The Story After Us: A heartwarming tale of life and love for modern women everywhere

by Fiona Perrin

  ‘That’s just it,’ Ben said. ‘We need to move fast with the campaign to get growth this summer. We need presentation of ideas back in two weeks’ time.’

  Two weeks. This sort of work usually needed at least six and, even then, it was an intense schedule. I was going to have to ask Luba to work some extra hours.

  ‘I’ll phone you later to see what you think,’ Ben said. ‘I know you like to have time to think through things and then always act decisively.’

  God, he thought he was funny. But if this was what I had to put up with to get my hands on this project, then I would smile all the way through it.

  *

  It was back at the office, when Bridget had finally stopped asking me why Ben talked to me as if he knew me, that I really started to panic. How was I ever going to get a world-class campaign together in two weeks? I asked Bridget to go upstairs and find out what creative teams were available.

  Liv rang. ‘So what did you think?’

  ‘He’s a complete bastard. Thinks it’s really funny to take the piss out of me in front of other people. And he’s good-looking but, boy, does he know it. You must have been completely off your head when you met him.’

  ‘Did I ever say I wasn’t off my head? I freely admitted it. But I do remember thinking that he was attractive and fun and—’

  ‘I now need to work my butt off for two weeks to pitch for an account that I will never win. I won’t see the children right when they need me.’

  Bridget came back as the landline phone was ringing. She mouthed across the room that Marti wanted to talk to me.

  I said goodbye to Liv and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Heard he’s a bit strange, this Ben Jones,’ Marti said. ‘Supposed to be some kind of wunderkind, however.’

  ‘Big bloke – looks really out of place in Campury. He’s certainly very sure of himself.’

  ‘Cocky?’

  ‘Cock, more like.’

  Marti sniggered but was soon back to business. ‘So you’re going to pitch and you’re going to try and win. This is the best chance you’ve got so don’t bugger it up.’

  *

  Ben called at the end of the day when I was halfway through planning just how we were going to do all the work. Bridget had gone off to try and negotiate some media strategy time. I was busily hating Lars all over again for never having to work out how he was going to juggle time between his children and his work. How had our marriage of equals become so one-sided? How had I let his dreams become so big that even my small ones – like a happy family and my own agency – became out of reach? I had my head in my hands as the phone rang.

  ‘It’s Ben,’ he said. I confirmed that we’d like to be on the pitch list. ‘Good stuff. I like you, Ami.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. ‘Who else have you selected?’

  He named three of London’s giants. What chance did little Brand New have?

  ‘So, I suppose now you can add “potential business conflict” to the list of reasons why you won’t go out with me?’

  I smiled despite myself. Maybe he was going to forget about all this silliness and get on with the job at hand?

  ‘Yes, thanks, already thought of that one,’ I said. ‘And can I ask you to stop making jokes about me in front of other people?’

  ‘Jokes? What jokes?’

  ‘You know, dropping in those things Liv told you.’

  ‘Did I do that? I promise you it was just teasing.’

  ‘Well, I need to get on with working out how to come up with a killer idea.’

  ‘So I won’t ask you out again socially until after the pitch.’

  I groaned down the phone. ‘That’s very sweet but I’m not in a position to go out with anyone. So, let’s just forget the “going out socially” thing, shall we?’

  ‘Absolutely. One of the reasons why I’m calling – to say that.’

  ‘Thank you. I mean it.’

  ‘And to ask you out in a business-y way.’

  ‘To talk about the pitch?’

  ‘Of course. We need to talk about the pitch. Lots.’

  ‘I can’t go out with you,’ I said, although for a brief moment I thought about playing along if it meant getting inside information.

  ‘You sure?’

  I knew what I had to say. ‘And you can’t go out with me because all the other agencies would think that I had an unfair advantage. It’s not professional.’

  ‘I was never really that worried about being professional.’

