by Tracy Bloom
‘Oh yeah,’ said Rick. ‘Where? Footie coaching would be perfect.’
‘It’s tennis coaching, actually,’ said Ben.
Braindead nearly choked on his beer.
‘You hate tennis,’ he exclaimed. ‘You bunked off every tennis lesson we ever had at school.’
‘I know,’ Ben nodded. ‘It’s the stupidest game known to man, but the tennis club in Henshall are desperate for someone in the evenings and the weekends, and it pays really well.’
‘Henshall!’ exclaimed Rick.
‘Yeah,’ said Ben. ‘What about it?’
‘Talk about suburbia. Henshall is bloody gold-plated suburbia. You’ll be coaching spoilt brats and bored housewives who have nothing to do but organise cleaners to tidy up after them in their six-bed mansions.’
‘Bored housewives,’ muttered Braindead. ‘Sounds good to me.’
‘You’re right,’ said Rick. ‘They definitely have sex in Henshall. They’ve got much more time for that sort of thing. Some desperate housewife is going to have you as her toy boy before you know it.’ Rick put his free hand up to his cheek, pretending to hold a phone. ‘Hi, Georgina, daaaaarling, just ringing to tell you the latest goss’. Yes, it’s true, I’m leaving David. Oh, you’ve heard, have you? Yes, all the rumours are true. I’ve been shagging the tennis coach. Can you believe it, daaaarling? Such a hoot. I’m moving him into the mansion next week.’
‘That’s not funny,’ said Ben.
‘But a tennis coach!’ cried Rick. ‘I repeat. You hate tennis.’
‘It’s not ideal,’ Ben admitted. ‘But we’re really struggling without Katy’s wage. I need to do something.’
‘Have you told Katy about this?’ asked Rick.
‘No,’ Ben sighed. ‘Not yet. Not sure she’s going to like the idea, either. She has a fit if I’m more than five minutes late home as it is. She’s often waiting at the door with Millie in her arms, ready to hand her over the minute I get through the door. Not sure how she’s going to react if I tell her I’ll be home even later and not around at weekends. But I don’t know what else to do.’
‘So Katy was a catch, then?’ asked Braindead.
‘What do you mean?’ said Ben.
‘She earned a packet at that advertising agency?’
‘Yeah. As I said, beats my job any day of the week.’
‘Fucking obvious, isn’t it?’ Braindead shrugged.
‘What is?’ said Ben and Rick in unison.
‘The answer.’
‘The answer to what?’ asked Ben.
‘All this money stuff and not being able to get married and online poker and Kirstie Allsopp.’
‘You’re making no sense, Braindead,’ said Ben. ‘Which I know is no major insight, but needs pointing out most times I see you.’
‘Katy goes back to work. You spend your days with Kirstie Allsopp.’
There was silence around the small table in the corner of the pub underneath a random framed picture of some fruit.
Rick spoke first.
‘I can teach you how to play online poker,’ he said.
Ben didn’t reply. His mind was grappling with Braindead’s idea.
‘She does say she misses work,’ he muttered finally. ‘I know she phones Daniel every week to see what’s happening and to check up on her clients.’
‘And I can teach you how to play online poker.’
‘I think she’d like to go back to work,’ said Ben, to no-one in particular.
‘It’s really easy once you get the hang of it.’
‘Looking after a baby?’ Ben asked.
‘No. Online poker.’
‘But do you think I could look after Millie full-time?’
‘You’re a natural,’ said Braindead. ‘I could never beat you at snap when we were kids.’
‘I could do it, you know,’ Ben continued, leaning back in his chair. ‘Actually, I think Katy lets her hormones get in the way sometimes. She gets all uptight and emotional about it. Whenever I look after Millie she’s fine, she’s great. She just lies on my belly while I watch the footie. It’s the best feeling in the world, guys, honestly.’ He stopped, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘You’ve just got to relax and then they will relax. I’ve thought about telling Katy – that she just needs to chill a bit, then Millie will, but I think she’d bite my head off. She’s . . . she’s just not herself at the moment,’ he said, looking away.
