The Way You Smile

by Kiki Archer

  “It wasn’t a joke; it was a statement.”

  Harriet laughed. “Exactly. You’re brutally honest, which is why I asked about the office. It splits opinion, but I like it.”

  “Isn’t that all that matters?”

  “Not in the world of market intelligence. That’s why focus groups are so hated.”

  “They are?”

  “Floor one is the lowest of the low. I had to get you out of there.”

  “You did?”

  “You know the focus group is pretty much the F word in market intelligence, right? Ultimate power’s given to people who like to hear themselves speak, or people just there for free food. Those women don’t really know about sportswear and they probably don’t really care about sportswear. Yes, they may be the target age range, but that’s about it. So many design and strategy hours are wasted on the opinion of people who don’t actually matter.”

  “They don’t?”

  “No. Focus groups kill innovation. As Steve Jobs said: true innovation comes from recognising an unmet need and designing a creative way to fill it.”

  Camila smiled. “That torch on the iPhone was needed.”

  “Exactly!” Harriet was laughing. “It wasn’t what you said, Camila, it was how you said it. You were uninhibited in both thought and action. The balls it took to change in front of the group and parade yourself around like that, and you weren’t doing it in a showy off way, just a fact finding way.”

  “I have children; it was no big deal.”

  “But they were grown men.”

  “My sons are bigger.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Taller I mean.”

  Harriet was still frowning. “Excuse me?”

  “Michael and Ethan, my sons.”

  “Are taller than the Mesh-Up men?”

  Camila nodded.

  “Are they…”

  “Fourteen and fifteen.”

  “Your children are fourteen and fifteen?! Well thank goodness for that! I was about to ask if they had a growth hormone issue.”

  “You weren’t!”

  “I was, but I didn’t, as I, like a lot of people, worry about saying the wrong thing. You, however, have a natural honesty about you. I see it and I like it, but can we go back to the fact your children are fourteen and fifteen? You don’t look a day past twenty yourself!”

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “It’s true!”

  “They’re the main reason I have no inhibitions. You can’t with teenage boys around.”

  “No, it’s more than that. There’s something special about you and you shouldn’t be working with the lowest of the low. Goodness, can you see why I wanted to get off that floor so quickly. Imagine if Market Research could hear me say that.”

  “Aren’t you Market Research?”

  “No. The company’s Market Intelligence which is divided into four sections: Floor One – Market Research, home to the focus groups. Floor Two – Market analysis, slightly more important, where’s the market going? Is it growing, is it in decline? Floor Three – Product Intelligence, exploring and predicting the trends. Floor Four – Competitive Intelligence, keeping clients abreast of their rivals’ strategies.”

  “It all sounds the same to me.”

  “Ha! I love that! But it’s not and you shouldn’t be down there at the bottom.”

  “I’m not sure I’m even meant to be on floor one. I only got shown around the ground floor.”

  “By whom?”

  “Pamela from Insights. I couldn’t see her name tag as it was tucked into her jacket pocket, but that’s how she referred to herself.”

  “No!”

  Camila nodded. “I’m meant to be on the mum returner scheme.”

  “We don’t have a mum returner scheme.”

  “Well I got the job.”

  “You got Pamela’s job which is… which is…” Harriet rolled on her chair to the left hand side of her desk and tapped into her computer. “Bear with me a minute.”

  Camila watched on as Harriet fingered down the screen as if speed reading. “Everything okay?”

  “I see what this is.”

  “What is it?”

  “She gave you the job because…”

  “Because what?”

  “Because…” Harriet paused. “It doesn’t matter. She found you and I want you.”

  “You do?”

  “Up here with me on floor five.”

  “What happens on floor five?”

  Harriet smiled. “This is where we expand the business.”

  “So there isn’t a mum returner job on the ground floor?”

  “Pamela obviously used that phrase because she knew it would get hundreds of responses.”

  “But I was the only one there.”

  “She cherry-picked you from your application form.”

  “Why?”

  “She…” Harriet shrugged. “She obviously saw in you what I’ve just seen in you.”

  “From my CV? I’ve only worked part time at my friend Julie’s bacon butty van for the past few years. I did a stint on the fish counter at Tesco before that but the hours were too long and I never liked putting my children into child care. My boys might be tall but that doesn’t mean they’re responsible. Well they are now, which is why I’m here and ready to work full time.”

  “Good, because I want you.” Harriet nodded. “For the business.”

  “And Pamela doesn’t?”

  “Pamela can find someone else to do whatever bits and bobs she needs doing. Collating various responses to telesales questionnaires no doubt.”

  “Is that what I was meant to be doing on the ground floor? She did sound busy.”

  “She’s quite infamous around here is Pamela. She chooses to work away from others in one of the small rooms down there.”

  Camila smiled. “So I’ve still got a job?”

  Harriet nodded. “You, Camila Moore, have got a promotion.”

  Chapter Seven

  “And as I left her office I could hear her on the phone summoning Pamela from Insights up to floor five.” Camila was huddled on her lounge sofa, pyjamas and slippers on, next to Julie, also in dressing gown and slippers, both with flutes of prosecco in hand, even though it was barely past four p.m.

