power of positive persuasion. That’s what I’d title today. Coop positively persuaded me to take a bit of a lead role in telling everyone, and I positively persuaded everyone to get behind it.
As I start writing the rest of my peppy teenage copy, I get lost in an odd, reflective mood. Poor teenage girls, I muse. I found it quite tough being a teenager. I was attacked by a shyness bug from 14 through 17, and had a slight stammer/babble problem when I did talk. It’s not exactly unusual: apparently Kate was shy, too. (Bloomie never was, unsurprisingly.)
Some girls must be born knowing how to make life happen exactly as they want it to. I assume they’re not the ones reading these skincare emails, but I’ve seen them on the King’s Road in Chelsea: dewy-skinned, pouty little 16-year-old madams with the air of cream-fed, much-adored cats. I was not one of those girls. When I was 13, my parents moved from London to Berkshire, and I changed from a bookish, liberal little Notting Hill school where everyone was a bit keen and giggly and geeky like me, to a rather posh, uptight, sporty, country one where the lustrous-haired pouty missies ruled the roost. They looked at me, recognised my stammering inadequacies instantly, and dismissed me. And of course, when someone doubts you, the more you doubt yourself, until you’re unable to talk at all, or at least I am.
That’s when I started the mantra. ‘Posture is confidence, silence is poise.’ The idea was that if I looked confident and poised, I’d feel confident and poised. And people might think I was about to say something brilliant. And then, if I did want to say something, they might actually listen, which might stop me stammering.
In other words, fake it till you make it.
Thanks to my mantra, I survived school. Then I went to university, where I met kindred spirits, particularly in the form of Bloomie and Kate, and discovered I didn’t really need the mantra anymore. Everything is so much easier when you have friends who think you’re funny. Inside every shy girl is a loud showoff dying to get out.
I still grasp the mantra like a security blanket in times of need. Which is basically, when something intimidates me. Like work. Or a bad date. Or, now that I think about it, every time I ever saw Rick, towards the end.
Hmm.
The mantra certainly worked this morning. Everyone acted like I was, well, not to sound too dramatic, but like I knew what I was talking about. But that’s not because of the mantra: I really did know what I was doing, and everyone else knew it too. Fuck fake it till you make it. I made it. I fucking made it.
I just had a good day at work. Not just a good day.
An awesome day.
Thinking this, I stare at the wall for a few minutes till I realise it’s ten to five and my copy is due at 5.30 pm. I push everything else out of my head and finish the email copy, proofread it, and send it to the account manager. Oooh, the adrenaline rush of a deadline met.
I know I’m breaking my don’t-talk-about-work (or dreams) rule, by the way. Don’t worry. It’s nearly the weekend. All I usually think about on the weekend is what to wear and where to drink. (And in the olden days, who to date.) As I head down to the tube, I skippy-bunny-hop a couple of steps. Then right outside the Crown pub on Brewer Street, I run smack-bang into Cooper coming out of the door with his pint, almost knocking him over in the process. I never go to the Crown. Smart Henry broke up with me there.
‘Coop! I’m so sorry!’ I exclaim, laughing. ‘I was running for the tube…’
Cooper grins at me. ‘You were skipping, actually.’ I laugh even more, and turn to look at the guy he’s with. About 35, very nice grey suit, slightly too-long hair. Rather chiselled cheekbones and bluer-than-blue eyes. I quickly compose myself and look back at Cooper, who introduces us. His name is Lukas, and he’s about to move to London from Berlin to be the UK MD of Blumenstrauße. (That explains the Euro haircut.)
‘Oh, fantastic,’ I say. ‘We’ve been talking about your company all day.’
‘I’ve been talking about it for eight weeks, since I joined,’ Lukas says, smiling at me and holding very thorough eye contact.‘Please, let’s talk about something else. Like…what you would like to drink.’
Is he flirting? ‘Oh, um, I’d love to, but I have to get home. I have plans tonight,’ I say. (Rule 6: No accidental dating.) ‘Thank you, though. Lovely to meet you. I’ll see you soon.’
‘Yes, you will,’ he says back. ‘Very soon.’ His German accent is mild, and gives his words a nice clipped sound. ‘Have a good night.’ Definitely flirting. Slightly sleazy. Probably a bastardo.
‘See you Monday,’ says Cooper.
I hurry down to the tube, running over everything that happened today again, and realise I should try to put work out of my head and think about what to wear tonight. Normally I’d have had that sorted by about 10 am. God, what’s happening to me?
The party is just getting underway when Bloomie and I get there at about 9 pm. On the way, I reread the Dating Sabbatical Rules, and then fold them up and tuck them safely in my lucky yellow clutch. I’ve resolved to never be without them.
Mitch lives in the far back end of Chelsea, almost in Fulham, in a fully party-proofed little flat: there’s a tiled, wipe-clean kitchen, a living room with—this is key, I’m sure you’ll agree—no carpet, and a not-particularly-nice back garden that can’t get ruined. Despite cosy appearances, it fits over a hundred people with the appropriate social lubricant (gin, vodka, beer, wine). Right now, only about 15 people are in the front room, mostly playing that never-ending party game, No My iPod Playlist Is Better, and a few more are in the kitchen. Bloomie dashes off to join them and unload her goodies.
I see Mitch supervising the iPod war, kiss him hello, and then feel obliged to kiss everyone else in the room hello, which means I’m basically tottering around darting my head about everyone’s face like a little bird for the next three minutes. Finally, I finish working the room and get back to Mitch.
Mitch is one of my best friends, but forget any ideas you might have about me secretly falling in love with him or vice versa: he spent the first year of university chasing after Bloomie and I, then resigned himself to best friendship, and now professes to find us physically revolting. He’s a banker, like Bloomie, but I’m afraid he probably is an arsehole, at least some of the time.
He’s also a complete tart, but since he never leads the girls to believe it’ll be anything more than just sex, he gets away with it. Just.
‘How’ve you been, Special Forces? I heard about you and Posh Mark.’
‘Mmmm,’ I say. Special Forces is his nickname for me—because of SAS/Sass. Except when I’m really drunk. Then he calls me Special Needs.
‘Tough luck, though he was too thick by half. But for fuck’s sake don’t talk to me about your feelings. DO talk to me about this intriguing Sex Vacation.’
‘Dating Sabbatical.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Big crowd tonight, Bitch?’ I ask. It’s not a very clever nickname, but it makes us laugh.
‘Don’t
