“Thanks Mr Hurley,” I say, shaking his hand, before turning and leaving his office.
“And Rebecca,” he calls after me. “Do let me know when your leaving do will be, won’t you. I should very much like to help give you a good send off.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Today is my last day at Penand Inc. Yay!
I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when it actually came to leave. Delirious, obviously, but I have been here a long time, so I thought a touch of sadness wasn’t completely beyond the realms of possibility.
It’s been okay.
For starters, I’ve done no work whatsoever. All day. I’ve pretended to do some – I’ve sat at my desk from time to time and shuffled papers, clicking on my mouse intermittently for added effect (I was playing FreeCell, but no-one needs to know that). But for the rest of the day I have been wandering around the building saying my goodbyes. Which turns out to have been a complete waste of time as at 4pm, everyone who has ever known me at the company – and several, I suspect, who have never even met me (some people will do anything for half an hour away from their desks) all cram into our office to see me off the premises.
They’ve put “Sorry You’re Leaving” banners up on the walls and tied balloons to my chair and thrown sparkly bits all over my desk.
I’m touched.
And they’ve bought champagne for a toast.
First Malcolm makes a little speech, during which he completely embarrasses me by telling everyone how in my interview he asked me why I wanted the job and I told him it was because I owed the bank £5,000 for all the university partying they had subsidised. He says he gave me the job for my honesty and slaps me on the back. Just as I’m taking a sip of champagne.
Then Fliss says a few words – about how she may be nearly forty years older than me but thinks of me as one of her dearest friends – despite trying to get rid of me for the last year. Which makes me cry. I blame it on the champagne that went up my nose.
And then I get a card – filled with a mixture of both heartfelt and crude sentiments that I’m sure I’ll have great fun reading later – and a present. I knew I was getting one. Everyone who leaves Penand Inc gets a present. But even if they didn’t, Erin ‘sneaking’ around the building clutching an A3 envelope with ‘Becky’s leaving, cough up your cash!’ scribbled on it in big black letters, was a dead giveaway. And I know what I’m getting too – or part of it, at least. Everyone who leaves Penand Inc gets a desk tidy filled with goodies. One of those tubular pen pot things that you loved as a child, but can’t see the point of as an adult when you have to tip the whole thing upside down just to locate the last paperclip that you are sure is in there somewhere, leaving a heap of pens, pencils, useless clusters of two or three staples and a selection of chewed pen lids scattered all over your desk in the process. Which kind of makes a mockery of the name ‘desk tidy’, if you ask me. And when I say filled with ‘goodies’, I do mean that in the loosest possible sense of the word. When you work for a stationery supplier, ‘goodies’ can really only mean pens and pencils and, well,…pretty much just pens and pencils.
It started years ago when some guy was given one as a leaving present because he had always had the messiest desk in the entire building (before my time, clearly) and could never find a pen when he needed one. And it went down so well (he was so touched he cried – imagine his elation if he’d stuck it out for the carriage clock) that it became tradition.
You do get something else. Unless you’re Billy-no-mates, that is, and no-one is really all that bothered to see you go. Or worse still, didn’t know you had arrived in the first place – and even then you’d probably get a couple of extra pens or something.
I’m not a Billy-no-mates, it seems, judging by the two gifts in Malcolm’s hands – and the number of people fighting for space in our office. My desk has been so untidy for so long I had no idea it could accommodate so many butt cheeks.
I open the desk tidy first. It’s pink – my favourite colour. And I’m honoured – as well as the standard blue and black biros and HB pencils, it has a retractable eraser, a miniature stapler and a small cellophane packet of treasury tags.
“Thanks,” I say, putting it down on top of the illegal fridge – the only surface free of bums – and looking at the other gift waiting to be opened.
“Let me guess, it’s a fountain pen,” I joke, relieving Malcolm of the large box-shaped gift. My dad does that every birthday – feels a present that’s obviously a new tie or a pair of socks and says ‘let me guess – it’s a new golf club’.
