Читать книгу The Dating Detox: A laugh out loud book for anyone who’s ever had a disastrous date! - Gemma Burgess - Страница 12

Right. The morning routine. I snooze till a delightful 8.25 am, and then take a long lazy shower with no shampoo or conditioner as I want fresh hair for Mitch’s party tonight and a double-wash makes my hair flop like it’s pre-product-1972, brush teeth, scrub with exfoliating gloves and body wash, shave pits and legs, blah-blah, you know the rest already.

Today Outer Self is channelling Tough Nu Wave Cookie, so I throw on pointy blue shoes, skinny white jeans, a sleeveless black turtleneck and a black blazer. As I pop up the collar of the blazer and roll up my sleeves, I wonder if I look a bit odd and decide not to think about it. I realised a few months ago that I really haven’t changed my fundamental approach to dressing since I was 13. I pick a theme and keep adding things till I get there. (Favourite outfit when I was 13: DMs, black opaque tights, jeans shorts, a black belt with a peace sign buckle, a white T-shirt and a black blazer. Would definitely wear the same outfit now, minus perhaps the peace sign belt.) Brush hair vigorously to make the day-old grease look like shiny newness and throw it into a dishevelled chignon thing. Win the daily Battle Of The Brow. Inner Self is thus ready to face day two of Dating Sabbatical. I grab my lucky yellow clutch and run downstairs.

As I head into the kitchen(ette) to grab a banana and a tin of tuna, I see Anna curled up with her duvet on one of the 60s settees.

‘Morning Anna!’ I call. She moans in reply and I look back around at her. ‘Are you OK?’

She raises her head and I see her eyes. They’re all swollen and pink like a newborn puppy. Yikes.

‘Don and I broke up,’ she says, reaching for a box of tissues hidden somewhere in the duvet.

‘Oh…dear…’ I say, and come over to perch on the side of the settee. His name is Don? No one has been called Don since 1955. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘No, no, I’ll be fine,’ she says, snuffling into a tissue. She looks up at me dramatically. ‘He has a wife, you know. I’m not sure if she’s the separated kind.’

Double yikes. Even I wouldn’t get into that situation. I look at Anna whimpering on the couch. She’s very pretty, about 30 or so, one of those tall girls with long brown hair and long elegant arms. I swear my upper arms are abnormally short. Anyway, back to Anna. I don’t know what to say to make her feel better. ‘That’s not…um…good.’

‘I’m just so tired of it,’ she sighs, blowing her nose. ‘The reason I went for that prick was that I was tired of game-playing single guys. He said he was unhappy and separated, and I thought that he’d be perfect for me, or else I wouldn’t have done it, I’m not that kind of person…and then last night he told me they were going to try to work things out…And none of my friends understand, they’re all in long-term relationships or married…’ Oh Jeez. Anna and I aren’t close enough to have this conversation.

‘Um, oh…’ I say. ‘You’ll be fine, Anna. Have a nice hot shower and get dressed and you’ll feel better.’

She shakes her head, staring blankly into space. I can see she’s having conversations in her head. Unhappy ones. I try again. ‘You really will, Anna…I know how hard it is. I’ve been dumped six times in a row.’

‘Really?’ she says, looking over at me with new interest. ‘How the hell have you survived?’

‘Um…I just sort of kept going and hoped for the best, I guess. And well, right now, I’m officially not dating. I’m on a Dating Sabbatical. I can’t make the right decisions, so I’m not making any at all. I can’t date men, accidentally or on purpose, for three months.’ I pause. ‘Like a nun.’

‘I love that idea,’ she says. ‘It’s the only way. Nothing else works. Nothing. You can try as hard as you like to be careful and you’ll still fuck up. I had my first boyfriend 18 years ago. I’m so tired of it all…’

‘Exactly,’ I nod. This is kind of sweet, we’ve never had a conversation like this. ‘I should leave for work, Anna…are you OK? Do you have plans tonight? My friend Mitch is having a party if you’d like to come…’

‘Oh, thanks, but I’m heading up to Edinburgh to see my mum,’ she says, pulling herself up into a sitting position. ‘I’d better get up too. The good people at Unilever won’t survive without me.’

I wonder what she does. I should probably know. ‘OK, well, have fun,’ I say. I lean over and give her an awkward hug. Her face smushes into my collarbone. Sigh. Bad hugs suck. ‘Hope you feel better soon.’

