The Shape of Us: A hilarious and emotional page turner about love, life and laughter

by Drew Davies

  All this left a bad taste in Adam’s mouth. If he was going to invest his considerable energies into M&D, he wanted the company to be fit for purpose, not mired in filth and shenanigans. Adam wasn’t a moraliser but he did have standards, and as he was volunteering his services free of charge, he felt he had a right to be judgemental.

  Nevertheless, Adam’s revelations didn’t stop him monitoring the pretty receptionist’s computer. Initially, he only wanted to see if Cara had a boyfriend (she did, but they hadn’t been together long – although he was Northern and worked as an electrician, so was probably rugged and handsome and knew instinctively where all the fuse boxes were kept), but soon Adam was obsessing over every last detail: her favourite websites, the music she played, her friends in the office, what she liked to eat for lunch. Then, while flicking through Cara’s inbox one evening, he noticed a receipt for a pair of gloves. Sensible, he thought, the weather was definitely getting colder – maybe he would buy a pair too? When he clicked the link, however, he was directed to an online fetish shop, where he found himself staring at the black, elbow-length PVC gloves for half an hour, the phrase ‘high performance, extra durable’ somehow more troubling than the large-breasted woman in eighties eye-makeup modelling them. Adam had always been afraid of kinks: they seemed so decisive. Most days, he couldn’t choose between white or brown toast, let alone if he wanted to be tied up or spanked. He wondered which Cara might prefer and his trousers twitched reactively. The excitement soon dissipated. If he ever saw Cara wearing the PVC gloves, he’d probably give himself a hernia. Or wet himself. Or both.

  There was only one place Adam felt safe from all unwelcome surprises. His corner-office compatriot avoided email altogether and gave the Web a wide berth (leaving it to his PA). His computer desktop, though, was littered with Excel spreadsheets, with documents stacked on top of each other in haphazard piles, each containing long lists of numbers with short notes in the margins. Adam made a habit of skimming through these notes, trying to decipher their meaning: ‘Short on 2, ER is 3.8’, ‘arobridge, langley, until the end of the week’, ‘Countermand NOT proxy’ – but, like the Shipping Forecast or Prime Minister’s Question Time, it was the very incomprehensibleness he found reassuring and calming. Adam would make only the smallest of changes: correcting the more obvious spelling mistakes, standardising the font size or deleting extra spaces, but it felt good to keep a tiny corner of Mercer and Daggen in order; a bastion for all that was right and decent.

  Monday, 1 November

  Sorry I haven’t written a post for a while, apologies to all my fans (joke).

  One thing that’s always been hard for me is letting stuff go. Everyone is always telling me it’s not healthy to bottle stuff up, and I get it. My M.E. was probably made worse because I hold onto things. I’m not saying that M.E. is all in the mind though, it’s definitely a physical disease. I know there are people who disagree with that, but I’ll bet a hundred pounds they’ve never had it. But we experience everything in our own way. Like, if you go on a roller coaster ride, for some people it’s the most fun thing they can do, and they’ll wait all day in a queue for the fastest rides, but for other people, it’s their worst nightmare. The same ride – you either love it or hate it. And with some things, I go all the way to the front of the queue, but then I can’t get on the ride. I know I should, I’ve waited all this time, everyone else is going on, they’re all being encouraging, but it’s like my legs are stuck. Something inside me keeps saying ‘no!’. Janelle says that voice is just trying to keep me safe. It’s valuable out in the wild, where there are bears and tigers and stuff (well, not in Croydon maybe), but it’s no longer helpful in the modern world, where it’s only a roller coaster, and I can’t really get hurt. Part of evolving is unlearning that warning, so I can get on the ride. I’ve been sitting on the sidelines so long. Maybe there’s something wrong with me? I have so many people trying to help. If I can’t do it for me, why don’t I just do it for them? And what if, hypothetically, you liked someone? Like liked them? They were in trouble. You worried about them fifty times a day, at least. Shouldn’t your survival instinct kick in and be useful then?

  I don’t know, I’m so tired of feeling stuck.

  Anyway, pretty gloomy. Here’s a gif of a cat falling off a table.