Blimey, it’s heavy, whatever it is. Definitely not a fountain pen.
I rip off the floral wrapping paper (Fliss’ choice, I suspect).
Bloody hell. It’s a laptop.
“It’s a laptop,” I say, or rather, shriek, at the top of my voice, staring at the box in my hands. And then I go into a major panic. What if it’s just a laptop box with something very definitely not a laptop inside – like a very heavy fountain pen, for instance, or a picture frame, or a box of bath bombs from Lush! Because everyone knows I love bath bombs from Lush!
But no, it really is a laptop.
I know we sell hundreds of them, but even at cost price they aren’t cheap and there’s no way Malcolm would just give one away. And I really need one too – I let Alex keep the one we bought together.
“You’ve worked for Penand Inc for a long time and made a lot of friends who all wanted you to have something to help you in your next adventure, Rebecca,” he says, reading my mind as the last bit of wrapping paper floats to the floor.
“If you are going to be a writer, then you’ll need something decent to write on.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m stunned,” I say. “Thank you so much everyone.”
“Good luck Rebecca,” Malcolm shouts, raising his paper cup of champagne in the air.
“Good luck Becky,” everyone echoes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I stare at the pieces of plate on the floor and smile nervously at my new boss.
“Oops,” I say.
Which is quite fortunate really. I very nearly said “bollocks” instead, remembering just in the nick of time that I am in the company of ten eight-year-old girls in pink sparkly cowgirl hats.
I have a new part-time job. At a coffee shop.
In hindsight, when Katie said that the sister of one of her colleagues was looking for some help at her coffee shop, it might have been an idea to clarify exactly which kind of coffee shop we were talking about.
This is not a quiet little coffee shop where little old ladies come to enjoy a pot of tea with a fruit scone, or where nine-to-fivers take refuge for a few minutes before returning to their offices with tuna baguettes to eat al desko. No, this is a coffee shop where children – and occasionally adults – sit and drink orange squash with malted milk biscuits whilst they ruin perfectly good white plates with pictures of trees and farmyard animals and call it art.
The name Potty Wotty Doodah should have been a bit of a clue.
But, in all honesty, I couldn’t afford to be fussy. I wanted something part time and with as little responsibility as possible to maximise the time I have available for composing begging letters to editors of glossy magazines. Which kind of ruled out half the ‘situations vacant’ pages in the local newspaper. My newly acquired aversion to paperclips and staples ruled out a further twenty per cent – office clerks, administrators, personal assistants, general dogsbodies… And a traumatic experience as a waitress at the tender age of seventeen, when I mistook a vegetable spring roll for a raspberry pancake and served it up with two dollops of vanilla ice cream and a generous helping of raspberry sauce, ruled out the remaining thirty per cent.
I don’t think even I could go wrong with a cappuccino machine. But a cappuccino machine and a slice of art on the side…?
Let me make this clear…
I cannot draw.
I cannot draw to save my life.
No, reall
y, if my life actually depended upon my ability to draw, I would, in fact, be dead.
To illustrate (no pun intended), until the age of ten (okay, fourteen) I drew people with square heads, because I couldn’t draw circles, and with arms that protruded horizontally out of their bodies, because shoulders and elbows were beyond even comprehension to me.
But I haven’t even got to the stage yet where I’m being asked by a five-year-old to draw a giraffe on the side of an eggcup and I’m already a disaster.
Caroline – my new boss – opened Potty Wotty Doodah three years ago, after six years as an art teacher and two years studying business at night school. In other words – she can draw.
It’s adorable. The walls are covered with rows and rows of shelves filled with every kind of plain white pottery you can imagine – bowls, plates, cups and saucers, salt and pepper pots, cookie jars, money boxes. There are even light switch surrounds, doorknobs and toothbrush holders.
