The Out of Office Girl (34 page)

‘You know,’ I hear myself saying, ‘you have some nerve, asking me that. I know you wrote that email. Did you know I’ve been fired because of it? It wasn’t enough for you to dump me in the most horrible, gutless, spineless way possible’ – Emilia’s eyes are like saucers now – ‘but now you’ve made me lose my job. Well, good for you. He’s
a real catch,’ I add to Emilia.

Emilia’s expression has gone from puzzled to utterly
horrified, and she looks up at Simon for guidance. He’s looking a little embarrassed.

‘Have a good one,’ I add, stamping out past them.

As I leave the shop, my heart is thumping from the shock of the encounter. Why did I have to meet him, in a city of seven million people? And what did I ever see in him? He’s
awful
. Buttonholing me and asking me if I was having a night in. It was probably crystal clear from my pathetic treats. I shouldn’t be worried about it in the grand scheme of things, but I wish they hadn’t seen those. Why couldn’t I have been buying, I don’t know, a litre of cream and a whole smoked salmon? Or a bottle of vodka and six limes? They’re probably laughing about it right now. I can’t
decide whether the fact that Simon’s thing with Claudine, which was part of the reason I got fired, didn’t last makes me feel better or worse.

I’ve reached home by now. As I let myself in and put my sad snacks on the table, I suddenly think:
What am I doing?
So I’ve been fired and my heart is broken. So what? Life goes on. It’s Friday night. Even Simon is having a night out, taking a break from
ruining people’s lives. Poppy’s out facing her demons – my friend Poppy, who’s been such a star to me. These are supposed to be my golden years. Why, exactly, am I at home with a £1 pizza?

I stick the pizza in the freezer, put the wine and Minstrels out for Ciara and Martin, and dial Poppy’s number. She’s still at home, thankfully.

‘Poppy? I’m on my way. Can you text me the address?’

THIRTY-FIVE

Fifty-five minutes later, Poppy and I are standing at the entrance to the warehouse off Commercial Street where
Bitch Done Me Wrong
is having its grand opening. She wasn’t joking about coming in disguise. She’s wearing a long blond wig and a pencil skirt with a plain white shirt and a string of pearls, plus big Supernanny-style glasses. It’s quite effective: even I didn’t recognise
her at first. I look a bit different too. I’m wearing the blue beaded dress over boots and black tights, and the biker jacket. I’ve scraped my hair up into a messy top bun, and I’m wearing a slick of red lipstick and lots of black mascara.

‘Are you ready for this?’ I ask.

‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I know all this stuff. Question is, are you ready for it?’ She pushes down her glasses, and looks at
me again. ‘Oh my word. Check you out. You’re a knockout!’

‘Just a little something I picked up in Sicily,’ I say. ‘Come on, in we go.’

Another thing I’d forgotten is how fashion-forward people are in London. It’s astonishing. As we go up the metal stairs, I see people wearing the most incredible outfits: vintage dresses with fur coats and hats, playsuits with platform boots, T-shirts and tweed
jackets over sequinned harem
pants, all customised with feathers and safety-pins and God knows what. Poppy is very conspicuous in her sexy secretary outfit – I hope people don’t recognise her.

We sign the visitors’ book – Poppy writes ‘Cruella de Vil’ – and go into the first room, a big white space. One wall is occupied by a massive, blown-up slide projection of a toddler in a pink jumper – Poppy.
She looks very cute, with her hair in braids and a toothless grin. Another wall has a big map of Jamaica. There are different toys strewn around the floor; a Meccano and Lego set on one side, and My Little Pony on the other. Beside the My Little Pony is a small, tattered photo in a cheap frame: a little boy, who I think must be Crispin.

‘So far, so weird,’ murmurs Poppy, and we go into the next
room.

The second room is even bigger. One wall seems to be covered with memorabilia, tickets and receipts, and the other is covered with massive sketches and paintings of Poppy, some of which are quite good. Suddenly a noise starts up on some kind of intercom: ‘Hi, my darling . . . just leaving you a message to say . . . miss you. Lots of love. Byeee!’ It’s Poppy’s voice. After a second it continues:
‘Hi, my darling . . . just leaving you a message . . .’ It plays on a loop for a while, then goes quiet.

‘Oh my God,’ says Poppy.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Not sure.’

