Precious You

by Helen Monks Takhar

  No. There was nothing coincidental or accidental about what you’d done.

  Because into my office entered a clone of me, a back-to-the-future doppelgänger. You’d altered your appearance, with your hair slicked back—a wave of red striking out off the left side of your temple, selling the full teardrops of your cheeks and the black mystery of your eyes more strongly than ever. You’d even altered your movements. You strode through the doors exactly as I did, throwing them open with a slap on each door, then walking through the dead center. This, instead of your usual, ever-so-humble creeping in through the single door on the left side. And you’d ditched the pastel, tit-clinging cashmere V-necks for an oversized cotton shirt, acid yellow, tucking it decisively into a gray ankle-length pencil skirt split to the thigh. You topped the whole look off with a black leather biker exactly like mine.

  Your impersonation was as shocking to me as it was mesmerizing to everybody else. They gawped on as you took your seat, flicking your hair out of your eyes with a tick of the head, not with a twee little tuck of the fingers behind the ears as normal; your reimagining of Katherine-Ross-in-the-office fully considered and complete.

  Inhabiting my style and movement had propelled your beauty to another level. An exquisite meeting of the soft and young with the hard and worldly. You wanted to show me you could be me and more, didn’t you?

  “Everything OK?” You flashed me those blinding, brilliant teeth, gleaming out from Russian Red lips.

  I tried to mask how disturbing I found your scaled-up mind games. I was initially grateful when Gemma summoned me away from my desk and back to her office with a gesture of her arm. When she noticed you, her expression was one of shock that quickly darkened to something else before she gave a small shake of her head. She didn’t really know what you were either, did she? Perhaps she never did.

  “Sorry to call you back in here again, Katherine, but I have a couple of things I need to discuss with you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m afraid Acceptableinthenoughties has been in touch again.”

  “And what are they saying this time?”

  “Well, the email itself doesn’t make any specific allegation.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “There’s no need.”

  I knew full well she was hiding something. “I think I’d really like to see it.”

  “You don’t need to worry about what the troll wrote specifically.” Liar. “But I did actually need to catch up with you about something else.”

  “Right…” What have I done now?

  “Katherine, you need to know, things are different now from how they were. They have to be, if we’re going to make it.”

  “Different how?”

  “I was prepared to hang fire on the ridiculous cab journey to work you’d put on expenses.” I opened my mouth to defend myself, but she kept going. “But really, you can’t have thought what you did at the Rosewood was OK and that I wouldn’t find out? I’d sent you and Lily there for a very specific purpose. Lily is young and impressionable, but I would have expected more from you. I’m sorry to say I’ve had to let Talent and People know. You need to consider this your second strike, Katherine. Because of this, I couldn’t not take account of the cab incident. This is a pattern. It needs to stop.”

  “Gemma, surely Lily filled you in?”

  “Filled me in on what? That you’re leading by spending my training budget on a massage?”

  I went to speak again, but stopped. I knew she’d never believe ditching copy camp was her darling Lily’s idea. I fumed. I was going to have to watch my back very carefully at work from now on, or face death by a thousand “HR-logged incidents” because of you.

  “I understand.” I understand perfectly.

  “I don’t know that you do. Do you know how many pale, male, and stale editors they wanted to ship in when we took over, or just how hard we had to fight to keep you on? You know, Lily, in particular, was absolutely insistent you stay. She said in this day and age we couldn’t start the new era showing the world we thought the only way to fix Leadership was to get a man in. I petitioned for you on this argument and that means it’s going to be on me if you don’t get back to your best and change your attitude to this workplace. So take this as a warning and now let’s move forward, let’s see you at your very best at the awards. I want you to get yourself down to The Dorchester with Lily this morning. They’re doing some final checks before tomorrow. Go. Take some ownership of the space again. Practice your speech. Do whatever it takes, take your awards back, because it was your night, Katherine. That’s what everyone says. It can be that way again. The next time I speak to HR about you, I want it to be about a marked change in your performance, not your final caution.”

  They must go for some kind of special class in the Human Resources module of whatever course Gemma had paid for to hit those icky sound bites. What made her think she ran this place better than my old bosses? That she could just bus in her niece and run the whole thing like a family empire?

  I took a second to breathe. “I’d like you to speak candidly with me, woman to woman: Do you really want me to succeed here?”

  “What is it you mean, Katherine?”

  “Do you still really want me—” It felt that tears would be expected and potentially helpful. Thankfully, they came. “Do you…do you really want to see me back on top?”

  Gemma pulled out a box of tissues from nowhere. They must teach that on “the module” too.

  “I do. I know it might seem as if I’ve been a bit hard on you, but that’s because I see a powerful woman in her prime. We need to look after each other. I want to see you thrive again. Enjoy a real renaissance.” She said “renaissance” in a hokey French accent and by now, she’d come to my side of the desk and squeezed my shoulders. One of her tissues found its way into my hands, and this facsimile of kindness helped escort a fresh gush of tears to the surface.

