Getting Over Mr. Right (19 page)

I plugged my laptop into the room’s built-in presentation equipment, opened PowerPoint, selected the last file I had been working on, and got started.

I had gone through this presentation so many times that I didn’t even need to look at the screen. Instead, I boldly looked out on my audience and rattled off the spiel like a true performer.

My audience was transfixed.

“Next slide,” I said to Ellie. “Now, as you can see,” I continued, “Effortless Bathing’s share of the easy-access bathing market currently stands at thirteen percent, but I’m confident that we can change that.”

I looked at Clare the account director. She had her eyes fixed on my slide. Her brow was wrinkled in concentration.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “It can’t really be true.”

I looked at Jeffrey. He was leaning forward. Squinting.

“But trust me, twenty percent is not an unrealistic target. In fact, I have looked at the competition and come to the conclusion that even this figure is way too small.”

Barry was also transfixed. And slack-jawed.

I was flying. I had them all. Even Ellie’s expression had changed from its default smug setting to stunned. The campaign I was proposing was daring, but it could work. I knew that. I could already imagine the end of the meeting. Jeffrey and his team would leave happy. Barry would slap me on the back. He might even give me Clare’s job. She wanted to spend more time with her horses.

“Next slide,” I said.

Ellie diligently flicked through the slides until I came to the end.

“And that,” I said to the assembled, “is all I have to say on the matter. Does anyone have any questions?”

Barry, I could tell, was bursting to ask something.

“Barry?” I opened the floor to him.

“What on earth is that?”

Have you ever found yourself behind the wheel of a car as it spins out of control? The moment you realize that you’re losing it, something quite peculiar happens. Time slows down, as if to afford you a valuable extra heartbeat in which to make the right decision. An illusory nanosecond in which to wrench the wheel in the opposite direction and keep out of the path of the oncoming juggernaut.

That’s exactly what it felt like to me when Barry pointed at the image on the projector behind me and, in the same moment, I glanced down at the smaller, identical image on my laptop.

“What … on … earth … is … that …?” Barry repeated.

It was like that moment when you realize, as you’re halfway through walking across the restaurant from the ladies’ to your seat, that people aren’t looking at you because you’re working that little black dress so dramatically. They’re staring at the trail of loo paper, or at the way your skirt is tucked into your knickers, giving everyone a great view of your arse and the big gray Spanx you had been meaning to throw away for months.

“Oh. Bum,” I said.

“I think you owe us an explanation,” said Barry.

“I don’t think she needs to explain anything,” said Jeffrey, almost gallantly. “It’s all perfectly clear to me.”

“Yeah. But,
seriously
, what is that?” asked Ellie. She was genuinely curious.

The PowerPoint presentation had paused on my picture of the world’s smallest cock. In such a hurry had I been to get the meeting started, I hadn’t noticed that the last PowerPoint presentation I’d viewed before getting to the office was not my presentation on how to make Effortless Bathing’s new Easy Bath a household name in an aging nation, but GettingOverMichael.doc. I felt distinctly nauseous as I recalled the other slides to which I’d treated my coworkers and clients.

“Don’t worry,” said Jeffrey. “I thought it was all very funny.”

“Well, yes,” said Barry. “It had its moments. But I would hate for you to think that it’s always like this in our office.”

“Our meetings with Ashleigh are the highlight of my life,” said Jeffrey.

Was Jeffrey flirting with me? I hoped he wasn’t. That could only make things worse.

“I don’t know how this happened,” I said hopelessly. “I worked on my presentation all night. Maybe I’ve got a computer virus …”

“I’ll email you the proper presentation,” said Ellie quickly. “So you can watch it at your own convenience. We’re really very sorry.”

“There’s no need for
you
to be sorry,” Barry told Ellie. “You were just following instructions.” She wriggled like a tickled kitten.

“Send me a copy of this presentation, too,” said Jeffrey. “So I can remind myself how to be a better man.”

“I don’t think you need any lessons on that,” said Barry.

Jeffrey blushed. Barry blushed, too. I just wanted to die.

I remained in the meeting room long after everyone else had filed out, with the picture of the micro-penis still projected on the wall behind me. I leaned heavily against the desk, too horrified to do anything but stare at the untouched pile of croissants
in the center of the board table. It crossed my mind briefly that, since no one ever touched the croissants, we might as well have a couple of plastic ones on permanent display. Then I went back to being horrified. How had I made such a stupid mistake? Instead of my killer presentation, I had given a display of such outstanding incompetence it would probably go down in the annals of advertising as the ultimate example of what not to do. I was always one for the high jump, wasn’t I?

But I heard laughter in the hallway. Barry’s laughter. That was a good sign. Jeffrey had been very sweet. He had made light of my cockup—my mini-cockup—and Barry was so keen to please Jeffrey. Perhaps that would save my neck. Another gale of laughter reached me. For a moment I thought that everything would be all right.

But then Barry was back in the boardroom. Before I had time to turn off my laptop.

“That,” he said, pointing at the micro-cock in its full, Technicolor glory, “is the saddest thing I have ever seen.”

Seeing the chance to inject some more levity, I agreed with him. “I know. And I dated it.”