  D

  With Samira’s help, Daisy manages to rescue the banquet, turning over fruit to reveal unblemished skin, slicing off the tops of the afflicted loaves and replacing the ruined meat with rolled-up slices of turkey luncheon. With the table arranged, she takes the cypress branches from the workshop, fixing them around the base of the bird stand, using hot glue and cable ties to provide a shield over the food.

  Disaster averted, the shoot resumes.

  Daisy has to fight the impulse to hide in her workshop – she’d like nothing more than to disappear for the afternoon, but she knows the gossipmongers will work themselves into a frenzy if left alone. Instead, she diligently spritzes the food with hairspray (careful not to squirt the birds) – replacing items as they sag and wilt under the lights – and busies herself making a crown of thorns for Jesus to wear in the final shot.

  As punishment for her earlier outburst, Flair refuses to speak to Daisy for the rest of the day, and Paula is even more frosty and uncooperative, but fortunately the birds have emptied themselves of excrement and are mostly well-behaved. By mid-afternoon, Flair gets the wide shot and wraps the birds (Paula makes a great show of giving effusive goodbyes to everyone except Daisy), but there’s no time to relax: the banquet needs to be cleared and new props set, the collective energy in the studio frantic now the finishing line is in sight.

  Daisy is hurriedly binning the second platter of now rather whiffy turkey luncheon when a thought stops her cold. Why am I doing this, she thinks, why am I rushing? It’s not as if she has anything planned for the evening. She’ll avoid the after-work drink and head straight home, but to what? Hours spent mindlessly trawling the Internet in front of the TV. A string of missed calls from her mother. One glass of wine that turns into five. Rush all you like, comes the needling voice in her mind, but you’re only making the void approach faster…

  Scraping the last of the processed meat into the bin with a splat and putting the plate to one side, Daisy sees Samira chatting to a gorilla. She blinks and wipes her brow with the back of her wrist – she must have hairspray sweat in her eyes – but when Daisy looks again, Samira is still nodding politely as the creature taps its chest and pats the top of its head, Samira – it appears – completely unfazed by a six-foot gorilla in their midst. When it stops gesticulating, Samira scans the studio and seeing Daisy, points directly at her. The gorilla turns, and Daisy feels her stomach somersault as she locks eyes with the animal, the jolt of adrenaline dislodging a bubble of sadness that has been growing in her chest all day. Daisy is acutely aware she’s in serious danger of bursting into tears if she doesn’t find somewhere private to compose herself, but the gorilla is already loping towards her, arms swinging by its sides, and Daisy can only stand watching, transfixed. As the creature draws nearer, she starts to see the limitations of the suit: there’s an obvious line around the neck, and the eyes aren’t quite right, but it’s very realistic, the hair thick and full, and the hands and feet are wonderful.

  When the gorilla is a few steps away, it stops and grunts: ‘Ah-uh-de-eh?’

  ‘I’m sorry… I don’t…?’ Daisy wants to say, ‘I don’t understand gorilla’, but knows this is ridiculous, so shakes her head instead.

  ‘Ah uh, Aisy?’

  Daisy catches the muffled sound of her name this time.

  ‘Yes, I’m her. I’m Daisy.’

  ‘Eh-oo elp-ee.’

  She leans closer, still not understanding, and the gorilla starts to point at its left ear.

  ‘Eh ip is uh,’ it says, jabbing at the side of its head.

  Daisy looks helplessly in the direction of Samira, but she’s no longer there. The lump in Daisy’s chest has travelled up to he
r throat now, an acidic burning sensation at the back of her mouth.

  The gorilla hangs its head in defeat, but perks up again – making the sign for a pen with one hand and paper with the other. Daisy rummages in her pockets and finds a pencil and an old receipt, welcoming the distraction of playing Pictionary with a gorilla, but of course it can do more than draw pictures, this beast is literate:

  The zip is stuck. The costume lady wants you to take it off without damaging it.

  Please. [It adds as an afterthought.]

  This is another of Flair’s icons for tomorrow’s shoot, realises Daisy: King Kong or Donkey Kong – one of the Kongs at least – probably tap dancing with Gandhi if today was anything to go by.

