Conditional Love (11 page)

‘Sorry Jess isn’t being very supportive about the will thing,’ said Emma.

There you go; I must have sent her some telepathic empathy.

‘Thanks. She’s entitled to her opinion I suppose.’ I shrugged. I had been hurt by her attitude, but didn’t really want to get into it now at volume, across the bus.

Emma continued. ‘You know how she is about family.
Family comes first
, and all that. Unless it’s me, then I come second, of course.’

I grinned and looked out of the window. Only two more stops until Emma got off. The skies were grey and menacing clouds looked ready to explode.

‘How did your mum take the news about the will?’

‘Worse than expected, she cut me off in the end.’

Emma pulled a face. ‘Oh dear. Well done, for facing up to her. That’s the hard part over. What did she say about your dad?’

I felt my face flush. I shifted from foot to foot and swallowed. Why was I so nervous? Emma was my best friend; she had stuck by me through all manner of disasters.

‘I didn’t tell her. I figured she doesn’t need to know. I’ll just make sure she never finds out, it’ll be less painful that way.’

Emma gasped so dramatically that everyone on the bus turned to stare.

‘You lied! Sophie, you lied to your mum?’

The teenagers pulled their earphones out to tune into the oldies having a row.

‘More of an omission, I’d say,’ I muttered, casting my eyes down.

‘You wimped out and lied? That’s despicable!’

It was a toss-up whose face was redder: mine from mortification or hers from being cross.

‘I was so proud of you for taking action for once.’

I cowered as she narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re making a whole heap of trouble for yourself. What if she finds out?’

Curious faces peered at me, waiting for an answer.

‘I…I…’ I was speechless. I’d let everyone down, including the other passengers who were desperate for more gossip.

The brakes hissed and the bus came to a standstill. Emma stared at me and hoisted her bag onto her shoulder.

‘Jess isn’t going to be impressed with this,’ she warned, sweeping past me.

The bus decanted her and several other commuters out into the morning rain and I shuffled further up the bus into an empty seat and buried my face into my coat.

The morning dragged by at work. Misery shrouded me like a hooded cloak. I couldn’t even be bothered to call Mr Whelan and let him know that I’d made my decision. I sighed and forced my eyes to focus on the computer screen. In theory, I was supposed to be creating promotional ideas for a travel agent’s May bank holiday advertising campaign. But all I could think of was Mayday, Mayday. Help. Abort mission.

Somehow I had managed to alienate all my chief supporters. Until Valentine’s Day, my life had been tripping along quite nicely. Since then I’d been dumped for being boring, accused of being a selfish wimp and my mother wasn’t talking to me.

My mum’s words had really stung. I hadn’t realised she had such a low opinion of me. There was an element of truth in what she’d said; I was ‘festering’ in the same old job. But it wasn’t as simple as that.

I concentrated on my breathing for a few moments. I needed a friend. Someone to be unequivocally on my side. The only person who was being nice to me at the moment was Mr Whelan, the man paid by my great aunt to settle her affairs. How sad was that!

The architect’s face materialised in my mind’s eye. Hmm, strange choice. To get him onside, I’d need a wet nose and a waggy tail. Besides which, he was another man paid by the hour for his services.

Blimey! I fanned my cheeks. I didn’t mean it like that. Thank goodness I hadn’t said those words out loud! I peered over the top of my screen and checked that my colleagues weren’t watching. No. I was safe. Jason was watching YouTube and Maureen was on the phone to a client.

OK. Forget friends. I could be independent and self-motivated when necessary.

Maybe to regain the respect of my loved ones, I should attempt a Madonna-style reinvention? I glanced down at my old grey shift dress and thick black tights. I needed a new attitude, more drive, a sprinkling of ambition and possibly a new suit.
The Herald
wasn’t a bad place to work I thought, looking round me. I simply needed to rekindle the passion I’d once felt for the job.

It had to be worth a try.

Donna wouldn’t know what had hit her. Once I had injected a little ‘va-va-voom’ into my professional life I could show Mum I did have some ambition after all. She would brim with pride if I got a promotion and, naturally, forgive me. Then when all the fuss had died down I might even feel brave enough to tell her about meeting Terry. Jess and Emma would apologise for not supporting me when I was going through a difficult patch and Marc would…

Marc’s name snaking its way into my daydream snapped me back into the moment.

