She felt his hand slip into hers, and she had a sudden, terrifying thought that he might try to kiss her. She dropped her eyes and took a quick step back, but he just gave her hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it. When she looked up again he was walking backwards away from her.
‘Good night, Helen. See you next week.’
She watched him as he turned and walked up the street, and suppressed the small but nagging pang of something that could only be described as disappointment rising in her chest.
Monday
Myles arrived in the office about an hour after Gemma, though as usual he’d already been to two meetings.
He paused at her desk. ‘Hi, Gemma, did you have a good weekend?’
Oh great, now he decides he wants to be friends.
‘Yes, thanks,’ she returned. ‘Quiet, I get pretty tired these days.’
He nodded. ‘Did you finish up late on Friday night?’
Gemma sighed. Could he be more transparent? He obviously only wanted to ask after Helen. ‘Helen went almost straight to bed after she came back from your walk,’ Gemma reported. And not that he was really interested, but – ‘I was tired too, so Charlie was kind enough to escort my sister home. She was in need of supervision.’
Myles gave her a faint smile. ‘Do you like living there?’ he asked.
She thought for a moment. Of course she did. Whatever was going on with Helen now, she couldn’t want for a better housemate. ‘Yes, I like living there very much,’ she said. ‘Helen’s been really good to me, and she’s a very easy person to live with.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Very private, mind you,’ Gemma added.
‘Yeah, I get that,’ Myles said, perching on the edge of her desk. ‘She still hasn’t told me about her husband.’
‘And you haven’t said anything, I hope?’
He shook his head. ‘I told you I’d wait for her to bring it up. I just wish she felt she could open up to me,’ he said wistfully.
Dear God, Gemma groaned inwardly. Did she really have to sit here and listen to his lovestruck angst?
‘The thing is, she’s not over it,’ Gemma said bluntly. ‘Nowhere near.’
Myles looked at her directly. ‘You don’t think so?’
‘I know so,’ said Gemma. ‘Believe me.’
He looked thoughtful as he stood up again. ‘Oh, that’s right, I wanted to ask you, Gemma, is it okay if Helen works on Wednesday instead of you?’
‘Pardon?’ she croaked.
‘Just for this week,’ he added. ‘Though you might want to think about gradually reducing your days over the next few weeks – you haven’t got long to go, have you? And you said you’re getting tired.’
She was about to snap, That’s none of your business, till she remembered that it was entirely his business. Bugger.
‘May I ask what’s happening on Wednesday?’ Gemma resumed, trying to keep her cool.
‘There’s a meeting I want Helen to be part of. It doesn’t concern you: it’s a project I’m just getting up and running, and you’ll be off on maternity leave. So I thought if Helen could work on Wednesday . . .’
‘It’s all right with me,’ said Gemma, trying to sound offhand. ‘But I don’t know how Helen’s going to feel about it: Noah’s only in preschool on Thursday and Friday.’
‘I realise that. But after you have the baby, you’re going to be looking after Noah then, isn’t that the arrangement?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted warily. The finer details had never really been ironed out, and lately Gemma had been growing increasingly worried about how on earth she was going to look after a new baby as well as a four year old. Noah was a good kid, easy, but she didn’t think the baby was going to be so easy. She was well aware that women did it all the time, but they had experience by the time they had to juggle two. She might manage after a while, after she’d got used to the baby, but what would they do about Noah in the meantime? Gemma knew it had all been her idea in the first place, but lately she was getting the feeling it was all going to blow up in her face.
‘Gemma? Is everything all right?’ Myles prompted, leaning over her desk to get her attention.
‘Yep,’ she stirred. ‘Everything’s under control. I’ll let Helen know about Wednesday.’
‘Sure, you two talk about it,’ he said. ‘But I’m about to give her a call now anyway – I have some things I want to go over with her. I’ll let her know that it’s okay with you.’
Wednesday
‘I don’t get it,’ said Justin, raising his arm a little as he let the sheet of paper he was holding slide from his hand, free-falling back to the table.
