We sign the visitors’ book – Poppy writes ‘Cruella de Vil’ – and go into the first room, a big white space. One wall is occupied by a massive, blown-up slide projection of a toddler in a pink jumper – Poppy. She looks very cute, with her hair in braids and a toothless grin. Another wall has a big map of Jamaica. There are different toys strewn around the floor; a Meccano and Lego set on one side, and My Little Pony on the other. Beside the My Little Pony is a small, tattered photo in a cheap frame: a little boy, who I think must be Crispin.
‘So far, so weird,’ murmurs Poppy, and we go into the next room.
The second room is even bigger. One wall seems to be covered with memorabilia, tickets and receipts, and the other is covered with massive sketches and paintings of Poppy, some of which are quite good. Suddenly a noise starts up on some kind of intercom: ‘Hi, my darling . . . just leaving you a message to say . . . miss you. Lots of love. Byeee!’ It’s Poppy’s voice. After a second it continues: ‘Hi, my darling . . . just leaving you a message . . .’ It plays on a loop for a while, then goes quiet.
‘Oh my God,’ says Poppy.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Not sure.’
We look at the memorabilia wall. It’s covered with stuff: tickets to exhibitions and gigs, cards, wrapping paper, paper napkins with doodles and messages on them, receipts for meals at cheap cafés, train tickets, cinema tickets, programmes and leaflets. There are also tons of snapshot photos, mainly of Crispin, I mean Crippo, and Poppy. She looks really happy in some of them.
‘Look, there’s Crippo,’ hisses Poppy.
I glance over. It is indeed Crippo, wearing a red lumberjack shirt, braces, black skinny jeans and twelve-hole Doc Martens, and glasses with heavy black frames. His hair is in a massive quiff. He’s holding court to a group of admirers, mostly girls. He doesn’t seem to have seen Poppy.
‘I’m going to escape,’ Poppy stage-whispers, ‘into the next room. Coming?’
‘Go ahead, I’ll join you in a minute.’
Despite its horrible title, I’m finding the exhibition pretty interesting. I take a look at the programme, which is filled with waffle about how Crippo is ‘recording his own responses towards emotional upheaval through different found objects’. In a strange way, I feel almost jealous: I can’t imagine any of my old flames treasuring one of my used paper napkins, let alone filling a whole wall with mementoes.
I examine a painting of Poppy, where she’s wearing a red dress and standing on a green surface. The ground below her feet is covered with hundreds of little red flowers. I lean forward to look and, of course, they’re poppies. Not that I’ve seen her name written anywhere yet.
As I straighten up, the thought suddenly strikes me, out of nowhere, that Sam has been really unfair to me. OK, I was going to tell Olivia about Luther’s scandal – but I didn’t. That’s a big difference. He didn’t even give me a chance to explain. He was very quick to judge me, especially considering he was still involved with Marisa. I wonder if he knows I’ve been fired. Probably not, since he’s dealing with Olivia now anyway. What a mess.
I go over to Poppy, who is talking to a girl in a 1940s-style tea dress, with what looks like an entire pheasant on her head – it’s actually a hat, I see now.
‘This is Melissa,’ says Poppy. ‘Melissa, Alice, a friend from work.’
Melissa has huge eyes and false eyelashes, which she’s blinking energetically.
‘Oh, right,’ she says. ‘Which books do you work on?’
‘Non-fiction.’ I’m not going to tell her I’ve just been fired.
‘Alice has just finished working on Luther Carson’s book!’ says Poppy.
‘Wow! What was he like?’ asks Melissa.
It’s a good question. What was he like?
‘He was great,’ I say. ‘Good fun, and very down to earth.’
This is going to be my line on Luther; I’m never going to tell anyone about what really happened. It’s true, anyway. He was great.
I excuse myself, and drift into the final room of the exhibition. It’s quite something. The entire four walls are plastered with sheets of paper covered in Crippo’s spidery writing, sometimes with sketches. There are dried flowers – poppies – stuck up everywhere too.
