My Single Friend (3 page)

I suppress a smile and scan the notes I scribbled during the meeting. I’ve worked for weeks on this pitch but if we win the client – a massive property firm – it’ll be worth it.

‘You weren’t thrown by the question about contacts in the north-east?’ I fret.

‘What’s with the lack of self-belief, Lucy?’ says Dominique, stuffing her dark-blonde hair into a clip. ‘You’re not Peaman-Brown’s star performer for nothing.’

‘Oh, give over,’ I wince, though I can’t help feeling a little pleased.

‘Don’t deny it,’ she grins. ‘I keep saying you’ll be running this place in three years – and today confirmed it. The presentation was slick, our answers were textbook and, crucially, the MD had the hots for you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say, hoping she might be right.

‘Believe me,’ she winks. ‘It’s in the bag.’

Dominique and I hit it off the minute we met. She’s sassy, down to earth and a natural at this job – so much so, you’d never guess it wasn’t her first career choice. Dominique had wanted to be an actress until she realized that, in her own words, she had the stage presence of a plank of MDF. She persevered for several years and won the odd bit-part, but nothing more. The crunch came on the day she was turned down for an audition to play a dead body in a British Gas training video. ‘If
that
isn’t a signal to get a proper job, I don’t know what is,’ she says.

Yet when you meet Dom it’s impossible to believe she’s experienced a single setback in life. I still remember her striding in here two years ago with her proud and plentiful curves, endless legs and admirable aura of confidence.

Dominique is one of the many reasons I love working for Peaman-Brown Public Relations. I’ve been with the company since university, yet what I do for a living still baffles most of my family. They can get their head around my brother being a salesman, but if anyone mentions that ‘Lucy works in PR’, they scrunch up their noses with a deep sense of bewilderment – and injustice that they’re not paid to sit in a fancy office doing such a namby-pamby excuse for work.

What Peaman-Brown PR does for organizations is actually easy to understand, if not to do: we manage their image. On the one hand, this means unearthing positive stories and making sure the media knows about them. On the other, it means spotting negative news stories and making sure the media knows
nothing
about them. That’s the theory anyway. The practice can be different, I’ll admit.

‘Remind me how much this contract is worth,’ asks Dom.

I lift open the back page of my proposal and slide it over to her discreetly.

‘Good God.’ She shakes her head. ‘We deserve the bonus to end all bonuses if we get this, Lucy. Seriously, I expect to retire to a yacht in the Caribbean. Just a small one, nothing fancy.’

‘You’d be bored stiff.’

‘I’d bring you to entertain me,’ she grins. ‘You and I would be good on the high seas.’

‘It took me eight years to get my five hundred metres front crawl badge.’

‘I’ll buy you a pair of armbands,’ she promises.

‘You two are very full of yourselves this morning.’ The voice from the desk opposite belongs to Drew. He’s good-looking, well-bred and a charmer – when he chooses to be. It’s a quality he uses when he needs to divert attention from his professional ability (which is shaky at best) or when there’s an attractive female around – preferably wearing a skirt the size of a tea cosy. Such treatment is never directed at me; he prefers to wind me up instead. I’m sorry to say he’s often successful.

‘Of course we’re full of ourselves,’ grins Dominique. ‘We did brilliantly.’

Drew smiles back. ‘Glad to hear it, ladies. One of my pub quiz friends works for Webster Black PR and they’re going after that contract too, apparently.’

‘One of your pub quiz friends?’ repeats Dominique.

‘Yep. Did I mention I’ve been on the winning team of the north-west heats of Pub Quiz of the Year for three years?’

‘Only every day since we met you, Drew,’ she teases. Her phone rings on the other side of the office and she goes to answer it.

‘Well, I hope you’re right, Lucy,’ continues Drew, as he examines his nails. ‘I thought I’d let you know because Tim’s certain they’ve won the contract. Webster Black are experts in the field. I’d hate you to get your hopes up.’

He leans back in his chair and subconsciously rubs his crotch. Drew is one of those men whose hand is never far from their nether regions, as if permanently drawing attention to what they consider to be the most magnificent package bestowed on a human male.

‘I presume you were asked for a second interview?’ he adds.

‘I’m sure we’ll get through to the second round,’ I reply, filing away my documents. ‘I hope so anyway.’

‘Good. Glad to hear it.’ He smiles. ‘Apparently, they invited Webster Black back while they were still at the meeting.’

I look up.

‘They told Tim they were making a shortlist of three and Webster Black’s on it,’ he continues.

I know full well he’s trying to agitate me but refuse to rise to it. ‘They might have said something like that to Dominique on the way out,’ I reply breezily.

‘Oh, that’s good. Because it’d be awful not to reach the final three. That’d ruin your lucky run.’

‘There’s nothing
lucky
about our run, Drew,’ I point out.

Before he can respond, Little Lynette, the office administrator, appears at our desk sporting new hair extensions.

‘Morning, Lucy. Four letters today.’

