the stall door. Yes, I’d just destroyed a thousand dollars’ worth of technology but I’d be damned if I would let another woman go for a wee without sufficient loo roll.
‘Thanks,’ the voice replied, sounding relieved as the paper disappeared. ‘Appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I replied in a bright, tight voice as I gazed at my phone in the bottom of the toilet bowl, only to see myself looking back. And then the screen went black. I nodded and sighed before rolling up my sleeves and reaching in. I was a strong, vital, beautiful woman with her hand down a public toilet.
Brilliant start to a brilliant day.
The first day in a new job is always nerve-racking. Even if you’re in your thirties, even if you’ve done pretty much exactly the same job somewhere else before, unless you’re either Kanye or a complete sociopath, there are bound to be a few first-day jitters. And if you take those jitters and multiply them by the fact you’re coming back to work after having your first baby you’ve got a real, one hundred percent ‘shitting it’ situation on your hands.
With my waterlogged phone in my pocket, I eventually convinced myself to leave the lavs and made my way across the huge reception of my new office building. I smiled at the pleasing tap-tap-tap of my heels against the marble floor. Heels. In the daytime. It had been so long.
‘Hi.’
I beamed at the man seated behind the reception desk. He did not beam back.
‘I’m Angela Clark. I’m starting work at Besson Media today.’
Without raising his eyes to meet mine, the man nodded.
‘Photo ID?’
Slipping my hand into my ancient Marc Jacobs satchel, I pulled out my passport on the first try and handed it over with a brilliant smile. He looked at me, looked at the passport and looked at me again. Still nothing.
‘Fifteenth floor,’ he replied, sliding my passport back across the desk and inclining his head towards the bank of lifts across the cavernous hall. ‘Take elevator six.’
‘Thank you!’ I said, tucking my passport away and making the eighteen thousandth reminder to myself to finally get round to applying for a New York driver’s licence. I’d only been here the best part of a decade, after all.
But in all that time, I’d never seen anything like this. My old office had been a flash, glass, nineties-tastic monster of a skyscraper, slap bang in the middle of Times Square. If you were into flashing neon signs and an ungodly number of tourists, it was heaven, but this? This was something else. Besson Media had set up shop in an architectural icon. A recently renovated sugar refinery on the edge of Williamsburg, perfectly positioned to give Manhattan a good dose of hipper-than-thou side eye. Alongside the landmark building, we also had our own park, our own sculpture garden, different food trucks every single day and our very own beach. I’d read about the building, and I’d seen it when I walked by, but actually being inside felt so very special. Old red-brick walls and old-fashioned arched windows contrasted against the shining steel of the lifts and the touch screens I saw absolutely everywhere. Stopping myself from swiping wildly, I stepped into the lift, clutching my bag against my hip and grinning at strangers as more people joined me.
‘Hi,’ I said to the backs of people’s heads, shuffling backwards into the corner. ‘Hello.’
Ten months at home with a baby was pretty much exactly the same as when someone on a TV show disappears one week and then shows up the next, only to explain they’ve spent a thousand years in another dimension and no longer know who they were. You don’t speak to strangers in lifts, not in New York or anywhere else for that matter. One by one, floor by floor, people piled out until it was just me, all on my lonesome, arriving at floor fifteen.
It was beautiful.
Besson Media was, of course, on the top floor and, unlike the rest of the building, the penthouse level was all glass, giving us a 360-view of New York, Brooklyn and Queens, for as far as the eye could see. Not that anyone’s eyes were concentrating on what was happening outside the windows. Everyone already at work in the open-plan office had their eyes firmly fixed on whatever screen was in front of them, a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a phone. Without anyone to greet me, and not seeing anyone I recognized, I took an awkward step away from the safety of the lifts and into the hub. Perhaps, if I could find my office, I could get settled and then start from there.
‘Hello,’ I said, waving at a young Japanese woman with green hair who was studying her laptop intently. She peered back at me from behind gold wire-framed glasses with exceptionally large lenses. ‘Um, I’m starting today? I’m Angela Clark. I don’t suppose you know where my office might be?’
‘We don’t have offices,’ she replied. ‘It’s open plan. Hot desk. Set up wherever you like.’
A shiver ran down my spine.
Hot desk? There had been no discussion of hot desks.
‘I’m fairly sure I’m supposed to have an office,’ I told her, subtly nudging my left breast pad back into place with my forearm. ‘I’m going to be running a site—’
‘I run a site,’ the girl replied. ‘I’m Kanako. I run Bias? The fashion site? No one has an office except for the CEO.’
‘Did someone say my name?’
The shiver turned into the cold grip of dread.
‘Angela, you’re here.’
Everyone in the office looked up at once as Cici Spencer, my former assistant, stepped out of the lift. I had to admit it, CEO looked good on her. She strode into her office wearing a sleek Tom Ford jumpsuit with at least twelve grands’ worth of floral embroidered Alexander McQueen blazer casually slung on her shoulders. A pair of crystal-studded Gucci sunglasses perched on her surgically perfected nose, which she lifted up to the top of my head to look me up and down. I shifted my weight from foot to foot. I’d agonized over this outfit for days: Anine Bing booties, brand-new Topshop jeans, my favourite Equipment shirt. I was playing with fire wearing a silk shirt while breastfeeding but I’d done a literal dry run and was wearing two pairs of breast pads so I was certain I could get away with it. My ensemble was comfortable, smart, no bold statements but enough style to let people know I was supposed to be there and hadn’t got lost on my way to the Target in the Atlantic Mall.
I would never get lost on my way to Target. I loved Target.
‘Here I am,’ I said as I twisted my engagement ring around my ring finger.
‘Here you are,’ Cici said finally, lifting the sunglasses out of her silky straight, ice-blonde hair. ‘And it’s OK, we don’t have a dress code.’
I would not rise to her bait. I was the one who had agreed to come and work for my former-nemesis-turned-assistant-turned-sort-of-kind-of-friend and there was no point acting surprised when a leopard showed its spots. Not that Cici would be caught dead in leopard print these days, far too common.
‘I also hear you don’t have offices. What’s that about?’
‘I have an office,’ she shrugged, letting her black Valentino tote bag slide off her shoulder and into the crook of her arm. ‘Everyone else lives here.’ She waved at the mass of desks behind me, randomly placed around the room, some at seated level, some raised to standing. ‘Our
