Leaving the restaurant at just after three thirty Juliet watched her client grin tipsily at her from the back of a cab before crossing Piccadilly to Albermarle Street for the office. She was hot, a little drunk, and very relieved. Mark obviously hadn’t noticed anything odd about her at lunch; she’d been right not to take the day off work, not to treat it differently from any other.
‘Watch out, mate!’ Another cab was accelerating towards her and she skipped out of its way onto the kerb. Since when had cabbies stopped calling her ‘love’ and started calling her ‘mate’? Did she look more comradely, these days, less female, somehow? She looked down at her bare arms and legs: it would be hard to wear fewer clothes and still get seated in the kind of restaurant she’d just eaten in.
She wondered if Larry and Kate had come up with any ideas about where the three of them should have drinks that evening. Anywhere would do, just so long as she didn’t have to spend any time alone. Perhaps they could get a table outside somewhere; it was the third sultry July day in a row, already christened a heatwave by the papers but novel enough for her to look forward to passing through each slant of sunshine on the shaded path ahead. The French café near the office had set up a couple of tables on the pavement outside and the sight of coffees being stirred and cigarettes lit in the open air caused a shot of pure, searing abandon to hit her bloodstream. It was a shock, today of all days, to feel real joy. At best she’d expected a kind of suffocated despair.
Her mood changed the second she reached the Imagineer reception.
‘Juliet!’ Jo cried. ‘Where’ve you been? Dominic’s been looking for you!’ Although hers was a relatively relaxed reception job, Jo was wearing that silly headset thing that made her look like an air traffic controller. For once she was actually smiling, looking at Juliet with naked glee, like the Vegas tourist who’d stumbled on a VIP ticket to the big fight and suddenly found herself within flirting distance of Jack Nicholson. ‘They’re all in the boardroom,’ she added.
‘What d’you mean, “all”?’ Juliet asked her. In the cool, lily-scented space, she was suddenly conscious of the sweat on her skin. She knew her clothes and hair must reek of cigarettes; Mark was one of the few people left in the developed world who smoked more than she did.
‘I mean the whole company. For Dominic’s presentation!’
‘Fine, right, OK.’ She remembered Dominic’s email now, flagged ‘urgent’ and followed up with two reminders. God, how could she have forgotten? For Jo’s instinct was right: this was bad. Dominic would be far too vain not to take her oversight personally. Rushing down the corridor to the boardroom, she saw her colleagues crammed against the sliding doors; it was not going to be possible to slink in unseen. Damn.
She peered at her face in the glass: nothing like the Oliver Reed glaze she’d seen Larry get away with in the past, but flushed from drinking, nonetheless. Nor was it ideal that she looked as though she’d been sleeping rough: her eyes, a pale apple-green, had gone sludgy, her short highlighted hair resembled tinsel, and her make-up had either smudged or melted. It was nine months since she’d returned to London office life, but the air of the traveller still lingered about her appearance. Her body had that particular kind of missed-meals leanness, that stain of a tan that never quite washed off the skin of someone who’d once spent half a year on a Mexican beach. She’d never got back into working girl grooming in the same way. It seemed to suit her better this way.
Flattening her hair behind her ears, she waited for the next round of laughs before easing the door across, head dipped. Unfortunately it clattered shut and seventy-five heads turned towards her, like a many-headed monster hearing the rustle of prey. She caught Dominic’s eye straight away, hoping to transmit her contrition in a single end-of-the-matter glance, but saw at once that there was no hope. His face was alight with egomania and the insult of her lateness was plain to see.
‘Ah, Juliet, good of you to join us.’
Dominic loved public speaking, standing at the front, commanding his troops. And he looked the part, too, with his six-foot-plus authority, the deft way his body moved in the dark, well-cut suit, the faux mussed-up hair – ‘bed head’ you could imagine the stylist telling him as they shared a saucy frisson in front of the salon mirror. Every day he presented himself to his staff as though for a magazine shoot celebrating media millionaires under thirty. She’d never met anyone so intoxicated with his own success. He’d once told her, straight up, that he saw himself as the baron of brand builders. Actually, he’d used capitals: I Am The Baron of Brand Builders.
But he had something, she had to admit, and seeing him now at his most magnetic it seemed less extraordinary that they’d once slept together. Twice slept together, she corrected herself.
‘I’m so sorry, Dominic,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I took Mark Kendall to lunch to talk about the new Smithfield’s brief and I couldn’t get away. He sends his best.’
Dominic just clicked the mouse in his hand and said, ‘So, moving on…’ The image on the far wall changed and the seventy-five heads turned back again.
‘Any thoughts on this one, Juliet?’ Apology not accepted, then. She squinted at the image: the room wasn’t quite dark enough to make it out. It seemed to resemble a child’s join-the-dots drawing, until she saw that there were annotations, too small for her to read from her position by the door. Perhaps it was some sort of engineering diagram: Dominic had just bagged business with a French car manufacturer.