  Daisy takes a pair of tweezers out of her tool belt and walks behind the gorilla to find the zip. Locating it at the base of its neck, she pats the gorilla’s shoulder and it crouches obediently.

  ‘I’ve figured out why you gave me such a fright,’ she says, parting the hair along the seam of the zipper.

  ‘Eh-oh?’ says the gorilla over its shoulder.

  Daisy starts to pick away the fur caught between the zip’s teeth.

  ‘I was dating this guy recently, you see, who was a bit of a romantic. Chronically romantic, really. We were at a bar once, and one of those flower sellers came round with the roses wrapped in cellophane? Well, Chris – his name was Chris – he decided he wanted to buy me the lot. Hold still.’ Daisy tugs at a particularly stubborn clump of hair. ‘Except he didn’t have enough cash for them all,’ she continues, ‘so we had to leave the bar and trudge around South Kensington to find an ATM. The flower seller came with us, complaining in Romani the whole time. Chris said she was putting a curse on us, which – come to think of it – would explain a lot…’ The gorilla shakes its head and taps its ear again, but Daisy is too busy fishing out a lip balm from her pocket to notice. ‘So anyway,’ she says, applying balm to the zipper, ‘when I first saw you, I guess I thought Chris had hired a singing telegram or something. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s the sort of grand gesture he’d make. In fact, I think he joked about it once. He’s an absolute, utter cheese ball. I mean, there were at least thirty roses in that bunch and they weren’t even very nice. But the look on his stupid goofy face when he…’ Daisy’s eyes begin to well up with tears. She gives the zipper a good tug to try and divert attention from her sniffing. ‘Wow,’ she says, still sniffing and wiggling the zip, ‘this thing is really jammed tight.’

  Daisy feels a tap on her shoulder and turns to find Samira holding out a powder blue envelope.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she says, ‘but this arrived for you yesterday. It’s my fault, I forgot about it until now – whoops!’

  Daisy takes the envelope from Samira. Her name is written on it in small, neat letters, underscored with a curly line.

  ‘Eh-ha-to-go-son.’

  ‘Hold on,’ she tells the gorilla.

  Opening the envelope, Daisy takes out a card with a picture of a ginger cat on the front, the cat wearing what appears to be Scarlett O’Hara’s green curtain dress, complete with bonnet and drapery cord belt.

  Inside, the card reads:

  I’ve been a fool. Forgive me? Chris.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asks Samira, but Daisy can’t speak, she’s sobbing so hard. Samira drops her voice to a whisper: ‘Are you scared of gorillas too?’ She strokes Daisy’s shoulder. ‘My aunt’s an absolute phobic.’

  The misdeeds weren’t only happening during office hours.

  The Mercer and Daggen cleaning staff, dressed in soul-crushing uniforms of grey on grey, arrived each evening at nine o’clock to mop the floors, restock cupboards, empty bins and hoover the carpets. When they’d finished for the night, Adam would emerge from the corner office to make himself a final cup of tea before heading home and it was here, standing alone on the fourth floor with his teabag steeping, that he made his first puzzling discovery.

  Having used the last of the sugar cubes for his tea, Adam opened a fresh box from the cupboard and found it was missing a row. This in itself might not have been very peculiar, but he noticed the same quirk in different kitchenettes – unopened boxes of sugar, when opened, were missing exactly one line of sugar cubes: ten cubes in total, no more, no less. Adding it to his list (of things to raise with management once he was given an official job), Adam rang the customer support hotline, but no, they’d never ship a faulty product – a missing row of cubes would be picked up before distribution. Which company did he work for, and what was his name? Adam had hung up immediately.

  The following night he tried an experiment. Prior to the cleaners arriving, Adam collected every unopened box of sugar on the second floor and replaced the missing sugar cubes (it was possible, he learnt, to open and close the top flaps without ripping the cardboard), marking each box, before returning them to their cupboards. When he opened the same boxes after the cleaners had finished, the cubes were gone!

  His initial sting operation a total success, Adam ramped up surveillance and made his second startling discovery.

