by Jane Fallon
"P.A."
"Same thing. It's about time I got a career."
"What are you going to do?"
"I have no idea. But I'll find something."
"Well, I'll miss you. Really. And I'll ask around, see if I can put in a word for you somewhere."
"Thanks. Sorry I've been such a rampaging bitch of an assistant. Better luck with the next one."
"You know, the only reason I want you to stay is 'cause I'm terrified about who they'll make me have if you go."
"I heard Annie wanted to move off Reception."
"OK, if you even mention this to her then I'm not giving you a reference." Laura laughed. "I'm serious."
* * *
Back at her desk and back under scrutiny, Helen looked at her watch. Lunchtime. She had survived a whole morning and it seemed like the worst the girls had in store for her was to throw the odd snippy remark her way. If that was as bad as it got, then she could brazen it out.
Wrong.
She was putting on her coat to go out and get a solitary sandwich, which she had decided she'd eat on a bench in the square, when Helen-from-Accounts, minus plum lipstick and back in her old black suit, came into the general office. Helen smiled at her and was thinking about asking whether she wanted to walk to the deli together when she realized Helen-from-Accounts had blanked her. Not just blanked her but gone over to Jenny, who was greeting her like she was a long-lost relative who had just been discovered having survived the wreck of the Titanic. The two girls whispered giggly mutterings and then looked over in her direction and laughed out loud. This was too much. She'd expected it from the others but Helen-from-Accounts was taking the piss out of her. Helen-from-Accounts! She'd sacrificed herself to save that pitiful little fucker. How dare she? She glared in their direction, but they were either oblivious or else enjoying her discomfort. She heard the dumpy little pixie-haired pillar-box say something and clearly heard the word slut, then they both looked in her direction again and laughed some more. Helen felt herself coloring up again and grabbed her bag and stormed toward the door. On the way out, she passed Annie, coat on, coming in to join the party.
"OK, girls, where are we going for lunch?" she could hear her shouting above the laughter and, rather than wait for the lift and risk being there when they all came out, she went through the door to the emergency stairs and practically ran down the five flights and out into the street.
16
CHECK THIS OUT," Matthew said, producing a sheaf of papers from behind his back with all the flourish of a magician with a rabbit.
"What's that?" she'd asked, reaching for them, and then her heart had sunk when she'd seen the headings on the pages. Winkworths, Frank Harris, Copping Joyce. Estate agents. Oh, fuck. OK, so they were living together already, but the finality of buying a place together sent a wave of panic through her. Buying together said this is it, we've decided, we're together forever and she didn't feel ready to say that—didn't know if she ever would, although truthfully, the odds were stacking up against it. When she tried to picture herself in the future, these days, that picture just didn't include Matthew. In fact, she was trying to avoid picturing her future life at all at the moment—it was too depressing.
"You're always saying the flat is too small, so I thought what the hell."
"But…" she'd said, clutching at straws, "how can we afford it? I mean, you're still paying for your other house, obviously, and you have to give money to Sophie for the kids, and I'm about to be unemployed. Unemployable, probably."
He smiled at her wryly. "Have you got any idea how much I earn? We can practically buy somewhere else for cash. Not a house, but a big flat. Much bigger than this, at any rate Where do you fancy? Highgate? Primrose Hill? Round here? I want to stay near the kids, but otherwise Bob's your oyster."
She ignored her irritation at the whimsical expression. "But I love my flat."
"No, you don't. You said yourself it's tiny and it's dark and it's damp and the Rabbits are going to kill us in our bed one night. Plus, it's mad for you to be renting at your age."
"At least let's wait until I get another job," she said, thinking, that'll probably be never. "Then I can contribute. I don't want to feel like a kept woman." This seemed to work and they spent a quite pleasant half hour sifting through the details he'd gotten anyway, "Just to see what's out there."
"You're very nice to me," she'd said to him as they got into bed. "I'm sorry I'm a bit of a miserable cow to live with at the moment."
"Tell you what, you can make it up to me," he'd replied, and moved in to kiss her. They'd had sex for the first time in what seemed like ages and it'd reminded her a bit of what things had been like before it all started to go pear-shaped. She'd been very vocal, which he'd seemed to enjoy, although truthfully she was doing it for the Rabbits' sake. When he'd fallen asleep, she'd looked at him and he'd looked so peaceful and unaware of how bad things really were that she felt achingly guilty. She'd kissed him on the forehead, glad that she'd managed to give him a nice evening, for once, and turned onto her side to sleep.
* * *
Helen and Sophie were back in the pub and Helen was pushing Sophie to open up about the breakup of her marriage. She had said no, at first, when Sophie had called her to arrange another evening out, but then had given in immediately when pressed. She couldn't work out if it was curiosity or some kind of masochism; she just couldn't pass up the opportunity to understand the ramifications of what she'd done from the other woman's point of view—to pick at that scab a bit more until she was able to numb the pain and allow it to start healing over. Sophie, always controlled, was resisting pouring her heart out, although it was tempting to do so. She did, however, share one piece of news with her new friend—that she had found out more about who her rival was—
"She actually works at Global. Can you believe that?"
