The Note: An uplifting, life-affirming romance about finding love in an unexpected place

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Switch FASHmas up?’ Maya’s freckled nose crinkles.

  What does that even mean?

  ‘I think FASHmas is looking a little tired under your tenure, Maya, so I’m going to be the figurehead for it this year. Freshen it up. Make it sharp. Make it savvy. Make it cool again.’

  ‘“Make it cool again”?’ Maya’s distaste gives her voice a little wobble, and suddenly she sounds as intimidated as she is outraged.

  ‘You’ve done it for what, two years? I think it’s time to give it a fresh pair of eyes. I’ve spoken to Lucy, she’s already on board.’

  ‘So this is an ambush then, Cressida. If you’d already decided you weren’t going to go with Chloe and Olivia’s look and my tone of voice, why did you have us working so hard on a concept? That’s a lot of wasted hours.’

  ‘Deal with it!’ Cressida sings, collecting the mood boards from the centre of the table and dumping them against the little wire bin on her way out.

  A door slams.

  Chloe starts to cry.

  Olivia is incandescent with anger.

  ‘Did she just fucking do what I think she did?’ Red hair turns to flames. ‘How dare she!’

  Maya tries to rally spirits. ‘Girls I’ve seen this before at Walk In Wardrobe. She’s a bully. Nothing we would have done would have been good enough. You’re both brilliant at your jobs and what you produced wasn’t right for Cressida and her designer delusions or Game of Sloane’s politics – but it was right for FASH. You did good. But annoyingly it’s her call, she’s the editor. We’ll just have to grit our teeth and go along with it. Smile and wave. See what Lucy thinks come New Year.’

  ‘I hope she fucking shoots herself in the fucking Chelsea boot,’ says Olivia with a riled smirk.

  Maya’s calm exterior belies livid anger bubbling beneath.

  *

  ‘Lucy can I have a word please?’

  The Ecuadorian cleaner starts to vacuum nearby and Lucy looks jangled from two directions.

  ‘Yeah I have to leave in five minutes, my nanny is going on a date. Bit selfish…’ she jokes.

  Maya smiles, light relief from the issue she’s about to raise. Everything seems more unnerving in this corner of the building, by the plush offices of Lucy, Rich and Rich.

  ‘Erm, excuse me, can you come back in ten minutes?’ Lucy snaps at the cleaner, who meekly wheels her Henry hoover away and turns it off. ‘Can’t hear myself think,’ she says, looking back at her screen and tugging her butter-blonde bob.

  Maya waits patiently, nervously, and notices Lucy looks more frazzled than usual.

  The office is quiet, and the only other voice Maya can hear is Rich Robinson’s muted tones as he goes through his diary with his PA on the other side of another glass wall.

  Maya stands gawkily at Lucy’s desk.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about Cressida.’

  Lucy looks away from her screen and up at Maya.

  ‘Sit down.’ She gestures for Maya to take a chair. ‘What did you want to say?’

  ‘She’s really causing upset among the team, Lucy. Saying really personal stuff to Olivia, totally diminishing the confidence of the team, coming up with crazy ideas that just aren’t on brand… Some of the team have been coming to me saying they’re really upset.’ Maya feels sweat trickle down the small of her back into the base of her silk blouse.

  ‘“Really upset?”’ scoffs Lucy, before round, wise eyes soften a little. ‘Maya this isn’t high school. This is work. I thought you were bigger than that.’

  Maya is silenced. Her moment of boldness quashed. Speaking up for nothing. ‘I… I am… I just thought you might want to know…’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not just sore about Cressida getting the job?’

  ‘Me? Not at all! I didn’t really want the job.’

  ‘It kind of showed, Maya.’ Lucy looks back at her screen and doesn’t bother to pretend she isn’t reading an email.

  Maya feels betrayed, by Lucy, by herself.

  ‘Well then you have to believe that I’m not talking from a jealous point of view. I’m just worried for the team. She’s ruffled lots of feathers, not just mine.’

  Lucy continues to look at her screen while nodding, as if she’s listening.

  I’ve blown it now, I may as well go the whole hog.

  ‘It’s not just Cressida. Something has changed here. I’m not sure whether it was before the bonuses scandal or after, but people used to be happy. They used to be proud. Even the models on the walls don’t look happy any more,’ Maya tries to joke.

