It's Not Me, It's You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  She was also getting a crash course in speaking ‘London’. Emma had amusing but obscure rants about the difficulties of life in the capital. It contained all kinds of knotty practical problems to do with travel and parking spaces that Delia hadn’t contemplated, and the tribal rivalry was a surprise. It wasn’t one city, it seemed. It was five or six soldered together, and they all disliked and mistrusted each other.

  Take Emma’s friend who was having a flat-warming in Brockley – something which was apparently catastrophic. It was as if Emma was discussing the Uruk-Hai of Isengard, as opposed to residents of South London.

  ‘Brockley!’ she said, waving a fork over her goat’s cheese and spinach pie with homemade puff pastry. ‘I work in west London. How the hell do I get to Brockley? It’s not on the Tube! The bus? Me, at my time of life, a bus!’

  ‘How do people in Brockley get into London?’ Delia asked.

  ‘The overground,’ Emma said, with a shudder. ‘Brockley sounds like it should be in Kent, which it practically is. Do you want to come?’

  ‘Maybe another time.’

  Delia didn’t feel up to meeting new people. But she was surprised to find she had two non-physical friends keeping her company in her first fortnight. Firstly, Peshwari Naan. He’d replied. She’d softened.

  How I tracked you – remember like explaining any magic trick, it’s always a let-down. I set up a Googlewhack. PN

  A what? I appreciate the irony that I could Google it. D

  It’s a unique combination of words hidden in a site that means any search for those words will bring up one result. I guessed I might be looked up online. Once you’d hit my blog, an IP trace showed that the visit was from council HQ. Boom. PN

  Ah: Delia remembered the odd blog with its gibberish copy and thought, yes, this checks out. However, the Found You! email came direct to Delia. She knew very little about the mechanics and specifics of IP traces, but Delia knew enough to know it wouldn’t tell the Naan it came from the computer of the redhead in the pinafore, to the left of the angry woman with knobbly feet.

  But how did you know that was me in particular? Also, you didn’t tell me who you are? D

  The answers to these questions are connected. Go on. One guess and then I’ll tell you. PN

  Delia was glad of the chance, that day, to think about something other than Celine’s photo album ‘Gurllllls Go To Crete 2011 aaaaargggh’ and its plethora of bikini shots.

  She pondered. The Naan identifying her must be something to do with her trip to Brewz and Beanz. That’s how he’d know it was her. Yet he recognised her? The council website didn’t have headshots of the press office staff.

  Aha! Her original theory returned.

  Wait. You know me. Which means I know you?! D

  4.5/5! I don’t know you as such. I know ‘of’ you. I know you always wear a good dress to the Christmas party, and don’t like fruit in salads. (Buffet small talk.) (I once hinted that we’d had this conversation! Amazingly enough, I don’t think I stuck in your mind.) And yes, thanks to the Googlewhack tripwire, I knew to be wary at Brewz that day. Didn’t go in. You shouldn’t have sat by the window. Surveillance 101. PN

  Oh my GOD. I can’t believe you work at the council! D

  Neither can I. PN

  So why the trolling, the mayhem, the havoc, the antagonism towards the council? D

  Because I work at the council. PN

  In the quiet of Emma’s kitchen, Delia laughed out loud at her laptop screen.

  Haha! You really hate it that much? D

  It’s not hate-hate. I have a low boredom threshold – idle hands, the devil, and all that. Truth be told, I never meant to make it a regular thing. Once I heard the councillors were getting their pants in a bunch, I couldn’t resist carrying on. I’m like that. If there’s mischief to be made online, I often make it. PN

  But what about your job if you’d been caught???! D

  I’m never caught at the scene, I’m like Macavity the Mystery Cat. With broadband. But I def went too far, not least as it came back on you. I never meant it to get nasty, in my head it was only anarcho-lols. Sorry again. PN

  Oh, no worries. Which department are you in? D

  Would you mind if we didn’t divulge those details right now? I know you say you’ve left. For all I know, you’re on annual leave and this is some new stage of the press office investigation Sorry again if you’ve left though. PN

  Delia relaxed. She believed him. This was someone who’d been chancing his arm, he wasn’t outright dangerously reckless.

