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

by Fiona Perrin

  I called Liv, who sounded very smug at the other end of the phone. ‘You’re not going under after all.’

  ‘What if he tells Marti I shouted at him like a lunatic?’

  ‘Just meet him very professionally. Tell him you don’t want to discuss that day. And apologise. Then get him to sign on the dotted line.’

  I paused and then said, ‘Liv, Lars came round last night, talking about doing the right thing for the kids and asked me to try again – and then he looked at my face and he suspected something and, well, I wanted to make him hurt so I ended up telling him about Peter. He was really angry. He said I was no longer his wife.’

  ‘I thought that was what he wanted.’

  ‘It is. I think he was just shocked that I would actually, you know…’

  ‘But you have and there’s no point regretting it. It’s done. It was fun. You’re moving on. He treated you appallingly for years and he left you. You haven’t done anything wrong. And all that about going back to him, well.’

  ‘He was… he was broken, Liv.’

  ‘Just keep remembering how many times he’s broken you.’

  There was a silence and then I said, ‘Have you thought of being an agony aunt?’

  ‘Yes, but how can you give original advice when everyone’s problems are always the same? Now, go get that account. Be snooty, breezy and just a little bit disdainful.’

  ‘Snooty, breezy and just a little bit disdainful.’ I hung up and set to work.

  Bridget hurried round setting up the projector in the big meeting room upstairs. At 11.45 a.m. I powdered my face, asked Bridget to put the coffee on and then paced up and down the boardroom.

  ‘I’m ten minutes early. I hope you don’t mind,’ came Ben’s sardonic voice from the doorway.

  I tried to smile. He was carrying his jacket. His tousle of hair had been cut and his face was the colour of a latte although summer had yet to start in England.

  I walked forward, a fixed smile on my face, and shook his enormous hand. Then, I gestured to a chair at the meeting table and said, ‘Would you like coffee?’

  ‘Only if it’s French,’ he said.

  ‘Would that be white, black or…?’ Bridget asked.

  ‘I’ll have black with milk,’ he said.

  ‘Black with milk… black with milk…’ Bridget was off towards the little kitchen.

  He sat down at the glass table and I sat across from him.

  He smiled. ‘How are you? Look, I’m sorry if I upset you…’

  ‘You didn’t. It’s me who needs to apologise. I shouldn’t have pushed you.’ I sounded stiff and uptight, barely spitting the words out of closed lips.

  ‘I wound you up when you were completely knackered. I’m sorry. Should we just call a truce?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said shortly. Was this another one of his games? I had to work with him, that was all – pull off the next hour without any repeat performances. ‘Let’s just get on with business, shall we? I apologise for my behaviour at the presentation. I was having a very bad day.’

  ‘And I apologise for listening to your best friend and for asking you out.’

  My eyes narrowed to slits.

  Bridget entered the room, immune to the tension, and put a coffee cup in front of Ben. ‘Black with milk is white, isn’t it?’ She sat down next to him at the table and got out a notepad. I rose and started to pace up and down.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘You’ve decided that our treatment is…’

  ‘Absolutely revolutionary in our brand category.’

  Bridget wrote that down.

  ‘It transforms Campury in a single stroke into something that has the irony that a British woman will want…’ I went on as if he hadn’t said a word.

  ‘It’s fabulous,’ he said. ‘No one else has come up with ideas like that. You saw Claudia’s face and everyone else at Campury thinks the same.’

  ‘How is Claudia?’ I couldn’t help myself. Bridget flushed purple.

  ‘Very well indeed,’ Ben said and raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you like me to pass on your regards?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, my one issue really is the stability of your agency.’ He became very businesslike.

  ‘I’ve asked Marti if he wouldn’t mind joining us for a few minutes so that you can ask him any questions you like.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  I went for the kill. ‘If that all stacks up you’re giving us the account?’