Helen nearly choked on her vodka. She could feel the walls of the pub closing in around her. She looked around, nothing had changed, the world was carrying on as normal. Sophie was still talking.
"I mean, I knew he knew her through work, but I never thought she was someone he spent all day with. She used to be his assistant, for God's sake."
"How do you know?" Helen managed to ask.
"Trust me, people are dying to break good news to you when things like this happen. Apparently, she just announced it in the office the other day, although Amelia said no one's surprised, she's always been a bit up herself. No one likes her."
Ah. Amelia from Human Resources. What a bitch, thought Helen.
Throughout the evening, Helen kept bringing the conversation back around to "Evil Helen," as she now knew she was being perceived—quite rightly so, but it still irked her to hear the things that her colleagues had been saying. Other facts that Sophie had elicited from Amelia included:
Helen was rubbish at her job. (This was so not true.)
She flirted with all the male directors. (Ditto.)
She had told all the girls in the office she had another boyfriend until recently. ("I wonder if Matthew knows about that," Sophie was saying.)
She'd told everyone Matthew was having an affair with another woman to deflect suspicion away from herself. ("Nice," said Sophie.)
She was nearly forty. ("Ha!" said Sophie. "Younger than me but not that young. She won't be able to rely on her looks for much longer.")
"God, she sounds awful," Helen found herself saying, and actually believing it for a moment, until she remembered she was talking about herself. "Does she think it'll last, your friend?"
"Oh, Amelia's not my friend," Sophie said. "But she's one of those women that always want to be first with the news, so I bet she was bursting to tell me. It definitely wasn't out of concern for my well-being. I can't stand her, actually."
You've got good taste, Helen thought.
"And no," Sophie continued, "the general perception at Global is that it won't last. They all think he'll come to his senses and realize he's made a mistake, but I doubt it. I know Matthew, he'l
l never admit he's wrong."
"You never can tell," said Helen.
"Well, that's his problem now," Sophie replied, effectively drawing a line under the subject.
* * *
After that she wouldn't be drawn out, and they drifted into the slightly less enthralling topic of Claudia's impending birthday.
"What's she like? I mean, what kind of stuff is she into?" Helen asked, thinking that she might glean a bit of useful information to use in her fight to make her Sunday afternoons bearable.
"Claudia's big love is animals. She used to want to be a vet and I think she still does, but she can't admit it because she's in the middle of a 'can't be seen to care about anything' phase. Suzanne's the one who does well in exams. She wants to be a doctor, or at least she says she does, but I think that's because she once said so to Matthew and he's gone on about it ever since. I think she's scared to say she wants to do anything else because she's such a daddy's girl and she wouldn't want to let him down. She's a normal girly-girl, into boy bands and makeup and pink stuff. I've never so much as known her to watch ER, let alone take an interest in science. To be honest, I'm just grateful they're both fairly stable and not yet drug addicts or hookers or shoplifters—well, as far as I know."
Helen laughed. "They're what, ten and twelve?"
"Soon to be eleven and twelve. So what, they start young these days…"
"Do you think they want their dad back?"
"I think they'd give anything. Absolutely anything. But they're still young enough to forgive and forget. That gets much harder as you get older."
"What do they make of Helen?" Helen was unable to leave the subject of herself alone.
"Oh, they can't stand her. Or, at least, that's what they tell me. By the sound of it, she makes it pretty clear she's not interested in them."
They shared a cab home as far as the Camden tube station, where Helen insisted she get out and walk the rest of the way while Sophie took it on up Kentish Town Road. It was such a normal, everyday thing that friends do that Helen nearly forgot who they both were and allowed Sophie to drop her off at her door as she was trying to insist she should. Matthew wasn't there, of course—he was at the family home, babysitting the girls—and neither was his car, but it would still be a stupidly risky thing to do. What if Sophie, knowing where she lived, decided to drop around unannounced one day? No…it didn't bear thinking about. She picked her way past the crowds spilling out of the Electric Ballroom and replayed the evening in her head. Apart from the half hour character assassination of herself, it had been a good evening. Strange but enjoyable. Strange, enjoyable, and more than a bit reckless. She wondered if she had a death wish.
She realized she was feeling guilty about the girls. It wasn't their fault they were caught up in the middle of this, she thought. In fact, she was starting to find she was growing quite fond of them, in principle. When Sophie talked about them she made them sound adorable—vulnerable, complicated, unique. It was just that it was hard to equate that with the surly monosyllabic creatures who spent their Sunday afternoons glaring at her from beneath their long fringes. As she turned the corner into Jamestown Road, she vowed to try harder with them.
* * *
"Let's get a kitten," said Helen back at home when Matthew had finished moaning about Sophie getting home late and clearly half cut again.
"What?"
"I mean it. Let's go to Battersea Dogs Home and pick out a kitten or a cat or a dog. I don't know, let's just get an animal."
"Has Rachel got you drunk?" he said, laughing, but Helen could see he was pleased she was in a good mood.
