I’d arranged to meet Peter in Camden, in a pub near the market, which would never have been my first choice because I know how hellishly busy the area gets on weekends, and as soon as I walked in I knew that my worst fears were justified – the place was rammed with hipsters and tourists. Thankfully Peter had had the foresight to book a table, and the waitress led me to it, and there was Peter, immersed in the sports pages of the Sunday Telegraph. (Call me shallow, but I did cringe a bit when I saw his choice of reading material.) The last time I’d seen him, he’d been wearing ordinary jeans and a jumper, but today he’d clearly made a special effort with his appearance. He was working the grandpachic story that was one of the big trends of the season, with a tartan scarf looped around his neck over a tweed coat with leather patches on the elbows and a chunky cardigan, and when he stood up I could see he was wearing red corduroy trousers that ended at the ankle, revealing argyle socks. I wondered hopefully whether the copy of the Torygraph was just an ironic addendum to the look, and then it struck me that it was possible none of it was ironic, and this was his normal Sunday attire. My fashion radar simply wasn’t finely tuned enough to tell. Anyway, when he kissed me he smelled and felt so nice that I remembered our amazing night together, and felt better and forgave him for the socks. And the red trousers.
I sat down and Peter asked me how my week had been and how Serena was, and I told him, and asked him about how Jess’s wedding had gone, and he told me, and then we ordered our lunch – roast chicken for him and nut roast for me, and a bottle of red wine – and then a bit of an awkward silence fell, which I filled by chatting away about the other people in the pub.
“Look at that family there,” I said, indicating a couple and their perfectly behaved, Boden-clad offspring. “I bet you they’re both barristers, and they live in Highgate, and coming here for lunch is their version of slumming it.”
Peter laughed. “I live in Highgate,” he protested, but joined in the game anyway. “And over there, the bloke with the dreadlocks with the blonde girl. He’s her bit of rough, she’s only going out with him because her parents would be so shocked if they knew, except she’s wasting her time because she’ll never have the bottle to introduce him to them.”
I resisted pointing out that the dreadlocked man was quite hot enough to shag on his own merits, so to speak – I so would, anyway – and instead said, “Those two in the corner. Food bloggers. Look, she’s got her camera with her and they’re going to photograph every single dish and analyse it to within an inch of its life, and actually they’re hoping that the management will realise that’s what they’re doing and comp them things or give them a discount.”
By this point our own lunch had arrived and we started eating – actually, I was more kind of picking at my food, because I wasn’t particularly hungry and was feeling a bit shy and clumsy still, aware that what this was really about was me and Peter deciding whether we liked each other enough to sleep together again, and after that we’d have to decide whether we liked sleeping together enough to see each other again, and it’s a rather nerve-wracking situation to be in, more like an audition or a job interview than a date. I took a gulp of wine and looked around the room some more – it was one of those cavernous, contemporary places, all metal struts and expanses of glass and exposed brickwork – and I became conscious of a bit of a commotion by the entrance, and said to Peter, “Oooh – what’s going on there?”
I heard a child’s bell-like tones exclaim, “I’m not eating in this dump.” Immediately the volume of conversation in the restaurant dropped as everyone turned their attention to eavesdropping on the drama, the childless ones with horror as they vowed that if they ever had kids, they’d never, ever behave that way in a public place; the parents with relief that, on this occasion at least, it was someone else’s offspring kicking off.
“I want to go to MacDonalds,” said the child, its voice piercing the sudden silence of the room. There was a little murmur of embarrassed laughter, and as if encouraged, the kid continued, “I don’t want to have my lunch here. It stinks. It smells of bumholes.”
There was a pause, presumably while the child’s parents tried very quietly to persuade it to shut the fuck up and stop showing them up in public, and then the voice rang out again, “I won’t, and you can’t make me! Bumholes! Runny poo!” Another pause, then fresh inspiration struck and the child piped up, “Foreskin!”
