About a Girl

  ‘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.’

  Ignoring the fact that, despite having a first class degree in English and Media Studies, Amy’s longest career commitment to date had been as a ticket taker at the local Odeon, I decided to believe her. What choice did I have? I was good at my job. Charlie had once told me I was so good, I couldn’t just sell ice to Eskimos, I could convince them that my ice had been hand-carved by pixies and contained the frozen tears of unicorns and that they should thank me for giving them the opportunity to even think about buying it. I just needed a new plan. And some more crappy wine.

  ‘First things first ? if you’re not going to have a bath, you at least need a shower.’ Amy kissed my cheek and jumped up to her feet. ‘You’re going to catch your death, and, quite honestly, I can’t look at your hair like that for one more second. You’re pretty rank.’

  ‘OK.’ I let her hoist me up to my full five feet and nine inches and wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands. Sometimes she made me feel like a complete beast, her being all pixie-like and adorable and me being, well, five foot nine. My nan always told me I was statuesque, but really, who wanted to be a statue?

  ‘So you get in the shower and I’ll go out and get some proper food ? you’ve got nothing in,’ Amy said, slapping me on the arse and pointing me towards the shower. ‘Hitler’s not due back any time soon, is she?’

  ‘Please don’t call her Hitler,’ I groaned. It was fair to say that Amy and my flatmate did not get along. Luckily, said flatmate was away all week. ‘She’s not home till the weekend.’

  ‘Thank. Fuck,’ Amy declared with exaggerated relief on her face. ‘She’s the last thing we need.’

  ‘Agreed.’ I hated to encourage the two of them when they went at it, but it was true, my flatmate was not the most supportive human in existence. If I could get through this week, get things back on track before she came home, life would be easier.

  ‘Right.’ Amy pulled her keys to my flat out of her pocket and used them as a tiny, shiny pointer. ‘So, shower and hair wash for you, Sainsbury’s and seven chocolate oranges for me, and we’ll meet in front of the TV for a Buffy marathon in fifteen minutes. And I’m only giving you one day off because tomorrow, every ad agency in the country is going to be fighting over you, and there’ll be no time for vampire-slaying then.’

  I nodded, hugged her and shut myself in the bathroom, suddenly desperate to strip off my wet outer layer. Flinging the soggy shift against the bathroom tiles, it hit with a satisfying slap and I stepped under the shower with almost a smile. My skin was cold and clammy and the hot water stung in the best way possible. I could feel myself warming up right through to my bones, which at least meant I could still feel something. Seriously, someone needed to let London know that it was summer. We’d had about three days of legitimate sunshine since May and it was almost July.

  ‘Maybe I’ll go travelling,’ I told the rubber duck who lived in the corner of the shower. ‘Maybe I’ll go somewhere warm.’

  ‘With what money?’ he asked. That duck was so cynical. ‘You haven’t got any savings.’

  Cynical he might be, but he was also right. Bloody duck. I’d spent the first half of my twenties getting into a really quite impressive amount of debt of both the student loan and credit card variety. Interning and assisting were not well-paid professions, and without the Bank of Mum and Dad to help me through the first few years, I’d had to rely on the kindness of strangers. That is, the graduate loans officer at HSBC. He’d been very ready to help and even more ready to take every penny of interest back. So no, I didn’t have any savings, but I didn’t really have any debt left either, so that was something. Sort of.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I told the judgemental duck as I lathered up. ‘Tomorrow I’ll email everyone I know at the other agencies. How many references have I written in the last year?’

  The duck didn’t answer. He was cynical and rude.

  ‘So many. I have written so many. I must have all the emails for the HR people somewhere.’

  And I had. Aside from being amazing at my job, I was also one of the longest servers at D&D. They had a pretty high staff turnover, and for reasons I’d never really been able to understand before today, no one liked asking HR for a reference.

  ‘I don’t need to panic about this,’ I carried on. ‘It’s a hiccup. I’ll be in a new job by Monday. A better job. The best job ever.’