  ‘You aren’t the usual…’ I tried to be diplomatic and still make my voice sound the sort of smiley that potential clients with big accounts to give away deserved.

  ‘I hate usual,’ he said. ‘Love people who surprise me. You surprise me.’

  ‘Well, I won’t if you keep me on the phone…’

  ‘All right, I’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I would say it was my pleasure but that would be a lie.’

  *

  When I got home that night Luba was dreamily cooking sausages and chips for the children.

  ‘Do you think the children could have broccoli or peas or something as well?’ I asked. Maybe they didn’t do nutrition in Bratislava?

  Luba just stared around her into space.

  ‘Luba? Are you OK?’

  ‘Oh, Amelia, I very OK.’ I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen Luba actually smile but she did now and it reached her languid eyes and she looked even more luminous. ‘Tomorrow I go out with Guy Gates.’

  ‘The footballer from down the road?’ Finn asked from the kitchen floor where he was busy smashing various Power Rangers together.

  ‘Yes.’ Luba smiled on. ‘He come to door when you at school and say he will take me to football match and dinner. He say I very pretty.’

  ‘Well, you are very pretty.’ I was glad for Luba. ‘I’m sure you’ll have a fantastic time.’

  Guy Gates seemed a bit of a jumped-up arsehole, but then what did I know? Since he’d moved in a few months back he’d just driven up and down the road in a bright yellow Ferrari, which Nadine said was a pollutant and ought to be banned. He’d also upset Mrs Wragley by getting a vulgar gold wheelie bin. Still, if it made Luba smile for once who cared?

  ‘And you’re all right about me going out tonight with my boss?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Luba shook the oven tray full of chips. ‘I stay in and make myself more pretty for Guy Gates.’ She smiled again; it was so unusual that both Finn and I carried on staring at her for several seconds.

  10

  2007

  When Lars wasn’t emailing potential backers for his business, he spent hours sitting on our sofa, eating inedible spaghetti, or out in the yard behind the house fixing Liv’s bike. Our conversations were frenzied from the start – I needed to know absolutely everything there was to know about him as if, in knowing it all, he would belong to me completely.

  It was then that I learned my first Swedish: älskling first – I was his honey, his darling. I also learned the popular swear words: fy fan – for fuck’s sake – or för fan i helvete! – something to do with the devil in hell, for example.

  Thor came to stay that winter, in London for a tech event, and I practised them on him. ‘You are a potty mouth,’ he said, learning an English term in exchange.

  He was huge, hairy, adorable and charming. ‘Good God, gorgeous,’ he would say from Lars’ sofa as I tiptoed past on my way to work. ‘What a sight for sore eyes – that is right phrase for girls, yes?’ Lars and I spent an evening getting drunk with Liv and him; we left them to it at about 1 a.m., and in the morning there were suspiciously long ginger hairs on Liv’s pyjamas, clashing with her own auburn.

  ‘He’s very enthusiastic,’ she reported. ‘But I can’t go out in public with him because our hair colours don’t go together.’

  Winter sprang into summer and Lars and I wandered, always hand in hand, and sat on the patchy gras
s of Bloomsbury’s squares, talking. He talked more about his childhood – how he’d stood in awe, looking up at one of his father’s bridges that seemed to float in the snowy sky as it spanned a valley. How he’d vowed then that he would make something of his life. How he’d thrown himself into studying to deal with the grief of his dad’s early death.

  I told him more about mine too – in London first, with parents who adored me, in our sunny house, the light weakening as my dad’s short silences became longer. How Mum and I would have time together – we went to galleries, shopping, walking in the park – and how these times got fewer as Dad’s illness got worse. How even then he could also be loving and inspiring, my cheerleader. Then, their move to the country and the moods getting longer, my mother effectively cut off from me because he needed her and she, in turn, could not forsake him.

  We agreed that our family would never be like that. ‘It needs to be perfect and complete and make the children feel as if they are always safe,’ I told him fiercely.

