A Funny Thing About Love

by Rebecca Farnworth

  Trish glanced at her and smiled. ‘No way, you look too smart to fire today.’

  They both considered Carmen’s pearl-grey fitted shift dress and shoe boots – after the casual look yesterday, she’d thought she’d better pull her finger out style-wise. ‘But I’m sure she’d like to,’ she muttered back. Trish, usually so positive about everyone, had nothing good to say about Tiana.

  Matthew took his place next to Tiana. The mischief was entirely missing from his eyes. Tiana gave him a tight little smile and then launched into her speech.

  ‘Thank you all for coming here?’ The Antipodean lift was in full swing. ‘I won’t take up too much of your valuable time, I know how busy everyone is, but I have a special announcement?’ She looked round the room, making sure she had the full attention of the twenty or so people there. ‘Matthew has decided to step down as deputy director of the company.’

  There was an immediate mass intake of breath and exclamations of ‘No way!’. Clearly Matthew had only told a select few.

  ‘You can’t leave!’ Trish wailed. ‘You are Fox Nicholson!’

  ‘Hear hear,’ came a chorus. But not from Tiana or Will, it had to be said. Carmen shot him a WTF look which he ignored. He was doing his bland corporate, expressionless act, and he was rather too good at it for Carmen’s liking.

  Matthew smiled. ‘Thanks, but it’s time for me to take a bow. I’ve worked in this business for over twenty-five years and really you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I can’t help wanting things to be the way they were, and that’s just not helpful to the company right now. But I love all of you and hope you’re going to stay in touch. I might even join Facebook.’ At this there was an audible chuckle from the room, as Matthew was a notorious technophobe and had only just got a mobile phone, and he detested using email. He was so dignified and courteous and such an all-round lovely person, Carmen could feel tears prickle her eyes, and she knew she wasn’t alone as she scanned the room and saw the expressions of shock on her colleagues’ faces.

  ‘Anyway,’ Matthew continued, ‘I want to go with a bang and not a whimper, so I’m having a party at home at the weekend. You’re all invited.’ Matthew’s parties at his house in the leafy suburb of Thames Ditton which overlooked the river had been wild annual events that usually took most of the office at least a week to recover from.

  ‘Speech!’ Lottie piped up, beating Carmen to it.

  Matthew shook his head. ‘Not here, Lottie, I’ll do it at home.’ Matthew’s hatred of the boardroom was also legendary. It had used to be a cosy, shambolic room with a large wooden table and mismatched chairs, until it too had undergone a makeover and all the furniture had been swept out and replaced with the impersonal glass-topped table and black leather and chrome chairs, which were desperately uncomfortable.

  After a few more platitudes from Tiana about how much Matthew would be missed, everyone shuffled out of the room and slunk back to their offices.

  Carmen wanted to ask Will if he’d known about Matthew, but he was deep in conversation with Tiana. Traitor, she thought savagely, and stomped out of the boardroom. Yet again as she sat down at her desk it was impossible to work. There were too many thoughts swirling around her mind for her to concentrate on what she should have been doing, which was to prepare for the meeting with Karl Fraser. After some ten minutes she couldn’t resist the impulse to see Will any longer. She just had to find out if he had known about Matthew.

  He was in his office this time, busy writing something at his computer. He radiated stress and seemed a million miles from the Will who had kissed her last night, but Carmen ploughed on regardless. ‘That was nice of you to speak out for Matthew at the meeting,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Did you know he was leaving?’

  Will looked up. He seemed pretty annoyed at her tone. ‘Yes, I knew, and what was I supposed to say? I’ve only known the man three months and I am Tiana’s deputy. She’s the one who gets to make the speeches.’

  Carmen scuffed her shoe boot on the wooden floor, deliberately making an irritating squeaky noise. ‘I just think you could have said something. Matthew founded this company, people are going to be really sad to see him go. I’m really sad to see him go.’

  Will pushed his hair back. He seemed distracted and there wasn’t a smidgen of flirtation. Carmen was starting to feel distinctly awkward about last night. Maybe Will had lied when he’d said it was a good kiss, maybe he thought it was a terrible kiss and was now trying to put as much distance between them as possible.