  Lucy stands and packs her phone and her tablet into her bag.

  ‘Oh please Maya. Don’t be so soft. It’s business. You didn’t get a bonus. You didn’t get a job. This is one of the biggest fashion empires in the world. If you’re not feeling proud to work here then you can always go back to Walk In Wardrobe. Or I heard Wicked Style were recruiting. I don’t have time for this, I need to get home for the nanny.’

  Lucy wraps herself in a petrol-blue funnel coat and charges out of the office, down the corridor to the glass double doors by the empty canteen.

  Maya is floored. What happened to the best boss she ever had? What happened to the best job she ever had?

  Maybe it is me.

  Maya stands on weak knees and smooths her skirt down as she gathers herself and starts walking back to her desk.

  Rich Robinson exits his office with such swagger he overtakes her in his Cuban heels.

  ‘Working late tonight, Matilda?’

  ‘Oh you know… Always dedicated to FASH!’ Maya musters and looks at the back of his annoying-shaped head as he skips out.

  *

  On the train home Maya opens her dented laptop and starts writing. Words tumble, notes form. Notes about what it’s like to work at FASH. Notes on the excitement, the perks, the friendliness, the fun when she first arrived. Notes on how the models used to glide down the stairs in their terry-towel dressing gowns, from the canteen to the studio, proud to be modelling for the world’s largest fashion retailer. Notes on how Sam and the tech team seemed like they had the best jobs in the digital world. Notes on how a young designer full of excitement and ideas was made to cry in a meeting, all her effervescence and enthusiasm knocked out of her in one sharp swoop. The countryside outside blackens and words spill onto white rectangles as Maya thinks back and wonders at what point FASH turned from a happy place to somewhere where people can be made to feel so awful.

  Maya ponders how a company that makes £68,000 per minute can stop giving staff small bonuses, or at least leave a token bottle of Prosecco on employees’ desks at Christmas, many of whom are starting out on a first-job minimum-wage salary. Maya writes down all the Cressida-isms – the cruel things she has said to the team. The negative reactions to people’s brave ideas. Her comments about people’s body shape. Her disgust and disdain for FASH’s own customers, the people who keep them all employed.

  As the train jolts and the late workers head homeward-bound, steam emanates from Maya’s keyboard, and so consumed is she that she doesn’t even notice James watching her from the middle of the carriage.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  A vacant stool sits in a studio while James tests his flashbulbs against the mottled grey backdrop he rolled down behind it at 6.30 a.m. It’s now 8 a.m. and this is James’s first booking as a freelance photographer through his agent at Kaye-French. It’s not his dream gig – portraits of big cheeses at an asset management firm in the City – but given that fat cats work an earlier day than advertising creatives, it was a booking James could fit in before his day at MFDD starts. A trail of portly men and the occasional woman have steadily passed through the studio, and James is surprised by how many of them he liked through the lens and enjoyed talking to while they sat nervously, out of their comfort zone. The first subject was quite unforgiving when James’s digital SLR ran out of battery and he had a 6.45 a.m. conference call to get to, but James was so annoyed with himself, his heartfelt apolo
gy meant that headshot #1 (Harold Leaver, Investment Portfolio Manager) cooled a little. James has that effect on people. That’s how James has done so well in a career in advertising, despite not being able to talk the talk. Dominic does the bullshit, James backs it up with quiet authority.

  Next up on his call sheet is headshot #12, Miriam Wallace, Assistant Vice President.

  ‘Morning,’ she says, exactly on time. She walks in, sits on the stool and fidgets.

  ‘Morning,’ smiles James, trying to put her at ease.

  Miriam has soft beige hair framing a tense, lined face. She undoes a button on an ill-fitting blazer and looks nervously into the lens. She was busting balls in the Frankfurt office via Skype fifteen minutes ago and now she feels vulnerable.

  ‘This won’t take long, just try to relax.’

  ‘I don’t relax.’ Miriam refastens her jacket button and feels the pinch of last night’s seven-course dinner hosting her New York counterpart.

  ‘What have you got in store for the rest of the day?’ asks James, making chit-chat as he sees some softness through the lens.

  ‘I’m firing someone in Geneva as soon as this is over,’ Miriam replies without a hint of irony.