I’d been dying to tell him about my inheritance. I knew it was weak and pathetic to still want him back, but he was fun and gorgeous and made me feel all small and girlie. A really cynical part of me suspected that if I waved my new found wealth under his nose it wouldn’t take much to get him interested again.

But I wasn’t prepared to stoop that low.

Far better to use my new, career-focussed, eye on the prize, go-get-’em persona to dazzle him. I might even go back to the gym and exercise for real. I shuddered. Baby steps, Sophie.

A strangled scream from Donna’s office interrupted my flow. She appeared to be yanking all the cables out of her laptop. I had visions of it flying through the plate glass window and someone calling for security.

Maureen opened her eyes wide in fear and Jason curled his top lip and shook his head. Which left me.

Walk tall. This is the ‘new you’. Show her that you mean business.

I knocked on Donna’s door and poked my head in.

‘Everything OK?’

The boss had her head on the desk, still not a platinum hair out of place though, I noticed. A laptop was hanging by a solitary cable, suspended over the waste paper basket.

She lifted her head up and glared at me sulkily.

‘Can you do Facebook?’ she demanded.

I nodded. I was of the Facebook generation, addicted to updating my status on an hourly basis. If I ever suffered amnesia, I would be able to reacquaint myself instantly with my entire life by checking my Facebook page.

‘Twitter?’

Once again I nodded. This second nod wasn’t strictly true, but in the spirit of my new ‘can-do’ attitude, I decided to wing it. How hard could it be? Donna let out a long whistling breath through her nose. It could have been one of relief, or maybe she was still mad. Impossible to tell, although her face was looking less screwed-up.

She pointed at a chair. ‘Sit.’

I sat, apprehension starting to build in my stomach.

‘I need you in the boardroom with me at noon.’

Wow. I hadn’t expected that. Me. In the boardroom. At noon.

‘Er, great!’ I grappled for the right words, wanting to sound keen and calm even though I was anything but.

Seek and ye shall find
. Or
Ask and ye shall receive
. Whichever the correct proverb was, I had been looking for a leg up the ladder and appeared to have stumbled over one.

‘The board has asked me,’ Donna sat back, folded her arms and cleared her throat, ‘I mean us, to give a presentation on social media to help them decide what
The Herald’
s stance should be. Should we be Twittering and Facebooking, that sort of thing.’ She waved her hand around vaguely.

I had lots of questions but all I could think was, ‘Presentation, me, boardroom, noon.’

‘But… but… why us in advertising, not editorial?’

‘They don’t want it to be news-led. They want promotions, vouchers, competitions, that sort of thing.’ Donna leaned forward, raised her chin and looked at me shrewdly.

The digital clock on her wall changed to 11 a.m.

I gasped. ‘We’ve only got one hour. They can’t possibly expect us to produce a report in that time!’

My heart was beating double time at the thought of it. Donna looked down at her desk, a little shiftily it seemed to me.

‘Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it. Just rustle up a few handouts, nothing too detailed. Most of them won’t even know how to use the internet, I’m sure. I’ll introduce you and let you do the rest.’

‘Me! You want me to do the whole presentation?’

Donna sat back in her chair and pursed her lips. ‘Is that a problem?’

I faltered; it was hardly ideal – my first time in the boardroom and I had almost no time to prepare. On the other hand, it might just give me the chance to shine that I’d been looking for.

My newly-hatched plan to perk up my career was in motion!

‘Not at all,’ I chuckled with false jollity. ‘I would just have liked more notice to make sure I do a good job.’

‘You’ve got fifty-five minutes to do a good job, so…’ she did that irritating head flick at the door, ‘go and get on with it.’

Striding back to my desk, heart pounding, I was a little bit dazed. I had a sneaking suspicion that Donna had known about this meeting before today. Why leave it until the last minute? Now I had less than an hour to produce something that under normal circumstances would take all day.

Maureen placed a cup of tea at my elbow and I gave her a tight smile of thanks. I took a deep breath and opened up a new document on my computer.