  ‘I know you’re upset about Matthew and I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Anyway, I’ve got to get on, I have a meeting to prepare for.’

  Carmen felt horribly rejected. ‘Yeah, well, so have I,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Like flirt with the postboy?’ Will asked, a slight twitch to his mouth.

  Okay, so that was a slight improvement. ‘No, like see that fuckwit Karl Fraser.’

  ‘Look, if he gives you a really hard time, you can always refer him to me.’

  It was actually a sweet thing to say, but Carmen couldn’t help feeling patronised. ‘No, no, I can handle him. Anyway, must get on.’

  ‘Laters, Miller,’ Will called after her, adding, ‘I really am sorry about Matthew. And liking the dress – rock that sexy governess look.’

  Will’s flirty comment could not dispel Carmen’s feeling of gloom as she slouched back to her office. She couldn’t face the prospect of work, all those emails to follow up, all those calls to make extolling the virtues of her clients, trying to screw out the best deal for them. It all seemed pointless. Instead she sat at her computer and clicked through photographs of the last time she reckoned she’d really felt happy – on holiday over two years ago on the Greek island of Zakynthos with Nick. There they were beaming away on one of the beautiful beaches, blissfully unaware that a year later they would have split up.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said out loud, drinking in the brilliantly blue sea and the radiant happiness. Just then her mobile rang. It was Nick.

  ‘That’s a coincidence,’ she told him. ‘I was looking at pictures of us.’

  There was a pause, during which Carmen could detect Nick’s unease at the mention of the word ‘us’. ‘No, no, I’m not harbouring thoughts of getting back with you, it was just to see Greece – you know how I feel about it.’ Carmen loved Greece – the sky, the clear seas, the smells, the people, the heat, the cicadas, the sunsets – she had to go there at least once a year or suffered withdrawal. ‘My soul needed a shot of happiness. Matthew’s just resigned and I’m due to see fuckwit Karl and you know how much I detest him.’

  She expected Nick to launch into some expletives of his own – he too loathed Karl – but none came. ‘I wanted to see you, Carmen, but I’ve got to fly out to Germany tonight for the tour and there’s no other time, and I really didn’t want you to find out from anyone else.’

  Suddenly Carmen was on high alert. She and Nick had promised to do the two-year separation and then divorce – both hoped it would be less acrimonious, less painful, and after all, it wasn’t as if they didn’t still care for each other, if not as lovers then as friends. ‘You don’t want to get married already, do you?’ she asked accusingly. For the last four months Nick had been seeing Marian, a French hairstylist he had met at one of his gigs, but Carmen hadn’t realised it was serious.

  ‘No, it’s not that.’ Nick had his uptight, you’re not-going-to-like-this voice on. ‘Oh God, Carmen, I’m really sorry to do this to you. Marian is pregnant.’

  ‘Oh’ was all she could manage. Dropping the phone, Carmen lunged across the office and retched into the bin. She could hear Nick calling her name. ‘Sorry,’ she wanted to say in that disembodied voice you hear when you get someone’s voicemail, ‘the person you are calling is unavailable, please try later.’ Nick’s calls grew more urgent. She staggered back to the chair and picked up the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Carmen, really sorry, I know how this must feel to you, really
I do, even though you must think I’m the most insensitive bastard in the world.’

  ‘When’s the baby due?’ Carmen didn’t know why she asked this – it would only pain her further.

  ‘The eighth of March or around then,’ Nick reluctantly replied.

  ‘So Marian must have got pregnant practically straight away?’ Oh, the bitter, bitter irony after all that trying with Nick, when sex became the last thing in the world you wanted to do but you forced yourself, for a baby that was never going to happen.

  ‘Something like that.’ Another reluctant reply. ‘Anyway, take care, let’s speak properly when I get back.’ Nick spoke in a rush, so quickly she couldn’t have got another word in even if she’d wanted to. Poor Nick, the bearer of what would be to anyone else the best news in the world, no wonder he wanted to get off the phone.