  ‘Oh dear, sorry.’

  ‘I’m not sorry, he’s incompetent.’

  Saggy lids hang over dispassionate eyes. James doesn’t want to take a picture he knows Miriam Wallace will hate every single time she walks past it in reception, however much she would pretend that vanity is beneath her.

  The studio goes quiet. James examines Miriam.

  ‘What was the best thing that happened to you all week?’

  ‘What?’

  Miriam is taken aback. No one in this building would think or dare to ask her a question like that.

  ‘What was the best thing that happened to you this week?’

  Miriam touches soft hair while she thinks.

  ‘My daughter. My daughter got back from Australia on Saturday. She was gone a year.’

  Click.

  *

  Ever since Velma died, Sundays have made Maya feel somewhat empty. But this Sunday, what feels like it might be the last sunny Sunday of the year, calls for a morning run to get Maya up and out and to stop her feeling lost. Later today, Nena and Tom are finally coming to Hazelworth, so Maya decides to get out early so she can spend the morning baking up a storm for their long-awaited visit.

  Maya sits on the black and white chequered tiles of the hallway floor and laces up her trainers. Two rectangles of stained glass let the morning light shine down on her shins and as she flexes her heels to lace up her left trainer she notices definition. A satisfying dip between shin bone and muscle that empowers her.

  Maya stands, straightens her running tights up over her waist and pulls a long-sleeved lime green top down over a thin running vest. Beyond the stained glass the sky is tinged with pink hues and sympathy.

  Maya runs the short path, turns right, then right again at the end of the road, over the roundabout with the gastro pub with the hanging baskets, that looks like a large selection box of something tasty sitting on the corner. Tired eyes adjust to the light as Maya focuses on the musings she was writing until 1 a.m. on a Saturday night. An Insider’s Guide To FASH. As Maya runs down a Roman road with grand houses on one side and tiny terraces on the other, she wonders why she stayed up so late writing it: it’s not a style guide, it’s not helpful. It’s gossipy, it’s negative, it’s an exposé. But that doesn’t matter because it felt cathartic and no one will ever read it. At the end of the Roman road, fuchsia flashes on Maya’s trainers as she bears right onto an unspectacular thoroughfare that looks like it could be a through road in any suburban town in this country. Petrol station. Takeaway shops. A grocery store. Houses built in the 1930s, a vet’s clinic. But it’s a means to a park, where grand gates sweep open to let Maya in.

  Tall copper beeches punctuate a path with a white line painted down the middle of it before the path snakes to the left of a large expanse of grass. One side of the path has an illustration of a man wearing a hat, striding with purpose, the other side has a picture of a bicycle. Maya stays on the side with the walking figure on it, even though there aren’t any commuters whizzing through the park to the train station at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. Maya starts to find her stride, using the line as a tow to regulate her pace. A dog walker, in the middle of the field, leads an ageing Rottweiler towards the banks, at the far right of the park, against the train track obscured by tall elms. A man wearing a waterproof jacket even though it isn’t raining helps a little girl learn to ride without stabilisers. A woman does tricep dips on the bench by the path’s edge. The rest of Hazelworth is sensibly still asleep.

  Thump, puff, thud. Maya hears the feet of a faster runner coming up the path behind her and obviously moves to one side so the runner can pass her without impediment, or the feeling that Maya is being competitive. One of the unspoken rules in the Running Code that Maya learnt from Herbert Flowers along with Nodding, Never Getting Too Close and Not Spitting, not that she ever did that of course.

  The faster runner’s pace slows on his or her approach. He or she has chosen not to overtake, which throws Maya because she was adhering to The Code and making it clear that she was Happy To Be Overtaken. As Maya’s lungs strengthen and her cadence becomes more confident, she decides to speed up a little to shake off the runner who isn’t adhering to The Code. It shouldn’t annoy her but it does.

  I would have been overtaken. Now I feel under pressure to go faster.

  Maya’s irked mind flashes to Cressida and she tries to remember the name of the intern Cressida bullied at Walk In Wardrobe, the one who pretended to be run over by a bus rather than come back to work with her. As feet hasten, a name escapes her, but Maya can picture eyes wide with wonder and expectancy on the cusp of a career in fashion. Bullied out by a few off-the-cuff but oh-so-cutting comments that weren’t even dwelled upon by their deliverer.

