The Nearly-Weds (38 page)

Flicking through pictures of minor European royals and Jane Seymour posing by the pool in a palace in Kuala Lumpur might not have been a good idea after spending two nights in an establishment with more wildlife than a Tanzanian nature reserve.

‘I wouldn’t mind a
bit
of luxury next time, I must admit,’ I confess, though I’m not sure when the next time will be. It’s not that I don’t enjoy going away with my friends – their company was the single highlight of an otherwise very challenging trip – but I’m currently in year one of a new job, not exactly rolling in money and, cheap and not-so-cheerful as it was, Zante has eaten into the funds for the main holiday I intend to take with my boyfriend, Roberto.

My heart flutters to my throat at the thought that he’s on the other side of the arrivals lounge door, waiting for me to slide into his arms.

My friends can’t really get their heads around Roberto and me, and the extent to which, after two years together, I still adore him.

I don’t wish to sound schmaltzy, not least because I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that we’re perfect – we’ve had some positively operatic rows in the past (inevitable, really, when a feisty Italian falls for a girl determined to give as good as she gets) – but, two years on, I’ve come to realise something about why we were made for each other.

He isn’t just the man I love: he’s the man who made me realise that I’m not all that bad myself. Despite the half-stone I’ve failed to lose over the course of the ten years. Despite my hair permanently refusing to do as it’s told. Despite the fact that I couldn’t keep a secret to save my life, grind my teeth in my sleep, find it difficult to say ‘I’m sorry’ and have a tattoo of a spider on my bum, from when I was life-guarding for Camp America, that now looks like a malignant melanoma.

Despite these faults and a million others, he brings out the best in me and, even at my worst, I know he’ll still love me.

‘Maybe we should start saving up for something more special one day,’ suggests Nicola. ‘We could put a bit away each month. Then after . . . I don’t know, three years or so, we could have a proper holiday. A
luxury
one.’

‘Oh, Nicola, you’re a genius. Let’s
do
it!’ Meredith beams. ‘Top flights. Gorgeous hotel. Champagne all the way. It’d be amazing.’

Obviously, she’s right. Although after the last two days, somewhere with a flushing toilet would be a bonus.

Chapter 1

Wandsworth, London July 2012

My make-up bag doesn’t look like that of a woman who’ll be checking into one of the world’s most glamorous hotels the day after tomorrow. Even I know that, with my stunted enthusiasm for these things. There are lots of lipsticks – the only cosmetics I ever seem to buy (intermittently in a bid to ‘make an effort’) – plus a Rimmel concealer, dehydrated mascara and something called a ‘chubby stick’ donated by Meredith. That’s pretty much it.

It strikes me how bad I’ve become at the things girls are meant to be good at.

I never used to be. Once upon a time, I was into this sort of thing. But for someone who takes their job as seriously as I do, flaunting your assets is not a good idea. Part of me thinks that if any boss has an issue with glamour and femininity in the workplace, then it should be the patriarchy’s look out, but the reality is it rarely works like that. If I turned up at the office all pouty lips and filigree undies, my reputation would never recover – and not just because letting
my
boobs off the leash of their control bra can be such a hideous distraction that I might as well go the whole hog and stick two Mr Whippy cornets on each one.

But, if I’m honest, wanting to be taken seriously at work isn’t the whole story. The whole story is a long and complicated one, and can probably be summarised thus: I have other priorities now.

Still, this trip will be good for me, as everyone keeps saying.

Part of me can’t believe I’ve never been on a holiday as luxurious as this. Although, to be fair, I’ve had hardly
any
holidays in the last four and a half years, unless you count Center Parcs.

‘Mummy!’ my four-year-old daughter, Florence, cries from her bedroom. ‘Something’s . . .
happened
. But it was only an accident.’

Florence, who was named after her father’s birthplace, might have the voice of an angel but there are few sentences capable of making my heart sink faster.

I optimistically interpret her tone as being insufficiently urgent to qualify as a true emergency.

‘What
kind
of accident?’ I ask lightly, piling my clothes into the bag, deliberately stalling before I face whatever disaster has befallen her.