We look at the memorabilia wall. It’s covered with stuff: tickets to exhibitions and gigs, cards, wrapping paper, paper napkins with doodles and messages on them, receipts for meals at cheap cafés, train tickets, cinema tickets, programmes
and leaflets. There are also tons of snapshot photos, mainly of Crispin, I mean Crippo, and Poppy. She looks really happy in some of them.

‘Look, there’s Crippo,’ hisses Poppy.

I glance over. It is indeed Crippo, wearing a red lumberjack shirt, braces, black skinny jeans and twelve-hole Doc Martens, and glasses with heavy black frames. His hair is in a massive quiff. He’s holding court to a
group of admirers, mostly girls. He doesn’t seem to have seen Poppy.

‘I’m going to escape,’ Poppy stage-whispers, ‘into the next room. Coming?’

‘Go ahead, I’ll join you in a minute.’

Despite its horrible title, I’m finding the exhibition pretty interesting. I take a look at the programme, which is filled with waffle about how Crippo is ‘recording his own responses towards emotional upheaval
through different found objects’. In a strange way, I feel almost jealous: I can’t imagine any of my old flames treasuring one of my used paper napkins, let alone filling a whole wall with mementoes.

I examine a painting of Poppy, where she’s wearing a red dress and standing on a green surface. The ground below her feet is covered with hundreds of little red flowers. I lean forward to look and,
of course, they’re poppies. Not that I’ve seen her name written anywhere yet.

As I straighten up, the thought suddenly strikes me, out of nowhere, that Sam has been really unfair to me. OK, I
was
going to tell Olivia about Luther’s scandal – but I didn’t. That’s a big difference. He didn’t even give me a chance to explain. He was very quick to judge me, especially considering he was still involved
with Marisa. I wonder if he knows I’ve been fired. Probably not, since he’s dealing with Olivia now anyway. What a mess.

I go over to Poppy, who is talking to a girl in a 1940s-style tea dress, with what looks like an entire pheasant on her head – it’s actually a hat, I see now.

‘This is Melissa,’ says Poppy. ‘Melissa, Alice, a friend from work.’

Melissa has huge eyes and false eyelashes, which
she’s blinking energetically.

‘Oh, right,’ she says. ‘Which books do you work on?’

‘Non-fiction.’ I’m not going to tell her I’ve just been fired.

‘Alice has just finished working on Luther Carson’s book!’ says Poppy.

‘Wow! What was he like?’ asks Melissa.

It’s a good question. What was he like?

‘He was great,’ I say. ‘Good fun, and very down to earth.’

This is going to be my line on Luther;
I’m never going to tell anyone about what really happened. It’s true, anyway. He was great.

I excuse myself, and drift into the final room of the exhibition. It’s quite something. The entire four walls are plastered with sheets of paper covered in Crippo’s spidery writing, sometimes with sketches. There are dried flowers – poppies – stuck up everywhere too.

A few feet away from me, I can see
a tall woman with long dark hair, who is also looking at the wall. She looks familiar. Then I realise who she is: Caroline Brady. I’ve seen her picture in the trade press. She’s Irish and was previously an editor at a literary publisher, and she’s recently founded a new agency with two others. I read a book by one of their debut authors recently and it was excellent.

I know what Claudine would
do in this situation. I remember watching her at a launch earlier on this summer, circulating like mad. She’d bounce right over there and probably press her card on to the woman or even suggest lunch. I could never do that.

A little voice inside me says:
And maybe that’s why Claudine is being promoted and you’ve been fired
.

Standing there, I think, not for the first time, about how all of my
problems – Sam, work, everything – stem from my crazy lack of confidence. It’s ridiculous: I can fly off the
handle at Luther, or Simon, yet I can’t cross the room to talk to this woman. Why am I such a mouse? Why can’t I just go up to her and introduce myself? What’s the worst that can happen? I make an idiot of myself and she snubs me. I’m not going to die, am I?

But then I think better of
it. It seems so intrusive. She’s probably come here to relax, not to be hassled by unemployed people. And what would I say? ‘Hello, I know who you are’? And . . . what if she has heard I’ve been fired? How will I explain it? As I debate with myself, Caroline looks at her watch and half turns, as if to leave.

That’s a sign. I have to do it. I’m going to pretend I’m Claudine. No, I’m not. I’m going
to pretend I’m a more confident me. I’ve done harder things than this in the past two weeks. Before I can change my mind, I walk over to her.

‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Are you Caroline Brady?’

She smiles. ‘Yes, I am. And you are?’