  Ben placed his elbows on the table in a relaxed way. ‘Let’s just see how it goes with Marti, shall we? Bridget, why don’t you go and ask Mr Goldwyn if he’s available? Not a word to anyone yet, eh?’ he added as she shut the door.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ said Ben at exactly the same time.

  I spluttered and he took the advantage: ‘I think we’d better clear the air before we go any further, don’t you?’

  ‘It all seems extremely clear to me.’

  ‘It will be extremely difficult to carry on working with you if you keep treating me like you hate me.’

  ‘I apologised for being emotional.’ I could hear the defensive note in my voice.

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I just think we got off on the wrong foot.’

  ‘Right from the start with that ridiculous mix-up with Liv, you just wanted to laugh at me.’ I felt my rage rise again. ‘And I used to have actual dignity, you know, before all this.’

  ‘You mean owls didn’t shit on your walls before you split up with your husband?’ He twinkled now and I refused to smile.

  ‘They didn’t actually. And prospective clients didn’t take the piss out of me all the time either.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I had the best of intentions. The trouble was that you were all on your high horse and that does bring out the wrong side of me… I’m sorry again if I behaved like a smart arse.’

  ‘You are?’

  He smiled on. ‘I promise to take you extremely seriously.’

  ‘Bastard,’ I grunted and he chuckled. We swapped the short smile of adversaries who respect each other’s fighting spirit.

  Bridget came back in and, after her, in strode Marti.

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he boomed, shaking Ben’s hand vigorously. ‘Back in the UK after a spell on the continent, eh? Bet that’s good news to you.’

  ‘It certainly is when I see ideas like I have from Brand New.’

  ‘Good old girl, Ami, isn’t she?’ Marti said, gesturing to me. ‘Sent you the best we had.’

  ‘She’s fantastic.’ Ben winked at me.

  ‘Any other patronising remarks you two want to make about me before we start?’ They both laughed.

  ‘Now, you need some further information about us?’ asked Marti. ‘We’ll tell you everything you need to know.’

  Why didn’t he just say it? That he would back me all the way? I thought about that terrible night in The Ivy, how he hadn’t really done anything except berate me since then. I went cold – what if I’d got this far but Marti still intended to pull the plug?

  Ben sat down and Marti creaked into the chair opposite. I sat at my boss’s side and willed him to support me.

  ‘However, as you will understand, I’m worried about Brand New being a going concern.’

  ‘Well,’ said Marti. ‘Was a tough one losing LandGirls, but we’d love to add Campury to our list of accounts.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I think what Ben is saying is that he wants to give us the account, but he needs to know we’re financially secure.’ Will you back me, Marti? Or are you going to let your bruised ego get in the way?

  ‘Exactly that,’ Ben said. ‘We want the ideas and we want Ami and the team, but I need to know that we’re working with a sustainable business.’

  I could see a vein in Marti’s head throbbing. There was no doubt about the prestige of winning Campury. He said, ‘Bridget, maybe you could go and find us a copy of the accounts tha
t show how Brand New has been performing?’

  ‘Got them ready and waiting,’ and she was off out of the door.

  I took a deep breath. I needed to make this work and I had one chance. ‘I just need a moment with Marti,’ I told Ben.

  He looked at me, surprised, but nodded. ‘I need to make a call anyway.’

  When he’d gone off into the hallway I rose and so did my boss. ‘I need you to tell him that we’re all good,’ I said.

  ‘But are we?’ His voice was cold; his face showed no trace of charm.

  ‘Of course we are.’ I shook my head and realised that, not only had I bruised his ego, but, by being in front of him, I reminded him of how he’d made a huge mistake. Marti didn’t really do mistakes. ‘Look, I just want to forget about it, go back to being professional, go back to being friends with you.’

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘I made a serious error of judgement,’ he said.

  ‘Come on,’ I urged. ‘Everyone does that, don’t they? And think what we’ve been through together over the years. Adding Campury to the agency would top all of that.’

