by Kiki Archer
Nigel turned to Deana for confirmation that Camila was indeed where she was meant to be before ushering Tina back to her seat. “Ladies,” he said, “it seems we need to pay attention to what’s going on.” He banged on the table. “Focusing faces forward please. Deana, are you heading this up?”
Deana stepped forwards. “No, Camila’s the lead on this one, but we’re all here to discuss.”
“I’ll type up the notes,” said Brett, tapping on his tablet and moving to the seats against the front wall.
Camila smiled. This was good. Deana and Geoff were by her side, Brett had chosen a role that wasn’t at all supportive but was needed all the same and Tina had piped down, for the moment. “Okay,” said Camila, eager to show her ability to engineer discussions, if nothing else. “How many of you have choked on a liquid before?”
Silence.
“Or coughed as you breathed in and started to choke?”
More silence.
“Or, you know, you’re eating something and you suddenly laugh and it’s not the food you’re choking on, it’s your gasp that goes down the wrong way?”
Camila stared at the blank faces at the round table. “Spicy soup? You slurp it too quickly and your throat suddenly constricts?” She nodded; it was that asking for help time again. “Come on, ladies, aren’t you here to interact? To participate?”
Ellie spoke first. “You called me fat.”
“Yeah and you got me in trouble with your phone torch,” added Tanisha.
“And you lost me a day’s pay,” said the pink-haired punk. “Because I hear it was you who stole my place in the group.”
Tina stood up. “And I could definitely do whatever promotion you’ve got,” she snapped.
Camila looked around at the women, suddenly wondering how the fight-filming boys might respond if the scuffling children were in fact nasty bullies, or the people on the bus recognised the old man for the dirty Peeping Tom that he was. These women didn’t owe her anything. These women were happy to watch as she failed. She turned to Deana and Geoff who’d taken a notable step backwards. “I’ll carry on, shall I?” she said, to no reply.
Brett spoke up, tapping in an exaggerated fashion on his tablet. “So. So far no one recognises the need for the product.”
Turning to the remaining women in the group who Camila didn’t think she’d offended, she started again. “All I’m asking is whether or not you can imagine this happening? Your airway contracting due to a cough or an awkward swallow? Can you at least imagine it?” It was a technique she’d used when Michael and Ethan were growing up, when they didn’t want to admit to something, but they didn’t want to sound stupid either. Yes, Mummy, I can imagine my teeth dropping out. “That’s all I’m asking,” she would say. “Imagine your teeth dropping out. Now, tell me again, did you eat all the sweeties?”
“I think I might have choked once when I was drinking a Coke and I laughed suddenly.”
“Good!” said Camila, focusing on the woman sitting next to Ellie. “And did you find it hard to breathe?”
“For a bit.”
“Were you gasping?”
“For a bit maybe.”
“Okay, imagine you had an inhaler in your bag.”
“I don’t have asthma.”
“No, a choking inhaler.”
Tina was still standing. “A choking inhaler? Ha! Another crap idea from the crap ideas woman!”
Brett continued his over-the-top note taking. “When imagining a demand, the focus group still think the idea’s crap.”
Camila stepped forward and tried again. “How many of you have a rape alarm in your handbag?”
Silence.
“When you’re out jogging?”
Silence.
“Strange, I thought you were the fit and active target group for Mesh-Up gym wear?”
A woman beside Tina spoke up. “I have one.”
“Wonderful!” said Camila. “And how many times have you used it?”
“Never.”
“Good, but you take it anyway. So now, can you imagine how the same principle might apply here? You probably won’t choke, but you’ll take the device just in case.”
“What device?”
“The choking inhaler.”
“CRAP name!” Tina was still standing.
The woman spoke again. “But I wouldn’t pay for one. I only have a rape alarm because I got it free at my university fresher’s fayre.”
Brett tapped loudly. “No one would buy it anyway.”
“You wouldn’t pay five pounds say, for something that would stop the embarrassment of choking and spluttering for breath?”
Silence.
Camila nodded. “Okay ladies, not to worry. Thank you very much for your time.”
“I could do that!” snapped Tina to Nigel. “Is that all she had to do? What’s so special about what she’s just done?”
Camila left the room, heading back to the lift, unaware of Doug’s chastisement of everyone in the room.
“She’s just held her own in the cesspit,” he said. “And your time here, Tina, is done.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jabbing the button for floor five, Camila willed the doors closed. Embarrassed, shown up, mocked, unsupported, defeated, those were all understatements for how she was feeling right now. Ridiculous seeing as it was Deana’s idea to go down to the focus group and Brett’s idea to arrange it so quickly. She jabbed again. Had she been set up? Was it planned? Why even go ahead with an idea that had no real mileage? Yes, Deana had said it was good to keep all systems in place, but no one had helped her, they’d all just watched as she drowned, apart from Brett, who’d tried to hold her under. Keeping her finger on the button, she felt alone, which was silly seeing as she’d spent the best part of fifteen years alone, overcoming challenges all by herself, being both mother and father when she had to be, and cleaner and cook, not to mention taxi-driver and homework helper and personal shopper and first-aider, the list was endless… but the difference was easy, she did it for people who cared, for her children who were her world.
