How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  ‘Emily’s right, Rich. You’re not seriously suggesting your parents will eat keen-wah on Christmas Day? Remember that time we gave Barbara sweet potato and she said it was what they used to feed to pigs during the war?’

  Rich shrugs and fastens his neon-yellow belt over his windcheater: ‘Christmas doesn’t have to be set in stone, does it? We need to open ourselves up to the possibility of change, Kate. Actually, Joely says …’

  Not her again. I’m starting to actively dislike this stout, wholesome, menopause-expert cat-lady without going to the trouble of meeting her first. The Gospel according to St Joely has grown tiresome. Has Rich found some kind of mother substitute or something? I change the subject and suggest brightly that Rich might like to forego his bike ride for once and get the Christmas decorations down from the loft and then accompany me to the supermarket to buy food and drink for Em’s party. Rich says huffily that he is preparing for a big race in May, and he can’t afford to miss a single day. ‘It’s not a bike ride, Kate, it’s training.’

  After he’s gone, Ben comes over and rests his head on my arm. ‘Mum, can we have little sausages in bacon and crispy roast potatoes for Christmas dinner?’

  ‘Course we can, darling.’

  ‘I want everything to be the same,’ he blurts out in a voice too small for his body. He must have grown three inches since the summer. There are ghostly stretch marks on his back, the skin striated like a silver birch.

  ‘Mum, where will we put the tree in our new house? I liked our old house.’

  ‘So did I, my love, but you know we had to move so Daddy could do his course and Mummy could do her new job in London. Everything will be exactly the same, I promise. Our new house will be lovely soon. Clever Piotr will have finished our kitchen, won’t you Piotr?’

  ‘Yrrnrsczr.’ From a crawl space under the floorboards, comes the muffled sound of Polish affirmation.

  10.17 am: ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’ was pouring like aural hot chocolate from every shop doorway on my route into work this morning. Speak for yourself, Michael Bublé. Am struggling to understand how the kids can be breaking up from school next week. The weather is so mild and, mentally, I’m still somewhere in late October. I’d forgotten how hard it is to organise a family Christmas while holding down a full-time job. Let’s face it, Christmas is a full-time job, and I daren’t show any sign of slacking off in an office where I’m still on probation.

  Word has got back that I didn’t make a deal with Grant Hatch – quite the opposite, in fact. Jay-B sent me a terse email asking for a full report of the meeting with ‘likely solutions re Grant going forward’. Chemical castration springs to mind. I badly need to drum up some new business to earn my keep around here. No word yet about the Russian deal. It’s gone to the head of Risk, and then the Board, who will give it the final sign-off if all the checks come up OK, and if they decide that Mr Velikovsky is unlikely to be unmasked as a Bond villain hell-bent on world domination. Not for the next three years, anyway.

  Troy came over and sat on my desk yesterday, legs splayed wide apart like the unselfconscious baboon that he is, and told me that the firm gets nervous about Eastern European money. ‘It’s not very sticky, Russian cash,’ he explained. ‘Tends to leave as fast as it came in, which is crap for the bottom line.’

  Troy’s show of helpfulness was fooling no one. I know full well he’d be cracking open the champagne if my first big success was snatched away from me. If I brought in Velikovsky it would be as if the hand grenade Troy gave me had turned into a hundred red roses.

  I never had much time for this kind of office willy-waving when I was building a career here in my thirties. Not having a willy to wave helped: you can’t wave a vagina, can you? I have even less time now I’m here earning money simply to pay Piotr to build my kitchen and put food on the table – well, Doritos for Emily’s party, anyway. If Troy wants to patronise me, the woman who, in another lifetime, set up the fund he works on, then the Scarlet Pimpleboy can go right ahead. What matters is that I impress Jay-B, which is why I am going to make nice with some rock-star widow, Bella Baring, who my boss says is ‘mad as a sack of cats’. I should really be swotting up on this bonkers woman before our meeting, but Christmas calls.

  Whatever it takes, I have to get hold of a PlayStation for Ben. I promised. Decide to ring evil faceless Internet cow to challenge her in person. If righteous anger fails will throw self on her mercy, describe Ben as twenty-first-century Tiny Tim who will wither and die without gift of latest technology.