A few feet away from me, I can see a tall woman with long dark hair, who is also looking at the wall. She looks familiar. Then I realise who she is: Caroline Brady. I’ve seen her picture in the trade press. She’s Irish and was previously an editor at a literary publisher, and she’s recently founded a new agency with two others. I read a book by one of their debut authors recently and it was excellent.
I know what Claudine would do in this situation. I remember watching her at a launch earlier on this summer, circulating like mad. She’d bounce right over there and probably press her card on to the woman or even suggest lunch. I could never do that.
A little voice inside me says: And maybe that’s why Claudine is being promoted and you’ve been fired.
Standing there, I think, not for the first time, about how all of my problems – Sam, work, everything – stem from my crazy lack of confidence. It’s ridiculous: I can fly off the handle at Luther, or Simon, yet I can’t cross the room to talk to this woman. Why am I such a mouse? Why can’t I just go up to her and introduce myself? What’s the worst that can happen? I make an idiot of myself and she snubs me. I’m not going to die, am I?
But then I think better of it. It seems so intrusive. She’s probably come here to relax, not to be hassled by unemployed people. And what would I say? ‘Hello, I know who you are’? And . . . what if she has heard I’ve been fired? How will I explain it? As I debate with myself, Caroline looks at her watch and half turns, as if to leave.
That’s a sign. I have to do it. I’m going to pretend I’m Claudine. No, I’m not. I’m going to pretend I’m a more confident me. I’ve done harder things than this in the past two weeks. Before I can change my mind, I walk over to her.
‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Are you Caroline Brady?’
She smiles. ‘Yes, I am. And you are?’
‘I’m Alice Roberts,’ I say, shaking her hand. ‘I used to work at Paragon until last week. I loved that Irish novel you sold recently.’
‘Thanks,’ says Caroline, looking very pleased. We discuss the book for a while. Then she asks curiously, ‘So what sort of work did you do at Paragon?’
I could play safe, and not mention Luther – in case she knows what happened. But what’s the point of playing safe?
‘I’ve just been working on Luther Carson’s book,’ I tell her.
She raises her eyebrows; she looks impressed, but I’m relieved to see there’s nothing else in her expression. ‘Really? He’s a big fish. How did you find that?’
Normally, I would say something extremely self-deprecating here, about how awful or difficult the book was. But then I think of Claudine. She would never do that; she would spin herself for all she was worth.
‘It was a challenge,’ I say. ‘But I’m pleased with how it turned out. He really came through, and we’ve had some great reactions from the papers.’
‘Good for you,’ Caroline says. ‘And what’s your connection here?’
‘I know, um, the ex,’ I say. ‘The subject, I mean.’
‘Ah, fair enough. I’m on the groom’s side, so to speak. Crispin is a cousin of my husband’s. A distant one, though.’
Here’s even more proof that Crippo is secretly posh. Only very posh people know who their distant cousins are, let alone invite them to their art launches.
‘So what do you think of the exhibition?’
‘I like it. It’s . . . thought-provoking. I’m assuming that the title is meant to be ironic though.’
She smiles. ‘Let’s hope so,’ she says. ‘We’ve a table booked for dinner so I’d better head off. But let me give you my card. If you’re interested in what we do at the agency, you should drop us a line.’
‘Thanks very much, I will,’ I say, delighted.
Caroline says goodbye and I watch her go, exhilarated. It might come to nothing, but it’s a step in the right direction. She was so nice! I can’t believe she didn’t even ask me why I left Paragon.
‘Hey,’ says Poppy, appearing beside me. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘Looking at the rest of the exhibition, and networking!’ I show her Caroline’s card.
‘You go, girl! Look at you, working the room. I mean the space.’ She looks around. ‘I think I’ve seen enough, and I’ve even managed to say hello to Crippo. Shall we make a move?’
‘Of course.’ I don’t want to ask her what she thinks of the exhibition. No matter how flattering it is, I can imagine it must be very intrusive.
To my relief, though, Poppy starts to laugh as soon as we leave the building and begin walking towards the nearest pub.
‘God, that was surreal. I need a drink,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe we went to an opening without even a box of wine. He is such a skinflint.’ She gives me a hug. ‘But thanks for coming with me. You’re a star. I’ve got something for you!’
