seems simple.
‘That doesn’t mean you should be a mute. Making him laugh is crucial.’
‘I need to be funny, too?’ I say in dismay. Robert looks amused by this. ‘What makes you the expert? Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘Not exactly. I’m just very good at being single.’
Ah, a player. On cue, his phone buzzes with a text that I can immediately tell, by the disinterested way he reads it, raises his eyebrows slightly, and then taps out a reply, is a girl.
‘Cool, detached . . .’ I muse, watching him. ‘Do I have to do this forever? Some day I’ll fall in love again, I hope, and then I won’t have to think about this . . . Right? Like, on my wedding day, do I have to think about acting cool and detached?’
His phone buzzes again. Another text. He reads it and raises an eyebrow, before looking up at me and computing my last statement.
‘Don’t think about falling in love. Don’t even say the word. Love has nothing to do with dating. And don’t think about your wedding day. Ever,’ he says, picking up his wallet and keys from the coffee table. He throws me the remote control and I catch it perfectly. Yes! Two out of two. ‘I’m off. Meeting a friend.’
‘I figured,’ I say. ‘Does that mean my how-to-date tutorial is over?’
‘Going on a date is just something to do for a few hours.’ Robert takes his coat from the hall cupboard. ‘It’s no big deal, so don’t build it up to be something more in your head.’
‘But what if I don’t feel detached? Or cool?’
Robert pauses as he reaches the door, looks over at me, and grins. ‘Fake it.’
As I head in to work the next morning, I realise that Robert was right. I’m sure you’ve already come to the same conclusion: it was a bad date. I’m trying to chalk it up to experience, rather than chalking it up to my so-I-WILL-end-up-alone-and-lonely theory.
My office is just behind Blackfriars. I’m a financial analyst for an investment bank. Basically, I need to know everything about the retail industry in order to help our traders and clients make money.
When I first started working, I loved my job. I loved winkling out information that no one else had. I felt like a little truffle pig snuffling for gems. Then the recession hit, and with no gems to snuffle, it became hard to get excited, or even care, about any of it. And then I – rather belatedly, as tends to happen to me quite a lot – realised that my job wasn’t about research, it was all about helping rich people get richer. Which doesn’t exactly fry my burger. Though perhaps work isn’t meant to be enjoyable, you know?
Full disclosure: I only joined this company because its stand was next to the bar at my university careers day.
I am not kidding. I was finishing a difficult and essentially useless degree in medieval French. The university careers day was stressful and weirdly humiliating. Plum and I discovered the bar during happy hour, the two investment guys at the company stand spotted us and, after our second bottle of half-price wine, came over for a chat.
I didn’t know what else I’d do with my life, and the salary sounded pretty good, so I applied for the grad scheme, got in, got a couple of qualifications, and now, here I am, an associate analyst. Stuck halfway up a job ladder I never knew existed till I was already on it.
I sit in a quiet corner of a very large, very grey open-plan office, on the 6th floor. My boss, Suzanne, is a managing director and has her own office (glass fronted, so she can keep an eye on us). I work in a small team, specialising in luxury retail, with two other analysts, Alistair and Charlotte. Sitting around us are the other teams: pharmaceutical, automotive, banking, construction blahblahblah.
Today, at 6.40 am, I’m the first one in from my team. The workday starts very early for research analysts. Just one of the many things that I don’t like about my job.
I sit down, turn on my laptop and sigh. Oh fluorescent lighting, how I hate you. I swear the one above my head flickers and buzzes an abnormal amount. At least my team doesn’t have to present at the 7.15 am sales meeting today. Instead, all I have to do is check Bloomberg and Reuters and see what’s happening in the markets. Nothing so far. Yay. If there was, I’d need an opinion. And it’s hard to have an opinion when you don’t really care.
This is how easy it would be to improve my quality of life: let my work day start after 9 am and let me dress how I want. Today I’m wearing my uniform: a cream top with grey trousers and heels. The top is a bit silky and the trousers high-waisted, so this is haute fashion in my office, which is exceedingly conservative even for the City. Most women here wear utterly boring skirt suits with ill-fitting shirts and sensible, closed-toe low heels; anything too fashionable attracts attention. I think my job is why I don’t speak style quite as well as Plum does. You need to be trying out new looks all the time in order to develop a real instinct for what suits you.
I take out my notebook and am looking over yesterday’s list (I’m big on lists, as you’ve probably noticed), crossing off things and rewriting instructions on today’s fresh list when my phone rings.
‘Plummy plum,’ I whisper. ‘I’m—’
‘I know you’re already at work,’ she says. Plum works in PR, so her day doesn’t start till at least 9 am, and right now I can tell she’s still in bed. ‘I need 10 seconds. How the fuck was it?’
I sigh. ‘Pretty bad. I need more than 10 seconds.’
‘I thought perhaps you’d fall in fucking love and end up marrying him!’ she says, yawning. Her voice is croaky in the mornings. She smokes too much. And swears too much.
‘Dream on,’ I reply, and hang up quickly as Alistair approaches. Maybe Robert’s right. Love’s got nothing to do with dating.
‘Everybody’s got a dream!’ He’s very cheerful in the morning. ‘What’s your dream? What’s your dream? Welcome to Hollywoooooood.’
‘It takes a real man to quote Pretty Woman,’ I say, as he sits down.
‘Really? Can I rescue you right back? Remember, you shouldn’t neglect your gums.’
Alistair seemed shy and hardworking in his interviews, but quickly revealed himself to be quite the opposite, and we’ve ended up becoming almost-friends – as much as I ever make friends at work, anyway.
Charlotte, on the other hand, who I can see trudging up the hallway now, is, well, dull. Yes, I feel bitchy for saying that about a colleague who’s never done anything bad to me, but honestly, she doesn’t inspire affection. I might be a bit quiet sometimes, but she’s practically a mute. Her hair, skin and clothes are all varying shades of taupe, and she wears ponchos (ponchos!) over her suits in winter and so inevitably, because she isn’t Elle Macpherson-shaped, looks like a mushroom. I’m not the most stylish person in the world, but I know a ‘don’t’ when I see one.
‘Morning, Charlotte,’ I say cheerfully, as she sits down at her desk.
‘Morning . . .’ she says flatly. See? No effort.
A