  Maybe the intern whose name I can’t remember wasn’t tough enough to work in fashion either.

  Maya speeds up again as she follows the curve of the path, leaving the tree-lined avenue at the entrance of the park and turning into something less defined. A rough track laps around the expanse of grass, heading into hidden nooks and bushes, and a weeping willow by a brook. Maya wonders why her feet chose this route today now that the footsteps following make her feel under duress. Sometimes Maya runs in the countryside, to the hills that frame Hazelworth in its bowl, sometimes through the town itself, zig-zagging the roads that lead off the market square and back again. Sometimes she runs up to Herbert and Dolores’s house on the hill, so she can say hello, wave goodbye, then run back down with Hazelworth stretched out before her. Her town. Her home. Her sanctuary.

  Why did I run this route today?

  Maya needed to run in circles around the park, where she wouldn’t need to think about her pace or her route or her surroundings or whether it was too early to wake her parents. She just wanted to think about what she wrote last night. What she was going to bake for Nena and Tom (she’s even thinking of some kind of macaron tower as today has a special occasion feel about it) and how she should approach work tomorrow morning. If she’s being edged out of FASHmas, is it time to look for a new job?

  Still hearing the footsteps behind her, suddenly Maya is aware of how few people are around. That Rottweiler looks hopeless, and the man with the girl is so engrossed in scooping up his daughter after each enthusiastic fall that Maya doesn’t think he would even hear her scream. A quick glance back, while adhering to the Eye Contact rule Herbert Flowers taught her: never make eye contact with a male runner if you don’t feel one hundred per cent certain that he’s not a murderer.

  Too fleeting. Maya could only just gauge the height of a slender man with light brown hair. Maya tries to peel away, except now she’s on the path that laps the edge of the park by the hidden railway track, there’s nowhere to peel away to. The once-kind morning sky has turned grey and gloomy clouds
loom. Perhaps the man in the waterproof jacket was onto something.

  Go.

  Maya’s feet are moving faster than her legs can handle and as she revs up her revolutions she trips on a root of the willow tree and tumbles into nettles on one side of the path.

  ‘Owww!’

  The runner in pursuit trips on Maya’s foot, jutting out onto the path, and falls deeper into the nettles, stinging his arm and scuffing his knees.

  ‘Jesus!’ huffs Maya, angrily, dusting off twigs and berries from lime-green sleeves.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ A red face rises. ‘I just wanted to know if it was you,’ says a man who looks like a boy. A face with more freckles than the spaces between them blushes. ‘It is you!’

  ‘What?’ Maya scowls, bending and flexing her ankle gingerly to see how serious her fall was.

  ‘Maya Flowers? Remember this? Pretty familiar scene, although we used to do it among the silver birches.’

  Maya feels stalked and uncomfortable and angry that this man made her feel scared when she usually feels strong when she’s running.

  ‘You made me fall over,’ she says, still unpicking berries from her clothes.

  Maya looks up and sees his face. The face of a boy she used to know. Blue eyes. Light brown hair. Freckles. A checked bomber jacket with a sheepskin collar long since recycled or turned to rags. His hair used to curl over and kiss the sheepskin collar but now it is cropped and short – but Maya can see an eleven-year-old face looking at her with delight.

  ‘Pip? Pip Smith?’

  ‘Maya Flowers. You used to slow down for me in kiss chase – you’re faster now,’ he laughs.

  ‘That’s not funny, you scared me.’ Maya’s anger turns to relief, and with a little sigh and a whisper of a laugh, the tension flows away like the blood running down Pip’s knee.

  Pip Smith was the sweetest boy in the playground. Always sticking up for people. Always inventing new games. Always running faster, jumping higher and climbing dizzier heights just to impress Maya. Always drawing pictures for Maya after school, then taking a folded piece of paper out of his pocket the next morning and watching Maya’s face as she opened it, to see if she liked the Ninja Turtle or Simba the lion cub or the self-portrait of Pip doing judo. Sometimes Pip used to draw Maya as a princess in Cinderella-esque ball gowns. Maya liked Pip’s drawings. And she did secretly slow down for Pip in kiss chase too.