  Peeking through the corner office blinds one Tuesday, he watched a cleaner stop her dusting, check to see if anyone was watching, and make a beeline for one of the desk phones. Removing a folded sheet of paper from her pocket, the cleaner carefully dialled a number and, after waiting a few seconds, began to read aloud from the page (Adam was too far away to hear what she was saying). The cleaner repeated the process several times until she was disturbed by an approaching security guard, forcing her to hang up abruptly and resume her dusting.

  Adam was fascinated. What could she possibly be doing? But of course, it was obvious – she must be a spy. The cleaner was collecting sensitive material during her rounds and reading them over the phone, to be transcribed by a rival company – probably those swines at The 800 Group. Forget sugar cubes, Adam thought, this was corporate espionage and Mercer and Daggen would make him Employee of the Year when he brought it to light. Despite his initial excitement, Adam decided the best course of action was to lay low while he collected more evidence – there were a few things that didn’t add up (for example, why did the cleaner make multiple calls?) and he wanted to make sure he had all the answers before officially blowing the whistle. He was pleased he waited: only a few nights later, he spotted two different cleaners make calls simultaneously, both reading from pages and taking turns to watch out for security. This was not the work of a lone gunman, he realised, it was a crime syndicate!

  The constant adrenaline rush of discovery left Adam either hyperactive or drained. He considered switching to decaf, but cups of tea were the only thing keeping him going as he zipped between floors, checking in cupboards or finding vantage points to spy on the cleaners. It was on one of these trips, not long after he’d uncovered the goings-on with the cleaners, that Adam heard the whistle.

  There are generally two types of whistle humans use to get attention: the salacious wolf-call, and the friendlier, ascending ‘hey, you!’ This was definitely the latter and as loud noises were uncommon in the offices (apart from the drone of a vacuum), the sound startled Adam. It was late though – the cleaners had all gone home and the desks were empty. Confused, he was about to continue on his way when he heard the whistle again. This time when he turned, he saw the man from Maintenance, in his black uniform, sitting on a chair by the windows with his legs stretched out, hands behind his head, ever-present Bluetooth in his left ear.

  Adam had two thoughts, one after the other in quick succession. The first had been bugging him for a while now: where exactly is this guy from? Although Adam spoke only English, he prided himself on being able to guess a person’s accent (or make a reasonable stab at it), but the snippets of Mr Maintenance’s phone conversations had always been unplaceable. Azerbaijan perhaps? Or one of the nations that ended in ‘stan’? Uzbekistan – was that a country?

  Adam’s second thought was new, having sparked into life that very millisecond: why is he wearing the cleaners’ uniform?
Adam hadn’t noticed, maybe because all the cleaners were female, but the maintenance man’s uniform was very similar in design. In fact, now he was really paying attention, it even had the same grey stripe around the sleeves and the colour was dark grey, not black. Grey on grey…

  Still reclining on his chair, the man who may or may not be from the Maintenance department did something which sent a chill down Adam’s spine: he winked at him.

  Wednesday, 3 November

  I deleted that last post, sorry if you hadn’t read it. You missed out on a pretty bad metaphor about a roller coaster (I’ve been learning about metaphors, euphemisms and similes recently – they’re all sort of confusing. I think it was a metaphor). I was disappointed about a trip that failed. Badly. When I re-read the blog post, I felt it was a bit too personal, but mostly, it made me angry – I was, like, stop complaining and do something then. That’s the cycle I go in – I just go round and round in circles until I get sick. No more circles. Even if I don’t know if it’s the right decision to make, I’m just going to make one. I am going to do something. I should think of a new catchphrase. Just make it happen! I’ll work on it. Oh yeah, ‘Just do it’. Duh. Nike. Stupid. Maybe that’s what Nike means? I always thought it meant just buy the shoes, but maybe it can be applied to lots of things? Nike might sue me if I use their catchphrase. Mine can be ‘Just do something’ then. I don’t think anyone will have copyrighted it, because it’s not very good.

  JUST DO SOMETHING

  Yeah, it’s kind of bad.

  But it’s something.

  Nine

  Retail. Therapy. Together, these words are oxymoronic. JoJo finds no part of the process therapeutic: not the changing rooms, nor the long queues, and definitely not the gormless staff, but as her mother used to say in Johannesburg all those years ago: needs must when the devil drives.