‘It would save you having an affair with a wrinkly orange housewife,’ Rick said helpfully.
‘This could be the answer,’ Ben muttered. ‘Katy goes back to the job she loves whilst I stay at home with Millie. We can afford the mortgage on the flat and start saving to get married or even a house, and I don’t have to be out of the house all hours tennis coaching.’ He paused, turning his gaze to the framed fruit on the wall. ‘And maybe Katy will be more herself again,’ he muttered to no-one in particular. ‘We just need to figure out how to convince her it’s a good idea.’
Chapter Five
Katy gave herself one last once-over as she stood outside her former workplace. Shoulders puke-free – check. Leopard-print wool coat bought in the Harvey Nichols sale three years ago, and carefully selected for today to show she had not turned into a dowdy-ville mum – check. First time in heels, chosen for the same reason as the coat despite the fact they were crippling her – check. Cath Kidston cowboy nappy bag, bought to show Daniel that baby accessories could be cool and didn’t have to be dominated by primary colours – check. Millie fast asleep following strategically timed mammoth feed in the café next door in the hope that she would stay asleep for the entire duration of the obligatory take-your-baby-to-work visit, when everyone pretends to be overjoyed to meet your offspring but secretly is just delighted for the distraction and a gossip – check.
Katy could feel her heart pounding with nerves, which was ridiculous. She’d walked into the building a thousand times before, so why the big deal today? She knew exactly why. The last time she’d walked through those doors she’d known who she was. She was their best Account Director, whose opinion was respected and sought after to the extent that last year she’d been made an Associate Director, earning the right to have an opinion on the entire business. She was an award winner. She could see the trophies earned for some of the campaigns she’d worked on, lining the far wall of the reception area. She was a colleague, a mentor, a lunch companion, an after work drinks buddy, a water cooler gossiper. She had been all of those things and now she was none of them. Just eight weeks ago her life had been full of work. Her work had defined how she lived and who she was. Since then it felt like she’d not only had a baby but also been through some strange time machine, entering a new zone entirely, and was revisiting her former life as an alien. She wanted to run away. She wasn’t sure if she could handle the inevitable scrutiny from her former colleagues as they judged how she was handling her new self. She didn’t feel up to facing the out-of-body experience of being in her former workplace as an outsider, a foreigner, someone who had to wear a sticker on their lapel that shrieked VISITOR – be careful what you say.
She took a deep breath and leaned forward over the pram to push the door open, but it was too heavy for her to move with one hand. She attempted to jam the pram at it, but even that was no match for the heavy, sleek, all glass door. She could feel her cheeks start to turn red as she noticed a receptionist observe her battle with the door. She was getting flustered now. This was not the entrance she wanted to make. Cool, calm and in control was the image she intended to leave behind, not blind panic because she couldn’t manoeuvre a pram through a door.
The receptionist, who was different to the one who normally worked there, was gesticulating at her, pointing vigorously at something to her left. She looked over to where the woman was indicating. There was another door that to Katy’s recollection she had never used in her entire seven years working at the agency. Tucked away in the corner, a gentle slope led up to a door with a disabled entrance st
icker on it. As she looked, it automatically glided open. Katy didn’t want to go through the disabled entrance. She’d never been through it before and she wasn’t about to go through it now. She was Katy, Account Director at this fine establishment, temporarily on maternity leave. She would use the door she always used. She reversed the pram slightly, awkwardly spun it around then shoved her back into the glass, forcing it ajar just enough to squeeze herself through. Unfortunately, its heavy bulk started to swing back immediately, trapping the pram and forcing Katy yet again to attempt to budge it using just one hand.
‘There you go,’ said the receptionist, appearing at her side and pulling the door back for her. ‘You could have used the disabled entrance, you know.’
‘I don’t have a disability,’ Katy wanted to scream. ‘I have a baby, that’s all.’ Instead she turned on a forced smile and said, ‘Thank you,’ through gritted teeth. She turned her back on the woman and headed for the lift.
‘Are you visiting someone?’ the receptionist called, just as she pressed the button. ‘I have to sign you in first.’