Barry smiled, but it was not the smile of someone who was enjoying a joke. It was the sad smile of someone who knows something you don’t know and what he knows is not good. At all.

“When you have finished in here,” he said, “I think that you and I should have a long-overdue chat. In my office.”

He left.

As a nervous reaction, I stuffed one of the perennial croissants into my mouth and chewed it desperately as the tears came to my eyes. I suddenly knew exactly what was coming.

Barry didn’t put on the black cap of a hanging judge, but he might as well have. Clare was already there with him when I walked into the office. She had the look of a concerned social worker about her as she tapped her fingers nervously on the manila folder in her lap. My name was written upon it in thick black pen. I was horrified by the sight of it. I had no idea they already had an actual
file
on me.

“I’m sorry,” I said at once.

“Sit down,” said Barry. “Have a glass of water.”

Water. That didn’t bode well. Not even an offer of tea?

Clare and Barry swapped glances, and Clare gave a tiny nod to cue Barry that she was ready to start.

“We all know how much Michael meant to you,” said Barry. “And hard as you may think I am, Ashleigh, I do know what it’s like to have loved and lost. We all do.”

Clare nodded.

“And we all know that it takes time to get over these things. Especially as one gets older and the hopes and dreams we once had of a happy ever after seem ever more elusive.”

Oh, no, I was going to cry.

“It’s harder and harder to bounce back each time,” Barry continued. “But, Ashleigh, you’re starting to be a liability. Sure, the Effortless Bathing people made light of your mistake in the presentation today, but we all know that won’t be the end of it. Their account manager is about as discreet as Joan Rivers on
truth serum. By close of play tonight there won’t be a single person in the British advertising industry who doesn’t know what happened here today. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes global.”

Clare stood up abruptly. “I’m going to talk to Ellie before she puts that presentation on YouTube.”

“She wouldn’t. She can’t,” I said. “It was on my laptop. Nowhere else.”

Clare sat down, but she stood up again equally quickly. “I believe you, but I would also put money on Ellie knowing how to get into your files.” She left the office for a moment. While she was gone, Barry took a call from his mother (she was safely home from the dentist) and I sat on my hands. When Clare came back, she announced, “Ellie has promised not to tell anyone, on pain of death. And the promise of a pay-grade review.”

Good old Ellie. I’d been right to think that she was one clever girl when I offered her the job. She sure knew how to make lemonade out of the lemons I had been handed that day.

“So.” Barry was ready to begin again. He leaned forward on the desk, fingers interlocked, eyebrows interlocked. He regarded me seriously. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll make a written apology to the people from Effortless Bathing. I really am sorry,” I said.

“I don’t doubt it. But the fact is that we would be within our rights to ask you to leave right away. Being made to look at a picture of a stranger’s penis could be seen as harassment by some more delicate souls.”

“No one in this office is that delicate!” I protested.

“I can’t take the risk of being seen to be irresponsible by not taking firm enough action.”

Clare reached across and took my hand. It was then that I realized.

“You’re asking me to fall on my sword, aren’t you?”

Clare and Barry nodded in unison.

“But …”

“You need some time off,” said Clare.

“I could just take some leave,” I suggested hopefully.

“You need a
lot
of time off,” said Barry. “We’ll look after you,” he promised. “We’ll make sure that you don’t walk away from here empty-handed. We’ll even throw in a few sessions with a shrink. How about that? I’m sure Clare knows a good one.”

Clare gave him her “look.” She was not the type of woman who wanted it to be known that she knew the number of a therapist.

“What do you think, Ashleigh?” Barry asked me.

I couldn’t answer him. My brain simply shut down in horror. I had never been given the sack before in my life. Unless you count the time I was let go from my Saturday job for turning up late three weeks in a row.

“According to your contract, you have a four-week notice period,” said Clare. “But there’s really no need for you to work through it. Ellie is on top of all your projects, I think. And I’m sure you’ll agree that she can phone you if there’s anything she doesn’t understand.”

“Of course,” I said in a very small voice.

“Is that everything?” Barry looked at Clare.

“That’s everything.” Clare gave me another sympathetic smile. “You’ve been a valuable member of the team, Ashleigh.”

“But not anymore.”

She stopped short of agreeing with me.

Barry stood up. “I’ve … er … I’ve got to visit the gents’.”

“I should be getting back to work, too,” said Clare. “You can go home now,” she told me. “If you like. Get Ellie to call you a taxi on account.”

I just about managed to walk out of Barry’s office and back to my desk without falling down. Still, I looked distressed
enough to bring Ellie scuttling back from the photocopier at once. She brought sweet tea.

“For shock. You look like you’ve had one.” She even offered me a HobNob from her secret stash of carbs.

“They’ve given me the sack.”

“Noooo!” said Ellie. “Why on earth? Anyone could make a mistake with the files on their laptop. Anyone. I can’t believe they didn’t cut you some slack.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “This is really bad, Ashleigh. I’m with you every step of the way. Do you need a cardboard box for your stuff? I’ll go and see if I can find one in the stationery cupboard.”

Ellie even helped me to pack my things away. She made herself incredibly useful, but as I left the office that afternoon, I knew she was already trying out my swivel chair for size.

As if life couldn’t get worse, when I got home, Becky was waiting on the doorstep.