  11.28 am: The office is pretty empty and there’s no sign of Jay-B or Troy, so I quickly dial the Contact Us number and get a recorded message: ‘If you wish to speak to a customer services adviser, please choose one of the following options: Press one for Sales, Press two for Tracking, Press three for Total Nervous Collapse, Press four if you wish to murder a member of our Help Team and display their severed head on Tower Hill. Press five to hear these options again.’

  ‘Bugger. Why is it never possible to speak to an actual human being?’

  ‘Are you OK, Kate?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Alice, did I say that out loud? Just being driven quietly loopy by the joys of Christmas shopping.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she sighs. ‘This year, I’ve got to buy for my mum, my dad, my brother and Max. Nightmare.’

  I look at Alice and try to remember what it was like when I was single and Christmas was just getting presents for four people and turning up on Christmas Eve at your parents’ house expecting the festivities to commence. No point describing what is involved in creating perfect Christmas for children and husband and husband’s family, especially sister-in-law, the born-again Ofsted Inspector, who brings her judgemental eye to canapés, napkins and table decorations. Put it this way, Cheryl has a Christmas Pudding Cinnamon-fragranced air freshener in each of her three toilets. I presently have one working bathroom with what Richard would call issues around sanitation and a bumper pack of Santa Claus serviettes.

  I don’t mention any of this to Alice. It would be like trying to explain neoclassical endogenous growth theory to Lenny. No need to frighten the poor kid. She’ll find out soon enough, if that louse Max ever gets round to popping the question. Alice says she is excited about the office party, which is taking place in some club I’m clearly supposed to have heard of in Shoreditch. I arrange my features into an approximation of eager anticipation, shudder inwardly and add party to my Christmas to-do list, which is currently longer than Finnegans Wake. Surely attendance isn’t compulsory?

  ‘You totally have to come,’ says Alice. ‘You’re part of the team now and all the big bosses will be there so you definitely need to show your face. Oh, and Kate, don’t forget your flu jab. Lunchtime. It’s on the eleventh floor remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thanks.’ (‘Roy, can you give me a nudge about the flu jab please?’)

  Dial the number for the PlayStation supplier again and, this time, miraculously, I get through. Am so startled to be speaking to an actual person that the whole sorry tale comes pouring out of me. How I purchased the item, but I reset the password as instructed, and, infuriatingly, that cancelled the order. Then, I bought it again, using the right password, which was great until I got an email from the company telling me that delivery would now be after 29th December.

  ‘That is correct, yes,’ says the voice.

  ‘But, obviously, it’s a Christmas present. A Christmas present. And Christmas takes place on the twenty-fifth so the twenty-nineth isn’t much use to me and my son really wants this PlayStation which I paid you for weeks ago.’

  ‘Is not possible. Out of stock.’

  ‘Well, as I didn’t cause this problem and I’m going to have a really disappointed boy on Christmas Day, I think the least you can do is …’

  ‘Madam, I have the right to terminate this conversation, as I feel you are getting aggressive,’ says the voice.

  ‘What do you mean, I’M GETTING AGGRESSIVE? I’m being in
credibly polite considering how utterly hopeless your company has been.’ Oh, hell. Spot Jay-B coming out of the lift and quickly put the phone down.

  1.10 pm: Over lunchtime, I call every possible PlayStation supplier within a twenty-mile radius of the office. Nothing. I Google Tofurky instead. Sadly, it turns out not to be an upper-class foot perversion but an actual thing: a vegan substitute for turkey. ‘This holiday season, while others are sitting down to a meal of dead flesh, fill your plate (and your tummy!) with these tasty, cruelty-free meats instead.’

  Sorry, despite what Saint Joely says, we are so not having that in my house on Christmas Day. I know just where Richard can stuff his Tofurky.

  ‘What’s that, Roy? I have to remember something. OK, can you narrow it down, please? What am I supposed to be noticing? I really have no idea what you’re on about. Never met the Joely woman.’