Sighing as the lift doors finally started to close, Camila questioned who she was doing this current job for, because it certainly wasn’t bringing the empowerment and personal independence she’d originally hoped. A stint on Julie’s bacon butty van was ten times as rewarding as this, the sheer joy and appreciation always visible on the customers’ faces the second they took their first bite of whatever greasy snack they’d chosen. Even looking after her brother and sister’s children at a playcentre seemed more appealing than this right now.
“Camila!” shouted Deana, shoving her foot in between the lift doors as they closed.
Camila looked down at the solo shoe, hoping it would be pulled out so she could continue her journey alone. She turned away as the chrome doors re-opened.
“Camila,” Deana was panting. “Brett, Geoff and I… come on, men,” she said, keeping the door open as she flagged them from the corridor. “Brett, Geoff and I, and in fact Nigel and Doug… Doug in particular, we wanted to say—”
“Deana! Sorry! Wait! Let me just jump in there! They said you were down here.” A woman with short, spiky hair who was clutching a sheet of paper joined the crowd in the lift but shoved her bottom against the frame to keep the doors open. “I’ll show Doug and Nigel next but, Brett, you’re going to love this one! Listen up.” She fanned her face with the email print off before reciting: “Hi, Harriet. I’ve spent the morning searching for your email address online, but obviously you don’t let any old hoity toity email you. Luckily I’m not any old hoity toity. La la la la la. I got to know you intimately in the limousine last night.”
“Ai ai,” cheered Brett.
“La la la la la. Your red stilettos are calling me.” The woman squealed as she flapped the paper again! “What a weirdo! This one’s claiming to work with you lot.”
Deana’s cough was loud but the yapping continued unabashed.
“I think she beats t
he woman who said she was Harriet’s long lost soulmate. Remember her? Deloris, I think she was called. Said she lived in the bushes in Harriet’s office.”
Deana’s staged cough was even louder, and now accompanied by a violent head shake, but the spiky-haired woman was oblivious.
“Obviously this is all bollocks; it’s from a Hotmail address. She does talk about the company’s intranet though, but honestly the lengths people go to to make contact with Harriet. How stupid to think this is her actual email address? H.I.P at H.I.P Marketing.” The woman laughed. “Of course it’s going to go through a P.A first.”
Bowing her head and drawing her shoulders in tight, Camila edged her way from the back of the lift and squeezed past her colleagues and the spiky-haired woman without saying a word, her pace quickening at the whoops and giggles that erupted behind her and chased her down the corridor until she turned and folded in on herself in the stairwell. Grabbing hold of the metal handrail, Camila clung on tightly as chilled wind whipped up the stairs. She shuddered. She had to get out; she had to get home. Who had she been kidding that she could do something like this? Halting her descent, she suddenly stopped. What about her bag and her keys? She paused for a second before recommencing her downward flight. She knew she couldn’t go back. They were laughing at her, all of them, and she felt like an idiot. She was an idiot. She’d ask Helen to nip up and get her things. Helen had been nice, in fact Helen had been the only nice person she’d come across so far.
Thankful for the cool draught as she made her final descent of the stairwell, Camila fanned her cheeks just to be sure before straightening her blazer and checking her hair, exiting through the heavy door and into the foyer with as much poise as she could muster. She glanced around. Why was it so busy? The one day she wanted to sneak about unseen and suddenly the place was heaving with people. Was there a fire alarm? No, she’d have heard it. A tour of the building then? Whatever it was she needed to get to the glass desk and ask for a favour.
“Helen,” she said, aware that the receptionist looked unusually frazzled. “I need… Oh no! What’s happened here?” Her attention was taken by Helen’s work surface. “It’s covered in smears!”
“Tell me about it. People have been leaning all over it to write their name tags as there’s no room left in the red or yellow areas.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re you.”
“They’re me? What? Replacing me? Well that didn’t take long, did it?!”
“Your old job. Pamela from Insights said she didn’t have time to re-advertise but Harriet said she had to do it properly. That’s what Harriet was doing down here the other morning. Pamela told me. She’s always huffing and puffing about on this floor moaning to me about everyone, Pamela that is, which is ridiculous seeing as she’s meant to be on floor three.”
“What do you mean do it properly?”
“Oh you know she can’t just call in the person who’ll steal her Christmas Crown.”
Camila shook her head. “I’m lost.”
“Pamela Simpson-Smith. She wins it every year. That’s why she hides herself down here.”
“Wins what?”
“The Christmas Crown, the Christmas Trophy. It’s hush hush but it gets voted for and given out on the sly.”
“Still lost.”
“The award for the crappest acronym. She’s won it for the past seven years. Won in the loosest of terms obviously.”
“Pamela from Insights?”
“Yes, Pamela Simpson-Smith.” Helen lowered her voice. “Pamela Isabelle Simpson-Smith.”