Poppy digs in her bag and produces something. I half expect it to be another art invitation, but it’s a card. I take it uncomprehendingly. It’s Sam’s business card.
‘Um . . . Poppy, where did you get this?’
‘I nicked it from Olivia’s desk while she was at lunch. I know, I know. I’ll put it back on Monday. But you said you didn’t have his email address. And now you do! Honestly, Alice, if you just emailed him and explained to him properly—’
‘Poppy, I’m not going to contact him.’
She looks crestfallen. ‘But why not? What have you got to lose?’
I shake my head. I can’t explain that even the tiny act of holding Sam’s card has brought back all my most painful feelings. I don’t want to call him and feel them all over again. I don’t want to be the girl in London he hates, or – even if he believes me – the one he feels sorry for, who had a crush on him and got fired. And I don’t want to be invited to his and Marisa’s wedding.
‘Look,’ I tell her. ‘I appreciate this, I really do, but it’s pointless.’ And I hand her back the card. ‘Now, let’s get a drink and forget all these awful men.’
I start to walk on, but Poppy doesn’t follow.
‘You know, Alice,’ she says, ‘I’ve seen you do this before.’
‘Do what?’ I say warily.
‘When a nice guy shows an interest in you, you run a mile. It’s as if you think you don’t deserve it. Whereas a creep like Simon has your full attention.’
‘That’s not true,’ I say uncertainly.
Turning away slightly, she slips her wig off and puts it in her bag, fluffing out her curls. ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘Let’s get a drink. How about the Ten Bells?’
In the pub, we mainly talk about Crippo and the exhibition; Poppy fills me in on some of the work gossip as well. She tells me that she’s helping Olivia out with some of the more confidential stuff, while they interview for a new assistant. That was how she was able to borrow the card.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asks.
Of course I don’t mind: I don’t care. She doesn’t mention Sam again. But on my way home on the Tube, I keep thinking about what she said. When a nice guy comes along, you run a mile, whereas a creep like Simon has your full attention.
She’s right. I was so scared of getting close to Sam, and not just because I thought he was out of my league. It was also because he was real, and Luther wasn’t real – it was just a fantasy about rescuing him. I can remember the panic I felt when I woke up beside Sam – it wasn’t just panic that we had done something unprofessional: it was panic that once he got to know me, he would stop liking me, the way Simon did. And that’s what happened – not just because of the thing with Luther’s story, but because I was horrible to him and ran away from him. And now, even if I send him all the emails in the world, it’s too late.
THIRTY-SIX
My first full week of unemployment is pretty awful. The worst part is telling my parents: I’ve been putting it off but it has to be done. They’ve never really understood my job anyway, and when I tell them I’ve been fired for leaving out a clause and sending the ghostwriter home (I’m not mentioning the magazine), they’re completely baffled, and indignant.
‘I’m putting you on speakerphone,’ my mum says. ‘I want your father to hear this. Graham! Listen to what’s happened to Alice.’
After some rustling at the other end, my dad comes on the line. ‘Have you asked Erica’s advice?’ he says after I’ve told him what I told Mum.
‘I have, Dad, but I don’t want to take any legal action—’
‘All right,’ says my dad. ‘Then we’ll try and resolve it informally. Why don’t we arrange a meeting with your boss – I’ll happily come up to London and sit in with you, if you’d like – and just talk through things reasonably?’
It’s sweet of him, but the idea of Dad storming up to London in his Toyota Corolla has to be nipped in the bud immediately. ‘Dad! No! This isn’t school. You can’t just ask to see the headmistress.’
‘But there must be something we can do. This is just disgraceful of them. Completely unjustifiable. You’ve been a good employee—’
‘Graham, let me talk to her,’ I hear my mum say in the background. She comes back on the line, trying to sound reassuring though I know she’s really worried. ‘Don’t worry, darling. We’ll sort this out somehow. And meanwhile you can always move back home.’