‘Thanks,’ she says, getting up off the couch. ‘Maybe I should try my own Dating Sabbatical.’

I turn to smile at her as I head out the door. ‘Maybe you should!’

On the way to work I reflect on last night’s loss of my Dating Sabbatical virginity. Mr America had been confident, cute and funny. Just the kind of guy I always like. He’d also revealed himself to be an utter brat with a bit of a bad temper. Without question a cockmonkey, a bastardo classico.

If I’d agreed to go out to dinner with him, I would have been charmed by the good looks, impressed by the confidence, seduced by the banter—and dumped in a few months when he got tired of me. I know it, because that’s what has happened every time before. Well done me. I can handle the Dating Sabbatical. In fact, I can thrive on it.

I feel terribly happy all of a sudden. Strong and happy. I skippy-bunny-hop a couple of steps, and high-five myself. No, I really do. (A self-high-five involves jumping in the air and clapping your hands together, with the back of one hand facing you and the other coming up to clap it from below. It looks funny, but it feels great. I highly recommend you try it.) A guy walking by flinches instinctively as though I was going to hit him and I get the giggles. Day Two of the Dating Sabbatical is going to be good.

I get to work with my tailored-to-my-personal-tastes coffee, and, seeing that Andy isn’t in yet, sing ‘Goooooood morning!’ as I reach my seat. Laura looks up and narrows her eyes.

‘You look soooooo different today! What is it? Oh, oh, oh, I meant to tell you—though how could I have told you before when I didn’t see you! And last night I left work and I thought I saw you! Only it wasn’t you. And it looked just like you and I was thinking, what is she doing in Hackney? Because obviously you live in Putney!’

‘Pimlico?’ I say. ‘So…what do you need to tell me?’

‘Oh! Yes! Coop wants you. In his office, well, it’s not an office, but you know, at his desk. Because he’s here.’

‘Thank you, Laura,’ thunders Coop from the other side of the Chinese silk screen that separates his desk from us. It’s silly, really, as he can hear everything.

I walk around it and sit down with a cheery morning face that I’m pretty sure will annoy him. Coop was very good looking back in the 80s, I think. He had a moderately successful New Wave pop group. Then, the 90s saw him partying hard with Oasis and Blur (well, perhaps not with them per se, but certainly near them), which aged him and made him look a bit craggy and bloaty. He got into advertising at about that time too. These days he’s in love with a German woman called Marlena, a former model and fledgling jewellery designer, who eats, lives and breathes organic and forces him to do the same, so he’s the picture of mildly irritable health.

Coop’s habitual manner is distracted and grumpy, but the minute he actually concentrates on anything he’s rather fun to be around. I think it’s because creating ads is one of the only things he really enjoys. And he seems to think I’m good at my job, which is always nice, and I think as a result I’m more confident around him than I am with anyone else at work. (As one of my primary school teachers wrote in an end of term report once: ‘She responds well to praise and approval.’ Heh.) And over the years he’s been lovely every time I come in crying about a break-up, though he always pretends he can’t remember anything about it afterwards.

‘You. Wordgirl. Explain what the hell has been going on here with these scamps.’

When he says scamps, by the way, he doesn’t mean lovable little rascals; he means creative ideas. I sit down next to him and talk him through the scamps. As I do, I hear Andy get in. Odd how even his voice makes me shudder inside.

‘Anything else to report?’ he asks, looking through the scamps one last time.

I shake my head. ‘Nope.’

That’s a lie, but he’s not looking at me and can’t tell. Thankfully. He’d worm the Andy story out of me in about one minute.

‘Good. Good to know you’re here when I’m away. Safe hands,’ he adds, writing something in the notepad he carries everywhere. ‘Do you have any holidays booked over the next few months? Weekends away?’

‘Nope,’ I shrug. ‘I’m not dating,’ I add helpfully.

He looks up, frowns, and ignores me. ‘May need you to help entertain the Germans a few times. They’ll be coming back and forth from Berlin.’

‘Me? With potential clients?’

‘Yes, and you’ll present all the award-winning work you’re about to create.’

He goes on to explain everything. The Germans, it turns out, head up a huge personal care company called Blumenstrauße—tampons and toothpaste and razors, oh my!—and they’re launching four of their most popular products in the UK next year. We’re going to work with them for a few months working out launch plans, and if they like us, we’ll get the business. Sort of a pitch-by-fire. I realise quickly that this pitch is a very big deal. It could be the making of this agency, and Coop’s career.