‘Well . . . will you be cross?’

I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know – what have you done?’

‘It wasn’t me. And, anyway, it’s okay because it was
only an accident.
’

I abandon my packing and head across the hall to her tiny bedroom.

We moved here last year because it’s in the catchment area of the exceptionally good state school where Florence will start in September. This monumental date in my daughter’s diary unfortunately coincides with our company’s most important day of the decade – a headache I have put off tackling because it involves an impossible choice: get my friend and neighbour Debbie to take her to school on her first day there, or face being burned at the stake by my boss – or something like that.

Apart from location, the flat is unsuitable for our circumstances in every conceivable way: it’s too small, the garden consists of four potted gerberas, there’s an unshakeable smell of damp and it’s nowhere near as convenient for work as our old place in Clapham. This means my frenetic daily commute resembles a scene from
Chariots of Fire
, and our regular childminder is permanently threatening me with the sack, apparently unconcerned that it’s supposed to be the other way around.

It’s also ludicrously expensive, not helped by the fact that the pay rise for which I’ve been holding out over the last six months has not yet materialised.

Oh yes, and we have a dog. I don’t make life easy for myself. But it was only when Spud’s owner, Mary – our landlady – died recently that I discovered, to my abject horror, that she’d bequeathed him to Florence in her will. Her son, James – our new landlord – couldn’t have him because he’s allergic, and has his golfing holidays to consider. Spud’s a lovely little thing but, practically speaking, not what I need in my life right now. So I briefly considered packing him off to a rescue home, but didn’t have it in me, particularly as if Florence had found out, she’d have held it against me for the rest of her life. Plus, to Mary’s infinite credit, she also bequeathed the funds for a dog-walker each day I’m at work for the next five years. Which goes to show what an optimist she was, given that Spud is already knocking on fourteen.

Despite this chaos we do, just about, cope. I can’t claim to be mother of the year – there have been one or two low points, the most recent being Florence’s nursery’s Harvest Festival when, last-minute, the only items I could find in the kitchen cupboards as an offering were a tub of bicarbonate of soda, some cocktail sticks and three bottles of WKD.

That doesn’t, of course, stop my mother from telling me every time we speak that things would be much easier if I’d just move back to Liverpool. Which I’ll never do – and not only because she lives there.

The fact is, I love Liverpool and I’m proud to call it home – it’s the city that made me. But it’s London that will forever be the mad, glorious place I can’t ever imagine leaving, not when so many memories live here with me.

I push open the door to Florence’s room with trepidation.

It is in every way an offence to feminist sensibilities. A haven of pink, it has a glittery dressing table (a present from Grandma), a fairytale bed (also Grandma’s work) and more
Disney Princesses
paraphernalia than you’d find in all the store cupboards of the Magic Kingdom.

But she adores it. And, given that I’ve brought my daughter up to know her own mind, I can hardly complain when she asserts it – even if I wish she’d find something to replace the subject of her current obsession: a pink vacuum cleaner. I refuse to buy it, despite her tearing out a picture of it from an Argos catalogue and sticking it on her wall, like some sort of shrine to domestic servitude.

It’s her big eyes I see first. You can’t miss them, even when part-hidden behind her wild, dark ringlets. Then I’m diverted.

‘I’ve done my nails. But I smudged a bit,’ she declares, holding out her hands.

Courtesy of a bottle of cherry-red polish (again, my mother’s work), her fingers look like she’s fed them into an office shredder. And, yes, she
has
smudged them. All over her duvet.

‘Florence!’ I gasp, diving across the room.

It’s only when I’m halfway there that I realise my movement has prompted Spud to stir from one of his lengthy snoozes. He bounds towards me to give me a kiss, knocks over the nail polish and proceeds to leap around until there are bright red doggy footprints all over the carpet.

Barely pausing for breath, I grab the bottle and race to my room to locate some nail polish remover, which I proceed to sprinkle about the place in a futile bid to clean up.

‘If only I had that pink Hoover to help clean up,’ Florence sighs.

Then my phone rings. I press ‘Answer’ and wedge it under my ear. It’s my boss, David.