  We talked too, in my single bed in between long bouts of sex. Sometimes, afterwards, one of us would shift and let the other lie on top for a while just to get some room to spread out. Then we would carry on our busy chatting.

  ‘We live in a big house on a hill with you as my bird,’ he told me one night when we were on his slightly bigger mattress upstairs. His room was completely unfurnished aside from this mattress on the floorboards, a makeshift desk from crates and an IKEA clothes rail where he hung the few clothes he owned. There was a pile of books in one corner and a pile of CDs – stuff from the early nineties mostly, Nirvana and other grunge bands.

  ‘With wisteria growing up the windows,’ I said.

  ‘What is this? Wisteria?’

  ‘It’s a plant with fluffy flowers,’ I told him. ‘You’ll be this hotshot tycoon and I’ll be this big cheese branding person and we’ll be professionally fulfilled while being admired for our artistic merit.’

  ‘I hope we can do this.’

  ‘We’ll throw dinner parties where everyone will remark about how fabulous the food is and then we’ll go out into the kitchen and laugh our heads off about how grown up it all is. And we’ll spend evenings together, curled up on the sofa, after having pulled off the biggest deals in the world and the newspapers will write about how we are the most successful, glamorous couple ever… with at least seventy children, all perfectly behaved and gorgeous.’

  Lars laughed in my ear. I could feel his hot breath. ‘Well, two or three. They will be brilliant and beautiful, like you, älskling.’

  I would roll the word around on my tongue when I wasn’t with him. I was his älskling, his darling.

  11

  2017

  I munched my way through fish pie, swilled down with champagne, as I sat side by side with Marti in the relaxed elegance of The Ivy. There was something comforting about being with someone I trusted so much and who’d always had my back. There was also something great – given my financial situation – about being out for a posh dinner.

  Marti liked the contribution I was making to his forthcoming pitch on underwear branding to the snooty French.

  ‘Absolute bloody diamond, this girl,’ he told the waiter who periodically appeared and filled up my glass.

  ‘You’ll be fine if you stick to the diversity between French and English consumers,’ I said, and put my knife and fork together.

  ‘You really all right with this divorce business?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I’m still hoping it won’t go ahead.’ I changed it again, uncomfortable but smiling. ‘How are your daughters?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about them,’ said Marti. ‘Lucy has disappeared in Brazil – her mother is thinking of hiring some sort of spook to go and search every polo farm in the place.’

  I thought about the patient, careful woman who was Bonnie Goldwyn. She turned up smiling at all required company dos and was sociable and interested in the employees, but somehow always looked as if she’d rather be back in Hampshire, reading a book. She’d produced two beautiful daughters and now seemed to exist beside Marti rather than being married to him; he always talked about her affably but with a hint of fear.

  ‘Terrified of her coming back up the duff,’ Marti continued.

  ‘She’s on her gap year,’ I said. ‘That’s what girls do – go abroad, fall in love. I’m sure she knows all about condoms.’

  Marti glanced at me from underneath his bushy eyebrows. ‘Johnnies?’ he mock spat. ‘You’re talking to me about johnnies and my daughter in the same breath? Have you no shame?’

  I laughed and we both looked at the pudding menu. ‘Go on, have a crème brûlée and then so can I,’ Marti said. ‘And we’d better have another bottle of fizz and discuss sorting out getting some new customers.’

  Ah. It wasn’t Loosey underwear he wanted to talk about then. The troubles with my business were the real reason he wanted to have dinner with me. I realised that for the last half an hour I’d actually forgotten about being in so much difficulty.

  ‘This thing with Campury sounds promising,’ he went on.

  ‘It really is a great opportunity. But we’re only at the beginning.’

  ‘Yes, don’t depend on it. Everyone in town is going to want that account.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I’ve got to fill the hole of LandGirls.’

  ‘Without another big account, I’m sorry, but Brand New just won’t fly.’ Marti looked away.

  OK, now we were cutting to the chase. I took a deep breath and smiled on.

