Crazy, Busy, Guilty

by Lauren Sams

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling so wide she popped a wrinkle in her forehead. ‘I’m so glad people are sitting up and taking notice of us now. We’re working so hard; it’s nice to be recognised.’ More clapping as her smile got wider. ‘I know! Let’s take the team out for drinks on Friday night, after your interview! We should celebrate all of this.’

  And so Fun Meredith returned. Sometimes I was more afraid of Fun Meredith: I was sure that, at some point, she’d convince me we should get tattoos of each other’s faces or go to Stonewall on Ritalin and make out with gay guys. Fun Meredith was a little too fun.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, against my better judgement. ‘That sounds like a great idea.’

  *

  ‘Just let me pop my recorder on,’ said Leni. She didn’t look the way I’d imagined her to. She was young, for starters – maybe even younger than Anna Cantwell-Hart. (Like a high-school frenemy or a serial killer, I could only refer to Anna Cantwell-Hart by her full name.) She was shrewd, too. I’d assumed this would be a puff piece, perhaps even something that Meredith herself had orchestrated. But Leni was a real journalist, and so it seemed Media Alert was going to run a real profile of me.

  ‘No problem,’ I said, trying to calm my nerves. I’d be fine with the interview if it weren’t for the elephant in the room. The very skinny, very glamorous elephant called Meredith, who, like a celebrity PR, insisted on sitting in on the interview in case I ‘ran into trouble’.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t get you anything?’ Meredith asked for the third time.

  ‘Uh . . . sure. A water would be great.’

  ‘Bea!’ Meredith boomed. Bea scurried in. ‘Water, please, for Leni. Bottled. Sparkling or still, Leni?’

  Leni threw her hands up. ‘It doesn’t matter, whatever you have,’ she said, laughing but clearly over Meredith already. She turned to me. ‘Geez, you guys can buy me a bottle of water? You’re doing well. Most magazines I visit have sticky tape holding the carpet down.’

  I laughed nervously, smoothing my dress over my knees.

  ‘The business is performing extremely well,’ said Meredith, smiling. ‘Ads are up year-on-year and period-on-period. Circ just keeps increasing. But for us, you know, it’s really about engagement. We want to reach out to our readers, make sure we’re top of mind when it comes to any conversation they’re having.’

  Leni nodded, making notes. ‘Really? Any conversation?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Meredith said, barrelling on. ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s about the new 5:2 diet or ISIS, we want them to think, “Oh, I read about that in The Weekend.” But of course, it’s not just about the magazine anymore – we’re looking at a 360-degree brand experience. A podcast. A TV pilot. A series of interactive stories on –’

  ‘Wait.’ Leni held up a hand and looked at me. ‘I really want to hear from Georgina. As the editor.’

  Meredith cleared her throat and nodded, folding her hands in her lap. She shot me a look that said, unmistakably, Don’t fuck this up. I pictured Obama and took a breath.

  ‘Uh, sure. Well, Meredith’s right, we want to be part of all those conversations. It’s an exciting time for the brand –’

  ‘Right, sure, but, down to brass tacks,’ Leni said. ‘Buzzwords and corporate BS aside, you’ve lost your founding editor, you’ve come from a women’s magazine, which is totally different in terms of revenue streams, the newspaper you sit in has just made 100 staff members redundant and lost $5 million last year . . . So how are you going to make all these big plans happen? And do you have the money for it all?’

  ‘Well, we –’ Meredith began.

  Leni held up her hand again and Meredith quietened. I’d never seen anyone command her like that. It was magic; I wanted to applaud.

  I glanced at Meredith, whose eyes bulged at me. ‘Well,’ I said, clearing my throat to buy a few seconds, ‘we have new advertisers on board, which is very exciting for us. We’re just about to do our next round of upfronts, in Sydney, where we’ll be unveiling some cool changes for the brand. The podcast, the redesign, new contributors, a new strategy. And we’re doing some cross-promoting with the paper, to redirect readers to the mag.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m writing a column, actually.’ Leni looked up from her notes.

  ‘So who’s being bumped?’

  ‘Uh . . . I’m not sure.’ I looked at Meredith, who shook her head. She didn’t know either.

