‘Bye, Serena. Nice to have met you again,’ I said with radiant insincerity. She was in such a filthy mood she didn’t even look at me while she addressed an equally mendacious reply to the back of the fireplace and missed the full glory of my get up. James was so eager to be rid of me that he was already in the hall rooting for his car keys in a Chinese bowl that seemed to be a general dumping ground for everything. I couldn’t resist putting my head back around the door and saying cheerily, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep him long. And you won’t miss out. He’s got lots of stamina. Believe me, I know.’
James gave me a very old-fashioned look as I joined him on the doorstep, sending my guilty conscience into overdrive. Had he overheard? He looked at the shoes dangling from my hand and said, ‘Can I ask why you were careering around in bare feet on a winter’s night?’
‘I can’t run in these, and I thought I might have to.’
His eyebrows rose as he pulled the door to. ‘In future it might be more sensible to wear something you can walk in rather than hooker’s shoes.’
‘They aren’t hooker’s shoes,’ I protested. ‘They’re much too expensive.’
He made a noise that sounded rude and opened the door of a red Renault Clio. ‘A skirt you can walk in would be useful too. Or any skirt at all.’
He banged the door shut before I could answer. He got in and, gunning the engine, slammed into first gear and we careered off down the road in a manner certain to gain the attention of the traffic police for miles around. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘if you’ve got to go around looking as if you’re hoping to get laid, it’d be wiser not to get into a car with a man who has a problem keeping his flies buttoned.’
‘I didn’t know that at the time,’ I said. I was trying to be understanding. If I hadn’t completely wrecked James’s evening I’d put a considerable damper on it, and unpleasant stains all over his new carpet too. ‘I think I should be able to accept a lift without being molested by some creep who keeps his brains between his legs.’
‘Of course you should. Just as much right as I’d have to walk into a Catholic pub in Belfast and say I don’t think much of the Pope. Free speech and all that. It’s just that if I’m not a complete moron, I might care to consider the consequences first.’ I clutched the handle on the door for protection as he jammed his foot down on the accelerator to emphasise his point and the G-force pushed me back into my seat. He glanced at me, daring me to answer back so he could give vent to the bad temper he was barely keeping in check. I didn’t.
I have never made the journey back to Clapham quite so quickly. I doubt anyone has. I stared stonily out of my window watching the darkened houses flash by, annoyance fuelled by the knowledge that even if James was completely out of order in coming the heavy like this, he wasn’t entirely wrong. If I hadn’t been in such a snit I would have seen that Hugo was a slimy git and wouldn’t have gone as far as the other side of the room with him. I gestured silently for James to turn down a side road and then at the block where I share a flat. He stopped, double parking, and I got out with as much dignity as I could manage. ‘Goodbye, James. Thank you very much for all you’ve done. I’m really sorry to have interrupted your evening like this,’ I said, determined to show that I, at least, knew how to behave. Then temptation got the better of me, and I spoiled it by adding, ‘I hope you’ll be able to pick up where you had to leave off. Or should I say take off what you had to put back on?’
He glared at me poisonously. I retreated rapidly to the safety of the entrance to the flats. However he was more eager to return to Serena than for vengeance for he was already half way down the road by the time I turned to look at him. The door opened behind me and my next-door neighbour came out.
‘Cool footwear, Laura,’ he called as he went past.
I looked down in dismay. I’d forgotten about the husky slippers. I was going to have to return them, wasn’t I? Perhaps I could post them or maybe leave it a week or two.
James might have calmed down by then.
CHAPTER 2
I was being suffocated. He was pinning me down, his arm across my chest, weight driving the air out of my body, his foul breath eddying across my mouth and cheeks. I thrashed around, trying to scream, but no sound came out. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. A waft of old fish drifted past my nose.
Fish? With difficulty I opened my eyes. A pair of green eyes stared balefully at me. The large shape sitting on my chest opened its mouth and yawned widely, giving me a second chance to savour what had been found in next door’s dustbin. I struggled up and pushed my cat Horatio’s considerable weight off me.