  ‘It’s one hell of an account,’ he grunted. He looked as if he wanted to say more.

  ‘You thought I’d never get it, though?’

  ‘Well, you haven’t been in the best state of mind lately, if you don’t mind me saying so. It’s not just a question of underpinning Brand New, it’s a question of whether you’re going to get things back on track.’

  I blushed hard. He was right and it hurt. I’d been professionally absent, whether physically because of the kids, or mentally, because of Lars, in the run up to the pitch and for months before that. I’d nearly let my agency go under because I’d not kept my eye on the ball. It wasn’t just that I’d hurt him, then, it was that he doubted whether I had the staying power to pull off managing such a big account.

  ‘I’m sorry for that,’ I said. ‘But I promise you that I will throw absolutely everything at making this work if you make it possible. And I’m sorry I haven’t been my best.’

  ‘You’ve had a tough time.’ But still he was right – having a tough time with Lars didn’t make up for running his investment into the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘But you can trust me. I won’t screw up again.’

  ‘One hell of a comeback, winning Campury.’

  I started to hope. ‘I need you to know you can rely on me.’

  He smiled then – not a big smile but a small one. ‘We’ve both gone off the boil a little bit, haven’t we?’

  This was probably as good a making-up as we were going to do. ‘Won’t happen again.’

  ‘We’d better get Jones back in and tell him we’re on, then, hadn’t we?’

  Relief flooded through me. ‘You won’t regret it.’

  ‘I’d bloody better not. Now we’re both going to move on from all this unpleasantness and we’re going to deliver the best bloody campaign we’ve ever done.’

  I was sweating slightly as I went to the door, opened it and went along the corridor to Ben, who was looking out of the window. ‘Sorry about that,’ I said.

  ‘Say some stuff that needed saying?’ was all he said as he turned around.

  ‘You could say that, but now we’re all good and ready to get the paperwork done.’

  Ben grinned. ‘Always a good idea to stick up for yourself. You do that quite well, Ami Fitch.’

  An hour later Bridget took a photograph of us signing letters where Marti promised that Goldwyn would guarantee Brand New’s finances for as long as we controlled the Campury account. Marti and Ben looked pleased. I looked like a small child that had just climbed off the roller-coaster ride of her life.

  *

  Then Ben insisted on taking me out for ‘a quick drink to tie up the details’.

  ‘I promise this is the start of me behaving properly,’ he said. Dazed, I followed him until I found myself on a banquette in a private members’ club a short walk away.

  Ben ordered me a glass of very cold Sancerre. ‘I know it’s your favourite wine. Liv told me.’ I took a huge gulp. ‘Now, you’re going to have to forgive me if I forget every now and again not to take the piss out of you.’

  I laughed despite myself. ‘Can we move on and talk about how many bags we’re going to shift?’

  My agency was saved. Still, I hadn’t banked on how close Marti had come to losing faith in me. But, I’d pulled it off: I would have some money coming in while we worked out the divorce settlement – not much, as it would take a while for the account to start paying, but it was a start on protecting my children. I wanted to cry with relief.

  Ben seemed to be trying hard. ‘Here’s to the future.’ He held up his glass to me. I raised mine back.

  ‘All that stuff with Marti…?’

  ‘Just what needed saying,’ I said firmly.

  He nodded and changed the subject. ‘Life feels a bit crazy when all the divorce stuff is going on, doesn’t it?’

  I raised my eyebrows, not sure where this was going, but Ben carried on. ‘I got this mad adrenaline rush after I split up with my wife, worked about eighty hours a week, took the kids on all these outings – skiing, football, swimming – anywhere I could turn all the frustration into physical energy.’

  ‘Were you gutted?’

  ‘You know, you forget about expressions like “gutted” when you hang around with Italian women.’ He smiled. ‘I was more than gutted. I was incapable of accepting it.’

  ‘Did she walk out on you?’