Katy stared back at her. It wasn’t that long ago that Katy had held a set of keys for the entire building, and now some woman was asking her to sign in.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she said before she could stop herself.
‘No,’ replied the receptionist. ‘Should I?’
‘I work here, I don’t need to sign in,’ said Katy as firmly as she could without shouting. She jabbed the lift call button again. She couldn’t bear the sight of this woman who didn’t recognise her. She could also sense a couple of clients perched on the bright red, deeply uncomfortable designer sofas trying desperately hard not to be seen to be watching the altercation.
‘Do you?’ the receptionist said. ‘Have you been off sick or something?’
‘Maternity leave,’ said Katy. ‘Or do you think I’ve stolen this baby? Why is this lift taking so long?’ she said, stabbing the button, desperate to remove herself from the reception area and away from the embarrassment of not being recognised at her own workplace.
‘Don’t you have a pass?’ asked the receptionist.
‘A pass for what?’
‘The lift.’
‘I don’t need a pass for the lift.’
‘You do.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since a tramp wandered in a couple of weeks ago and got all the way up to the top floor then fell asleep in the boardroom, just before a big presentation. They’ve put a new system in.’
‘I see,’ said Katy. ‘Please may I have a pass then?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Visitors aren’t allowed passes.’
‘I’m not a visitor, I work here. Haven’t you been listening?’
‘Then you should already have a pass.’
The woman folded her arms, a hint of a satisfied smile on her face.
‘Where’s Dawn?’ asked Katy. If Dawn had been on reception like she usually was then this would not be happening.
‘She was let go because of the tramp incident,’ the woman continued. ‘And I have a Post-it note stuck to my computer saying NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS in capital letters.’
‘Well, if it’s on a Post-it note then who I am I to argue,’ said Katy, beginning to lose it. ‘Call Daniel in Creative Services. He’ll come down and tell you who I am.’
The woman turned and walked back behind her desk, then tapped something on a keyboard before speaking into a headset.
‘Hello. It’s Sue on reception. I have a lady downstairs with a baby who claims to work here but she doesn’t have a lift pass and she refuses to sign in. She asked me to call you.’
Sue went silent for a moment listening to the reply.
‘Is that what you’d like me to tell her?’ she said. ‘In those exact words?’
She turned to Katy and shouted across reception. ‘Daniel says to tell that drama queen bitch to put her child-bearing thighs on the visitor couch and he’ll be down after he’s finished doing her job for her.’ She punctuated the sentence with a smug smile.
‘What on earth are you doing to the Crispy Bix campaign?’ demanded Katy, striding into Daniel’s office. She’d already been round the entire office to have her baby manhandled. Millie for the moment appeared to be grateful to be lying back in her pram, so Katy hovered in the doorway rocking her backwards and forwards.
‘And what business is it of yours these days?’ replied Daniel, looking up from behind his desk.
‘I know what’s happening, Daniel,’ said Katy. ‘I’m not here, and you’ve seized your chance to let your creative juices run riot.’
‘That’s my job, Katy. I’m the Creative Director of the agency. It’s what I’m paid for, in case you’d forgotten.’
‘Yes, but as I’ve said to you many times before, you are not here to create art, Daniel, you are here to sell stuff.’
‘People buy beautiful things, Katy. You should give the general public more credit for their appreciation of beauty.’
‘But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? It’s not their idea of beauty; it’s your idea of beauty. Crispy Bix is a kids’ cereal. A poster campaign based on extracts from Shakespeare sonnets isn’t going to attract your average six-year-old.’
‘So this is what having a baby does for you.’ Daniel stood up and waved a cursory arm at the pram. ‘You’re going all low-brow on me.’
‘Don’t you dare bring the baby into this argument,’ cried Katy. ‘You know I’m right. Shakespeare doesn’t fit in with the brand values for Crispy Bix.’
‘Fuck the brand values!’ Daniel shouted back, banging his fist on the desk. ‘The posters are stunning. Award winning. They’ll stop traffic, I’m telling you.’
‘And sell precisely zero packets of Crispy Bix.’