‘That’s brilliant, Coop,’ I say. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘Thought you’d like it,’ he says. ‘Actually, wordgirl, I want you to head up this one.’ Me? I’m speechless. He glances at his watch. ‘I’m late for a thing. Call a company meeting, tell everyone about the pitch, and that there’s going to be a lot of work for the next few months. Lots of late nights, and no neglecting existing clients.’

I have to bear bad tidings? And create another scene after Wednesday’s drama with Andy? ‘Um…’ I say, trying to think of a way to get out of it. The dog ate my public speaking voice? ‘Why not email everyone? Better coming from you?’

‘No,’ he says, standing up. ‘People never read those emails properly. Nothing beats being told in person. Scott already knows.’ That’s the senior account director, a smooth-talking Ken-doll type. ‘He’s with Shiny Straight today at a strategy roundtable. Anyway, I want you to answer any questions about the Germans and whatnot. I’ll be back later.’

I go back and hide at my desk for a minute, thinking. I have to call a company-wide meeting to tell everyone to kiss goodbye to their social life? I can feel panic rising in my chest. Why, why would Cooper make me do this? I can’t do it. I really can’t.

I look at the clock. It’s still early. I’ll just wait till everyone has their breakfast and coffee. Then they’ll be in a better mood. I email Amanda The Office Manager about the brainstorm and Google Blumenstrauße. Lala. Procrastination. Panic-led procrastination. I feel a bit ill. Maybe I am coming down with something.

At 11 am I can’t put it off anymore. Cooper could be back any second. With a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach, I send an email to all staff to meet in the creative room immediately.

As the accounts people wander in, looking around for Cooper, I clear my throat and walk over to the centre of the room.

‘Cooper isn’t here, but he asked me to…’ I start. No one is listening. In fact, the account managers are chatting away about Charlotte’s new manicure. Andy is on his mobile. His underlings are looking at something on YouTube and snickering. Amanda The Office Manager is picking her breakfast out of her teeth whilst Laura is twisting her hair and snipping off split ends. She’ll end up with hair like a haystack, but now isn’t the time to tell her that.

‘Everyone!’ I say louder. Laura glances up and quickly drops her hair and the scissors. Everyone else continues as they were.

I pick up a spoon and empty glass left over from breakfast on Laura’s desk, and clink them together. The first few clinks don’t quite connect, but the last three are quite loud. Everyone stops what they’re doing immediately and looks at me. I feel the blood rush to my face. Just get on with it. I lean against Laura’s desk, faking a nonchalance I certainly don’t feel. Posture is confidence, silence is poise.

‘Hi, everyone…Uh, as you know, Coop’s been away for the past week in Germany…and the good news is, we are pitching for a huge German toiletries company that’s about to launch in the UK.’ The words all tumble out of my mouth in a rush, and I pause to clear my throat and calm down. Everyone is looking at me and—surprisingly—actually listening. ‘We want to handle it all for them: from strategy for the launch to packaging to branding and online and offline campaigns and well, everything. If we win, it’ll immediately double and eventually triple the size of the agency, so it’s a pretty big deal.’

Everyone snaps to attention. For the next five minutes I answer questions about the German company. It takes Laura to get to the point. She’s probably the smartest person in the room.

‘When is the pitch? And what do we have to do?’

‘The work starts today,’ I say, and I can hear a few people groan under their breath. Oh fuck. I really, really do hate telling people things they don’t want to hear. ‘Brainstorm at 3 pm. All staff are invited, compulsory for creatives. Now, um…there’ll be weekly meetings with them rather than just the one big pitch. Coop knows the, uh, head guy, and he’s, um pitching us as the kind of agency that works as a partner, not a supplier…’ I look around. Everyone’s still paying me total attention. Gosh.

I clear my throat. ‘The good news is that there’s no one else competing with us for the job—yet. The bad news is that if they’re not happy, we will lose them straightaway. Which means the pressure is going to be pretty consistent over the next few months. Coop wants everyone to help. So there’ll be a lot of late nights and possibly weekend work…’

I hear even louder groaning. Oh shit. Mutiny.

Andy speaks up. Oh double shit. ‘We can’t do that on top of everything else. It’s not possible.’

‘Well, it has to be,’ I say to the wall, as I don’t dare to meet his eyes.