‘Cheers, Lynette,’ I reply, putting them in my in-tray. ‘Nice hair.’

Little Lynette has been known as such since she started on work experience aged sixteen. She’s now five foot nine and twenty-three but the tag is unshakeable.

‘Ooh, do you like it, Luce?’ she beams, twiddling with the raven-coloured ends of her hair. ‘It’s taken a bit of getting used to. The glue hasn’t half made it go crusty.’

‘Your hair’s lovely,’ I reassure her.

‘Not a bit knotty?’ She scrunches up her face.

‘If you need anyone to run their fingers through it, let me know, won’t you?’ Drew jumps in.

I catch Lynette’s eye and tut. ‘Drew’s rehearsing for the role of office sex pest,’ I tell her, but she’s too busy whooping with delight to hear.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ says Drew, winking. ‘Lucy’s irked because she’ll be too old for men to lust after her soon.’

‘I’m only twenty-eight—’

‘Lust!’ hoots Lynette. ‘Ooh, I love a man with a big vocabulary.’

Drew doesn’t miss a beat. ‘That’s not the only thing that’s—’

‘Oh God, Lynette,’ I cry. ‘How can a nice girl like you listen to this and not want to give him a slap?’

‘Easy,’ she giggles, and totters away.

When I open my in-box, seventeen new emails have arrived in the two and a half hours I’ve been out of the office. I skim the list and open one.

Erin is the Marketing Manager of the Circle Theatre, one of the accounts I manage, and if all those I worked with were as nice as her, life would be significantly simpler. Erin isn’t just an easygoing client and a lovely person, she’s a friend too. A proper friend with whom I spend time outside work because we genuinely get on – not because I’m ‘building client relationships’, i.e. making sure we continue to get their cash.

I hit reply.

As I go through my other emails, it’s inevitable that not all are going to be as pleasant as Erin’s. There’s one from a small but demanding client – an insurance firm – suggesting I target
Hello!
with some two-month-old pictures of their staff drinks party.

Then there’s the chain of DIY stores whose Marketing Manager has emailed with another set of amendments – the sixth – to a press release he officially signed off two days ago and which I sent out to the world’s media this morning.

Finally, there’s a note from a potential client saying he needs to cancel our dinner date tonight and rearrange for a week on Tuesday – when I’m going to
Cirque du Soleil
.

A response from Erin pops up.

My love-life will never get off the ground unless I endeavour to become thinner.

Henry looked at me as if I was clinically insane when I shared this conclusion with him. I then explained that there
is
some logic behind the theory and I am not simply some
Heat
magazine-reading idiot who is obsessed with the size of her thighs, at which he pointed out that I love
Heat
magazine and spend more time contemplating the circumference of my legs than most people do inhaling oxygen.

My argument is this: first, had I the bum of a seventeen-year-old trampolining champion and a washboard stomach that made Cameron Diaz look like a pork-pie addict, I would radiate a level of self-assurance that would be irresistibly attractive. Secondly, were I possessed of such qualities, I would simply
be
irresistibly attractive.

Henry snorted at these suggestions in a manner I didn’t appreciate, and I told him as much, before dusting off my old Diet World welcome pack and ‘
Nootrient
’ point calculator.

Worse, he’s now looking at me with an air of amused disbelief as I walk around the supermarket calculating the Diet World ‘
nootrient’
value of our foodstuff before it goes into the trolley.

We currently have one artichoke (0
nootrients
), a large bag of bean-sprouts (ditto), a box of ice cream (4 per serving – I’ve got to have a treat occasionally), a piece of Brie (5, ditto), two bottles of Pinot Grigio (24
nootrients
in total – I have a stressful job), and a tub of margarine (1 per teaspoon – to be used sparingly).

Henry looks at his watch.

‘Lucy, we’ve been here an hour and there are seven items in our trolley. At this rate it’ll take until two weeks on Tuesday to buy enough ingredients for a stir-fry.’

‘Eight items,’ I correct him. ‘The margarine came with a free fridge magnet.’

‘You told me you hated Diet World.’

‘I did not,’ I protest.

‘You called the leader Mussolini.’

‘Only because she was going bald. And, okay, she was a bit of a bully, but it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to the classes anyway. I’ve got enough willpower to do it by myself. I’m just following the diet, which I know from experience works a treat.’

‘If it works a treat, why are you having to do it again?’ he asks.

I tut, hiding the fact that I’m stumped for an answer.

‘Is this allowed?’ he asks, picking up a family-sized chocolate trifle that could keep a killer whale going through the winter months.

‘God, no!’ I leap back in horror. ‘There must be . . . let me calculate this . . . SEVENTEEN
nootrients
per portion.’

‘I don’t know what seventeen
nootrients
means, but from your reaction I’m guessing it’s potentially fatal.’

‘Might as well be,’ I tell him haughtily. ‘It’s out of bounds.’

‘Y
ou
don’t have to have it,’ he says innocently. ‘I can hide it in the fridge drawer for myself.’