  “Oh God, I can’t believe I’m crying at work again. I haven’t done this for a long time. I’m sorry.” I hadn’t actually cried once at work, but I know the rules, Lily: You can’t look like you’re made of stone in moments like these.

  “Don’t be sorry, just say you’re going to come out and do your best. Because you still have your best in you. I believe your finest hour is yet to come. It had better be, since I lobbied so hard for you with the board!” Superficial, motivational care, spectacularly failing to distract from the distinct sound of thin ice cracking below. I wondered whether this is what she did to you, if perhaps part of your problem was being asked by Gemma for your “best self” every day, even if you were dying inside. I thought I understood you more than I ever had in that moment. She would drive me mad too, I thought. Health professional, the woman at your old school had said. Mental health professional, that’s what she should have said.

  I looked out at you again and my blood ran cold. You’d replaced your saintly at-work smile with my typing frown. It was uncanny. You must have been staring at me when I had no idea, and practicing in front of the mirror in your apartment to perfect the imitation.

  The truth of what was at stake began to dawn on me.

  You were more than devious in your framing of me for crimes you had committed, you were more than ruthless in your daily undermining of me in my workplace of more than twenty years, more than heartless in your pursuit of my partner.

  You were dangerous.

  I got up to leave Gemma’s office, trying to ignore the image of younger me in my peripheral vision. You were twisting around on your chair, gazing up at Asif as I went to the toilets to dry my eyes. Not a mirror, a cracked window to a past just gone; out of reach.

  “Leaving in ten, Katherine,” you called just as I got to the double doors out of the office. I slammed both palms against them and wanted to kill you there and then.

  Just before
I went, I made a discreet call to IT to get Acceptableinthenoughties’s email forwarded to me. Gemma clearly wanted to avoid creating an email trail to show all the times the troll had sent threatening messages, and she’d done nothing about it, so I’d create my own.

  Subject: Time for action

  Dear Publisher,

  If you don’t do something about Katherine Ross, I will. She deserves to die before she bores us all to death.

  A death threat.

  The time was coming for me to ask for my investigation, see where this would leave Gemma.

  * * *

  —

  WE WERE WAITING for the train on our way to The Dorchester. You stood in front of me on the edge of the tube platform at Borough while a party of schoolchildren shrieked around us. You, head down, on your phone, speed writing whatever thoughts were in your skull that you felt needed to be captured. Me, up against your back as the children bumped up behind me, the low roar of the approaching train beginning to reverberate around the platform then, as it got closer, in our chests.

  “I know you fucked me, Lily,” I shouted into the back of your head. I tried to stay as calm as I could, but I was shaking.

  Your head stayed down, but your fingers paused for a heartbeat, then resumed tapping away again.

  You turned to speak to me. “What did you say? It’s really loud.”

  The train clattered ever closer, the children becoming very excitable at the sight of it. I was struggling to stay on one spot.

  “You fucked me over. At the Rosewood!” I screamed, the train only meters from us.

  You turned all the way around to face me, almost nose to nose. A child shouldered the back of me, and I could barely stay upright. If I fell, I’d instinctively use your body to steady myself. You would have nowhere to drop but right under the train.

  “Sorry.” You just shrugged at me, like it was nothing.

  My breath fast, hot with rage. My fingers tingling.

  The train skimmed by, just inches behind you, and ground to a stop. We boarded.

  “I told Gem it was my bad,” you said, going to take a seat opposite me. “But, the thing is, no matter what I said, she just wouldn’t believe it wasn’t you.” You smiled, raised your eyebrows, then returned to your phone.

  Now, in this moment, I could feel my hate grow; an acorn with epic potential. It was now or never to wrestle control back, to be on top again.

  I thought for a second about the nature of the beige cloud that smothered me last year and had threatened to again. Perhaps it was always coming for me, waiting to envelop me should my life not deliver, if the fixes I’d sought for my horrid childhood didn’t work. So where was the beige now? The underlying issues had not gone away. My stagnating career, our patchy finances, our creative disasters, my middle-aged trough, were becoming more entrenched every day and the chance to make good on the losses waning. Perhaps my mother had been right about my life after all: It was worthless. I would indeed amount to nothing.

  You coming on the scene? It had served to bring all these realities into even sharper relief. But you’d achieved something not even you could have foreseen. I was starting to feel something shifting inside and around me. You were forcing the beige cloud to mutate into something completely different. This new filter made life feel urgent again, rather than deadening it; it demanded I stay awake and alert at all times. It demanded I bring my best fight.

  So I ended up writing furiously on that tube journey. I may not have written a published manuscript, but I do know that good writing reaches out to another person, and the only way you can do that is by putting the truth to good use, however difficult. My truth? Illness, failure, loss of purpose. They were nothing to be proud of, but they were all I had to give.