‘I’m already here till eight every night,’ he says. ‘My team and I work harder than anyone else. We need extra support. I know a couple of freelancers. I’ll call them.’

‘No,’ I say, looking at his chin. ‘Everyone in this agency works hard, Andy. If you and your team didn’t spend half the day looking at YouTube, you wouldn’t have to stay late to get the work done.’

I see the account managers smiling at this.

‘It’s creative research,’ he says loudly. ‘We need stimulus. We actually create things, you know…’

God, you’re pathetic, I think.

Suddenly I don’t feel intimidated by him. Right this second, I don’t care if he—or any of them, actually—likes me or not. I am in charge of this pitch, and I am not going to let some charm-challenged man-boy fuck it up for me.

I stand up and look him straight in the eye. ‘Well, for the next month, you and Danny and Ben are going to have to get your creative stimulus outside working hours. This is the most important thing to ever happen to this agency. I don’t want creative to be responsible for losing this account, and I’m sure you don’t either.’

He stares at me without speaking. I stare back. He looks away first. Fucking hell! Yeah!

Danny raises a hand. Gosh, what am I, a teacher? ‘Yes, Danny?’

‘One of the clients at my last agency was Johnson & Johnson. I know the market. I’d like to be involved.’

‘Great.’ Dude, what part of ‘Coop wants everyone to help’ don’t you understand, I think. Then he flickers a little smile at me and I realise he might actually be speaking up to show support to me, and give two fingers to Andy. Double gosh.

Charlotte clears her throat and raises her OPI I’ve Got A Date To K-Night!-manicured hand. ‘I’d really like to be involved too, my team will be able to manage all my existing clients.’ Her ‘team’—two account execs (recent graduates that she works like dogs)—glance at each other in anguish. ‘Is that OK?’

Even Charlotte is treating me like I’m in charge? ‘I’m sure that’s fine. You’ll have to run it past Scott, though.’

She nods. Everyone is looking at me expectantly. What do I say now? Class dismissed? ‘OK, well, see you all the boardroom at 3 pm.’ The office disperses quickly, but the rise in buzzy chatter shows how excited everyone is about this pitch. Shit, it really is a big deal, you know. And Coop asked me to be in charge, kind of.

As I walk back to my desk, Laura beams at me and I wink back. I feel pretty good. In fact, I feel great. I sit down and realise my heart is racing with excitement. I just can’t believe how well that went. I look over. Andy is loudly inviting his team out for coffee. And a Sass-slagging session, I expect. Laura and I are not, obviously, invited.

I’m busy for the next few hours doing work for existing clients, and when Coop comes back and looks over to me with raised eyebrows, I just nod back with a little smile. Everything is fine, dude. Totally fine. The 3 pm brainstorm goes equally well. Apart from Andy loudly denigrating every idea I have, and coming up with none of his own. My brain is 100% dedicated to the task at hand. Men, love, dating—these things are no longer worthy of my time and energy.

As the meeting finishes, I stand up and say ‘Thanks everyone’, mostly to genuinely thank everyone but also as I want Andy to know that he hasn’t beaten me. He ignores me. I grin at Cooper on my way out and he gives me the thumbs up back. I choose to take it as a message of solidarity. Thank God he’s back from Germany. It’s so much nicer sitting in the office without big bad Andy dominating it.

With only a few hours left till the weekend, I settle down to one of my favourite regular jobs: a monthly chatty email to teenage girls about their spots for a skincare client of ours. (When they sign up to the social networking bit of this skincare site, they’ll get an email a week for a few months. It’s mostly skin-related stuff, and some period/hormone/ hygiene/boy talk. And the odd discount and competitions and prize draws.)

Let’s see…Discover the power of perfect skin. Discover the joy of perfect skin. Imagine perfectly soft, deeply clean skin. Finally, perfect skin could be yours. Picture perfect skin, every day. Transform your skin, and your life. Yikes, that’s a bit much. Let’s go with the first one. Discover is a nice strong active word, and alliteration is always a positive pleasure. Plus, it’s not promising perfect skin. You can’t really promise something like ‘Perfect skin, guaranteed’. You have to just talk about how good it could be to get perfect skin. Otherwise—according to the neurotic marketing manager at the skincare company, anyway—someone who uses the stuff and gets a spot could sue. (Really, who would bother?)

The power of positive persuasion. That’s what I’d title today. Coop positively persuaded me to take a bit of a lead role in telling everyone, and I positively persuaded everyone to get behind it.