  ‘Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out how it’ll work. Someone will obviously have to get bumped from the opinion pages, won’t they? To make room for you?’

  Oh. Oh shit. That hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t want anyone to be bumped.

  ‘I think you’re missing the bigger picture here, Leni,’ Meredith said, her voice taking on the strain of the Very Frustrated. ‘We’re taking a brand that started small and we’re making it bigger. We’ve planted the seed and now we’re watering the garden. We’ve got the pebble, now we need to make it a pearl. We’ve –’

  Leni nodded and gave a half-interested, ‘Mmm,’ to stop Meredith from finishing her trio of metaphors (the last one was, ‘We’ve got the grape, let’s turn it into wine.’).

  ‘So Georgina, what’s the biggest challenge for you?’

  Meredith. Definitely Meredith, I wanted to say.

  ‘Um . . . I would say the threat of digital is a challenge for us – as it is for everyone in print. But we’re not trying to compete with digital, we just want to exist alongside it. People still want to sit down and read the paper on the weekend.’ At this, Leni raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  ‘Digital’s great,’ Meredith piped up, ‘but the evidence is right there: people still want paper. They still want print. Especially for their Saturday paper. It’s just not right to sit down to a tablet over brunch, is it?’

  Leni nodded slowly, the kind of nod you give the stranger on your doorstep who’s trying to convince you to join their church. ‘Right. But you’re branching out . . .?’

  Meredith nodded coolly, her expression turned down a few notches now. Leni had not turned out to be the fluffy, fun reporter Meredith had hoped for. ‘We are, Leni. It’s important to diversify. And consumers love The Weekend, so why not offer it to them on different platforms?’ She paused and crossed her arms across her chest. ‘Give the people what they want, that’s what I say.’

  Leni nodded. ‘Right. Ah, sorry, Meredith, could I have that water please? It’s a little stuffy in here.’

  Meredith stood up and barked at Bea again. When she didn’t get a reply, she stomped out of the room in a huff to get the water herself.

  Leni turned to me. ‘Is she always so . . .?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Off the record,’ she asked, ‘what’s she like to work for?’

  ‘Uh . . . Off the record?’ I glanced at the door. Open. This was a bad idea. This was self-sabotage.

  Leni nodded, giving me a conspiratorial smirk.

  ‘Well . . . not great. She’s not exactly even-keeled. I mean, don’t get me wrong: Meredith’s great at her job. I’ve learnt so much from her and it really is –’

  ‘An exciting time for the brand?’

  I laughed, embarrassed. This woman thinks I’ve drunk the office Kool-Aid. I paused, and thought it over.

  She might be right.

  ‘Right,’ I said, trying to figure out how to recover my composure. ‘Yeah, like I was saying, it’s always . . . interesting to work with Meredith. She works hard and plays hard.’

  Leni leaned in, suddenly much more interested. ‘What does that mean?’

  I laughed. ‘Oh, well . . . wait, is this still off the record?’

  Leni nodded. ‘Sure, of course.’

  I made a little glug-glug motion and Leni’s eyes widened.

  ‘Here you are,’ said Meredith, handing Leni a bottle of water. ‘I don’t know where Bea’s disappeared to. Honestly.’ She shook her head, clearly disappointed that Bea had dared to leave her desk for the
first time in months.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Leni. ‘So, tell me more about this podcast.’

  ‘Yes!’ Meredith said, clapping those hands again and nodding excitedly. ‘We’re just getting the funding approved for a studio. Eventually, it’ll be a whole podcast network.’

  A whole podcast network? My heart began to beat faster, wondering exactly how much more work that would mean for me. We hadn’t even decided what the first podcast would be, let alone visioned an entire network.

  Leni seemed surprised too. ‘Big plans,’ she murmured as she took more notes. She looked up at me. ‘And what would you like to bring to the reader, George? Like, what’s your endgame?’

  Meredith went to jump in, but Leni, once again, raised a hand to silence her. It was thrilling to watch.

  ‘Look,’ I said, leaning back in my chair. ‘It’s not rocket science, right? I just want to give people something they can read while they’re eating breakfast on Saturday mornings. I want them to be entertained, maybe learn something new. That’s it.’