  At The Dorchester, they’d already started setting up the tables for the awards. It all looked exactly the same as it always did. It could be last year, or ten years ago, or any other year. Purple light, something frothy and timeless about the place. Outside of fashion. Practice bursts of incidental music to accompany the presenters and winners to the stage, pumping from the speakers. The machine-tooled “rock star” moments the events company engineered for every occasion, whatever the sector, whatever the award. People come to awards to be told they’re special. They put on their hired tux and occasionwear, get their hair done; maybe they tell their spouses they “may as well stay in London” so they can get properly leathered or more, because “it’s a special night.”

  But you can’t show me any occasion more devoid of prestige and kudos than any corporate awards ceremony, even ours. After Leadership’s gongs were over, they’d flip the tablecloths, change the display boards, and roll in the next set of idiots who put their faith in their industry’s “special night.” Dentists. Teachers. Accountants. Hairdressers. The trade body they give money to, telling them there’s a significance it’s possible to attach to their job, promising that you could feasibly be recognized as the “best” in one small subcategory of what you do. To be told, and for the world in that ballroom to hear it: Your job matters; you matter. Little wonder so many people, particularly those of us in middle age, are willing to pay to participate.

  I watched you swish about from table to table, cooing with some Felix Fucknuts or other. Another slew of kids buzzing around, somehow managing to look and sound exactly the same; that high-register enthusiasm, that waffle you all spout before you get to the point, those insta-ready facial expressions and the instantaneous alliances you strike up with your own kind.

  “Katherine, I think we’re ready for you, if you’d like to do your run-through?” you said, from behind a clipboard. You handed it to one of the other intern types and walked up to me with an iPad.

  “I loaded the new draft speech onto this, in case you couldn’t print off yours. Paper-free Wednesday and all that.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Lily, but I’m not using that. I’ve got something of my own.”

  “But Gem—”

  I stopped for a moment, about to falter around my reasoning for not towing the line, before something occurred to me. “But you can handle Gem if we change things up, can’t you? I think I remember you telling me that.” I walked past you, trying to steady my breath in light of both what I’d just said to you and all I was about to say to all those people who were currently fussing about the ballroom. They would surely stop in their tracks when they realized what I was saying. And when they did, they might laugh at me. They might pull out their phones and record me, then share the video on social media, the caption: Check out this midlife meltdown! It might go viral. My life could be over.

  I reached the stage. Walking slowly and deliberately toward the podium, I listened to the blood in my ears, thought about making my excuses and coming back to try again later, before timidly adjusting the mic to the level of my mouth.

  “Hello…Hi? Could someone possibly work with me for a quick sound check?” I called out to whoever’s job it was to care, stalling for time.

  All but one of the young people ignored me. It struck me: They already thought the very worst of me, they already had me pegged as a sad case, a has-been. I didn’t have anything to lose. Go on, girl, show ’em Kathy’s back, I could hear Iain say.

  So, in my flattest, most comically middle-aged voice, I said, “Good evening, Mayfair. How you feelin’?”

  And the little cunts laughed. I had their attention. OK. It was time for me to go for broke and see what I could make from the pieces of me.

  I breathed. Swallowed. Breathed again, then began for real.

  “My name is Katherine Ross, I am the editor of Leadership. I’m also someone’s partner. A daughter. And I’m a failed writer of novels with mental health issues.”

  Stunned silence.

  And I would have liked, in that moment, for everything and everyone to go away, for me to disappear, to be wiped off the
face of the earth. But I’d started now. I was saying the unsayable about me, or rather the things everyone else was saying about me behind my back. I couldn’t turn around now.

  “Who are you? Who are we?”

  The whole room seemed to stop. It felt like the only person breathing was me.

  “If you’re recognized as this year’s Rising Star, will you still worry you could be doing better?

  “If you win Consultancy of the Year, will you immediately wonder who will win next year?

  “Maybe, if you’re recognized here tonight as Senior Manager of the Year, you’ll hear a voice in your head telling you, You don’t deserve this.

  “The raw fact that we may sometimes sidestep is how leadership is as much about weakness as it is strength.

  “It’s only by knowing our weakness that we find the power to become stronger.

  “It’s only by showing and sharing our authentic selves, which include those doubts, those areas of our characters and our work, where we know we could make more headway, that takes us to Truly…Great…Leadership.”

  I looked around, young faces peering at me and me alone, absorbed in my words. In pity or admiration, I wasn’t sure yet, but whatever they were hearing in my speech, they felt its power. I continued, my confidence beginning to grow.

  “So tonight, as we celebrate just that, I want to ask us all to celebrate our own and each other’s weaknesses. Can we do that? Together? With a new spirit of authenticity and togetherness based on more than circumstance, chance, economics. Bonds based on truth.

  “Emotional truth. And personally investing in ourselves and each other.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do? Yes. And because it’s good business.

  “So, see weakness. Walk toward it. Make friends with your own Achilles’ heels and see the opportunities. That’s what Gemma Lunt and the buyout team are doing with Leadership, and also with me.”