As I start writing the rest of my peppy teenage copy, I get lost in an odd, reflective mood. Poor teenage girls, I muse. I found it quite tough being a teenager. I was attacked by a shyness bug from 14 through 17, and had a slight stammer/babble problem when I did talk. It’s not exactly unusual: apparently Kate was shy, too. (Bloomie never was, unsurprisingly.)

Some girls must be born knowing how to make life happen exactly as they want it to. I assume they’re not the ones reading these skincare emails, but I’ve seen them on the King’s Road in Chelsea: dewy-skinned, pouty little 16-year-old madams with the air of cream-fed, much-adored cats. I was not one of those girls. When I was 13, my parents moved from London to Berkshire, and I changed from a bookish, liberal little Notting Hill school where everyone was a bit keen and giggly and geeky like me, to a rather posh, uptight, sporty, country one where the lustrous-haired pouty missies ruled the roost. They looked at me, recognised my stammering inadequacies instantly, and dismissed me. And of course, when someone doubts you, the more you doubt yourself, until you’re unable to talk at all, or at least I am.

That’s when I started the mantra. ‘Posture is confidence, silence is poise.’ The idea was that if I looked confident and poised, I’d feel confident and poised. And people might think I was about to say something brilliant. And then, if I did want to say something, they might actually listen, which might stop me stammering.

In other words, fake it till you make it.

Thanks to my mantra, I survived school. Then I went to university, where I met kindred spirits, particularly in the form of Bloomie and Kate, and discovered I didn’t really need the mantra anymore. Everything is so much easier when you have friends who think you’re funny. Inside every shy girl is a loud showoff dying to get out.

I still grasp the mantra like a security blanket in times of need. Which is basically, when something intimidates me. Like work. Or a bad date. Or, now that I think about it, every time I ever saw Rick, towards the end.

Hmm.

The mantra certainly worked this morning. Everyone acted like I was, well, not to sound too dramatic, but like I knew what I was talking about. But that’s not because of the mantra: I really did know what I was doing, and everyone else knew it too. Fuck fake it till you make it. I made it. I fucking made it.

I just had a good day at work. Not just a good day.

An awesome day.

Thinking this, I stare at the wall for a few minutes till I realise it’s ten to five and my copy is due at 5.30 pm. I push everything else out of my head and finish the email copy, proofread it, and send it to the account manager. Oooh, the adrenaline rush of a deadline met.

I know I’m breaking my don’t-talk-about-work (or dreams) rule, by the way. Don’t worry. It’s nearly the weekend. All I usually think about on the weekend is what to wear and where to drink. (And in the olden days, who to date.) As I head down to the tube, I skippy-bunny-hop a couple of steps. Then right outside the Crown pub on Brewer Street, I run smack-bang into Cooper coming out of the door with his pint, almost knocking him over in the process. I never go to the Crown. Smart Henry broke up with me there.

‘Coop! I’m so sorry!’ I exclaim, laughing. ‘I was running for the tube…’

Cooper grins at me. ‘You were skipping, actually.’ I laugh even more, and turn to look at the guy he’s with. About 35, very nice grey suit, slightly too-long hair. Rather chiselled cheekbones and bluer-than-blue eyes. I quickly compose myself and look back at Cooper, who introduces us. His name is Lukas, and he’s about to move to London from Berlin to be the UK MD of Blumenstrauße. (That explains the Euro haircut.)

‘Oh, fantastic,’ I say. ‘We’ve been talking about your company all day.’

‘I’ve been talking about it for eight weeks, since I joined,’ Lukas says, smiling at me and holding very thorough eye contact.‘Please, let’s talk about something else. Like…what you would like to drink.’

Is he flirting? ‘Oh, um, I’d love to, but I have to get home. I have plans tonight,’ I say. (Rule 6: No accidental dating.) ‘Thank you, though. Lovely to meet you. I’ll see you soon.’

‘Yes, you will,’ he says back. ‘Very soon.’ His German accent is mild, and gives his words a nice clipped sound. ‘Have a good night.’ Definitely flirting. Slightly sleazy. Probably a bastardo.

‘See you Monday,’ says Cooper.

I hurry down to the tube, running over everything that happened today again, and realise I should try to put work out of my head and think about what to wear tonight. Normally I’d have had that sorted by about 10 am. God, what’s happening to me?