  Meredith cleared her throat. ‘If I may, Leni –’ she said, flashing her best ‘We’re all friends here’ smile, ‘– it’s really about engaging, like I said. We want broad-spectrum, household-name engagement, and of course we also want specific recognition as an individual product. There’s talk of doing a Sunday supplement, too, once we get a little bigger. And that’ll help with the engagement.’

  What? How would I run two weekly magazines? It wasn’t possible. I spun my head to look at Meredith. She just beamed at me.

  ‘Wow,’ said Leni. ‘This is all . . . very surprising. Most media companies are losing staff and shutting down supplements. This is very big news.’

  Meredith was practically vibrating. ‘It is. It’s a great success story. It’s foolhardy to think of your product as stand-alone these days. Readers – everyone – expects a 360-degree –’

  ‘Brand experience?’ Leni asked.

  Meredith nodded and smiled indulgently. ‘That’s right,’ she said. I knew she could tell Leni was making fun of her, but there was no way she’d ever give Leni the satisfaction of knowing she had irked her. It was one of the things I admired most about Meredith, actually. When she wasn’t being so tyrannical, she was bloody amazing.

  Leni smiled, bemused. ‘So, Georgina, how will you handle the extra workload? Are you bringing on more staff? Opening another office?’

  I laughed nervously. Was I? I had no idea. Unsurprisingly, I was yet to figure out exactly how I would handle this new supplement and podcast network, seeing as I had only heard about them, oh, sixty seconds ago.

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Like I always say to Gigi here,’ said Meredith, her voice reaching Peak Passive Aggressive, ‘– she’s a real go-getter, Leni, make sure you put that in your story – what I always say to her is, “Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out.” And you know what? She always does.’ She paused to look over at me, and then smiled broadly. ‘Don’t you, Gigi?’

  Chapter 15

  ‘I found it,’ said Neil, sidling up to me at the crowded bar.

  ‘Mmm?’ I asked, not looking at him directly. Meredith was two tables away but I suspected she’d still know I was talking to Neil. Like a dog hearing an ambulance two suburbs over, she’d pick it up, somehow.

  ‘The most hipster restaurant in Sydney. I found it.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Sounds good.’

  Neil peered round to look me in the eyes. ‘You OK?’

  I nodded, eyes on my drink. As I snuck a glance at him, he shot me a confused, almost wounded look.

  I whispered. ‘I can’t talk to you. Meredith knows.’

  Watching Meredith as she liberally poured a round of champagne for the thirsty subs, I nodded for him to move outside. He followed.

  The night air was bracing after the sweaty claustrophobia of the pub and I shivered reflexively. Neil moved to put his coat around me – a lovely gesture, but one I couldn’t accept. I put a hand up to stop him. But before I had a chance to say, ‘We have to stop all this lovely flirtation that’s making me feel all sorts of fluttery feelings in my ladyparts,’ Neil took my hand and pulled me along.

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Wait –’

  He turned around and held his hand up, smiling mischievously. ‘I have a plan.’

  A five-minute walk later, it was clear that, true to his word, Neil had found the most hipster nonsense bullshit restaurant in Sydney. It was called blooprnt and every meal was ‘carefully devolved of its whole’, the waiter told us, as we nodded, wide-eyed and valiantly restraining our laughter. The waiter, who obviously recognised Neil from the food pages of The Weekend, attended to us like we were Bey and Jay.

  ‘And what does “devolved of its whole” actually mean?’ Neil asked, utterly straight-faced.

  The waiter replied in kinds. ‘Most food at restaurants is so . . . complete,’ he said, as if what he really meant was, ‘Most food at restaurants is fished from garbage bins and reassembled on plates people have wiped their arses on.’

  ‘What we want to do, at blooprnt, is give you the essence of the food. We want to get back to the true nature of what eating is all about. Nothing fancy. No techniques you can’t pronounce. Here at blooprnt, we’re about honest food,’ he said through his requisite lengthy beard.

  Thirty minutes later, he returned with a bowl of raw, unpeeled carrot, to ‘confuse the senses’.