  Hah! OK. Though I am sure Detective Donkey Saddle could easily check I’ve definitely left. D

  … Donkey Saddle? PN

  A big naan! You never heard that description before? My fiancé always used it. (I say fiancé, he was only engaged to me for an evening before I found out he’d been shagging someone else. Is an ex-fiancé still an ex-fiancé if they were only your fiancé for under an hour? If a tree falls in a forest, etc. etc.) D PS Can’t believe I don’t remember you.

  As I said, I’m not very memorable TBH. Sorry about the former fiancé, sounds a fool if you don’t mind me saying. PN

  I’m sat here looking at the profile of the girl he was/is sleeping with on here. You can say anything you like, frankly. D

  Do you want me to erase her Facebook account? Because I can do that. PN

  Can you?! D

  You’d have to give me a War Command room, some tin soldiers to push round a map, a set of marker pens, a flipchart, and a box of Krispy Kremes. I’d probably penetrate Zuckerberg’s fortress full of flip flop-wearing douchebags in Palo Alto in a week. He said, modestly. Hey, I have plenty to be modest about, otherwise. PN

  If you’re so good at computers, why not work for GCHQ or the FBI? D

  Ah. That’d be lack of confidence and motivation, and doggy paddle being easier than the deep end. Then getting to an age where doggy paddle is all you do. (An ancient 31.) PN

  I’m 33 so shut your filthy mouth! D

  She wasn’t usually so rude – or at least, not when sober – but she’d somehow fast-tracked straight to a mate-in-the-pub intimacy with the Naan.

  Well. You don’t look it PN

  Delia had never been one for actually socialising on social media. Selling her life in its shop window had never appealed. Uploading albums titled ‘Big Bite Out Of Big Apple With Team Hello Kitty’ – really, Celine sounded a total idiot – had always seemed faintly narcissistic to her. She was superstitious about showing off: even the best-looking lives could come apart at the seams. As she could attest.

  Yet right now, she got the lure of the digital age. She had a new sort-of-friend who lived in her screen, behind protective glass. Peshwari seemed genuinely regretful at causing Delia trouble, and she relented and admitted he was only one part of hustling her towards a door she should be heading for anyway.

  They began chatting during her first days down south, about life, the universe, the differences between Newcastle and London, the fears that could hold you back and the things that could push you forward. She could be a different Delia online: more flippant and funny, and less sad and careworn.

  Her second friend was The Fox. On her third day of solitude, Delia went to an art supplies shop. It was a gorgeous place, with rainbow galleries of glass jars of pure powdered pigment, planks of hard pastel crayons and thick paints in fat tubes you were itching to squirt. She bought new pens, brushes and pads and got back to the flat with the excitement bubbling. Sat in Emma’s front room, the only sound the scratch and swipe of her tools across the paper, Delia covered acres of cream cartridge with the story of her superhero alter ego moving cities. She started in soft, feathery swoops of pencil, then inked it in.

  There was something about being in charge, as Ralph said, that was so exhilarating. Delia hadn’t drawn in so long and felt oddly shamed at having been so lazy. Lazy, or scared? She was worried what others would think of the results, so much so she’d forgotten the effect that doing the drawi
ng had on her. She went into a sort of trance, absorbed by the alternative universe. Telling this story was soothing and enlivening, at the same time.

  The Fox wasn’t frightened of her new terrain. She was sailing through the streets at night, or sitting on the edge of a rooftop, scenting the air, enjoying the glittering possibilities spread out before her. No one and nothing could scare her, she had battles to fight.

  On her fourth night, Delia realised The Fox was telling her something.

  ‘What makes you think you’re right for this role as a junior account manager?’ Delia thought she heard a satirical inflection in junior.

  The immaculately made-up Indian girl, Tori, had thin, perfectly threaded brows, the width of matchsticks. The sharp eyes underneath communicated pity and irritation in equal measure. They spoke volumes, in fact.

  Why have you come here? What made you think you were qualified? Why is your foundation a shade too pale so you look like a ginger geisha, didn’t you do that jawbone test in natural light? When can I finish this depressing conversation and get my low-carb salmon from itsu?