  At that moment, Jay-B comes over. He wants to brief me about Bella, the rock-star widow. He explains that Fozzy Baring’s kids all have trust funds. There are three legitimate children, but as many as nine all together; since Fozzy died, more women keep coming out of the woodwork and demanding DNA tests. Bella, who was the starter wife, has three of the kids, but she prefers horses. Can’t blame her. The eldest boy has been in the Priory. Depression induced by smoking too much dope. Your basic car-crash rock-sprog. Bella likes a bit of the wacky baccy herself. Hasn’t got a clue about the investments.

  ‘Your job, Kate, is to explain things without confusing her and reassure her how brilliantly it’s all going. Fozzy’s accountant is always trying to get Bella to move the money somewhere else so he can get a bigger slice. Greedy bastard. That mustn’t happen. You’re cool with that, yeah?’

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely, no problem. I’ve been reading Fozzy’s autobiography.’

  ‘FLU JAB!’ shouts Roy, making me leap up with a start.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, Jay-B, just forgot, I have to nip upstairs. Back in a minute.’

  ‘Roy, you were supposed to be reminding me about my flu jab!’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Yes, but much too late. Look at the time.’

  A nurse is sitting behind a table at the entrance to the eleventh floor. Only one person remains in the queue. Clearly, they’re about to finish.

  ‘So sorry I’m late,’ I say, ‘have you got time to squeeze me in?’

  The nurse gives an obliging little smile and indicates a list where I’m required to fill in my name and – oh, help – Date of Birth. I scan down through all of my colleagues’ birthdays. Some of them were born as recently as 1989. I could literally be their mother. Malcolm from Accounts, who is universally considered to be ‘ancient’, practically Mayan, in fact, was born in April 1966, a whole year after me. Luckily, and only because I forgot my appointment, no one in the office will see that I am, in fact, the oldest person in the entire building. Only the nurse will know my guilty secret. The pen hesitates a second above the box before I decide to write down the alarming truth: 11/3/65.

  6.20 pm: Am done for the day. Slink out of the office, holding my coat bundled up under my arm rather than putting it on. That way people might think I am coming back. Not that most of them bother to look up from their screens. I could trot past them on a donkey.

  Make it to the main door, which opens with a sigh. Join the club. Then out into the winter air, and freedom—

  ‘Kate.’

  Well, that didn’t last long.

  ‘Alice. What are you doing out here?’

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  ‘But I was just in the office. And so were you. I saw you there, ten minutes ago.’

  ‘I know, but I didn’t want, I mean I couldn’t really talk there.’

  ‘Private stuff.’

  ‘Well, sort of office stuff, actually, but private too.’

  ‘You speak in riddles, darling. Go on, tell me, don’t look so worried.’

  I look at her young clear face, which, to my amazement and dismay, begins to crumple.

  ‘My God, Alice. What’s happened? What have they done to you?’ A hand on her arm for support.

  ‘Nothing to me.’ She looks up. ‘To you.’

  ‘Me? Nothing’s happened to me. I mean, nothing worse than usual. Your basic ghastly day, but I made it through OK.’

  ‘I know, but … it’s just …’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘Troy.’ So that’s it. The man is a virus in a suit.

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘Well, I was in one of our meeting rooms, you know, the ones with the adjoining door. I’d gone to steal a pen from that stack of posh ones they always have at the side. And the door was open a bit, and Troy was in the other room, on the phone. I could hear every word. He obviously didn’t know I was there, and …’

  ‘And he was talking about me.’

  ‘At first I wasn’t sure. But he kept saying, “She”. Like, “She’s doing OK”, and “She’ll learn”. But then—’ Alice bites her bottom lip.

  ‘Come on, I’m a big girl. I can take it.’

  ‘Well, it started to get really nasty. Like, “We could totally bang her”, and “She’s up for it, she just doesn’t know it”, and then lots of horrible stuff about, I don’t know, like they were having a bet on you.’

  ‘When did you know it was me?’

  ‘When Troy said something about how it looked like you’d pulled off the Velikovsky deal. And then of course they were joking about pulling and pulling off and God knows what. I mean, how old are they?’