Every account team leader had been called to the meeting this morning in the boardroom, but none of them had been told what it was about. Myles and Helen had been working on the proposal since Monday, tossing it back and forth over the phone and via email. Helen had needed persuading initially: this was getting a little too close to the coalface for comfort.
‘You know how I feel about advertising, Myles,’ she’d tried to tell him.
‘But it was your idea, Helen.’
‘Not intentionally,’ she’d declared.
‘That’s what makes it so good,’ he’d said, ‘and why I want you in on it from the beginning.’
‘I don’t understand. Why do you even want to get involved at this level? You’re the managing director.’
‘My role is to improve the efficiency of the business, and this is one way I believe I can do that. Look, I’m not going to run any campaigns; I only want to get them thinking.’
They knew Justin would be the first person to object; they could have placed odds on it.
‘What don’t you get, Justin?’ Myles asked.
‘“I buy it because . . .”?’ Justin almost sneered, though not quite, he was too shrewd for that. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘What’s not to get, Justin?’ Myles restated, displaying admirable restraint, Helen felt. She’d never really taken to Justin. He was the type of ad exec that gave ad execs a bad name.
‘You want to mount an entire campaign with the catch cry “I buy it because”?’ said Justin. ‘I hate to break it to you, MD, but it’s been done before.’
‘Not exactly like this.’
‘Close enough,’ he shot back. ‘I don’t get what the big deal is.’
Myles cleared his throat. ‘I think you’re all aware that for some time I’ve been less than delirious about some of the self-referential, arthouse stuff we’ve been churning out here at Bailey’s. If you’ll look through the notes provided in the folders in front of you –’ Myles paused, waiting for everyone to catch up. He looked directly at Justin. ‘Do you need Helen to help you find it, Justin?’
Justin sniffed, opening up his folder.
‘If you turn over to page four,’ Myles went on, ‘you’ll find listed some very interesting figures. These campaigns are not achieving what they set out to do. They are, simply put, not hitting the mark.’
‘Excuse me, MD?’
‘Yes, Deb?’
‘You’ve blacklisted the Pearson campaign. You do realise it won the Silver World Medal in New York last year?’
‘Precisely my point, Deb,’ said Myles. ‘Look at the stats for product recognition, product recall, sales on the back of the campaign. This was an ad that won arguably advertising’s highest honour, but it was a failure in the marketplace.’
‘The same could be said for a lot of films that fail at the box office, MD,’ said Lewis, possibly one of the stupidest executives on staff. Helen marvelled at how he had got to where he was, and, even more, how he managed to stay there. ‘I mean, they get critical acclaim, they get Academy Awards, but no one goes to see them. Doesn’t mean they’re not good films.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ Myles agreed, his frustration beginning to show. ‘But we’re not in the film industry, Lewis, that’s the whole thing. We’re not in the business of making art, yet we’re trying to sell stuff to people
in an overcrowded marketplace by being obscure and clever and arty. It’s not working. Concept advertising was a turn-of-the-century buzzword. Its time has passed. People are cynical and tired, and so overloaded with information they can’t see straight. They don’t trust anyone, not the government, not police or teachers or doctors, and certainly not people trying to sell them something from behind a smokescreen. I believe if we turn it around and talk straight, using their language, we might just have a chance of getting through to them.’
‘I disagree,’ said Justin.
No surprises there.
‘Which part do you disagree with, Justin?’
‘Your basic premise,’ he said flatly. ‘People don’t want plain speaking. They don’t care about the truth. Why do you think they keep voting Howard in? What they want is to believe they’re special, they deserve the best, because they’re worth it. They want luxury, they want prestige brands. That’s the direction all the international agencies are taking. Did you know you can even do a masters degree in luxury goods management in the UK?’
Myles had been waiting patiently for Justin to finish his spiel. ‘That’s all very enlightening, Justin, but it’s only one side of the coin,’ he said. ‘Last week I asked Helen how she chooses toilet paper, for example.’
Every face at the table turned towards Helen, whose own face was like a hot pink beacon, she was sure, shining for all to see.