Sophie Stone, Social Media Strategist, had arrived.

thirteen

Fifty-nine minutes later, I stood next to Donna outside the boardroom on the dizzy heights of the top floor, waiting for the signal to enter. The USB stick I was clutching felt slippery against my sweaty palms and I bitterly regretted not going to the loo before we left the department.

Donna was gazing at me warily, as if she doubted I could pull this off. To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself. Her eyes travelled downwards to my old dress and shoes. Her bosom rose as she inhaled deeply and looked away. I glanced down, smoothing my free hand over my stomach as I sucked it in.

Crikey! My dress was verging on too short for the office, let alone the boardroom. I tugged it down a smidgen.

What if the board thinks I’ve got some sort of ulterior motive? Do I look like a trollop?

I considered asking Donna the question but held my tongue. She always dressed smartly, but she had made a special effort today in a black suit and eye-watering heels.

Shaking my head, I dismissed the thought that she had definitely known about this meeting before this morning. It was irrelevant; if she’d asked me before my ambition epiphany, I would only have shaken my head in fear or apathy and pointed at Jason as the person most knowledgeable about social media. Today, however, I was ready to look opportunity in the face and give it a big fat kiss.

Wendy, the Managing Director’s PA, poked her head out of the door.

‘We’re ready for you, ladies!’ she trilled.

I managed a nervous smile. Donna led the way into the room and stopped in her tracks, her face turning pale grey.

‘The Chairman’s here,’ she hissed at Wendy.

‘Yes,’ she winked, ‘aren’t you the lucky ones!’

Other than at the Christmas party, I’d never even been in the same room as him. My mouth went dry as reality started to sink in.

Wendy distributed my handouts to the six men seated round a super-shiny mahogany table and we made our way to where a laptop was connected to a projector screen. I fumbled to find the right hole for my USB stick. My hands were shaking and I was starting to feel a bit light-headed. Perhaps I was trying to run before I could walk with this bold new attitude.

Donna grabbed my arm.

‘You’d better not mess this up,’ she hissed, ‘or both our careers are on the line!’

Gee, thanks for the pep talk, Boss.

I looked round at my audience. Average age I guessed to be around fifty-five and not a smiling face amongst them. With the exception of Wendy, hair styles ranged from receding to bald. The Chairman, stern and bespectacled, sat at the head of the table, with the Managing Director on one side and Wendy on the other.

Donna kicked us off. ‘I’d like to introduce Sophie Stone, my advertising executive, who is going to give you an overview of social media and the role it can play in business, illustrated with case studies.’

Case studies? I felt my insides flip over. Donna hadn’t said anything about that. My eyes darted to the closed door. I contemplated making a run for it and leaving Donna to sort out her own mess. My boss had tiny beads of sweat forming on her top lip and looked the most needy I’ve ever seen her.

Sophie Stone to the rescue, it is then.

I took a deep breath, peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth and began.

‘So you see,’ I declared, fifteen minutes later, ‘using social media in a targeted and strategic way can result in an open and instant dialogue with our readers in a way that our newspaper can’t achieve. It would also allow our sponsors and advertisers to get direct feedback from their campaigns and promotions.’

The presentation was going very well. The board seemed genuinely interested and the questions they had asked had all been straightforward. Even Donna looked happy! I was feeling dangerously smug.

‘I’d now like to open up Facebook and Twitter so we can look at how other businesses are using it.’

I opened up Facebook, bending down to shield my password. It would open up automatically to my personal page and I sent up a silent prayer that none of my friends had posted anything salacious recently.

‘Case studies.’ I flicked over to Donna, accusingly. Time to improvise.

‘Would anybody like to suggest someone to look for on Facebook?’ I looked around the room, hoping for some audience participation.

‘You can have a look at my Facebook page if you like,’ said the Human Resources Director, cramming a chocolate digestive into his mouth and brushing the crumbs off his moustache.

‘Er.’ I shot Donna a second glance. So much for the board not knowing their Explorer from their elbows. Donna, very unhelpfully, gave a little shrug.

‘I was thinking more of a company, a brand, or a celebrity?’