  Our senses already being fairly confused, we made a run for it to the nearest pub and ordered two cheeseburgers and a bottle of wine. Meredith, meanwhile, had texted me four times to ask where I was. Baby’s sick, I replied. Had to head home. She texted back, Boo. U r no fun. Why isn’t the nanny there?

  I breathed out slowly, willing my fingers not to text back, I DON’T HAVE A SODDING NANNY.

  After we got past the initial flurry of getting-to-know-you questions, Neil cut right to the chase. Between bites of fries, he asked, ‘So what’s it like being a single mum?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, taking a second to think. I was feeling a little tipsy, having drunk two martinis at the pub and almost half a bottle of wine with Neil. Pretty soon – within minutes, even – I knew the truth serum effects of the wine would begin to kick in. That part of me wanted to say it’s quite hard actually. But I knew what people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that, yes, it was tough, and yes, it was non-stop – and they loved it when you included a hilarious and touching anecdote that demonstrated the aforementioned difficulty – but that generally, I was OK. That’s what Neil wanted to hear, I was sure. I certainly wasn’t about to say, on a date, with a human male, ‘Well, being a single mum is basically not knowing what you’re doing and being afraid every day that you’re ruining not just your own life but someone else’s, too, someone much smaller and way cuter than you are, and occasionally crying for no good reason, like when you hear “Cat’s in the Cradle” on the radio. Also you drink a lot of wine even though you know you should cut down, and swear a lot, and hardly ever wear ironed clothes.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I lied, eating the last of my decidedly dishonest, fully constructed, properly delicious burger.

  He raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. People tended to want to be impressed by mothers, especially single ones. ‘Wow. Really? You seem to be handling it so well. How old is . . .?’

  ‘Pip. Pippa. Philippa,’ I repeated the nickname-to-real name explanation that I felt I had to give everyone who asked. ‘She’s almost eleven months.’ The first six months of Pip’s life had felt like years. Now the time was flying by like it was on fast forward.

  ‘Cool. What are you doing for her birthday?’

  I paused. What a great question. What a great question that I did not have an answer to.

  ‘Uh . . . not really sure yet.’ Jesus. What was I doing for Pip’s birthday? It was her first birthday – it was a big bloody deal. You only turn one once, after all. I made a mental memo to text Ellie and ask her to help me. What did a
one-year-old’s birthday involve? Probably way too much work. I didn’t have time to make 150 tiny sausage rolls from scratch (not to mention the organic, grass-fed ingredients I would somehow have to procure, children these days being allergic to anything with preservatives, additives and all other -ives) only to see them end up half-eaten and strewn across the park for a lucky family of ibises. Even if I did have the time, I would never have the patience or, indeed, the inclination.

  Neil nodded, mistaking my hesitation for deep thought on the matter. ‘So how’d it go with the reporter today? The one from Media Alert?’

  I shook my head and laughed. ‘Uh . . . well, it was OK except for Meredith butting in every fifteen seconds or so. She’s so . . .’

  ‘Meredith?’ he volunteered.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Neil laughed. ‘What did she do?’

  I screwed up my face. ‘She pissed off the reporter. She couldn’t stop interrupting. She said “360-degree brand experience” about a thousand times.’

  ‘Oh no. Why does she say that? It doesn’t even make any sense.’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But –’ I buried my face in my hands ‘– now I’ve started saying it too. Help me!’

  He laughed. ‘Oh man. That is bad. That is really, really bad.’

  ‘I know. Then she started talking about how we’re going to have a whole podcast network soon, and do a Sunday supplement, and –’

  Neil rolled his eyes. ‘Oh yeah, all that stuff. It’s never going to happen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He shrugged, chewing. ‘Meredith has been talking about that stuff since The Weekend started, what . . . a year ago now? Actually, before that – when we first got the team together, it was “part of the plan”.’ He put down his burger to do air quotes.

  I squinted. ‘So . . . what does that mean? It’s all just hot air?’

  ‘Probably.’ Neil kept eating as I stared at him, unsure what to say next.

  I’d figured out that Meredith’s emails were mostly fit to be ignored, and that she had a habit of giving me busy work and then forgetting all about it . . . but telling a reporter about big plans for your brand – plans that were never going to see the light of day – that was bad. That would make me look bad.