Oh, how I regretted having my back to the door, so I was unable to appreciate the drama to the full, without craning rudely around for a look. I was giggling helplessly into my nut roast, but Peter was looking a bit shocked and disapproving. “I’d never have been allowed to get away with behaving like that,” he said.
“Poor parents, though,” I countered, “You don’t know, maybe the kid’s a perfect angel normally and this is just a blip. Can you see what they’re doing?”
“Trying to reason with him,” Peter said stiffly. “It doesn’t appear to be working.”
“Bumholes!” said the child again. “I bet the food tastes like poo! Poo and vaginas!” he finished triumphantly, and I could no longer resist twisting in my chair to catch a glimpse of the little sod and its unfortunate parents. I tried to glance discreetly around, but then froze and simply gawped, for there in the doorway, on either side of the child, a boy of about five wearing a Batman costume, complete with hood, were Ben and Nina.
My first thought was that Nina looked exactly the same, with her long, bright hair and vivid, floaty clothes. She was still tiny and insect-like, even more so because she was wearing huge retro sunglasses with bright blue lenses. The child – Benedict – was nothing like Ben or her at all: he was a plump, compact, dark-haired kid with beetle brows that could have done with a bit of attention from Anya the plucking lady, and to be brutally honest, he reminded me of the little boy in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Because I’ve been so close to Ben for so long, I generally have a fairly good idea of what’s going on in his head at any time, a bit like I do with Rose, but you wouldn’t have to know him to tell how he was feeling then, with about a hundred people all staring at him with varying degrees of pity and scorn. He looked bewildered and embarrassed, as if he’d like nothing more than to disappear beneath the reclaimed sanded floorboards, and totally unprepared for the realities of parenting this spawn of Satan.
“Shall we go to MacDonald’s, then, sweetheart?” Nina cooed. “Is that what Mummy’s little man wants?”
“Yes,” said the child, only he sort of stuck out his lower lip while he was saying it, so it came out like, “Mwuss.”
Nina flicked her filmy tangerine-coloured scarf over her shoulder, apparently totally unfazed by the attention they were attracting, and said, “Come on then, my darling. Mummy will take you there, and you shall have a banana milkshake for a treat. Come on!” she sort of snapped at Ben as an afterthought, and the three of them turned around and left, and everyone gradually returned to their food, sorry that the show was over but glad they had a topic of conversation that would last them all through their lunch and probably a good few dinner parties too.
I was considering telling Peter that I knew Ben, and filling him in on the whole sorry story, but he’d already launched into a bit of a diatribe about parenting techniques, and how laissez-faire, neglectful mothers and absent fathers were contributing to the moral decline of society and had been linked to the London riots last summer. He even quoted an article by Melanie Phillips that he’d read in the Daily Mail recently. Honestly, it was as if his body had been taken over by aliens. I wanted to say, “Who are you and what have you done with the bloke I fancied?” And in short order thereafter, “It’s not you, it’s me,” immediately followed by, “I’ll always love you as a friend.” But then I thought about Oliver’s birthday party in a couple of weeks’ time, and turning up looking like the loser girl who couldn’t get a date. And I thought about Ben and Claire (or Ben and Nina), Rose and Oliver, Vanessa and Tom, Simon and Khalid – basically everyone I knew in the whole wo
rld being part of a couple, like Noah’s sodding ark. And I’m ashamed to say that I went home with Peter and shagged him, just because I didn’t want to go home on my own.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next week, work started off vile and grew steadily viler. It began with Barri’s Monday morning breakfast meeting. This little brain-child of his meant that instead of starting at the relatively civilised hour of nine thirty, we were all expected to be in the office for half eight, and would gather around the meeting room table for a post-mortem of the previous week and some ‘blue-sky strategising’ about the week to come. Sadistically, Barri always arranged for a huge platter of pastries to be delivered from the food hall, so we sat there staring at the buttery croissants and sticky blueberry muffins and custard doughnuts, all absolutely determined not to be the first to cave in and eat one. Alongside the platter of shame was a bowl of fruit: bananas, which I detest, and a few rather sad-looking apples and clementines. The first time I’d attended one of Barri’s Monday meetings I had been unaware of the unwritten rules surrounding the pastries and, because I’d got up at six for a run and had no time for breakfast and was starving, I’d casually reached for a croissant and started eating it, and everyone around the table fell silent. There was even a little gasp from Isla, and Barri stopped talking about forecasts and gave me a look that practically took the polish of my nails.