  Delia could answer those unspoken questions more easily than the spoken. 1) Panic 2) Desperation 3) Trying to economise and use the rest of the bottle. The saleswoman in Fenwicks bamboozled me, I look like a mime artist 4) As soon as you like, how in the hell can you Londoners justify five quid for some fish though? I’d be starving an hour later.

  ‘I’m very motivated and enthusiastic and I have good writing skills,’ Delia said.

  Tori did a quirk of the lip and a near-imperceptible shake of her head.

  ‘That’s true of many of the candidates.’

  ‘I have very good social skills and fit well into a team.’

  Oh no, she was on the verge of doing the works well on her own or part of a team cliché. Tori ignored it.

  ‘Do you have any questions you want to ask me?’

  Delia had spent the last half hour trying to cover her shame that she’d only done a smattering of bar jobs, maternity cover in admin at SpecSavers and eighteen months at a boring PR firm – mainly construction industry clients – before landing her plum role at the city council. PR and comms weren’t interchangeable, Delia knew that, nor were Newcastle and London. Just because she could draft releases trumpeting good or bad news, didn’t mean she was an automatic dab hand at ‘starting dynamic conversations’ and ‘engaging target demographics’ to launch clients and/or products and services into the saturated news cycle in the capital.

  Delia didn’t understand how she’d got the interviews if her CV’s scant contents consistently ruled her out. Didn’t her interviewers read it first, to save them all the time and the trouble? The answer seemed to be a firm no.

  Delia was all too aware how her employment history should look: bouncing every two years between increasingly well-known companies, her job title getting more impressive with each move. Instead, her CV was the equivalent of a comb-over – a few desperate strands arranged to try to conceal the glaring bald pate, and fooling no one.

  This interview had now entered the purely face-saving rigmarole phase. It was her fourth of these moments in as many days and Delia’s will to pretend had left her.

  ‘… No. It’s fine, no questions from me. I think I’ve got the idea,’ she smiled, and glamorous, twenty-eight-year-old-at-the-most Tori looked embarrassed for her. Delia had ruined the gloss and cool of the place with her sweaty honesty. Tori’s face as she ushered her out said that Delia had to leave before it became contagious.

  Confidence: how did you get it? How did you come by that extraordinary, life-transforming quality?

  Emma had once told her about being offered a raise at her last firm that was more than she expected. Yet she still screwed her face up and told her bosses: ‘What? This is an insult.’ And they doubled it. Emma whooped with laughter. Delia had been incredulous. ‘But. How do you dare?’ Emma shrugged. ‘It’s the game, isn’t it? It’s only money. They can only say no.’

  Delia had repeated this mantra to herself constantly as she hurtled around London, in her third week as a sort-of Londoner. She meticulously planned all her Tube stops and routes in advance and yet it still became a scary logistical nightmare, relying heavily on Google Maps.

  The PR company offices she’d visited so far were typically light, air con-chilly shrines full of vases of amaryllis and trilling phones and the bustle of proper people going about their brisk necessary business. Meanwhile, Delia sat in reception feeling like a spare part, holding a silly coat.

  Call Delia a quitter, but she couldn’t see any of this changing. She’d thought she could at least score a summer job. She was going to tell Emma tonight this had been a nice experiment, but after two weeks of dud interviews, she was back up to Newcastle at the end of the month. Fox tail between legs. Hoping to evade her foes with similar vulpine cunning …

  Delia was too frail to cope with more rounds of rejections and in worklessness, she had started to feel like a teenage mope, sponging off Emma.

  She’d live in Hexham, hunt for another comms job – temping if needs be. She’d draw in her spare time. She was ten years too late to apply her Graphic Design training, but perhaps she could catch up with a night class …?

  If only Tori had been the end of it. The last dignity ransacking was due to be at three o’clock in an office off Charing Cross Road, at a place called Twist & Shout. She couldn’t remember if she or Emma had shortlisted it as a possible – Emma had been browsing during her lunch and emailing her with suggestions, a generous gesture when Emma got what seemed to amount to twelve minutes’ break.

