Читать книгу I Heart Hawaii - Lindsey Kelk - Страница 7

One year earlier …

‘I am a woman who has it all,’ I said quietly, staring at my own face reflected back in the screen of my iPhone. ‘I am a woman who owns her power.’

The version of me looking back rolled her eyes but I went on regardless.

‘I am strong, vital and beautiful.’

And tired, emotional and, according to the tag in the front of my pants, wearing my knickers back to front. Although they were clean, so at least there was that.

The affirmations were my best friend, Jenny’s, idea. Apparently, if I said them out loud, every day, they would all come true. The more I heard myself say these things, the more I would believe them and then the whole world would believe them too. In theory. But the more I stared at my pale complexion and red-rimmed eyes I couldn’t help but think a nice, uninterrupted eighteen-hour nap would be more effective. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure I was supposed be reciting them on the toilet at work but I was fairly sure this was the first time I’d been entirely alone since I’d given birth ten and a half months ago.

I took a deep breath and refocused. My attention span was something else that needed some work, along with my short-term memory and my pelvic floor muscles.

‘There is nothing I cannot accomplish when I put my trust in the universe,’ I said, breathing out.

Jenny said the affirmations would open up my subconscious and allow me to contact my inner goddess, the divine feminine energy, but so far mine was nowhere to be seen. Probably out dicking around with all the other inner goddesses who hadn’t got up five times in the night with a teething baby.

Lifting the phone a little to improve the angle of my selfie, I really looked at myself. Jenny said you had to look yourself in the eye when you were doing it and I didn’t have a mirror on me. Maybe there was something in these affirmations, after all. Sleep deprivation didn’t do much for a girl’s dark circles but my cheekbones looked killer. I tapped the photo-editing app Jenny had also installed on my phone and swiped through until I found my favourite filter, trying to snap a picture to send to Alex. Because nothing says I love you like a selfie taken on the toilet.

‘Hello?’

Three sharp raps on the cubicle door and I jumped out of my skin. My phone slipped out of my hand, fell between my knees and plopped directly in the toilet bowl.

‘Excuse me, do you have any toilet paper in there?’

‘Nooooooo,’ I breathed, momentarily paralysed before grabbing handfuls of toilet paper and waving it under the stall door. Yes, I’d just destroyed a thousand dollars’ worth of technology but I’d be damned if I would let another woman go for a wee without sufficient loo roll.

‘Thanks,’ the voice replied, sounding relieved as the paper disappeared. ‘Appreciate it.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I replied in a bright, tight voice as I gazed at my phone in the bottom of the toilet bowl, only to see myself looking back. And then the screen went black. I nodded and sighed before rolling up my sleeves and reaching in. I was a strong, vital, beautiful woman with her hand down a public toilet.

Brilliant start to a brilliant day.

The first day in a new job is always nerve-racking. Even if you’re in your thirties, even if you’ve done pretty much exactly the same job somewhere else before, unless you’re either Kanye or a complete sociopath, there are bound to be a few first-day jitters. And if you take those jitters and multiply them by the fact you’re coming back to work after having your first baby you’ve got a real, one hundred percent ‘shitting it’ situation on your hands.

With my waterlogged phone in my pocket, I eventually convinced myself to leave the lavs and made my way across the huge reception of my new office building. I smiled at the pleasing tap-tap-tap of my heels against the marble floor. Heels. In the daytime. It had been so long.

‘Hi.’

I beamed at the man seated behind the reception desk. He did not beam back.

‘I’m Angela Clark. I’m starting work at Besson Media today.’

Without raising his eyes to meet mine, the man nodded.

‘Photo ID?’

Slipping my hand into my ancient Marc Jacobs satchel, I pulled out my passport on the first try and handed it over with a brilliant smile. He looked at me, looked at the passport and looked at me again. Still nothing.

‘Fifteenth floor,’ he replied, sliding my passport back across the desk and inclining his head towards the bank of lifts across the cavernous hall. ‘Take elevator six.’

‘Thank you!’ I said, tucking my passport away and making the eighteen thousandth reminder to myself to finally get round to applying for a New York driver’s licence. I’d only been here the best part of a decade, after all.

But in all that time, I’d never seen anything like this. My old office had been a flash, glass, nineties-tastic monster of a skyscraper, slap bang in the middle of Times Square. If you were into flashing neon signs and an ungodly number of tourists, it was heaven, but this? This was something else. Besson Media had set up shop in an architectural icon. A recently renovated sugar refinery on the edge of Williamsburg, perfectly positioned to give Manhattan a good dose of hipper-than-thou side eye. Alongside the landmark building, we also had our own park, our own sculpture garden, different food trucks every single day and our very own beach. I’d read about the building, and I’d seen it when I walked by, but actually being inside felt so very special. Old red-brick walls and old-fashioned arched windows contrasted against the shining steel of the lifts and the touch screens I saw absolutely everywhere. Stopping myself from swiping wildly, I stepped into the lift, clutching my bag against my hip and grinning at strangers as more people joined me.