Camila looked to Helen’s name tag, staring at the heavily embossed H.A.H that matched the company’s logo. She gasped, realisation suddenly dawning on her. P.I.S.S. Pamela from Insights was P.I.S.S. The woman had been ridiculed for being P.I.S.S for the past seven years and now wanted someone else to take the attention. Feeling for the name tag that was tucked into her own blazer, Camila pulled it out roughly. So that’s why C.U.M had been given the job.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Scuttling out of the H.I.P building’s foyer, coat, bag and car keys finally back in her possession, Camila dashed across the car park towards her car. It was raining. Typical. Just when she thought today’s shittiness couldn’t get any worse, the weather decided to piss on her parade as well. Forcefully shoving the key into the slot, she cursed as her thumb nail snapped. “Oh well bloody hell,” she gasped, turning to rest her back against the unopened car door as she shook her once pretty nail in the air. Breathing in deeply, Camila tilted her head back, allowing the cold rain to hit her face hard before attempting to exhale all of her tensions away.
Keeping her eyes closed, Camila tried to imagine that the pain of the almost freezing droplets now smashing into her eye sockets, and the slow damp seeping through her clothing, to be some sort of therapeutic spa treatment. They did that didn’t they? At spas? Blast you with fire hoses, or douse you with buckets of cold water? At least she was getting this for free. Standing still and letting herself shiver, she tried to ignore the warm droplets sliding down her cheeks. Camila shook her head. She’d failed. She’d walked away from a challenge. She’d even forced Helen from reception to go back up and face the music. Not that anyone had been there on floor five frantically mourning her disappearance. The receptionist had said the workspace was empty. Camila exhaled again. They were probably still in that lift, laughing at her, laughing at her make-believe connection with Harriet. A connection that was definitely imagined, or certainly exaggerated, as they’d been right: Harriet hadn’t come in today. With a final deep breath, Camila nodded into the rain, decision made. Walking away was the wisest move she could make.
Yanking the car door open and sliding into the driver’s seat, Camila kept her head down as she started the ignition. She didn’t notice the chauffer-driven sedan pull in front of the H.I.P building, or the woman who emerged from the backseat under an umbrella, or the woman’s red stilettos that danced over the puddles before dashing through the glass doors of the foyer and heading towards the lift that would rise to floor five.
****
Much of the journey home was a blur for Camila, one of those times where you arrived at your destination with no clue how you’d got there. The journey from the H.I.P building wasn’t far, but there were numerous sets of traffic lights, three roundabouts and tons of speed bumps, yet she couldn’t remember manoeuvring through, around or over any of them. Had the lights been green? She couldn’t remember. All she recalled were the noisy windscreen wipers and the fact she’d been deep in thought, replaying the day and reaffirming her decision to leave. Obviously she hadn’t officially quit, but her contract was nine to five and it was only three thirty in the afternoon, yet here she was, turning into her road. Three thirty. Afternoon break in the office. She cursed herself. Why was she bothered? She’d only be sitting on her own, or possibly creeping along the corridor to see if she could hear Harriet’s voice in any of the offices. And why care about Harriet? The woman had clearly tarred her with the criminal brush and decided to end their friendship, which was all incredibly fickle and rather unfair.
Plus a few days ago she didn’t even know who Harriet Imogen Pearson was, not really anyway, so why should Harriet Imogen Pearson suddenly occupy so much of her head space? She shouldn’t, but Camila knew why it was happening. Harriet had put herself there, in her consciousness, with her compliments and kind gestures. No one had called her hot before and it had been an incredibly long time since anyone had been so desperate for her company; and desperate was the right word. Harriet had been eager, yet now, all of a sudden, there was nothing. And it wasn’t the fact she’d lost Harriet, it was the fact Harriet shouldn’t have presented herself as someone willing to be found.
Pulling into her driveway, Camila turned off the ignition and sat for a moment, the rain immediately blotting the windscreen. What if it wasn’t about the stolen car after all? What if she’d pushed the boundaries too far with her glasses-off game? Admitt
edly it was quite intrusive and she’d never have dared be so forward in her questioning had she not drunk so much, but Harriet had been driving that too, the “let loose and have fun” mentality. Yes, it couldn’t have been much fun being told your fake glasses were a front for your fake persona, which was in essence what she’d concluded, but it was light-hearted, just like the rest of the evening had been. But maybe that wasn’t enough for Harriet? Maybe Harriet had wanted more and her response to Harriet’s question about how many times she’d thought of women in a sexual manner had dampened any planned progression of their friendship. Camila shrugged. She wasn’t going to lie though. She’d never thought of women that way, but then again she’d never thought about women this way either, analysing every motive, every action, every non-action.
Camila closed her eyes. Would she ever actually go there? With a woman? With Harriet? Listening to the sound of the rain as it drummed against her car roof, Camila pictured the final scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral: Hugh Grant kissing Andie MacDowell in a torrential downpour. She’d always viewed it as one of the most romantic movie moments ever, the idea you were so consumed with someone, so lost in their kiss, that you’d say: “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.” And obviously life wasn’t like that and spontaneous romantic gestures never really happened, but it would be nice to think there’d be a time where she might lose herself in one moment of madness.