  The jumpy, dancing website told her it was looking for someone with individuality and a fresh mindset, which was much more important than experience. LOL, sure it is, Delia thought.

  Earlier that afternoon, the sole company director, one Kurt Spicer, had messaged her. Due to the delivery of new office furniture, it might be easier to rendezvous in a nearby Starbucks, was that alright?

  Makes no difference, Delia thought. Literally. None.

  Delia was early. Wonderful. She could get her drink, choose a seat and gird her loins.

  She saw something move on the edge of her vision. A middle-youth-ish, hefty man was waving at her from across the room. In front of a table strewn with paper, a laptop bag by his legs. Balls. She wasn’t early enough. She made the ‘tipping cup to lips’ gesture that meant ‘drink?’ and the bespectacled man shook his head. She hoped the done thing was to get herself one, then present for inspection. Delia queued, feeling the coins in her hand grow greasy, telling herself not to be nervous. She just needed to get through this final rejection, then her London ‘adventure’ would be over.

  She got her coffee and wound her way over to his table.

  ‘Hello, Kurt?’

  ‘Delia, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Delia, trying to divest herself of her coat in an elegant, job interview worthy way, and instead feeling like a fumble-fingered Mrs Tiggywinkle.

  She could see a printout of her limp application on the table in front of him and cringed slightly. Inshallah, this would at least be brief. She hadn’t chosen a small one-shot latte for nothing.

  Kurt was fleshy, spiky-haired, forty or so, with the soft burr of an Australian accent and rimless glasses. He had a certain scrubbed media polish. He looked like someone you might see as a business correspondent on the twenty-four-hour news.

  Delia said she hoped his office furniture had all arrived and Kurt blew on the surface of his giant black coffee.

  ‘Howay the toon! Like the accent.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Delia said. ‘I started speaking and there it was.’

  ‘You’re from Newcastle?’

  ‘Near enough, a place called Hexham.’

  ‘So give me The Delia Moss Story. You have a mainly comms background, for the local council?’

  ‘Yep, that’s right,’ said Delia, stoutly, thinking sod it. Let’s wring the chicken’s neck and get this over with.

&nbs
p; ‘Why are you in London?’

  ‘Personal reasons, really. I have a good friend here and needed a change of scene.’

  ‘Messy break-up?’ Kurt said.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’ve seen that look. I’ve got an ex-wife who sits at the right hand of Satan. If she was on fire, I’d dial 998. Luckily she’s still in Canberra and we couldn’t have kids. Sometimes God knows what he’s doing, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Delia said, thinking, help, what’s happening?

  ‘And what makes you think you can make the transition to PR down here?’

  ‘Uh. Confidence. Life is all about confidence, isn’t it? I know I have the ability. I lack the experience.’

  ‘Experience is overrated. Experience is what no one has to begin with, no matter how good they are. Attitude is everything. Can you write me a press release I want to have sex with?’

  ‘Um …’ Delia tried not to laugh, ‘Er. Depends on your type?’

  ‘When it comes to skills at selling in, I look for raw humpability. Don’t give me missionary position. Go all out. Seduce the shit out of me, sideways. In suspenders.’

  Oh yuck, Delia thought. The ‘lecher’ warning light flashed urgently on her internal dashboard.

  ‘Can you stir up interest and generate publicity? That’s all I want to know. The phrase is “grab attention”. You don’t ask for it. You grab it.’

  Delia opened her mouth and it dawned that Kurt was someone who liked to speak in rhetorical question, mission statement bumper stickers. She didn’t have to say anything, merely nod enthusiastically while narrowing her eyes a lot.

  ‘In fact I nearly called the company Smash & Grab.’

  ‘But the criminal connotations weren’t ideal?’ she said, sipping her coffee. She’d tried to park her usual Geordie dryness so far in London interactions, but here she thought: in for a penny.

  ‘Precisely. After the riots, the whole thing took on an element of ram-raiding Tesco for a sack of Value Basmati Rice. What a waste.’

  ‘The name you went with was good, too,’ Delia said, wondering at how the conversation had turned so weird, so fast.