  Julie was frowning. “Did she call her Pamela from Insights?”

  Camila took a sip of the bubbles. “No. Pamela Simpson-Smith.”

  “And did you see what happened?”

  “No, I got to come home early.”

  “Chars to that,” cheered Julie, reaching across the sofa to chink their flutes together.

  Camila smiled. This is why she loved Julie. Not only did she say chars instead of cheers because she thought it made herself sound posh, she always insisted on flutes for special occasions and had declared this a special occasion having dashed out of her house the second she saw Camila’s car pull into the cul-de-sac. Julie had then listened briefly through the large Citroen Picasso’s window before saying she’d be back with prosecco, flutes and PJs, giving Camila just five minutes to get in and changed so the debriefing and discussion would be fresh faced and hot off the press. And while Julie wasn’t one to gossip in a malicious way she was certainly someone who seemed to know everything first. If you wanted the full story you only had to ask Julie from Number Eleven.

  Camila tucked her feet tighter into herself on the sofa before lifting her glass in a toast. “So. I have a promotion from a job I didn’t start, onto a floor I didn’t know existed, with a multi-million-pound entrepreneur who seems to think I’m great.”

  “That’s why we’ve got the bloody flutes out!” Julie did another cheers. “Do you think she’d let me park up in her car park?”

  Twisting her body and glancing out of the bay window, Camila stared at the back end of Julie’s pink-coloured bacon butty van and the ridiculous slogan that read: Julie Biggs, She Sells Pigs. Even though there was a picture of a bacon sandwich on the side of the vehicle,
its shape and colour, combined with the large side window hatch, often saw it mistaken for an ice-cream van. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think they must get food brought in as I barely saw anyone on the ground floor and it was the same again today. Yes, there was that pink-haired punk who Doug obviously mistook me for, but there were tons of people on floor one and I’m assuming it’s the same on floor two, three and four so they’ve either got catering facilities on those levels or there’s a back entrance to the building. It’s as if the ground floor’s just a front for the whole show.”

  “It often is in places like that and I don’t mind parking at a back entrance. The van doesn’t take up much room.”

  Camila turned her attention to the window once more and stared at the pink vehicle blocking her view. Admittedly it was only a view of the next driveway in the curving cul-de-sac, but it was an eyesore all the same. “I can ask.”

  “No, you can’t. Not yet anyway.” Julie nodded. “Give it a day or two.”

  Camila laughed; her neighbour was such a wheeler dealer. The female equivalent of Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, a programme her parents used to watch on repeat. Like Del Boy, Julie never meant any harm but, also like Del Boy, Julie never seemed to learn. There was always the next big thing. The venture that would turn her fortunes around. Thankfully she’d had her bacon butty van for over three years now and seemed settled into an enterprise that awarded her a steady income. Yes, she sometimes had little blips where she sourced the rashers of bacon from somewhere she shouldn’t, or filled the van with smog producing fuel, but for the most part her current business was above board.

  “How can Harriet know all her employees?” Julie was pouring more prosecco.

  Camila held out her glass before taking another sip of bubbles. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she runs god knows how many businesses and you said there were loads of people on floors one, two, three and four.”

  “I only saw floor one.”

  “Still, you said the car park was full.”

  “The front car park. There might be a back car park too.”

  “Exactly. So how does Harriet know who Pamela from Insights is?”

  Camila shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s how she’s got to where she is now. She’s clearly a people person.”

  “Because she was kind to you?”

  “You think it was just kindness?”

  “I don’t know what it was, but you know me, Camila, I’ll always give it you straight.”

  Camila smiled. Julie never gave it her straight. Julie would insist the wallpaper she’d recommended from the man at the market looked lovely even though the pattern didn’t match up no matter how perfectly you placed it. She’d also insist the scented candles she’d bought in bulk and given as Christmas presents were indeed scented even though smoke was the only thing they gave off. Thankfully Camila had imposed a strict ‘nothing that’s on show’ rule upon herself three years after becoming Julie’s neighbour and getting sucked in to all of her bargains. Yes, the cheap bottles of bleach were fine as bleach was bleach and the nondescript, often foreign brand was hidden behind the back of the toilet. Likewise, expensive book sets when the boys were growing up were so much cheaper from Julie’s source than the school book fayre or WH Smiths and they seemed of a similar standard, although produced on slightly thinner paper but again, no one apart from her and the boys had to see them.

  Important things though, like carpets and wall paint, were a definite no-no. Camila had learnt that lesson within the first year of moving into the cul-de-sac. Julie had been such a wonderful neighbour from day one, offering to help the ‘young couple’, as she’d called them, get on their feet. It was very obvious from the set-up – a heavily pregnant nineteen-year-old with a boyfriend the same age and two sets of parents, one a lot more elderly than the other, working together to set up the soon-to-be-family in a small semi-detached on the cul-de-sac that was nice enough, but certainly not a reward – that none of this had been planned. Yes, they had a home, but they didn’t have anything to put in it and that’s where Julie had stepped in.