‘Imogen, you asked me to call. Don’t you know it’s Saturday?’

David is a dream boss on many levels, and I owe him for reasons that go beyond my recent, scarily stratospheric, promotion. He’s the chief executive of one of the UK’s foremost food manufacturing companies, Peebles Ltd. You might not recognise the name, but we are an omnipresent force, producing some of the world’s best-known brands of biscuits, crackers, breakfast cereals and confectionary. Basically, if there’s wheat and sugar in whatever you’re eating, it’s very likely that we’ve made it, something we do in no less than twenty-one other countries.

Unfeasible as it might seem for a 29-year-old single mother, I am its UK marketing director. Or, at least,
acting
UK marketing director, which effectively means I’ve got the job but not the salary, for the moment at least. It’s a position for which David plucked me from relative obscurity after my two predecessors went off with stress.

It’s why I like him so much: the position is everything I’ve ever wanted in a job and has come earlier in my career than I’d ever expected. But that’s not the only reason why I love it. It’s made me feel as though I’m really going places; it’s proved to me that hard work does pay dividends. It’s not just the new office, or the fact that I now sit in team meetings important enough for crustless miniature sandwiches (although they are marvellous). I’ve suddenly become – or at least am on the way to becoming – a woman who can make things happen, who people listen to and respect. Which is a very good feeling, I can’t deny it.

On top of that, Peebles is quite simply a nice place to work; an office where camaraderie comes easily. In my pre-Florence days, this manifested itself in impromptu sessions in the Punch & Judy after work. Although these days I have to settle for grabbing a sandwich once in a blue moon with Stacey, Elsa or Roy, my friends on our floor, I still know I’m lucky to work with people I – largely – enjoy being around.

The only downside is that being a high-flyer or, at least, pre- tending to be one, isn’t exactly family-friendly. Although nobody explicitly says so, it’s not the done thing to slope off from work to get back in time to eat dinner with your daugh- ter. I constantly feel like I’m slacking, whether or not I’m stuck in front of my computer every night until past midnight. Which I am. Every. Single. Night.

‘Sorry, David. I actually left the message last night while I was tying up a few loose ends from home, but thanks for getting back to me. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve now sent you an email detailing everything you need to know while I’m away.’

‘Yes, I got that. And the two earlier ones.’

‘Yes. Sorry. I wanted to cover all bases, particularly for anything to do with the merger.’

Eight weeks from now, Peebles will be announcing to its staff, the stock market and the world’s media that it is joining forces with Uber-Getreide, which is basically the German equivalent of us. It’s all entirely hush-hush at the moment, but the result – the imaginatively entitled Peebles-Getreide Ltd – will create Europe’s biggest-ever food manufacturing giant.

David and his opposite number in Germany will be making the announcement at a press conference on 2 September, but it’s my job to get everything ready for him behind the scenes: from liaising with the marketing department at Getreide and appointing a PR specialist here, to determining what colour tie will imbue David with an aura of gravitas on the day.

‘That email includes details of everything, from the key contacts at Getreide to the market research results, the PR company we’ve just appointed, and every contact name and number you might need. Although I’m confident you won’t need any of them. They’re just in case.’

He sighs extravagantly. ‘You know what I think, Imogen?’ He pauses. ‘I think you need to
relax
.’

I breathe out, only now realising I hadn’t done so for several seconds. ‘I am. I mean, I
will
. And, anyway, Laura knows absolutely everything and I’ve told her not to hesitate to call me if anyone needs me. You’ve got my mobile, but I’ve also included a number for the hotel, and my friend Nicola’s number too, just in case. As I say, none of it should be necessary but—’

‘Imogen!’

‘Um . . . yes?’

‘What do I always say at times like this?’

‘Oh. Er . . .’ I am hesitating because there are any number of multiple-choice options to answer this. David is fond of philosophising, although the truth is he’s no Aristotle.

‘Think long. Think deep. But
think
.’ His voice drops an octave, in the same manner employed by Churchill when delivering his war speeches. Then he pauses, reflecting on his thoughts. As do I. Though I haven’t the faintest clue what it means.