  ‘About ten and a half, mostly. Do you know who Troy was talking to?’

  ‘I can’t be sure, but at one point he went, sort of, “Hey, Mr Hatchman”, or something like that.’

  ‘Grant. I might have guessed.’

  ‘The slimy one from a few days ago?’

  ‘The very same. So was it just, you know, idle banter, or did …’

  ‘Well, that’s it. If they were just being silly I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but it sounded as if they were actually cooking something up. Like, “OK, mate, I’ll see if I can go where you couldn’t. Teach her to turn you down. No one turns down the Hatchman”. And Troy was using the c-word and everything. It was just so horrid.’

  ‘Alice.’ I try a smile, neither comforting nor convincing. ‘It’s OK, really. I’ve heard worse, believe me. I’ve been around a bit longer than you in this business, I’ve seen more than you have, and …’

  ‘That’s the other thing. Troy kept going on about how old you are. Like how you would, I don’t know, benefit or something from him, from a young guy giving you one …’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I mean, you’re what, forty-ish? That’s nothing. I was so pleased when you came to work here, Kate, because it felt like having backup, you know, girl power.’

  ‘Especially with Troys all over the place.’

  ‘Right. And I really didn’t even think about the age thing.’

  The age thing. There’s me, there’s my time. Nutshell.

  ‘Honestly,’ Alice goes on, in a bid to cheer me up, ‘it’s not as if you’re—’ she casts around for an extreme example, ‘—fifty or anything.’

  I give her a big hug. ‘No,’ I say. ‘No, it’s not.’

  16

  HELP!

  1.07 pm: Dr Libido’s office is in an imposing terrace of Georgian houses on the corner of Harley and Wigmore Street. He has a six-month waiting list: all those desperate women like me who’ve heard a rumour he can give us our old self back. I managed to get a cancellation.

  I didn’t think I should put it off any longer. The time had come to seek help. Earlier today, I was sitting in the vast, chilly, marble foyer of a prospective client’s building, crying my eyes out, so boiling hot that I stripped down to a camisole, exhausted because of 3 am waking, bloated and slightly stinky. Would you buy a fund off this woman? The pitch was a fiasco. Client looked at me as if I was deranged, which was fair enough after I’d called her David. T
o be honest, that business with Grant Hatch must have got to me more than I realised, what with him using my age as a weapon against me. Bastard. And I was really upset about Jack. Any hope he would get back to me was receding. At the college reunion, I had allowed myself to reach out to him, had set cynicism aside and decided to give happiness a shot. With everything else that was going on I longed to have one lovely thing go right and the fact it wasn’t was so shitty. When I came out of the pitch, I thought, ‘I will jump under a bus if I don’t start to feel better soon.’

  It was then that Roy, bless him, reminded me about Dr Libido. I called right there from the street and his receptionist said, ‘Oh, if you’re quick, you can come in now.’ A miracle. Jay-B had summoned me by text for an urgent meeting, but I jumped in a cab going in the opposite direction.

  Emily to Kate

  Hi Mum, may be few more coming to party. lol! Lizzy invited some friends from London. Pls get lots more food and drink! Love you xx

  Kate to Emily

  How many EXACTLY? We don’t want a riot! xxx

  1.14 pm: Dr Libido’s nurse looks like a young Meryl Streep, wearing crisp white tunic and trousers. She hands me a form and asks me to fill it in. I start reading and I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The questionnaire reads like the breakfast menu from hell, only instead of scrambled eggs there are fried brains.

  Have you suffered from any of the following:

  Feelings of anxiety – can’t stop worrying about things beyond your control? Tick

  Disturbed sleep and waking up in the night? Tick

  Unexplained weight gain that you just can’t lose? Tick tick

  Brain fog, trouble finding things? Yes, that’s why I have, whatsisname, Roy.

  Vaginal dryness? Well, it’s been a while since the lady garden had any gentleman callers but there’s certainly discomfort and itching down there. That’s one reason I don’t want to cycle. Sitting on the saddle would be painful.

  Low mood? Rock bottom, thanks.