17
THE DAYS DRAGGED ON through the wet darkness of February with Helen forcing herself in to work, sitting at her desk feigning deafness to the occasional comments thrown out by the other women, and feeling genuine relief when they slipped back into their campaign of ignoring her. Matthew insisted on popping in to see her several times a day, no matter how many times she told him he was making things worse. Whenever he left again ("bye, girls!" all around), she kept her eyes firmly fixed on her computer screen, so as not to see the smirks. By Thursday, she'd taken to wearing her iPod at her desk. At lunchtime, she took herself out and ate her lunch in the square around the corner, even in the rain, and it was sitting there on Friday, wet hair, soggy sandwiches, damp paperback, that she ran into Sophie. And not just Sophie, Sophie and a rather attractive man.
Helen caught sight of them a split second before Sophie looked up as they passed by her bench. She froze in shock and contemplated trying to sneak away, but it was too risky. By the time Sophie spotted her, she'd just managed to compose herself and was trying to make eating on a bench, in the freezing rain in a square just down the street from Global PR, look like the most normal event in the world.
"Hi!"
"Eleanor! What on earth are you doing here?"
"I…had a meeting in Dean Street and…I've got another meeting in a bit, round the corner, so I thought I'd enjoy the beautiful weather."
Luckily, both Sophie and Mr. Attractive laughed. Helen took a proper look at him. Blimey, he really was nice-looking, tall, a slightly disturbing combination of dark hair and incredibly pale blue eyes, smile lines, well built. She hated skinny men. All knees and elbows and they always seemed to want to dress to show that off, like they were really proud of it, in stretchy tight-fit jeans that made them look like wading birds. Mind you, if anyone had asked her a few years ago if balding heads and paunches were her type, she'd have said definitely not. It was so long since she'd found a man even halfway fanciable that she spent just a fraction too long taking him in. Then she remembered it was rude to stare, especially at someone who might well turn out to be her new friend's new boyfriend.
It was just a momentary aberration and it was over in a second. She knew it was just the jolt of her hormones springing back into life, because she'd clapped eyes on someone half decent for the first time in God knew how long. She mentally chastised herself for even going there.
* * *
"This is Sonny," Sophie was saying, and for some reason they both laughed.
"Eleanor…oh, Eleanor does PR. How funny is that? Sonny's opening a restaurant in Percy Street in a couple of weeks and I was just saying to him you should get yourself a PR person, and here you are. Give him your card."
"I…er…I've run out, em, because of moving and everything, you know, I'm having to get new ones printed, so…"
"Well, I'll give him your mobile number, then. You're not too busy, are you?"
Helen made a quick mental list of the pros and cons.
Pros:
I'm nearly out of a job, so I could do with the money. I could do this standing on my head.
This could be the start of a whole new career.
Cons:
I'm not a PR person.
My name's not Eleanor.
I can't remember what my surname is meant to be.
Somehow she decided in a split second that the pros had won, and found herself saying, "No, not at all, that'd be great, ring me."
"Tell me about the restaurant," she heard herself saying.
"Well, it's Spanish. Tapas. We import all our own ingredients. Authentic Catalan. The head chef's come over from Gaudí in Barcelona. Have you heard of it?"
"No, sorry. Have you done anything like this before?" He was so enthusiastic, it was easy to imagine him charming the press.
"I had a bistro in Richmond. Tiny. Safe. This is scaring the shit out of me, to tell you the truth."
"I keep telling him he's crazy," said Sophie. "You know that statistic, nine out of ten restaurants go bust in the first year? Well, he's already had the one-out-of-ten successful one, so it's got to be all downhill from here."
"She's so supportive." Sonny laughed, and Helen thought how easy and relaxed they seemed together. She was glad for her friend, although a little miffed that Sophie hadn't mentioned her new conquest in their last drunken chat. Maybe she was seeing him before Matthe
w left, she thought, clutching at something that might absolve her guilt, but she knew that infidelity wasn't Sophie's style.
She said good-bye to Sophie, who was promising to call her later in the week, and to Sonny, who was saying he'd ring that afternoon. She waited until they were out of sight before she headed back to Global and sat back at her miserable desk.
Oh, God, what had she done? This was fucking insane. She'd been at Global long enough to know she could handle a small campaign in her sleep, but as Eleanor Whatshername? All her contacts, the endless editors and sub-editors and journalists she dealt with every day on Laura's behalf knew her as Helen Williamson. Maybe she could use her real name with them and her fake one with Sonny. Or she could tell him it was the PR equivalent of a stage name. Or her maiden name, although she'd never come across anyone who changed their first as well as their second name on marriage. It was a ridiculous idea. Too dangerous.
But…what if she pulled it off? What if she did a great campaign and he recommended her to his friends and she could set up on her own and fuck them all at Global? No…because if she did a great campaign, then what he would actually do is recommend Eleanor Thing to his friends. Eleanor Thing would be able to set up on her own and have a thriving business and a great new career. And she wasn't Eleanor Thing. Oh, God, what had she told Sophie her fucking surname was? She had no idea.
She went in to see Laura.