  Carmen very carefully clicked the hang-up button on her mobile and put it on her desk. She felt as if she might shatter at any moment. Shock pulsed through her. Nick was having a baby. She struggled to take in the news. But then again, how could she not have seen this coming? It was, after all, the whole children thing, or rather her not being able to have them, that had done for her marriage. Unexplained infertility, her unexplained infertility, the doctors called it. Two years of trying and then a year and a half with three cycles of IVF later the couple were broken financially and emotionally. They had not pulled together in the crisis, as she had hoped, they had been driven apart – Nick straight into the arms of another woman, Carmen into the arms of despair. She suddenly had a pounding headache. Oh my God, on top of everything else, I’ve probably got a tumour, she thought grimly. Still, at least I’ve spared my children the sight of me dying young. Always look on the bright side and everything.

  She picked up her bag. There was absolutely no way she could stay at work now. She had to get away, somewhere she could give vent to the pain. Her office door burst open. Of all the people in the world right now it was safe to say that Karl Fraser was the very last person Carmen wanted to see.

  ‘Michael Evans has got a fucking Channel Four quiz show and he’s not even funny!’ he roared, sending a shower of spittle Carmen’s way, causing her to flinch.

  ‘Actually, he is funny,’ she corrected him. Karl was too wound up to sit and paced like a caged rhino up and down Carmen’s tiny office, which only took three paces each way. He kept bashing into her cherry blossom lights. If he broke them she would bloody kill him as they’d been a present from one of her best friends, Jess.

  ‘He is not!’ He stopped pacing and leaned across the desk. Carmen contemplated putting up her umbrella as defence against the rain of spittle. ‘Where is my fucking quiz show? I won the fucking Eddie two years ago, the world should be my fucking oyster.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because you’ve alienated every single TV producer you’ve ever met with your enormous, overweening, unbearable ego.’ Carmen thought, or rather she thought she’d thought it but judging by the look of sheer astonishment across Karl’s fleshy face, Carmen had actually said it out loud. Nick’s shocking news seemed to have freed something in her. She felt swept along on a righteous tide of anger herself. It seemed all the pain, anguish and bitter disappointment were being channelled right at Karl, like a wave gathering momentum as it reached the shore. She was powerless to resist.

  ‘What did you say?’ he roared.

  ‘I think you heard me. You are egotistical in the extreme and impossible to work with.’ Carmen stood up.

  ‘What do you know about anything? You’re just a fucking agent!’ Karl snarled.

  ‘I know talent when I see it,’ Carmen shot back, the wave of anger rearing up and breaking now. ‘And I know that you have an appalling case of halitosis. I also know that I loathe you and no longer want to represent you. In fact, I no longer want to represent anybody, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hand in my resignation and get as far away from all you egotistical fuckwits as possible.’

  ‘You’ll never work in comedy again!’ Karl shouted.

  ‘Unoriginal, egotistical fuckwits. Oh, and I thought your last stand-up set was deeply derivative. Frank Skinner was doing all that aeons ago. So do me a favour and piss off, and do everyone else a favour and buy some Listerine.’

  Carmen marched out of the office and along the corridor. She heard Will calling her name but ignored him and, blatantly disregarding all company protocol and Trish, who was shaking her head and saying, ‘No!’, she burst into Tiana’s office. Tiana was perched on her desk, yacking away on her inevitable BlackBerry.

  ‘I really need to talk to you,’ Carmen interrupted. Tiana held up her hand and then pointed at the lilac sofa.

  Carmen sat down and waited for Tiana to stop tormenting her with her voice. Finally Tiana ended the call and swung round to face Carmen.

  ‘So, Carmen, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Actually, Tiana, I’ve decided to resign. With immediate effect.’

  ‘Really? That is something of a shock announcement, isn’t it?’ Alright, she could have the lift as it was a question. ‘Are you sure you aren’t overreacting to the news about Matthew?’ And that one as well. ‘I know how close you guys are. And I know your appraisal left you a lot to think about, but I am sure you can make the requisite improvements?’ But not that one.

  Carmen shook her head. She felt as if she was about to dive into the deep end and the water looked very dark and very scary, but she had to do it. ‘I think it’s time for me to do something else, Tiana.’