To my surprise it was nearly eight o’clock. It didn’t seem that I had slept at all. When I’d got in last night my flatmate Liv had just got back from her job as a theatre lighting technician. Unlike most theatrical folk she’s in work pretty constantly so due to our wildly different working hours and her habit of dashing off after the last performance on Saturday to visit her farmer boyfriend in Wiltshire we usually pass like ships in the night, only pausing to leave notes or borrow essentials like hairdryers. So naturally when we’re both in at the same time, alone and reasonably compos there’s a mega catch up session. This particular one had lasted well into the small hours, despite Liv finishing off our last bottle of wine with two of her workmates a couple of nights before so we’d had to make do with coffee. My eyes felt gritty and I had a low headache niggling away behind my forehead that for once I knew really was due to lack of sleep and not an excuse for a little too much, or much too much, the night before. Not even the most alcohol-sensitive person in the world could have a hangover on Serena’s minuscule measure.
I got stiffly out of bed, feeling about ninety years old, and shuffled to the kitchen, not helped by Horatio weaving in and out of my legs. Much to his loudly expressed annoyance I picked up the coffee machine for an urgently needed caffeine fix before heading for the tin of cat food. Horatio started life as an alley cat and he’s never forgotten that there was a time when he didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. He always makes sure he’s got at least two in hand tucked under his capacious waistline, and in between official mealtimes he goes and visits neighbours for a snack. Considering how tightly his somewhat moth-eaten fur is stretched around his stomach it amazes me that he can con people into thinking he needs to be fed.
I ladled out some Kittykins, or whatever he was on that week, into his dish and put it down for him. It smelled almost as bad as his breath. But the smell was easily compensated for by the silence. I poured my coffee and got the milk out of the fridge. Before the raucous caterwaul could slice through my head again I gave him his saucer of milk. The coffee didn’t do much in terms of bringing me back to something approaching life but I had a feeling nothing would bar a thunderbolt. The idea of choosing what to wear for work seemed as impossible as scaling Everest in a bikini. I contemplated taking the day off; even though my boss could fairly be said to lack most, if not all, of the finer human feelings, surely even she might agree that under the circumstances I deserved a bit of cosseting? However, Darian Mumford, Senior Account Director at Manly Field Public Relations, didn’t consider anything short of hospitalisation (and preferably that should be arranged for the weekends or taken as holiday) an excuse for any of her staff not being in the office, on time, bright as a button, neat as a pin, smart as a bandbox and ready to put her best foot forward. For someone who considers herself so right on, Darian has a remarkable fondness for antiquated truisms and clichés. Add to that the odd phrase which had been wafted around in my hearing recently such as ‘Perhaps better suited for something else’, or the more frank ‘Useless’, and I decided the wiser course of action would be to go into the office. After working with Darian for a bit you tend to pick up her speech patterns.
‘Laura, you’re late. Again. I’ve already warned you at least twice about your time-keeping. And,’ pause for her voice to rise an indignant octave, ‘what do you think you look like
? Have you forgotten what I said about standards in dress last week?’
Honestly, the woman must have X-ray vision. I had barely set one sore foot in the office and I’d swear she hadn’t come out of hers. Either she could see through the wall or she had set up a system of mirrors so she could spy on the menials in the main room. She swept out of her doorway, the sharp tip of her nose going pink as she stopped dead and looked her junior account trainee up and down with mounting disbelief and rage. It was a new low even for me.
I have to admit I wasn’t looking my best. The only shoes of mine I could get on over my heavily plastered and now swollen toe were a pair of strappy yellow sandals which were great for wafting around in on balmy June evenings but quite out of the question for a foggy January morning. So I’d ended up by borrowing Liv’s seventeen-hole DMs which could happily accommodate bad toes since her feet are a size larger than mine. I agree that their like are rarely seen in top public relations agencies - not the ones that have clients with a mental age of more than seventeen anyway. Then, since wearing them with one of the smart little suits that Darian insisted make up my normal working wardrobe would have convinced any impartial observer that I was at the very least bizarre, if not downright certifiable, I’d put on an ankle-length denim skirt and a leather bomber jacket. I thought I looked pretty funky, but chic I wasn’t. Darian prefers chic.