‘Come on, Juliet, we’re all agog.’
Maybe it was the effort she’d expended on all that false beaming across the table at Mark K, and maybe it was the wine, but she sensed herself weakening now, allowing herself to lose control. She was going to say the wrong thing. ‘Er, is this your take on the British land speed record?’ There was just one clear shout of laughter amid the titters and she didn’t need to look around to know it was Larry.
‘You do split my sides,’ Dominic said, voice dangerously pleasant. ‘Actually, this is my projection of revenue streams for the last quarter of the year. Stick around and you might learn something. If you’re not too busy with your briefs, of course.’
There were a few uncertain sniggers at that. This was deadly. They’d never bickered publicly before, though she’d been aware for a while that her star had slipped. She tried to remember how much she’d had to drink. Mark had ordered the third bottle of wine when she was in the loo; it would have been rude not to share it and a waste of Imagineer funds to leave it. A bottle and a half each; was that so wayward for the end of the week? Not if she’d made it back in time for Dominic’s presentation, it wasn’t. She looked across to Larry for support. He had his hand over his mouth, rubbing at the tip of his nose with his knuckles in that way he did, hardly bothering to disguise his enjoyment.
Dominic was still glaring at her. ‘Cuff him, somebody,’ he said, finally, with that slow-motion blink of disdain he did so well. Cuff him: this was his customary expression of dismissal, as though some trusty sergeant stood by to escort the object of his displeasure to a holding cell below. Like everyone else, Juliet usually communicated silent sympathy to the victim. She supposed others would be doing that to her now, didn’t dare look. She didn’t think she could deal with sympathy today.
Mercifully, the land speed slide was one of the last and Dominic was soon taking questions from the floor. ‘Dominic, it’s fantastic to see this sort of growth ahead of us,’ said a disembodied voice at the front that Juliet recognised as belonging to Emma from HR. ‘Does that mean there’ll be organic expansion in terms of staff?’ She was speaking in a bright, rehearsed sort of way that meant Dominic had planted the question.
‘Yes,’ Dominic said. ‘We’ll be actively recruiting across the board. But I’ll also be thinking about a radical restructure in the New Year, so it will vary from team to team.’
A current of paranoia now buzzed around the room. Radical Restructure, the dreaded double ‘R’. There’d been one last year when she’d first joined and she’d never experienced such wholesale back-stabbing and credit-snatching. It had been like working in a bad Eighties movie. In the end, no one had been laid off, anyway, which was just as well for her as she’d lacked any instinct for self-preservation at that time. It had been all she could do to lift her head off the pillow and go through the motions of each day.
‘Any more questions?’
‘Dominic?’ It was Juliet’s friend Kate. She stood silhouetted against the window with a fleecy outline of orange around her red-blonde ponytail. ‘I was just wondering,’ she said, ‘if there was any news on the leak in the ladies? I mean, it’s really grim, especially when you’re getting ready to go out.’
‘Yes, Kate,’ Dominic said. ‘That could put you right off your stride, couldn’t it? Do you want to catch up with Jo about that afterwards? She’s organising plumbing repairs, I believe. Anything sensible, anyone?’ He wasn’t looking at Kate, but making clear eye contact with Juliet, daring her to come up with something intelligent, confident she would not. All at once she felt close to tears, kept her eyelids closed for a second or two, willing someone, anyone, to ask another question.
‘Dominic,’ she heard Larry say. ‘Since we’re all here, this is probably a good time for me to tell you I’ve got a few ideas for the Christmas party. There’s a great restaurant on Brewer Street, where they do…’
‘Are you aware we’re in the month of July?’ Dominic interrupted with a nasty little chuckle.
‘…Elvis karaoke…’ Larry tailed off.
‘Five months away. How do you know you’ll still have your job then?’
Juliet watched. Larry had rescued her; she had to return the favour. ‘It’s just that this place is so popular,’ she said, carefully. ‘They’re already taking bookings. After all, who wants their Christmas do on a Monday in November?’
Most people shuffled to life at that. A restructure was one thing, a duff Christmas party quite another.
‘Who indeed?’ Dominic snapped. ‘Well, I’ve got something special in mind this year, Larry and Juliet, so you needn’t worry, delighted though I am by your continuing work as unofficial Imagineer social secretaries. Perhaps we can all enjoy your rendition of “Love Me Tender” on another occasion?’
That Dominic blink again. But he was pleased with the round of laughter raised with that last remark, she could tell. He pulled at his bed head and said, ‘OK, well if that’s all guys, let’s get back to business. I’ll see account directors at five and don’t forget Amir’s “Yolk of the Brand” show ’n’ tell tomorrow lunch time. Sign up if you can. Branding begins at home, don’t forget.’
Juliet waited in the corridor for Larry, who came out grumbling. ‘What does he mean “branding begins at home”?’
‘He made it sound like the sort of branding they do to sheep and cattle,’ Kate said, a step behind.