‘God, I’ve missed this,’ he declared, striding from behind the desk and taking Katy in his arms.
‘Me too,’ she muttered into his shoulder.
‘So how was it out there?’ he asked.
‘Oh, fine really,’ she sighed. ‘Apart from the fact I couldn’t help noticing bits of campaigns everywhere, and what was wrong with them.’
‘Not your job any more. This is your job.’ Daniel nodded down at Millie. ‘You going to stand there pushing that thing backwards and forwards like a trained budgie, or are you going to sit down? I can’t talk to you whilst you’re doing that.’
‘But she may explode if I stop,’ said Katy. ‘Stopping is a high-risk strategy.’
‘Come on. Sit down, she won’t notice.’
‘Oh, she will,’ Katy said. ‘She reminds me a lot of you, actually. If she doesn’t have loads of attention and constant flattery, she throws a tantrum and chucks all her toys out of the cot.’
‘I like her style,’ Daniel said approvingly.
‘Eeeeugh!’ A young man had barged into Daniel’s office, nearly falling over Millie’s pram in the process. ‘What is that?’
‘Ahhh, Freddie,’ said Daniel. ‘Let me introduce you to a baby.’
‘What is a baby doing in your office, Dan?’
‘This baby has arrived with Katy, who I guess you will not have met before. Freddie, meet Katy. Katy, this is Freddie. He’s on loan from the London office as an Account Director to cover your clients whilst you’re on baby watch.’
‘Oh. Hi,’ said Katy awkwardly.
‘Hi,’ replied Freddie, his eyes raking her up and down. Having completed his appraisal he switched his focus straight back to Daniel.
‘Crispy Bix don’t like the Shakespeare campaign,’ he told Daniel. ‘You were right, the Brand Manager is a cultural desert. I told her it was groundbreaking and would disrupt the entire under-sevens, low-sugar, high-iron, low-salt, semi-natural cereal category, but she wouldn’t listen. She insists we roll out Crispy Casper again and use him.’
‘Not the chipmunk!’ cried Daniel, putting his head in his hands. ‘Please tell me she doesn’t mean the chipmunk?’
‘Yep,’ replied Freddie. ‘She’d rather have a chipmunk than Shakespeare. How do these people get these jobs?’
‘When Casper was introduced, Crispy Bix sales increased by over fifteen percent,’ muttered Katy.
Daniel and Freddie just looked at her.
‘Just saying,’ she shrugged.
‘I’ll go back to her,’ Freddie told Daniel. ‘Tell her that the brand needs fresh innovation, not tired old, lacking-inspiration cartoon animals that have been done to death.’
‘That’s my boy,’ said Daniel, slapping Freddie on the back. ‘You ask her. Does she want to be a brand pioneer, famous for her foresight and guts, or a brand follower who will never be recognised for the great work which she’s capable of?’
‘Gosh,’ said Freddie. ‘Dan, that’s brilliant. Say it again so I can write it down.’
‘You’ll remember it,’ said Daniel. ‘Now off you go and sell my Shakespeare campaign in.’
Freddie backed out of the doorway without even saying goodbye to Katy.
‘You are such a twat sometimes,’ she told Daniel once they were alone.
‘Freddie is the Account Director, not you. He believes in the campaign.’
‘So he’s a twat as well, then.’
Millie chose this moment to throw a tantrum and hurl her toys out of the pram. Katy bent to pick her up.
‘See, just like you,’ she said to Daniel. ‘Always demanding attention. Do you want a hold?’
‘No.’
‘Fair enough,’ Katy shrugged. ‘I’d better go back home anyway. Let you get on with destroying our relationship with Crispy Bix.’
‘I thought it must be you when I heard a baby cry,’ said the Managing Director, poking his head around the door. ‘There’s nothing that sounds quite the same as a new baby crying, is there? Hand her over then.’ He took Millie from Katy, throwing her easily over his shoulder, and she instantly went quiet. ‘It’s so good to see you, Katy,’ he continued. ‘We’re really missing you.’
Katy beamed back. This was the best news she’d had all day.
‘Daniel, could you pop up to my office and—’