‘Hi,’ I said to the backs of people’s heads, shuffling backwards into the corner. ‘Hello.’

Ten months at home with a baby was pretty much exactly the same as when someone on a TV show disappears one week and then shows up the next, only to explain they’ve spent a thousand years in another dimension and no longer know who they were. You don’t speak to strangers in lifts, not in New York or anywhere else for that matter. One by one, floor by floor, people piled out until it was just me, all on my lonesome, arriving at floor fifteen.

It was beautiful.

Besson Media was, of course, on the top floor and, unlike the rest of the building, the penthouse level was all glass, giving us a 360-view of New York, Brooklyn and Queens, for as far as the eye could see. Not that anyone’s eyes were concentrating on what was happening outside the windows. Everyone already at work in the open-plan office had their eyes firmly fixed on whatever screen was in front of them, a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a phone. Without anyone to greet me, and not seeing anyone I recognized, I took an awkward step away from the safety of the lifts and into the hub. Perhaps, if I could find my office, I could get settled and then start from there.

‘Hello,’ I said, waving at a young Japanese woman with green hair who was studying her laptop intently. She peered back at me from behind gold wire-framed glasses with exceptionally large lenses. ‘Um, I’m starting today? I’m Angela Clark. I don’t suppose you know where my office might be?’

‘We don’t have offices,’ she replied. ‘It’s open plan. Hot desk. Set up wherever you like.’

A shiver ran down my spine.

Hot desk? There had been no discussion of hot desks.

‘I’m fairly sure I’m supposed to have an office,’ I told her, subtly nudging my left breast pad back into place with my forearm. ‘I’m going to be running a site—’

‘I run a site,’ the girl replied. ‘I’m Kanako. I run Bias? The fashion site? No one has an office except for the CEO.’

‘Did someone say my name?’

The shiver turned into the cold grip of dread.

‘Angela, you’re here.’

Everyone in the office looked up at once as Cici Spencer, my former assistant, stepped out of the lift. I had to admit it, CEO looked good on her. She strode into her office wearing a sleek Tom Ford jumpsuit with at least twelve grands’ worth of floral embroidered Alexander McQueen blazer casually slung on her shoulders. A pair of crystal-studded Gucci sunglasses perched on her surgically perfected nose, which she lifted up to the top of my head to look me up and down. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. I’d agonized over this outfit for days: Anine Bing booties, brand-new Topshop jeans, my favourite Equipment shirt. I was playing with fire wearing a silk shirt while breastfeeding but I’d done a literal dry run and was wearing two pairs of breast pads so I was certain I could get away with it. My ensemble was comfortable, smart, no bold statements but enough style to let people know I was supposed to be there and hadn’t got lost on my way to the Target in the Atlantic Mall.

I would never get lost on my way to Target. I loved Target.

‘Here I am,’ I said as I twisted my engagement ring around my ring finger.

‘Here you are,’ Cici said finally, lifting the sunglasses out of her silky straight, ice-blonde hair. ‘And it’s OK, we don’t have a dress code.’

I would not rise to her bait. I was the one who had agreed to come and work for my former-nemesis-turned-assistant-turned-sort-of-kind-of-friend and there was no point acting surprised when a leopard showed its spots. Not that Cici would be caught dead in leopard print these days, far too common.

‘I also hear you don’t have offices. What’s that about?’

‘I have an office,’ she shrugged, letting her black Valentino tote bag slide off her shoulder and into the crook of her arm. ‘Everyone else lives here.’ She waved at the mass of desks behind me, randomly placed around the room, some at seated level, some raised to standing. ‘Our director of culture said this was the best way to nurture creativity.’

‘But where will I put all my stuff?’ I asked with a frown. She knew I needed my stuff. It was all essential to my process, from my signed framed photo of Robert Downey Jr to the Hannah Montana Magic 8 Ball I used to make any and all difficult decisions.

‘Besson doesn’t encourage personal artifacts at the work station,’ Kanako recited from an invisible rulebook. ‘A decluttered environment promotes a more efficient workflow.’

I felt a dark look cross my face.

‘If any so much as thinks the words “spark joy” I’m going home.’

She shrugged and turned back to her computer. ‘We all like it this way.’