“Wow, Ellie, you’re a lucky girl,” he said.
“Sorry?” I said, bewildered.
“I bet we’d all like to be able to eat naughty food like that, and keep our weight… Oh.” And he gave me a sort of sneery, dismissive look, and suddenly I didn’t feel hungry any more in the slightest, and left the rest of my croissant drying out on the plate, and by lunchtime I’d been quite lightheaded with hunger.
I’d realised now that the pastries were simply another weapon in the arsenal Barri used to intimidate his team, and like so much of his management strategy, its effect was subtle yet deadly. The previous week, after particularly trenchant critique of her design for the cover of the Autumn look-book, I’d walked into the kitchen for a coffee and found Isla hunched over the breakfast platter, crumbs on her chin and tears in her eyes. When she saw me she turned scarlet, muttered, “Just clearing up,” and tipped the rest of the pastries into the bin before legging it out of there as if she’d been caught doing something dreadful. And when I’d gone to the loo a few minutes later, I’d heard retching and sobbing coming from one of the cubicles. The two events may of course have been totally unconnected, but I’m just saying, those pastries were used manipulate our morale to quite lethal effect.
But now I’d been at Black & White for several weeks and I was wise to Barri’s little ways, so I calmly sipped my coffee (black, one sweetener) and peeled a clementine and ate it, one segment at a time, even managing to leave three segments behind on the plate to prove that I was totally in control of my vile, base urge to ingest calories in order to sustain my body’s essential metabolic processes.
“Odette, an update on the style blog, if you don’t mind,” Barri said.
“Of course.” Odette smoothed a lock of poker-straight blonde hair back over the shoulder of her coral-coloured jacket, and moved a turquoise-nailed finger over the trackpad of her laptop. “We had four posts go live last week. An exposé of Peaches Geldof’s changing style, a piece by Delta Hughes, the celebrity stylist, on how to wear bustles, a round-up of the new neons, and,” she paused and looked around the table rather smugly, “an interview with Bliss Newham. Bliss, as you know, was very much the face of the fashion weeks this season. She walked for Givenchy, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior and many others – in fact, she made a record seventy appearances on the catwalk. So we were delighted to have a blog by her – which Piper ghosted, of course – in which she reveals how her meteoric rise to stardom hasn’t affected her down-to-earth attitude, how she keeps her incredible figure through exercise and good genes, and loves burgers and chips, and how she has met so many warm, beautiful people in the fashion world, who she knows will be life-long friends.”
I tried not to be a little bit sick in my mouth, and pulled my shorthand notebook towards me and wrote, “Bliss Newham, unspoiled beauty,” for something to do, and so that Barri, who was sitting next to me, would think I was concentrating really hard and thought Odette’s revelations were of great significance.
“Excellent!” Barri said. Odette looked even smugger.
“Our new collections have gone live and are selling well,” she said, and trotted out some figures, which I noted down for a press release.
“Now, Daisy,” Barri said, “How’s the planning going for the polo in May?”
Daisy banged on for a bit about all the celebrities she’d managed to get on the guest list for this shindig, which was apparently a huge deal for Black & White. Every year the store was one of the main sponsors of an international polo tournament, the kind of thing that gets described as a ‘glittering event’ and a ‘highlight of the social calendar’, at which loads of celebs and trust-fund babies turn up in inappropriate clothes and get plastered. Daisy was organising the hospitality in the VIP marquee, where those in the inner circle of fabulousness would be spending the day being fed vast amounts of free food and drink, watching the action on the polo field and then ‘dancing the night away at a star-studded after-party’, as my press release put it. Rose had been with Vanessa a few years back, when she was dating Danny the polo player, and she apparently had a fabulous time and was introduced to Prince William, who Danny had known at Eton. She didn’t shut up about it for ages, I remember.