At last she spoke. ‘Have you forgotten we have a meeting with Rainbow Cosmetics this afternoon?’ she demanded in throbbing tones.
My expression must have shown that I had. Not only was I dressed unsuitably, but I’d also been given instructions to come in fully decked out in warpaint from Rainbow’s latest spring collection, Spring Rain colours - very original. Darian has a fond belief that our clients note and approve of such dedicated professionalism. Personally I’m pretty sure most of the marketing men we deal with wouldn’t recognise their own product on the hoof, so to speak, if it leaped up and bit them.
I was about to give her my perfectly reasonable explanation as to why my cheeks were bare of Rosy Rust Blush and my lips weren’t gleaming with Rosy Light Stayput Shimmer Lipstick but she didn’t give me the chance. I got the full spiel about my inattention to detail, how my mind was taken up with my useless boyfriend, how I should spend less time thinking what I was doing that night and more on writing my copy.
She finally stopped in mid-rant long enough for me to get my own word in edgeways. Since listening to Darian carpeting someone is one of the office sports a major proportion of the staff had already found something to do in our office so there was quite an impressive audience hanging around in corners to listen to my story. It sounded properly dramatic too. I didn’t exactly exaggerate or make things up, just embellished the odd part a little. The audience liked it, especially the part where I had to defend my honour with nothing more than my door keys.
Darian was looking pretty grim by the time I’d finished. I don’t think she was happy about rushing in to slate me off before she’d heard what I had to say. It didn’t make her look too supportive towards the sisterhood, but that wasn’t my fault. Not really. It’s very difficult to stop Darian once she gets going, and it wasn’t my intention to show her up. Not my primary intention anyway. No doubt I’d get the blame eventually. Darian is never in the wrong. To believe in the rightness of your every action was one of the key things she’d learned on her assertiveness course. Though personally I think Darian needed assertiveness training like your average Pit Bull needs a shot of testosterone. She muttered something about my foolishness in accepting lifts from men I didn’t know (now where had I heard that before?) and then switched into caring mode. ‘But at least you weren’t hurt. That’s such a relief,’ she cooed. ‘Do you need to go home and rest?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m better off with something to do,’ I said truthfully. My imagination was still dwelling unpleasantly on what might have happened. Even work was better than thinking about Hugo’s wandering hands.
‘Well, perhaps Rainbow...’ She looked at me thoughtfully, no doubt weighing up the pros and cons of taking an assistant looking, in her view, like a tramp, against the potential advantage of a brave little PR executive being seen to overcome personal trauma to attend important briefing meeting on promotional campaign in teenage magazines. To my relief the tramp factor won. I liked the people at Rainbow but going with Darian meant I was relegated to the role of note-taker; needless to say if they didn’t like her ideas afterwards it was always because I had taken down the instructions wrong. ‘You’d better catch up with the skin-care advice letters this morning. It’s pretty straightforward, you won’t need my help.’
I didn’t point out she had never offered me any help on the Cathy Ashby skin-care letters. They didn’t pay a large enough retainer for a big cheese like her to get involved. Every box for the Morning Dew range of skin preparations carried an invitation to write to Cathy for her personal advice on all your skin-care problems. Cathy was pretty long in the tooth, she had been dishing out her words of wisdom since the thirties and, frankly, both the products and the packaging looked like it too but she still got about twenty letters a week Nearly all my replies were stock letters under headings such as ‘Teenager - spots’, ‘30s - combination skin’, ‘wrinkles’, etc, and included shatteringly novel recommendations such as ‘be sure to cleanse your skin morning and night with a proprietary product’- Morning Dew naturally, or ‘to help prevent the signs of ageing use a moisturiser morning and night’ - such as Morning Dew intensive care lotion. The customers seemed astonishingly grateful for such bog standard advice and surprisingly often I got letters from those who thought that if I could help with basic skin care then perhaps I was an expert on other matters, such as how to lose a stone in ten days (wish I knew), where to meet a good-looking, unattached, non-psychotic millionaire (ditto), and whether it was a matter for concern when your husband liked silk underwear. (On whom?)