  Well, maybe not the best job ever. I was really going to struggle to get the job of Alexander Skarsgård’s fang fluffer on the next season of True Blood. But still, never say never. I would go and work for a better agency. I would work on bigger accounts. I would manage a team who didn’t sniff the permanent markers when I wasn’t looking. It was time to dream the big dreams. Maybe I could even leave London. I knew a couple of girls who had got transfers over to New York. Maybe I could go and work in the States for a couple of years, do the whole Sex and the City thing. Or maybe even Australia. I’d heard there were a lot of opportunities in Australia. I hoped I’d be able to convince Charlie and Amy to come with me without too much violence.

  I stayed in the bathroom, scrubbing away shame and disappointment and the top two layers of my skin until I heard the front door go and the TV come on. Wrapping myself up in the biggest, fluffiest towels I could find, towels that obviously weren’t mine, I emerged from the bathroom ready to tell Amy all about my plans. Much to the duck’s dismay, I was totally smiling.

  For all of three seconds.

  ‘Are those my towels?’ My flatmate, Vanessa, stood in the middle of the living room with a very unimpressed look on her face. ‘Because if they are, you’re going to need to replace them.’

  Oh. Fuck.

  ‘Can’t I just wash them?’ I asked, my fragile positive attitude shattering all around me.

  ‘No. You can’t.’ She looked so disappointed in me. ‘They’re towels. You don’t share towels. That’s disgusting.’

  There weren’t many people in this world who were genuinely awful. Yes, there were the arseholes like Raquel in HR who got a kick out of making other people’s lives difficult, but it wasn’t like she went home and kicked puppies for fun. And as I’d learned already that day, even white supremacists could have a heart if you caught them on the right day. But Vanessa Kittler was a genuinely awful human being. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she had an entire pile of puppies in her room just for kicking around. No one would have been surprised to see her in a Dalmatian fur coat. In fact, if I’d found out she was a member of the BNP, I wouldn’t have been shocked. If I’d found out she was the secret underground leader of a fascist group planning the genocide of everyone with an undesirable body mass index or home-dyed hair, I might have raised an eyebrow. Just one, though. She was literally the worst person I’d ever met.

  Resplendent in skintight black jeans, an obscenely low-cut white T-shirt and a black leather
biker jacket, Vanessa looked me up and down, a small silver suitcase resting by her high-heeled feet.

  ‘Why are you at home using my towels in the middle of the day?’ she asked with an expression that suggested she’d just caught me doing lines of coke off the PM while my mum watched. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

  ‘I thought you were away all week?’ I stalled, really wanting not to be standing in the middle of the living room in a towel. In Vanessa’s towel. ‘Didn’t you book a shoot or something?’

  ‘I cancelled,’ she replied with a single flip of her shiny blonde hair. ‘I got to the airport and they had me booked on easyJet. Fuck that. Why are you in my flat?’

  To someone who was so conscientious and sickeningly loyal that they were still fighting the urge to call the office that had just fired her and make sure someone had changed the colour of the squirrel in the paper towel concept, this news caused me near physical pain. Vanessa was a photographer. And by that I mean that once every couple of months one of Vanessa’s friends booked her for a job that she occasionally accepted, and she vanished from the flat for a couple of days with the camera I’d had to trade her one month four years ago when I couldn’t afford my rent, which she had subsequently refused to sell back to me. I ignored the part where she referred to my home of five years as ‘her flat’. I knew for a fact that my rent paid more than two thirds of the actual mortgage, but never having paid a penny herself towards the roof over our heads made absolutely no difference to Vanessa whose house this was. Admittedly, her dad did legally pay the mortgage and had done ever since she had been accepted onto a fine arts programme at Central Saint Martins an undisclosed number of years ago. The deal was that he’d pay until she graduated. She never graduated. He was still paying. As far as Van was concerned, a deal’s a deal.