  ‘I will get some more business,’ I told him with the gusto of three glasses of champagne. ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘Couple of months.’ He looked straight at me. ‘Sorry.’

  He paused and looked uncharacteristically uncertain for just a moment. ‘The thing is, Ami, it’s going to be tough to bring you back into the big agency if you can’t make your own thing work.’

  There it was: he’d said it. I looked my boss straight in his eyes and knew that he was telling the truth – he couldn’t give me my old job. My reputation would be seriously damaged. After all the hullabaloo of the agency launch – our joint interviews in all the industry mags, the after-dinner speeches he gave where he used Brand New as a case study for how to ‘teach this old dog new tricks’ – he couldn’t throw me another lifeline. I tried not to show any emotion. This was just another seismic shift in the Richter-scale eruptions that were rocking my life – it was surprising how quickly I was getting used to them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marti went on, ‘but I think I would have trouble getting it past the rest of the board. But you will turn it around.’

  I tried to smile. I would turn it around. I had to win Campury. It was the only account that was big enough to make a difference. ‘I’ll win the pitch and then you can give me my seat on the board.’ It was an old joke between us.

  ‘Got to wait for one of them to croak first.’ Marti was clearly relieved that the difficult chat was over. ‘There’s old Haydon – he can’t even remember which board meeting he’s at; last week he was raving on about HSBC. You chosen your pudding?’

  I tried to smile. ‘Yes, I’ll have a crème brûlée.’

  ‘Nice to be out with a woman who actually eats,’ said Marti and waved at the waiter.

  In the loo twenty minutes later, I stared blearily at my reflection and prickled fresh goosebumps of fear. Then I took a deep breath and painted a new coat of lipstick onto my mouth. Holding onto the banister, I made my way up the stairs and gave Marti an affectionate smile.

  ‘That crème brûlée was amazing,’ I told him, sliding onto the bench.

  ‘I ordered you a Grand Marnier. We’ll drink that and then…’

  ‘Then I’d better get home if I’m going to make money for you tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, I thought…’ Marti looked down at his napkin.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you know, I just wondered whether you’d like to come back
to my club for a nightcap.’ Marti sniffed and there was something very, very unusual about the way that he rolled out the cliché.

  It was one of his jokes. I smiled. ‘I’d love to, but you know I can’t. I’m a very respectable career woman and mother, you know.’

  He looked at me and smiled again but his tone became very serious and his voice was thick. ‘Do you think… do you think you could ever…?’

  Please don’t let this be happening. No. He just always flirted with me –as he did with lots of other women, despite having been married to Bonnie forever.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ I said and looked around for the waiter so that we could get the bill. ‘Maybe we’ve had too much champagne.’

  But then he grabbed my hand and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Always been bananas about you…’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ I started to get up from the bench, pulling my hand free from his.

  ‘Sit down, please, sit down,’ Marti said. ‘Just hear me out.’

  ‘You don’t mean it, you’ve just had too much to drink. You know you’re a married man.’ I tried to be kind, to keep my tone light, and sat back down. Would I wake up in a minute from another tortured dream?

  ‘Not very married, you know I’m not very married. Bonnie and me, you know that, complicated situation… years and years… never thought you’d be free… always that damn husband getting in the way…’

  God, poor Bonnie. No wonder she would rather hang out in the country.

  My rage rose on her behalf, and mine – this was Marti, who I’d always thought was out to mentor me. Very slowly I said, ‘I’m really flattered, I am, but you know I’m never going to go out with anyone married. You’re my boss, for God’s sake… Look, you’ll forget you said all this in the morning and so will I.’ My voice had risen, however, in panic.

  ‘Shush.’ Marti looked at the other tables, whose occupants all studiously avoided looking around. ‘No, it’s not like that, you know it’s not like that… I’m really, keen on you… and I just thought that maybe now, you know, what with you being on your own and everything, that you might look at me in a different way…’