with an intelligent argument, there was a very loud knock at the door.
‘I am sorry and I do have to go.’ I shook off his hand and tried to discern what bits, in the tangled pile of material on the floor, had started out last night as my outfit. ‘Don’t answer it. It’s Paige.’
Really, I was impossibly stupid. I had just told Nick Miller not to do something and then expected him not to do it.
‘What if it is?’ he asked, eyebrows raised. ‘We’re adults.’
‘Oh, don’t start!’ I had no time for this. He could be such a cock sometimes. Most of the time. In fact, any time when he wasn’t actually using his penis, he was behaving like one. ‘Just please don’t open that door.’
And so, naked as the day he was born, Nick strode over to the door and flung it wide open. A very shocked blonde girl stood on the step and gaped.
‘Paige,’ Nick nodded. ‘Vanessa and I were just going over the plans for tomorrow.’
The tiny blonde girl tried desperately to avert her eyes from Nick in all his naked glory. As it was, the only other thing for her to concentrate on was me in my knickers, and that was doing nothing to improve the situation.
As she recovered herself and put two and two together to make a filthy four, Paige’s face fell. I took an ill-advised step forward and got my foot caught in Nick’s boxer shorts.
‘Paige.’ I looked at her.
‘Nick?’ She looked at him.
Nick just looked very pleased with himself.
‘Oh, Tess.’ Paige started to laugh and it wasn’t very nice. ‘Tess, Tess, Tess.’
‘Paige, don’t,’ I begged. I was fully aware that pleading with women didn’t usually go very well when they caught you hanging out in your underwear with the man they had designs on. Especially when that man was naked. ‘Please.’
‘Tess?’ Despite how very clever he claimed to be, Nick wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer. ‘Who’s Tess?’
‘She is,’ Paige said, nodding towards me. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Vanessa?’ Nick placed a hand over his manparts, not looking nearly as smug as he had five minutes ago. If I hadn’t been ready for the ground to open up and swallow me whole, it might have been funny. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nick, I can explain,’ I started, entirely unsure how I was going to do that. ‘It’s a long story. It’s a funny story. It’s, um, well. I don’t know where to start.’
‘I do,’ Paige chipped in. ‘This is Tess. She’s an irresponsible, selfish, evil, lying bitchface who’s been faking everything to everyone, and I didn’t grass her up because I’m an idiot.’
Bit harsh, I thought. A bit harsh, but ultimately accurate. All of a sudden, my knees weren’t feeling terribly steady. Nick looked very confused. And also still very naked. Unfortunately, his supreme manliness wasn’t enough to slow Paige down now she’d started.
‘Long story short, her name isn’t Vanessa,’ my friend, mentor and confidante stated. She was on a roll. ‘Her name is Tess Brookes and she’s full of shit.’
Well.
It was a much more concise version of events than I had to offer.
Two Weeks Earlier
It was more or less a day like any other when it all went wrong.
My alarm went off, I got up, showered in silence and watched fifteen minutes of breakfast news with stuttering subtitles so as not to wake my flatmate. I got dressed, I checked my bag to make sure I had an adequate number of tampons even though my period was a good three weeks away, and after checking I’d turned my hair straighteners off twice, I left for the office. As usual, I was the first in. No one else made it in before ten on Mondays, but I was the kind of irritating person who got a lot more done without the clacking of everyone else’s keyboards to distract me. Early mornings and late nights were my friends. And given the frequency with which they occurred, they were pretty much my only friends. But on this particular Monday, I had good reason to be so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. After seven years’ hard slog, I was getting the promotion I’d been dreaming of. I, Tess Brookes, was about to become the youngest creative director in the history of Donovan & Dunning.
Obviously no one was quite as excited about this as me, so it wasn’t exactly a shock that I was sitting outside the HR manager’s office before she’d even got off the Tube. It was fair to say I was dead giddy.
‘Morning, Raquel.’ I gave her a cheek-achingly massive smile when she finally appeared at the top of the stairs. It couldn’t hurt, I reasoned; after all, today was my day. Some girls had weddings, some had babies, I had my promotion. And that was only sad if you let it be.
‘Tess.’ Raquel, short, bleach blonde and dead-eyed, motioned for me to follow her into her office. She didn’t look surprised to see me. And why would she? We’d been discussing this promotion for the past six months; I figured she’d be glad to see the back of me. All that was left was for me to sign my new contract and then I’d be out of her way. For six months. I was ambitious.
‘OK, so let’s just get straight to this.’ She sat down behind a too big desk and smiled. ‘I’ve got some difficult news.’
‘Right.’ I sat up straight and put on my ‘I’m listening’ face. Difficult news? Was she leaving? Maybe she was leaving. I really hoped she was leaving.
‘As you know, the company has gone through quite a lot of changes in the past twelve months,’ Raquel said, folding her hands in front of her and leaning her head to one side. Such a serious soul was Raquel. Probably because she fired people for a living and everyone hated her. ‘And as such, we are having to undertake some necessary measures to ensure a successful restructure.’
‘OK,’ I nodded. This was a very funny way of giving me a big hug and a key to the executive bathroom. Of course I knew there was a restructure. They were restructuring me into a corner office and a big fat pay rise. Which was much needed to pay for the ridiculously expensive Promotion Shoes that were currently rubbing the fuck out of my feet.
‘As you know,’ she repeated, ‘the original plan for the business was to move you into a creative director role, with the copy and design teams reporting directly to you.’
‘The original plan?’ I was starting to feel a fraction less giddy.
‘The original plan,’ she confirmed, never taking her eyes off me.
This didn’t sound wonderful. Why wasn’t she squealing and giving me a present? And why was she smiling? Raquel never smiled.
‘Unfortunately, due to the new restructure, we will not be moving ahead with the original plan. The creative director role you were moving into is no longer part of the planned downsizing of the company.’
Words