We. There was a ‘we’ here and I, the new girl, was not a part of it.

‘I’m sure I’ll figure it out,’ I said, my hand never leaving my satchel for fear of my photos of Alex and our daughter leaping out and exposing me to all the world for the hoarder that I was. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Let me know if you need me to show you around,’ Kanako said without looking back.

It sounded like a nice thing to say but I could tell what she really meant was ‘now go away’.

‘I can give you the tour,’ Cici offered as a short but beautiful man with a shaved head appeared at her side. ‘Do I have time to give her the tour?’

‘You have seventeen minutes until your conference call with the investors,’ he replied, glancing down at a small tablet.

‘Plenty of time,’ she replied, shrugging off her bag and her sunglasses into the man’s waiting arms. From the look on his perfectly symmetrical face, I had to assume he was her assistant. It was the exact same expression last seen on Bambi, right after his mother was killed.

‘I’m Angela,’ I said, holding out a hand to the assistant. He looked down at it, his own hands full of thousands of dollars of designer goods. ‘It’s my first day.’

‘He knows who you are,’ Cici said, already striding off to survey her domain. ‘He’s my assistant, he knows everything.’

I really hoped he knew how to write a CV and find a new job ASAP.

‘Well, it’s nice to meet you …’

‘Don,’ he replied before turning back to Cici. ‘I’ll put these away and prepare for the call.’

‘Thanks, Don,’ she smiled as he scuttled away before sighing and lowering her voice. ‘It’s so hard to find a good assistant. You were so lucky to have me.’

‘Remember that time you had my suitcase blown up at Charles de Gaulle airport?’ I replied, watching as he ran.

‘No.’

It was a blatant lie. That was the kind of memory that kept Cici warm on the cold winter nights.

Before Besson, Cici and I had both worked at Spencer Media, one of the biggest publishers in the world, and a company founded by Cici’s grandfather. When she told me she wanted to strike out on her own, I knew she’d find her feet but I hadn’t realized just how fast she’d do it or how very big her feet would turn out to be. Within six short months, Besson had become a major player in digital media with some of the highest-trafficked sites in the US. While Cici could never claim to have been one of the world’s best executive assistants, she certainly could boast an innate ability to throw her family’s money at the most talented people in the industry, which resulted in absolutely brilliant content that was thriving in a market where everyone else seemed set to struggle.

‘I’m so glad you’re finally here,’ Cici said as we made our way around the open-plan office. ‘How is baby Ellis? Such a cool name. Alex pick it?’

‘Ellis is a cool name but my baby is called Alice,’ I answered, following her away from the hodge-podge of standing and sitting desks. ‘She’s named after my grandmother, actually.’

Fantastic. Now I was not only anxious about my first day at work, I’d also have to spend the rest of the morning wondering whether or not it was too late to change my baby’s name.

‘How old is he now? Like, three?’

‘She is ten and a half months, remember? You were there when I took the pregnancy test. How fast do you think babies age?’

‘Is that all? I guess they do say time flies,’ Cici said with wide eyes. I could tell it was taking an awful lot of energy for her to show this much interest in my personal life and I appreciated it, even if I knew she didn’t really give two shits.

‘They do and it does,’ I replied. ‘But I’m excited to be here, back at work. I’ve been going kind of crazy at home, I can’t wait to get stuck in with my site. I’ve got some really fun ideas—’

‘Yeah, I’m sure they’re great, that’s why I hired you,’ she interrupted. ‘So this is the conference table where we have most of our editorial meetings.’

She paused in front of a giant slab of crystal, propped up on a metal frame. If Coachella made office furniture.

‘The crystal channels your energies and creates a more harmonious working environment,’ Cici explained. ‘And it cost thirty-five thousand dollars.’

‘Bargain.’

‘I got it from an artisan I met at Burning Man.’

‘Of course you did.’

It really was just crying out for a ritual sacrifice with unicorn dip-dyed hair and a flower crown.

‘Over by the elevators we have our reading rooms, our privacy pods and meditation centre.’ She pointed at a row of frosted-glass doors. ‘While we encourage all our team players to invest their energy in our open-plan dynamic, we understand sometimes they need privacy.’

‘Oh yeah, sometimes,’ I agreed, trying not to vom at the term ‘team players’. I couldn’t help but wonder which Instagram influencer she had hired to do her HR. ‘Phone calls, difficult conversations, lactating.’

‘Lactating?’ Cici reared back as though I’d slapped her in the face.

‘Breastfeeding,’ I explained, making unnecessary honking motions in front of my own boobs. ‘Or pumping, I suppose. I have to pump.’