  ‘She made me do the walking,’ he said. ‘I kept on trying to come back. I couldn’t move on. And even now, I’m pretty sure I was a very bad husband.’

  ‘Control freak?’ I raised my eyebrows at him and had another slug of wine.

  He laughed. ‘No, just crap at knowing how to deal with her, to calm her down, to give her what she wanted.’

  ‘Did you help with the children?’

  ‘Of course, I did,’ he said. ‘It’s killing me being away from them for these few months.’

  I couldn’t work out whether he was a basic bloke who behaved like an egomaniacal tosser or an egomaniacal tosser who was pretending to be a basic bloke.

  ‘Now, aren’t you hungry? Feel like I should feed you meat pie and steamed pudding.’

  I was ravenous. ‘I know I come across as common as muck, but I’m dead sophisticated, you know, really.’

  ‘Then how about mignon of twenty-eight-day hung Scottish heritage beast, flambéed doucement, escorted by a lattice sculpture – no, installation – of hand-turned seasonal root vegetables and served on a bed of ornamental foliage?’

  ‘Ooh, yes, please.’

  A waiter appeared at our side. ‘Steak and chips twice, please,’ he said and took another large gulp from his glass.

  *

  Later, when the kids were in bed, I called Liv and told her the whole story.

  ‘It must be because your life was boring for so long that it has to get exciting now,’ Liv said. ‘But the agency is going to be OK?’

  ‘Well, this more than fills the hole of LandGirls but we won’t have any money for a while.’

  ‘Not so bad after all, is he, Ben?’

  ‘The man is a deranged womaniser who thinks the world is his toy set.’

  After I put the phone down, I went to look over my sleeping children, cosy in the house that I was determined to keep for them. I would develop the campaign, Ben would go back to Italy, Marti and I would get back on track… and the children and I would go on in a different kind of Happy Ever After. I turned off the light and walked down the landing to bed to sleep and sleep.

  Part Two

  30

  2017

  Bridget was brisk with excitement as we set about making the campaign come to life. Marti was distant – our old camaraderie was gone and I knew I needed to work really hard to get his true support back.

  Ben seemed to be able to conduct meetings without being offensive, busily talki
ng about production schedules. The gossip about him and Claudia had been overshadowed by a story about an affair he was supposedly having with an account director at Gorgeous.

  Now – like the proverbial buses – calls came in from other brands eager to sign up with Brand New; we were firmly back in the game. It was healing to be busy and somewhat successful again; I resolutely put Lars to the back of my mind.

  It was after an exhausting week that he turned up on my doorstep at 4 a.m. on Saturday and shrieked an incoherent mixture of Swedish and English swear words up at my bedroom window. I was woken in the cradle of my bed, but struggled to work out what the noise was.

  ‘Fan i helvete, Amelia,’ came from somewhere below, loud but slurring; I realised a pattering of stones was raining on my window. I sat bolt upright. ‘Fy fan, open the door.’ Then I heard a crash.

  I leapt out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown and skidded on the floorboards over to the window. Down below, in the yellow glow of the streetlights, wobbling on the path as he bent down to try to pick up a fistful of pebbles from the gravel around the flower beds, was a very dishevelled Lars, in a shirt that had lost its crispness some hours before.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ I threw open the sash window and hissed as loudly as I dared, ‘Lars, what the hell are you doing here? Go to your mother’s. You’ll wake up the children.’

  ‘För guds skull,’ Lars yelled back from where he had fallen forward onto a cactus. ‘Everything I was doing, I was doing for us. That’s us. You, me, the children…’

  ‘Go home, mate,’ came the voice of Guy Gates in the darkness from the direction of his house two doors away. ‘She doesn’t want you and neither do we.’

  ‘Nanny-stealing bastard,’ I shouted, forgetting to be quiet.

  ‘Bastard,’ echoed my elderly neighbour, Mrs Wragley.

  Great. We’re having a street party – and since when did Mrs Wragley swear?