‘I’m Alice Roberts,’ I say, shaking her hand. ‘I used to work at Paragon until last week. I loved that Irish novel you sold recently.’

‘Thanks,’ says Caroline, looking
very pleased. We discuss the book for a while. Then she asks curiously, ‘So what sort of work did you do at Paragon?’

I could play safe, and not mention Luther – in case she knows what happened. But what’s the point of playing safe?

‘I’ve just been working on Luther Carson’s book,’ I tell her.

She raises her eyebrows; she looks impressed, but I’m relieved to see there’s nothing else in her
expression. ‘Really? He’s a big fish. How did you find that?’

Normally, I would say something extremely self-deprecating here, about how awful or difficult the book was. But then I think of Claudine. She would never do that; she would spin herself for all she was worth.

‘It was a challenge,’ I say. ‘But I’m pleased with how it turned out. He really came through, and we’ve had some great reactions
from the papers.’

‘Good for you,’ Caroline says. ‘And what’s your connection here?’

‘I know, um, the ex,’ I say. ‘The subject, I mean.’

‘Ah, fair enough. I’m on the groom’s side, so to speak. Crispin is a cousin of my husband’s. A distant one, though.’

Here’s even more proof that Crippo is secretly posh. Only very posh people know who their distant cousins are, let alone invite them to their
art launches.

‘So what do you think of the exhibition?’

‘I like it. It’s . . . thought-provoking. I’m assuming that the title is meant to be ironic though.’

She smiles. ‘Let’s hope so,’ she says. ‘We’ve a table booked for dinner so I’d better head off. But let me give you my card. If you’re interested in what we do at the agency, you should drop us a line.’

‘Thanks very much, I will,’ I say,
delighted. Caroline says goodbye and I watch her go, exhilarated. It might come to nothing, but it’s a step in the right direction. She was so nice! I can’t believe she didn’t even ask me why I left Paragon.

‘Hey,’ says Poppy, appearing beside me. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Looking at the rest of the exhibition, and networking!’ I show her Caroline’s card.

‘You go, girl! Look at you, working
the room. I mean the space.’ She looks around. ‘I think I’ve seen enough, and I’ve even managed to say hello to Crippo. Shall we make a move?’

‘Of course.’ I don’t want to ask her what she thinks of the exhibition. No matter how flattering it is, I can imagine it must be very intrusive.

To my relief, though, Poppy starts to laugh as soon as we leave the building and begin walking towards the
nearest pub.

‘God, that was surreal. I need a drink,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe we went to an opening without even a box of wine. He is such a skinflint.’ She gives me a hug. ‘But thanks for coming with me. You’re a star. I’ve got something for you!’

Poppy digs in her bag and produces something. I half expect it to be another art invitation, but it’s a card. I take it uncomprehendingly. It’s
Sam’s business card.

‘Um . . . Poppy, where did you get this?’

‘I nicked it from Olivia’s desk while she was at lunch. I know, I know. I’ll put it back on Monday. But you said you didn’t have his email address. And now you do! Honestly, Alice, if you just emailed him and explained to him properly—’

‘Poppy, I’m not going to contact him.’

She looks crestfallen. ‘But why not? What have you got
to lose?’

I shake my head. I can’t explain that even the tiny act of holding Sam’s card has brought back all my most painful feelings. I don’t want to call him and feel them all over again. I don’t want to be the girl in London he hates, or – even if he believes me – the one he feels sorry for, who had a crush on him and got fired. And I don’t want to be invited to his and Marisa’s wedding.

‘Look,’ I tell her. ‘I appreciate this, I really do, but it’s pointless.’ And I hand her back the card. ‘Now, let’s get a drink and forget all these awful men.’

I start to walk on, but Poppy doesn’t follow.

‘You know, Alice,’ she says, ‘I’ve seen you do this before.’

‘Do what?’ I say warily.

‘When a nice guy shows an interest in you, you run a
mile. It’s as if you think you don’t deserve it.
Whereas a creep like Simon has your full attention.’

‘That’s not true,’ I say uncertainly.

Turning away slightly, she slips her wig off and puts it in her bag, fluffing out her curls. ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘Let’s get a drink. How about the Ten Bells?’

In the pub, we mainly talk about Crippo and the exhibition; Poppy fills me in on some of the work gossip as well. She tells me that she’s helping
Olivia out with some of the more confidential stuff, while they interview for a new assistant. That was how she was able to borrow the card.