The far wall is half-decorated with a mosaic of tiles painted by customers since the café opened, while the other half is waiting for the next three years’ worth.
To the left as you walk in there is a counter where Caroline greets everyone and serves coffee and juice. And in the centre is an island unit – it’s the kind you find in big kitchens, but instead of pots and pans and recipe books it’s filled with picture books, stencils, rubber stamps and tracing paper, and hundreds of bottles of paint. Inspiration Island – that’s what Caroline calls it.
The rest of the room is filled with pine tables and chairs, a different coloured plastic cloth draped over each table, a miniature pinny hanging from the back of every chair.
It’s just like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory – except you don’t eat the decorations, you paint them.
Caroline has a little girl – Molly, who’s five, and she’s six months pregnant with her second child. She’s starting to take things a bit easier now. Her friend Fiona works here too – but she’s in the process of setting up her own shop – a children’s clothing shop – just a few doors down in the same street, so she isn’t able to work any extra hours.
That’s where I come in.
So – Caroline is a former art teacher and Fiona stitches pictures of angels on t-shirts and socks, whilst I, it seems, am the token pleb who can’t even draw stick-men.
Today, though, stick-men are the least of my problems.
I am learning how to glaze a pot – that’s the bit that makes them shiny when they come out of the kiln, apparently. I haven’t gone near the kiln yet. I’m not sure I ever will after today’s disaster.
I pick up the larger fragments of plate from the floor and apologise to Caroline. Again.
“Don’t worry,” she says kindly. “That’s why we’re doing this – so you can get it right before you start handling the proper stuff.”
By proper stuff she means the pottery with the pretty pictures – straight from the hands of proud little girls and boys – instead of the plain items straight from the shelves. The very thought of touching the ‘proper stuff’ makes me nervous. The last time I had anything to do with any kind of pottery was in art class at secondary school when I accidentally dropped Emma’s cat dish. It was a masterpiece – a bowl in the shape of a cat’s face with delicate clay whiskers sticking out of the sides. She cried for the rest of the day. So did I. It was very traumatic. And we were eleven. Imagine what it could do to a toddler…
“Try again,” Caroline says, handing me the tongs you use to dip the pottery. They look like a pair of industrial-size barbecue tongs. I hold them awkwardly. I feel like Julia Roberts in the scene from Pretty Woman when she’s trying to pick-up snails at that posh restaurant.
I grip a mug like Caroline has shown me, with one half of the tongs at the bottom and the other on the rim, and slowly ease it into the bucket of glaze. It’s a thick blue gloopy substance.
“So why doesn’t everything come out of the kiln blue?” I ask Caroline.
“The blue disappears in the heat, but there are chemicals in the paints which make them resist the heat,” she explains. “Normal paints – poster paints for example – they would burn off.”
“Hmm,” I say, taking it all in, twisting the tongs gently in the bucket, to make sure the mug is coated all over.
“That should do it,” she tells me.
I ease the mug out of the bucket and then watch as it slips out of the tongs and drops back in. It bobs up and down like a bobbing apple at a Halloween party before filling up with glaze and sinking to the bottom of the bucket.
I smile at Caroline. It’s a smile of resignation.
I’m not sure I’m cut out for this. Selling pencils was much easier.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the end of the day I have broken one more mug and successfully glazed a dinner plate and a kitten ornament. Keen to leave on a high point I hang up my apron for the day and get the tube back to Katie’s.
I’m staying with Katie and Matt while I get myself sorted. They have said I can stay with them as long as I want. Technically that means I can stay forever – I don’t want to be on my own. But I won’t stay forever. They are getting married soon. They don’t want me cramping their style.
They have a lovely flat in Clapham Junction, just two stops on the Overground from Potty Wotty Doodah. They bought it last year after living with Matt’s parents for almost eighteen months to save for the deposit – a period Katie affectionately describes as her ‘time inside,’ so I know how much it means to her to finally have her own place.
