click on my computer and check my inbox. There’s a ‘missive’ – as my boss calls his perky team emails – from Rupert, AKA King of Crisps.
Wednesday, July 9
From: [email protected]
To: all teamsters
Subject: Just a few odds & sods!
Hi folks,
How’s tricks, my lovelies? Just a line to say thanks for all being so awesome! We’ve had a crazy time and you’ve all been incredible. No distribution probs lately, and we’re all set to take the world by storm, or at least the highlight of our crisp calendar – The Festival of Savoury Snacks!
Just a tiny thing. With a few new peeps having joined the team, can I just – sorry to be a pain here – mention a few words we don’t use here at Archie Towers?
I should point out that there aren’t actually any towers. It’s just one of those cuddly things that Rupert likes to say.
You know how pernickety I am! he goes on, sprinkling exclamation marks around as liberally as his favoured hand-harvested sea salt. Just give me a punch next time you see me, haha. Anyway, here goes:
Instead of staff we say team (singular = teamster)
Not company but family (i.e. you’re now welcomed into the bosom of the Archie family!)
Not fry but cook (yes, I realise that’s technically what we do here, but we all know the connotations of the word ‘fry’ – i.e., greasy, artery-clogging and frankly pretty horrid. Which isn’t our bag here at Archie’s, right?)
Not meeting but gathering
Not supplier but friend (i.e., our potatoes come from our friend Mickey Hunter’s farm in Kent)
Okie-doke?
Love,
Rupe xxx
‘Sounds like someone’s said “fry” again,’ I tell Dee, who’s arrived pink-cheeked, having cycled from her village a couple of miles away.
‘Oh, Christ,’ she sniggers, removing her jacket and helmet and dropping a contraband snack (raspberry Pop Tart) into the toaster. Dee and I look after events, PR and social media together. I’m also in charge of updating our touchy-feely website. Rupert insists on lots of photos of ‘teamsters’ doing fun stuff together, to convey the message that we’re a happy gang, forever larking about, and never have to do anything as mundane as sit at a desk or attend a meeting. I’ve had to stage garden parties and bike rides to show what a jolly time we all have. However, despite the tweeness and Rupert’s relentless enthusiasm for making everything ‘fun’, I do enjoy working here, especially since – and I feel awful even admitting this – Will’s been at home. It’s my escape, of sorts. Is it okay to want to run away from your own husband? I don’t mean in a packing-my-bags, forever sort of way. But I’m aware that I cherish my time away from the house.
‘I still don’t get the family thing,’ remarks Dee, who’s fairly new here, as she makes coffee.
‘I thought it was weird at first,’ I reply, scrolling through the rest of my mail, ‘and I did try to point out to Rupert that we’re not really a family, in that we’re not a biologically related unit who all go on holiday together …’
She laughs. ‘How did he take that?’
‘He said that to him, we are family.’
‘Scary,’ Dee says, handing me a mug of coffee and proceeding to make the first of a barrage of phone calls with remarkable efficiency. At twenty-four, she is probably the most grown-up person I know. She buys scented oil burners from John Lewis and pounces on White Company bed linen at sale time. She knows what an Oxford pillowcase is, for goodness’ sake. She explained it to me. At her age, I was already a mother, so I probably looked like a bona fide adult as I pushed Rosie on the swings in the park – but our tiny flat whiffed of wet laundry and potties and stress.
‘Look what Mike bought yesterday,’ Dee enthuses, during a break in calls, beckoning me over to look at her phone. She has photographed a chrome standard lamp with a hot orange shade – that’s how proud of it she is.
‘It’s lovely,’ I say.
‘Isn’t it? And we’re choosing rugs on Saturday …’ She has just moved into a tiny, impossibly cute cottage with her handsome builder boyfriend who sent possibly the world’s biggest bouquet of red roses to our office on her birthday.
‘So how is it?’ I ask. ‘Living together, I mean?’
‘Oh, it’s great. I love it that we’re together more, you know? And it didn’t make sense to keep two places going.’
‘No, I understand that …’ I glance at Dee. Her hair is pale blonde, straightened and shiny as glass, and her elfin features are defined with a flick of liquid liner and a touch of lip gloss. She seems so young for cosy, rug-choosing domesticity.
‘So, um … what d’you and Mike do in the evenings?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘Well, we do dinner – okay, I do dinner – and then we watch a box set.’
‘But you do go out sometimes?’ I realise I probably seem overly fascinated by her lifestyle: the habits and behaviour of a young person. It’s just … she seems so content. Why can’t I be like that, all excited by John Lewis home fragrances?
‘Occasionally,’ Dee replies, ‘but to be honest, we’d rather get the house finished than waste our money in pubs and restaurants.’
Hmm. Perhaps it’s because my freedom was curtailed so abruptly – by having a baby at twenty-two – that I can’t help feeling youth is something to be cherished and clung on to for dear life.
‘Anyway,’ Dee says, ‘isn’t it Rosie’s big day today? With the model agency, I mean?’
‘Yes, we’re due there at four.’ The sound of tuneless whistling announces Rupert’s arrival as he bounds upstairs to our office.
‘What’s this about modelling?’ He beams at us – his ‘girls’, which in my case is stretching things a bit – and rakes back a mop of curly dark hair.
‘Rosie was scouted on Saturday,’ I explain. ‘We were out shopping and a woman from an agency came up to us. She seems keen to take Rosie on.’
He feigns a crestfallen face. ‘Only Rosie? What about you? I’d have thought they’d have snapped you up!’
‘Don’t think so, Rupert,’ I reply, laughing, ‘unless they have a special division for people to model stair lifts, or those easy-care slacks you get in the Sunday supplements.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he blusters, grinning fondly and perching on the edge of my desk. In his faded checked shirt and scruffy jumbo