‘Still?’ she screwed up her pretty face. ‘Isn’t it a little old for that?’

‘Again, she, and again, not even eleven months,’ I repeated, staring at the privacy pods and wondering how many times a day they were used for the very important purpose of crying at work.

‘So gross,’ she muttered, adjusting her own perfect B cups inside her Tom Ford jumpsuit. ‘Anyway, this is where you would do that, I guess. The kitchen is right by the movement studio and the bathrooms, showers and dressing rooms are over there.’

She pointed off in the vague distance as I tried to log all the information. Things like this were more difficult to remember these days but I was fairly sure I’d be able to remember the place where the food was and where I needed to go for a wee.

‘And before you freak out and call HR, it’s one bathroom for everyone. That way no one can get offended.’

I lit up with a smile. ‘Like Ally McBeal?’

Cici looked back at me, stony-faced.

‘Don’t make that reference again,’ she warned. ‘People know I hired you. Don’t make me regret it.’

‘I promise you will not be the one with regrets,’ I assured her.

This was your choice, I reminded myself. You could have been sitting in your cosy office at Spencer Media right now but, nooo, you had to take a chance, you had to trust your gut and leave. Only my gut had a baby in it when I made that decision. It couldn’t be trusted. I should have been stopped.

‘And that’s it. I’m sure corporate culture went over the basics with you: no official start and finish hours, vacation is taken as and when it’s needed. We have a chef on staff to create round-the-clock snacks and beverages for all possible dietary restrictions and no orange in the office. I think that’s it.’

‘Sorry, what?’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the man who had just arrived with a small pig on a leash. ‘No oranges in the office?’

‘No orange,’ she repeated. ‘The colour. I hate it so I banned it.’

Brilliant. Starting her own company definitely hadn’t sent her mad with power.

‘Right. So, is now a good time to discuss my ideas for my site?’ I asked as she started back towards the elevators. ‘I have a name. It’s going to be Recherché dot com, it’s French and it can mean “to search for” or “exquisite”, which I think is perfect, don’t you? And content-wise—’

‘Sounds great, go for it,’ she nodded. ‘Have the design team get started.’

‘How do I get in touch with the design team?’

‘They’re in the directory,’ Cici replied.

‘And where is the directory?’ I asked.

‘On your computer?’ she answered.

‘And where’s my computer?’

‘I have to go to my office,’ Cici said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I have a conference call.’

‘I thought we didn’t have offices,’ I said as she pressed her fingertips against a touch screen to summon a lift.

‘You don’t, I do,’ she replied. ‘If you have any questions, please go talk to corporate culture. Otherwise, get started. I hired you because you’re good at what you do so, like, do it?’

The lift dinged softly and I felt a wave of panic wash over me.

‘But we haven’t actually established what I’m here to do, have we?’

‘You know, I think this whole mom vibe is working for you,’ Cici said as she stepped into the lift. ‘I mean, I get it. Once you have kids, it’s hard to not be lame but you’ve really leaned in to mom-dom, Angela. Maybe you were fighting against this normcore vibe all along.’

Normcore? Did she just call me normcore? Admittedly I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what it meant but I was one hundred percent certain I should be offended. What did this woman want from me? Higher heels? Tighter clothes? Should I have whipped out the Sherbet Dip that lived in the bottom of my handbag and pretended it was a gram?

‘I’m going to go and find a desk,’ I said, smiling politely as the lift doors closed on my smiling CEO. ‘I’m so excited to get started.’

Hell hath no fury like a British woman mildly offended.

‘Right,’ I said, turning my attention back to the sea of desks in the middle of the bright room. Squeezing the strap of my satchel, I steeled myself and entered the fray, looking for an empty desk. Note to self, buy Apple AirPods on the way home. All the cool kids at school had AirPods.

‘Work,’ I corrected myself under my breath. ‘Not school, work.’

Only this felt very reminiscent of my first day in sixth form when absolutely everyone else had Doc Martens and I was wearing Converse and I never, ever lived it down.

Things are different now, Angela, I thought to myself. You’re a married woman. Living in New York. You’ve got a cool job in the media, loads of interesting friends and an actual baby. You are a parent. If you can heave a living being out of your vagina and make it home from the hospital in time to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, you can certainly make it through your first day back at work.

I smiled, settling on a desk right by a window that looked out over Lower Manhattan. There, wasn’t so hard, was it? And besides, it wasn’t the first time I’d thrown myself head first into a situation with no idea what I was doing and I’d always survived before. Just barely on occasion but I’d always figured it out, one way or another.

‘This is going to be brilliant,’ I said out loud to the city below. ‘Just you wait and see.’