Fortunately I left some of my stuff at Fliss and Derek’s. Katie and Matt’s spare room is tiny – just about big enough to swing a cat. But only just. Any smaller and there would definitely be claw marks on the walls.
It has a single bed, a bedside table with a lamp and a framed photo of Katie and I dressed as witches, and a canvas wardrobe that Katie and I bought the weekend I moved in. I think we both underestimated just how many clothes I own – something we discovered when we hung the last t-shirt on the wooden pole and watched as it popped out of its sockets, spilling the contents onto the floor in a big heap.
“Matt!” we both yelled simultaneously, before collapsing onto the bed in a giggling heap ourselves.
“We’ll see you in a couple of hours,” Katie tells Matt as soon as I get home, giving him a quick kiss on the lips and throwing her bag over her shoulder.
“A couple of hours?” I ask, horrified.
Katie is dragging me to the gym. As if my day has not already been torturous enough…
Katie loves the gym. She goes at least twice a week – runs a few kilometres, cycles a couple of miles, rows the equivalent of a small river or two, does a few sit ups, a few press ups…
I hate the gym. All that puffing and panting – not to mention all the sweating. I keep telling her – it’s ever so unattractive.
And she pays £75 a month for the privilege!
This is the same gym, might I add, where Katie had her underwear nicked from the changing rooms while she was having a work-out before work one morning. I saw this as an opportunity – attempting to get out of going on the grounds of security.
“No-one would want to steal your knickers, B,” she had politely informed me. “They’re old and saggy and off-white.”
I decided not to waste crucial time being offended – that could wait till later – and attempted to come up with an alternative excuse instead.
“I don’t have any gym gear,” I said.
“I have spares,” she told me.
“I’m not a member,” I said.
“I have guest passes,” she announced.
I admitted defeat eventually, of course.
But bloody hell – two hours! Anyone would think we were training for the London Marathon.
We get the tube to the gym where Katie signs me in as her guest. Before I am allowed in I have to fill in a form with my name and address, date of birth and vital statistics – so that they can use them to attempt
to con me out of £75 a month, no doubt. And I also have to sign a waiver – to say that I won’t sue them when I come flying off the end of the treadmill and break both my legs. Or words to that effect.
“You never know B, you might meet a man here,” Katie tells me, shoving her bag in the locker and slamming the door shut before it falls back out again.
Katie wants to find me a man. She thinks I need one. She says it’s just like falling off a horse – “you have to get straight back on”.
“Or what?” I asked her, “I’ll forget how to do it?” I’m not quite sure exactly what it was I meant by ‘it.’
“I keep telling you – I don’t want a man right now,” I say, pulling my ponytail tight and digging my knickers out of my backside through Katie’s cycling shorts. Her bottom is a bit smaller than mine, evidently.
“Well keep digging your knickers out of your backside in front of everyone in the gym and you’ll probably be safe,” Katie laughs.
“Where do you want to start?” she asks me.
Nowhere is not an option, I presume.
I look around at the equipment – there are rows and rows of bicycles, treadmills, cross trainers, rowing machines…all with maniacs on them cycling, running, rowing for dear life and getting absolutely bloody nowhere. It all seems ever so tedious. Whatever happened to getting outdoors – on a real bike, on a real road?
“How about the sauna?” I ask.
I have to earn my time in the sauna, apparently. Two miles on the bike and one mile on the treadmill earns me twenty minutes in the sauna, according to Katie’s Law. Well, that sounds easy enough.
There are no pairs of bikes together so Katie and I take the bikes on opposite ends of the row and get to work. Or should I say, Katie gets to work while I fiddle about with the earphones trying to find the best channel on the gym’s sound system.
I settle on what appears to be a dance album and start cycling whilst simultaneously pressing buttons on the bike – completely at random. I must look like someone who doesn’t know what they are doing because the guy on the bike next to me offers to help.
The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights Page 135