‘Do you want to tell them what you told me, Helen?’
No, she didn’t. Couldn’t he see that?
Myles lifted an eyebrow, waiting.
Helen cleared her throat and sat forward in her chair. She took a deep breath. ‘I said I buy it because it’s cheap but not nasty . . .’ She glanced down at the introductory sheet for the meeting, where Myles had reproduced her words, verbatim, from the week before. ‘And I buy two-ply because one-ply is false economy – you just use twice as much. And, most importantly, I buy it because it’s made from recycled paper; it’s a crime to use anything else when you’re only going to flush it down the toilet.’
Justin stifled a yawn.
‘Helen also told me that she’s not interested in having her toilet paper feeling like silk,’ said Myles. ‘But perhaps some people are, like the ones you were talking about, Justin, who want luxury, I don’t know. I don’t know what people really think, and I’d warrant you don’t know either.’
‘This is bullshit, MD,’ said Justin, shaking his head. ‘Of course we know what people think, what they want, what they’re going to respond to. Don’t you know what a focus group is for, what market researchers do?’
Helen noticed Myles’s jaw clench. ‘Yes, Justin, I know all about market research, and especially focus groups. And I know how they operate. People are brought into an artificial situation, they’re often paid a fee, or at the very least given a nice lunch. Then words and phrases and images are presented to them in a highly contrived and very carefully controlled manner. There is a science to it, and I appreciate that it provides marketers with certain kinds of information. But you’re not getting the way people really talk, what they really think when they’re reaching for the product on the shelf at the supermarket. And, most importantly, what they might say about it at the dinner table that evening, or when they’re having coffee with their girlfriends, or over the fence to a neighbour. Yet what is the best marketing tool by far?’
Myles paused, looking around the table. No one was willing to hazard a guess.
‘Word of mouth,’ he said simply. ‘Everyone knows that until you get good word of mouth going, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at marketing, it won’t matter a jot.’
‘MD,’ Julie broke in, leaning forward on the table, ‘isn’t there a risk that we’ll just end up with something like those cringy ads with celebrities sitting around talking about headache tablets?’
Deb laughed. ‘Yeah, which actor is it rolling around on the floor with his kid? Like he ever gets up in the middle of the night . . .’
‘Okay,’ said Myles. ‘Stop for a sec and listen to what you’re saying. Those ads are “cringy”, Julie, because we don’t believe them. And why don’t we believe them? Because they’re celebrities and they’re falling over themselves to gush about the product.’
‘So now you’re suggesting that celebrity endorsement doesn’t work?’ Justin said, barely containing his contempt.
‘Celebrity endorsement works fine when they act like celebrities, not when they pretend they’re just like the rest of us.’ Myles took a breath. ‘I would like to see honest endorsements from ordinary people who pay for the products out of an ordinary wage. Take Helen’s toilet paper spiel. It’s a straight list of facts that’s meaningful to a consumer, but it isn’t dry or scientific, nor does it make out that the brand of toilet paper has changed her life. It shows Helen is intelligent and thoughtful, and not easily duped. I would suggest that’s how most consumers would like to be treated.’
He gave everyone some time to absorb that while he took a sip of water.
‘So what do you want us to do, MD?’ asked Julie.
‘I would like you to go back and look closely at upcoming campaigns, not anything that’s in development already, and see if there aren’t some that would work with this approach. I realise this won’t suit every product, and I’m also not suggesting it can’t be done with some creativity, some wit, some flair. In fact, obviously, I’d encourage it. But I want “I buy it because” to be the philosophy that drives a series of campaigns in the coming months.’
Everyone was jotting notes while he spoke. Except Justin.
‘Okay,’ said Myles, checking his watch. ‘That’s enough for today. I’d like each one of you to report back, most likely the same time next week, but Helen will confirm that. I want at least one suitable test case from each team.’
‘What if we don’t believe any of our accounts are suited to this particular approach?’ asked Justin.