  Camila smiled at the memory. Julie wasn’t that much older than she was but she had Terry, who she called her ‘old man’ and who was indeed a lot older than them all, and he gave her standing – as if she’d been around the block once or twice – and to be fair to Julie, she probably had. She’d raised Terry’s two children from a previous marriage, dealt with his various philandering’s, seen off the odd issue with the police and kitted out most of the cul-de-sac in exotic delights. Thankfully, the interior of Camila’s house now looked totally different to all of the others even though the exterior and interior layouts were identical. She remembered one year early on where all of the houses had the same solar panelled stick-in-the-grass stake lights, making the street look like some sort of airport landing strip. But now, even Julie’s house, the semi that was attached next door, which was the exact mirror image of the one they were now sitting in, couldn’t have been more different.

  Camila’s ‘nothing that’s on show’ rule meant she’d eventually bought real wallpaper from Wickes, and yes while it wasn’t designer it did stick to the walls as did the real paint she’d bought from B&Q, a far cry from the streaky oil-based stuff Julie had given her when she’d first moved in that was definitely responsible for the horrible chesty cough Michael couldn’t get rid of in his first few months of life. Either way her house was now lovely. Yes, it had taken fifteen years and lots of scrimping and saving to get to this point, but she was proud of the cosy carpet that hadn’t gone threadbare, and happy with the plush deep-cushioned sofa even though she’d had to pay in installments. Both were a dark grey that complemented the silvery theme of the lounge. Even the real Yankee candle sitting on the shelf below the television was a glittered grey. Reaching out, Camila pressed the switch on the free-standing lamp. It wasn’t dark yet but the light drew attention to the pretty beaded crystals hanging from the shade.

  “Can I give it you straight about your towel set first please?” said Camila, turning back to Julie. “One huge one, which was incredibly heavy, and six face flannels. It’s a good job they’re out of sight in my en-suite.”

  Julie laughed. “Oh, you’re so bloody dramatic.”

  “That’s something we both know I’m not.” And it was true. Situations were just dealt with in both Camila and Julie’s worlds.

  “You’re right. That’s why I’m worried.”

  Camila drank more prosecco. “I promise you, I got a promotion.”

  “But why?”

  “You think she felt sorry for me?”

  “You were standing there in next to nothing having been kicked out of a focus group for being too old.”

  “She didn’t have to come out of the viewing room.”

  “Of course she was going to come out of the bloody viewing room.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re standing there in next to nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Camila, you might not be dramatic but you can be naïve.”

  “You said those towels were a Must Have!”

  Julie laughed. “You are bloody funny.”

  Camila lifted her glass in a cheers gesture.

  Julie leaned forward in her seat. “Tell me again what she said.”

  “She said lots.”

  “The gushing stuff.”

  “I don’t think it was gushing.”

  “It sounded gushing.”

  “I don’t think that’s how she meant it to sound,” Camila smiled, “but she said I was perfection.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “She said I looked incredible.”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “She said I was refreshing and empowering, and she wished she had my confidence.”

  Julie banged on the arm of the sofa. “So. Harriet Imogen Pearson, that ball-busting business bitch off the telly, wants your confidence?”

  “I had my str
etch marks on show.”

  “They’re barely scratches.”

  “She said she liked how direct I was.”

  “And then directly told you she wanted you.”

  “For the business. She made that clear.”

  “Camila. Take stock. What can you offer Harriet Imogen Pearson? The woman who’s already got the business world in lockdown.”

  “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Do I need to spell it out?”

  “I.T.” Camila laughed. Julie didn’t. “What? The boys used to find that funny.”

  “She wants you.”

  “I know she does.”

  “No.” Julie wiggled her body. “Like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like,” Julie wiggled her body again, “that.”

  “Nope, I’m not following. Do it again.”

  “Like,” Julie paused, “oh you bloody cow.”

  Camila smiled. “I know she’s a gay woman.”

  “Oh, you do?”

  “Of course I do. It’s brought up in almost every interview.”

  Julie lifted her glass and nodded. “Well then, I rest my case.”

  “Just because Harriet Imogen Pearson’s a gay woman doesn’t mean she wants every woman she gives praise to.”

  “But she wants you.”

  “For the business.”

  Julie gasped. “You help out in my bacon butty van! You’ve done part time bits and bobs here and there. What can you offer her apart from your hot body?”

  “Stop being kind.”

  “I’m not, you’re a bloody cracker!”

  “I was being sarcastic. I have skills.”

  “And she wants to see them. Look at you, life’s short, give it a whirl; I would if Terry would let me.”

  “Would you?”

  “With her? God yeah, she’s bloody gorgeous. Honestly, Camila, either way you’re onto a winner.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “That’s where you’re naïve. She saw you. She fancied you. She’s going to take you.”

  “Where?”

  “Bloody heaven if the stories in Take A Break are true. Plus, fluidity’s en-trend.”