, with both he and Pearl agreeing that I mustn’t make a decision – mustn’t do anything until I’ve sought legal advice.

  ‘I can’t afford a lawyer,’ I remark, studying the mottled tarmac of the path as we walk.