I had barely sat down at my desk and got out my ‘to be answered’ file - it was bulging a little more than I’d thought, a lot more in fact - when Emma who sits on the other side of the office materialised by my side. ‘Hey, Laura!’ she hissed, casting a quick look at Darian’s slightly open door. ‘Did all that really happen?’
I opened my mouth to assure her that every word was true then saw her looking at me with a beady eye. ‘Most of it,’ I said, then added more truthfully, ‘Well, some.’
‘What happened? I thought you were going to a party with Daniel.’
‘I was. I did,’ I hissed, metaphorical steam coming out of my ears.
‘So?’ she demanded urgently. ‘How come you missed a chance to get your hands on him later? Have you broken up or something?’ There was a bit too much eagerness in her voice for my peace of mind.
‘Will you two stop talking and get on with your work!’ came a clarion-like command from inside Darian’s office. We were practically whispering. Either she had preternatural hearing or she had the place bugged. Emma blew a silent raspberry towards the door and went back to her desk.
We worked in obedient silence for all of two minutes and then Emma said in a loud voice, ‘Bother! I’ve got to go and check the files for Dento.’ She headed for the dark hole that acts as our general storeroom, library of cuttings, file and photocopier/fax room. It’s also the only place on that floor where we’re allowed to smoke. Darian is a fanatical anti-smoker. As David, the actual owner of the agency, likes a cigarette or twenty himself even she doesn’t feel she can ban smoking entirely, so she’s compromised by making it as difficult as possible for the dedicated smokers amongst us to indulge.
Since cigarettes have much the same effect on Darian as garlic on a vampire, the photocopying room is the only place in the building apart from the men’s loos where she never sets foot. On certain days when she is being more than usually impossible the main office is deserted while the photocopier is obscured under a thick pall of smoke. I sometimes wonder if she ever speculates why she appears to be
the only manager in the building to have a team apparently made up entirely of smokers.
A minute after Emma went I discovered there was something vital I needed to look up for the Cathy Ashby letters. Emma had prepared for my arrival with two cups of inky coffee from the machine and biscuits. I eyed the biscuits virtuously, knowing that I was going to have the strength to refuse them even if they were chocolate digestives. The shame of nearly having to reveal my buttressed tights to Serena last night was still too strong in my memory. ‘So what happened with Daniel? Tell all!’ commanded Emma indistinctly through a mouthful of chocolate digestive.
I took a swig of coffee, shuddered as stewed caffeine hit my taste buds and absently broke off a corner of a biscuit while I framed my answer. ‘He was enjoying himself and I wanted to go home, so I accepted a lift from our hostess’s cousin.’
Emma wasn’t buying that one. She fixed me with a deeply sceptical eye. ‘He was ignoring you and you took off in a justifiable snit,’ she proclaimed eventually. She’s not too keen on Daniel.
I broke off another bit of biscuit. ‘Not exactly,’ I hedged. Emma’s look became even more cynical. ‘Well, maybe just a bit like that,’ I admitted at last, though I added defensively, ‘There’s probably a perfectly good reason. She might have been asking him to tutor a writing course or something. He’s very dedicated to his work.’
Emma snorted inelegantly but to my relief didn’t pooh-pooh my weak excuse straight away or ask who ‘she’ was. Her butterfly mind had alighted on another, to her, more interesting subject. ‘You weren’t very forthcoming about the reaction of the man you knocked up,’ she said as she leaned back against the photocopier and blew a smoke ring into the air. ‘Was he chuffed to be able to aid a damsel in distress?’
‘Um, not really. Not at all, in fact.’ I thought of James’s irritated expression as he opened the door. ‘You see, he was about to do some knocking up of his own when I turned up.’
Something Stupid Page 3