My situation is bad enough, but to hear my parents so upset and helpless makes it a hundred times worse. Then there’s the problem of having to explain, every time I apply for something, why I left my previous job. Erica’s given me some phrases to use, but they don’t sound very convincing. By Wednesday I can’t face doing any more proper job applications, and I find myself scanning my local noticeboards for things like babysitting and dog walking. I also apply for a job as a waitress in a café down the road, but the man says he’s looking for someone with more experience.
On Thursday morning I wake up in a state of total despair. I know I should get dressed and start applying for things, but instead I turn on the TV and lie down on the sofa. I’m so engrossed in This Morning that I almost don’t hear my phone ringing.
‘Alice? It’s Alasdair White here. From Paragon.’
‘Muh-nhuh?’ I say, almost dropping the phone out of surprise and clearing my throat because this is the first time I’ve spoken all day. ‘Oh. Hello, Alasdair.’ I try to sound polite, but I’m freaking out. What on earth is he ringing about? Do they now want to sue me or something?
‘Is this a good time to talk?’
‘Ah . . . yes,’ I say, putting the TV on mute. Hopefully, if he heard voices he’ll think I was in some kind of meeting.
‘Alice,’ he says, ‘this will probably sound surprising, but – we’ve reconsidered our decision to let you go. I think we’ve acted somewhat hastily. I was wondering if you would like to come back and work with us again. Not as an assistant,’ he adds. ‘But as a commissioning editor.’
I’m so shocked that I literally can’t say anything. I can’t even make a sound.
‘I can understand if that doesn’t appeal to you,’ Alasdair says. ‘If you’d like, there is an editorial vacancy in another company in the group, which I think you’d be perfect for. It would be the same role: commissioning editor, non-fiction, celebrity books.’
‘What?’ I manage to say.
Alasdair repeats, ‘There’s an editorial vacancy in another company in the group, and I would put in a very good word for you. If you don’t want to come back to us, that is.’
‘But why do you – why have you changed your mind?’ I know it sounds blunt, but I can’t think of any other way to phrase it.
‘There are various factors,’ he says. ‘I know that, ah, Luther is keen to continue working with you. He feels that your input was crucial in helping him write his book.’
I look at
the TV, where Phillip Schofield is laughing away about something on mute. Is this really happening? Has Luther really insisted on having me back on board? I’m feeling shocked, amazed and baffled, all at once.
‘Um . . . Alasdair, thank you, but I’m going to have to think about this,’ I tell him. ‘I mean – it’s quite a surprise.’
‘I understand,’ he says. I hear his dog beginning to bark, and he sounds as if he’s standing up. ‘You can take as long as you like, Alice. And on behalf of the company, I do apologise. I think we had legitimate concerns but we over-reacted. We would like you to come back. I hope you’ll think about it.’
He hangs up, and I’m left blinking at the phone, open-mouthed. I can’t believe it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the dog barking in the background, I would have thought it was a hoax. It’s like those daydreams where you’re suddenly thin and gorgeous and your ex begs you to come back. It certainly feels like a dream come true – my long-awaited promotion. I might even get my own office. Alice Roberts: commissioning editor, non-fiction. It’s the answer to all my prayers!
Or . . . is it? Would I want to go back again after what’s happened? It was nice that Alasdair apologised – eventually – but what about Olivia? What does she think about it all? Maybe I should take that other job working on celebrity books. Although . . . the idea of going near a celebrity book ever again fills me with dread and despair. Which isn’t exactly promising. The conversation’s made me feel more energetic, though, and I suddenly feel galvanised to fire off my CV to Caroline Brady. I’ve spent the past two days drafting and proof-reading my email: now I need the balls to press send.
After I’ve done that, I hop in the shower and get dressed. The whole time, I’m thinking about the idea of going back to work, and about Luther. If he did say that he wanted me back, it’s incredibly nice of him. Or . . . maybe they just realised they were being unfair? Is that possible? I can’t fathom it.
‘That’s great news,’ says Erica, when I ring her. ‘They’ve obviously realised they were out of order and they’re terrified you’re going to sue. So now you can have the promotion and keep quiet, or you can definitely bring a case for wrongful dismissal.’
The Out of Office Girl Page 27