I needed to ring Mum and speak to her properly. I popped it on the bit of ticker tape that ran through my brain and it promptly disappeared down a chute labelled –‘the millions of things to do at some point in the future.’
After dropping Bella off, I bumped into a mum who’d been at the local park a couple of weekends ago. We’d ended up having coffee – she was in the newborn phase and had that drawn-out, anxious expression that was characteristic of that time. Her name was Bryony.
‘Love your trainers,’ I said as we stopped near the station.
They were bright green with purple flashes. Despite looking knackered she had that ability to look dishevelled in an attractive way, her hair piled up in a bun on the top of her head, a big leopard print scarf wrapped around her neck. She was probably about twenty-seven. Her baby was wrapped in a dozen blankets despite the warm sunshine. I had been exactly the same. It paid to ensure your baby was as warm as possible and poor Bella had often ended up clammy by the time we got home.
‘Thanks. I must take your number,’ Bryony said. ‘I thought we could meet up for another coffee soon perhaps.’
I sympathized with the need to talk to another adult. When Bella had been tiny I’d have had coffee with the postman if he’d have been interested (he wasn’t – instead he always shouted ‘Oi Average! Cheer up!’ whenever he saw me on the street. I wasn’t sure how my nickname had come about but guessed he was referring to my appearance in a casually sexist/offensive manner – ignoring the fact that he had one remaining strand of white hair that was plastered across his forehead. Last time we’d met, Bryony had told me she’d worked in advertising for a big London agency in Soho, but was now on six months’ maternity leave (advertising was an unforgiving industry for mothers, much like marketing). She now had ambitions to be a photographer. She wanted to take photos of children that weren’t cheesy, the opposite to those studio portraits where you get a family gurning holding onto a bunch of nonsensical props.
‘I feel completely rootless nowadays,’ she’d said with the candour that lack of sleep and a bit of welcome adult conversation tends to create. ‘I need to find something that energises me again. I think having a baby really brings it all into focus. Why would I want to sacrifice spending time with Ralph to do something I hate?’
It was a good question. It was one that puzzled me most days. Ralph was suckling from her breast. He was beautiful – white blonde hair and grey eyes, tiny fingers which wrapped around one finger, nails translucent and pale. Bella meanwhile span round and round in a chair kicking the bottom of the table. I’d always struggled with breastfeeding. Perhaps because of my age?
‘It’s a phase. You’ll feel better,’ I’d replied but I wasn’t so sure.
At least when you were on maternity leave you could dedicate all your anxiety to raising a small person. Once you went back to work, it got mixed together with a whole heap of other shit (which in some ways was beneficial as it diluted the brutal levels of worry you’d previously dedicated to your baby).
We swapped numbers and agreed to meet up for a coffee. It was against my usual anti-social instincts but I sensed she needed a friend and so did I (I wasn’t exactly swimming in them).
I got to work on time (no sarcastic comments from Phoebe) and after checking my inbox went with Simon/TWAT HAT for a coffee to discuss pet strategy.
‘I definitely feel much better,’ I lied as I sipped my turmeric latte, which I was trying to convince myself was nice, but was not as nice as a regular coffee at all. I was hoping Simon would be impressed by my ideas, and would pass it on to Phoebe/Darren so they’d see how dynamic I was. The only problem was the day hadn’t got off to a flying start. Bella had cried again at nursery, and I’d then spent five minutes looking for a nursery assistant who would take her from my arms. Many of the other children were crying too, and the whole scene made me sad. Why were we leaving these poor saps with other people so we could do jobs we hated? Simon was quite sweet though, and when I arrived he listened as I did my usual brain dump about my travel problems/childcare/woes/bad commute. He was softly spoken and intelligent. He also didn’t talk over me like many of the other men at work.
‘So how long have you worked at Mango?’ he asked.
‘Since the early noughties,’ I said. ‘I guess you would have been about ten years old when I started. Mad hey?’
And in a flash I saw that classic catchphrase, ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps!’ printed on tea mugs and mouse mats everywhere. Was that what had happened to me? Had I been institutionalized at Mango-Lab and made crazy? Why had I never tried anything else? Bryony and the way she effortlessly considered a new career, simply moving onto something new, felt unimaginable.
‘So how come Phoebe is your boss if you’ve been at Mango even longer than she has?’
I thought about it for a moment and chose to tell the truth.
‘I think I just ran out of steam – something like that anyway – Phoebe has always been fiercely ambitious,’ I wanted to change the subject because I wasn’t quite sure how I’d managed to progress so little in such a long period of time. ‘Anyhow, let’s talk about this pet food presentation. I did a project a few years ago about scented cat litter so I could talk you through some of that?’
‘That sounds spot on. Did it have essential oils in it? Also I always thought there was a subtle relationship between cat litter and cat food. They look the same but culturally we don’t have the same amount of shame around faecal matter that we used to. Perhaps there’s a role for a product that fulfils two roles at the same time?’
‘An edible cat litter?’
‘Something like that yes.’
‘I haven’t heard of such a thing and I can see a few barriers but it’s worth identifying as a route forward.’
‘The client is open-minded and wants NEW ideas. Do you think the accompanied feeding time depths were the best method?’ he asked.
‘Yes but I might have added some follow-up phone interviews. And made sure I got a good spectrum of pet owners. Highly involved, less involved – that kind of thing.’
‘We don’t call them phone interviews anymore,’ he said. ‘They’re in-depth digital pow wows.’
‘Well those. You know, talk to the owners after they’ve used the product and get their feedback.’
‘I like that. I wonder whether we should frame it as a litter or a food? I’ll have to think it through.’
The turmeric was catching in my throat. I was tired. Perhaps I needed a supplement for women in their forties who struggled to be enthusiastic. I wished it was time to go to bed. The senseless back and forth. It was kind of enjoyable … sort of … like the sensation of peeling off old nail varnish from your thumb, and it coming off in one piece.
When you worked in market research for long enough you realized that whatever category you worked in the stories you told the clients were,