‘Well, Justin, if you don’t think you’re up to the task –’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘What you did say earlier, however, was that you already know what people are going to respond to,’ said Myles. ‘But if that’s true, how come your last campaign failed spectacularly and you lost the account for the agency?’ He paused, allowing Justin to feel the full weight of his rancour. ‘I think if you look real hard, Justin, you might find something suitable. If not, then write me a detailed report on each and every one of your team’s accounts, outlining your argument. And have it on my desk twenty-four hours before the meeting next week.’
Justin stormed rather petulantly from the room, while the others followed without the histrionics. When they were eventually alone, Myles looked across at Helen. He didn’t need to ask the question.
‘You sold it to me,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘I think I might have had you on side already.’ He pushed back against his chair and stretched his arms out above his head, sighing loudly. Then he dropped his arms again and looked at Helen. ‘Come on, I’m taking you to lunch. We’ve earned it.’
He got to his feet and began gathering up the papers in front of him. After a while he glanced over at Helen. She hadn’t moved; she appeared to be deep in thought.
‘What’s wrong?’ Myles asked.
She stirred, looking at him. ‘Oh, sorry. It was just, well, it was about lunch.’
He frowned. ‘You’re not going to argue with me, are you? I’ve had enough arguing for one day.’
‘No,’ said Helen. ‘I was just going to suggest . . .’
‘What?’
‘Well, can we go somewhere a bit less . . . you know . . .?’
Myles was looking at her, intrigued.
‘I always feel so intimidated in those swanky restaurants,’ she tried to explain. ‘I mean, the food’s gorgeous, everything’s gorgeous, but I just feel like I shouldn’t be there. Couldn’t we maybe get a sandwich down at the Quay, sit in the sun?’
He smiled broadly. �
��I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’
*
A week later
‘What do you want for lunch, Noah?’ Gemma called from the kitchen as she peered into the refrigerator. She had an inexplicable hankering for McDonald’s, which she would have loved to put down to serious cravings as an excuse to take Noah there for lunch, but Helen would never fall for it, and besides, there was no McDonald’s in Balmain. Naturally.
Gemma felt bone tired, and it was barely noon. So much for the glowing middle months of pregnancy; they had been rather short-lived. Now she had sporadic indigestion, a feckless bladder, and other indiscriminate aches and pains, all serving to make a sound night’s sleep almost impossible. Sometimes Gemma felt as though she and the baby were fighting it out for domination of her body, and the baby was winning.
But that wasn’t the only competition going on. Every woman she met who had ever given birth felt duty-bound to disclose the worst of their experiences: nasty ailments, gruesome labours and the dark, awful epoch of baby’s first few months of life. ‘You think it’s hard now, just wait till . . .’ was their favourite refrain. Gemma frequently had the urge to tell them to shut the fuck up. But that would never do. Pregnant women were supposed to be serene and Madonna-like. Not so much the snatching-babies-from-Africa Madonna, but the sitting-dreamily-in-a-white-flowing-caftan-listening-to-Mozart Madonna.
‘Wait till you get to the last few weeks,’ Trish had confided only this morning. ‘You’ll barely be able to walk if you end up anywhere near as big as I was.’
Her mother had already been and gone. Perhaps that was why Gemma was feeling sapped. Trish had so much energy she sucked the life out of any room she walked into. She had arranged to meet the blind and curtain man here at eight-thirty, but at that time of the morning Gemma could no sooner focus on styles and colours than fly to the moon. So Trish took over, no surprise. She got on the phone to Helen and fast-talked her into whatever it was she wanted in the first place, and the deal was done. The blind and curtain man went on his way, and so did Trish. She had been running late for coffee with Wendy Whatsit, before whizzing up to the most divine little place in Newport where she’d seen a darling lamp in this month’s edition of Belle that would be utterly perfect for the baby’s room, and then she had to fly back for lunch at Meredith McWhosit’s, making sure she left in time for her hairdresser’s appointment before dinner out with Mr and Mrs Who-the-Hell-Cared-Any-More? Gemma never ceased to be amazed that one woman could be so busy for so long with so little.
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