When Daisy had said her piece, Barri moved on around the table. Poor Torquil was savaged over some samples that had gone missing – it was almost certainly not his fault, and they’d been appropriated by some venal journalist – but he blushed a livid shade of puce and sweat broke out on his acned brow, and he looked at the plate of apricot Danishes with a kind of crazed desperation. I made a mental note to take them to the kitchen and throw them away immediately after the meeting in order to save Torquil from himself. When Isla’s turn came, she was clearly terrified, stammering and stumbling over her words, but she got off relatively lightly, because, as far as I could tell, every shred of originality had been stripped from her design and it was a bland, slavish reflection of The Brand.
As far as Barri was concerned, I was learning, The Brand was gospel. He held dear to his heart a weighty document (if something which only existed on the company intranet could be said to be weighty – its megapixels were legion, anyway) called the Brand Guidelines, which set out in minute detail what fonts, colours and words were to be used in all company communications. The English language took rather a battering – Barri had apparently declared a unilateral war on the humble comma, and the word ‘that’ was never to be used. Even the geography of London came under fire in the Brand Guidelines – the street on which the store was located could only be referred to as ‘Bond, W1S’. I’d been forced to read the entire tome from cover to cover during my first week, and with every page I’d felt a fresh surge of annoyance at its triviality.
Isla finished speaking, then Piper briefly summed up what she’d been up to the previous week – mostly writing blogs pretending to be fashion models – and then it was my turn.
But Barri said, “That’s it for this morning, ladies and gent. Get out there and make the magic happen!” And everyone got up to shuffle back to their desks, limp with relief and exhaustion, although it was only nine in the morning. “Oh, Ellie. A moment, please.” And Barri – I’m not making this up – stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, ran a finger theatrically across his throat, and allowed his head to drop dramatically backward. So, I was in for assassination.
Part of me just felt wearied by his histrionics, and conscious of how poor a manager he was to be treating people this way. But mostly, I’m afraid to say, I felt small and scared. Vindictive and petty as I was beginning to realise Barri was, he was my boss and ultimately I neede
d the job, and everyone wants their employer to think well of them. So I sat back down and pulled my shorthand notebook back towards me, despising myself for the tremor in my hands, smiled brightly and said, “Yes, Barri?”
“What,” he hissed, “is this?” And he produced from his powder blue leather Smythson document holder a copy of the previous day’s Sunday Mirror colour supplement. I realised with a slight sinking feeling that I’d been so busy shagging Peter, then eating pizza in bed with him before dashing home to get a load of washing on and snatch a few hours’ sleep, that I’d neglected my usual perusal of the Sunday papers. Barri flipped the magazine open, and there was a six-page spread based on the press release I’d sent out the previous week, all about globalism and ethics in fashion. It looked great – Nadine, the junior fashion assistant who I’d got hold of on the phone and befriended after we’d realised she was going out with James, the guy on their news desk who I used to chat to when I was at YEESH, had really pulled out the stops.
“Wow,” I said to Barri. “That’s quite a lot of coverage.”
“Ellie,” he spat, “It’s coverage. In. The. Sunday. Mirror. Have you not read the Brand Guidelines?”
I felt sick. “Of course I have. There’s nothing in them about the Mirror, is there?”
Barri smiled a nasty smile. “No,” he said, “there isn’t. There’s also nothing in them about how we don’t get graffiti taggers to spray our brand on railway arches, nor have tramps model our clothes when they’re dossing in Trafalgar Square, nor employ feral cats to piss our signature scent on walls.” All of these struck me as rather innovative ideas with quite a lot of potential, actually, except maybe the one about the cats, which while inspired would be tricky to bring to fruition. But clearly Barri thought otherwise. “I thought I had spelled out in our Brand Guidelines that Black & White is upmarket, Ellie. Was that not clear to you?”
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