  Tiana clicked her Mont Blanc pen on and off, another intensely annoying habit. ‘Usually I would ask you to work a month’s notice? But I feel under the circumstances that it might be best if you clear your desk now? The company really can’t have agents working for it who can’t give a hundred and fifty per cent?’ Another pet hate of Carmen’s was people who came out with this percentage as if it meant something, instead of being utter nonsense.

  It wasn’t a question. Carmen nodded. This really was it.

  ‘And you can say your goodbyes at Matthew’s party. It’s been nice working with you, Carmen?’

  There, she was dismissed. She was about to reply, but Tiana was already on another call. Carmen had just torpedoed her own career. Way to go.

  She spent the next hour in a complete daze. Trish helped her pack up her books and snow globes, all the while bemoaning the fact that she was leaving. Carmen also had the humiliation of having Dex the security guard hovering in the doorway, making sure she wasn’t going to steal anything – though quite what she would steal was anyone’s guess, seeing as the only valuable thing was the MacBook, and that belonged to her. Or maybe he was stopping her from seeing her colleagues, in case she spread ill will and discontent and was bad for morale. Dex kept shifting his weight, which was considerable – too much time spent sitting in front of a CCTV monitor, eating Danish pastries – from Doc Martened foot to foot and apologising, ‘I’m just doing my job, Carmen.’ His plump white face was quite pink with embarrassment. Carmen ended up feeling sorry for him. She’d always thought he’d probably suffered enough by being the one who caught Dirty Sam on the fire escape, and he was decent enough not to report him.

  Connor the postboy was on his rounds and looked equally devastated to see what was going on. ‘I’ll have to have a goodbye kiss, Carmen,’ he said, managing to squeeze past Dex and popping his head round the door in expectation.

  That really would be the icing on her day. Carmen took a step backwards and blew him a kiss. ‘Let’s not spoil the memory of the one we had at Christmas,’ she said. ‘Dex, you’d better get Connor away, I don’t want him to get into trouble.’ Connor looked reluctant to budge without the full tongue-on-tongue experience, but Dex was bigger and managed to extract him.

  ‘Are you really sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Trish asked for about the twentieth time.

  ‘I need a change, Trish,’ Carmen told her. She was disappointed not to have seen Will, but Trish said he’d been called out of the offi
ce on urgent business.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be in touch,’ she said as she caught Carmen gazing wistfully out of the door in the direction of Will’s office.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Carmen muttered, ‘but I guess he’ll be at Matthew’s.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll ring you, Carmen, he really likes you. He’s always really down when you’re not in. And the kiss last night seals it, doesn’t it?’

  Although Carmen had always admired Trish’s ability to run the office, unjam the photocopier, remember to buy fresh coffee and organise Matthew, she had never placed much significance on Trish’s matchmaking abilities, seeing as Trish’s longest relationship that she knew about to date had been with her collection of cacti. Still, she didn’t want to be rude, and gave Trish a hug goodbye. Trish then insisted on giving her one of her favourite cacti. ‘This is Basil, he loves it if you sing Motown songs to him,’ she declared. ‘He likes them all, but I always feel “Papa was a Rolling Stone” is his favourite.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Carmen replied. Clearly Trish really, really should get out more.

  ‘Yes, he needs to be free from here as well, he hates the air con, they all do. In fact, I might have to take them home, but then what would I look after?’ Trish said sadly.

  ‘What about some tropical fish?’ Carmen suggested, reasoning that fish were pretty low maintenance and calming to watch.

  Trish fiddled with her braids. ‘Fish, I like it. I’ll write up a proposal for Tiana.’

  ‘Can’t you just ask her?’

  Trish shook her head. ‘No, she has to see everything in writing.’

  Carmen felt that she had definitely got out of the company at the right time.

  It was only when she was walking towards Oxford Circus Tube at the, for her, unusual time of three o’clock in the afternoon that the enormity of what she’d just done hit her like walking into a brick wall. She carefully placed Basil on the pavement while she scrabbled for her phone. ‘Marcus, is there any chance I could see you? Nick’s having a baby and I’ve just resigned.’