‘Well, we’re treated like livestock, so I suppose it makes perfect sense.’ Dominic’s little rally had obviously done little for Larry’s motivation.
‘Well I for one can certainly do without any disfigurements before the weekend,’ Juliet grinned. ‘I’m going to a thirtieth birthday party on Saturday. God, doesn’t it make you feel old?’
‘Not when you’re already thirty-four,’ Larry said. ‘Then it makes you feel irrelevant. Thanks very much, Juliet, I can see you’re on a roll today.’
They’d reached reception, pausing for a moment under the gleaming metallic lettering of the company name, along with the slogan: ‘everybody think’. This never failed to annoy Larry, the team copywriter; he wanted to see an exclamation mark after ‘think’ to show it was a directive. Every so often he would dash off an email to Dominic about it: ‘Otherwise it just looks like the “s” has dropped off the end and is lying on the floor somewhere.’ ‘Does anyone really care?’ Juliet would appease him. ‘Nobody here thinks, anyway.’
‘Let’s take the stairs,’ she said to Larry, as they shuffled along again. ‘I’m coming with you to the pit. Thanks for rescuing me in there, by the way.’
‘What have you done to Dominic?’ Larry asked. ‘He looked like he was ready to burn you at the stake. How come you missed the presentation? That’s not like you.’
‘I was at Smithfield’s all morning and we went straight to lunch. You know, I bet he wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t turned up at all.’
‘Better never than late,’ Larry agreed.
‘He has been very rude to you recently,’ Kate said. ‘Maybe he’s overcompensating, still pissed off you didn’t want to extend your…’ She broke into a whisper, ‘relationship.’
‘Oh, is that what it was?’ Larry laughed. He was still amused by the idea of Juliet and Dominic together. She thanked God for the twentieth time that he hadn’t been in the bar that night in April when they’d first got together and was therefore unable to torture her with details of the grisly seduction. Then again, if he had been there, maybe she wouldn’t have taken Dominic back to her flat. Just how had that happened, anyway?
Her memory of the morning after was clear enough: she’d woken up to find that the purring shape under the duvet next to her was her boss. The bed was surrounded by taped-up boxes and half-packed bags – she was moving out that weekend – and Dominic just looked around the room and said, ‘If you were planning a quick getaway, Jules, I’d remind you that you’re the one who lives here!’ Even now it made her cringe: all those years of fidelity at home and professionalism at work and within six months of her first job back she’d slept with her boss. How predictable. And now she seemed to have progressed to cheeking him in company meetings, too.
They had emerged into the half-light of the pit, as it was known, the low-ceilinged space where Larry, Kate and the rest of the creative team worked. It was distinctive for its animal smell, the smell of too many men in their twenties walking around with their shoes off; too many flatsharers who’d missed their slot for the shower; too many McNuggets and curry sauce. Clients were never brought to the pit.
‘So what are we doing tonight…?’ Juliet started, but was interrupted by the approach of Emma. As usual, she couldn’t help staring at her layered blonde hair, which was so perfectly blow-dried it looked like she had a wig sitting on top of her normal hair. She was one of those people who dressed for the job she wanted (HR director) rather than the one she had (HR executive). She was just like Jo: buttoned up, self-promoting, a pain.
‘Just who I wanted to see!’ Emma exclaimed, though it could hardly have been a surprise to find Larry and Kate at their designated workstations. ‘Have you guys got your job descriptions for me? The deadline is tomorrow morning. Dominic wants to read them over the weekend.’
‘Why do we have to do these again?’ Kate asked. ‘I hate writing.’
‘You could always draw yours,’ Larry suggested. ‘I’ve got some nice crayons somewhere.’
Juliet and Kate giggled but Emma didn’t. ‘It’s a highly constructive exercise whereby Dominic can assess your own perception of your contribution to Imagineer and update his personal templates. It’s enormously helpful for recruiting.’
‘Right. We’ll get straight onto it,’ Larry said, flicking through the Standard. ‘I see David Beckham’s been at it again…’ Juliet looked affectionately at him. Even though his hair was cropped and he dressed in the same skater-boy clothes all the creatives wore, she could still recognise the Larry she’d seen in those old photos he’d shown her one night at his place: the Larry of the late Eighties, with long metal-head locks and battered leathers. His face was not good-looking, exactly, but it had a sort of friendly sneer you couldn’t help wanting to turn your way. He looked clever, like a cleverer-than-average busker.
‘What is this?’ Larry said, as Emma swished off. ‘Job descriptions? When the weekend’s almost upon us!’ It was another of Larry’s pet theories that since Thursday was widely accepted as the new Friday, no one need worry about doing any real work on either day. Juliet, whose job it was to coax Larry to meet his deadlines and to manage the client if he was running late, usually protested this. But today was different, today she knew exactly what he meant. ‘Yeah, what if the world ends tonight and the last thing we used our brains for was a job description. Emma’ll be lucky.’
‘Perhaps, like me, she simply views Thursday as a normal working day, an opportunity for revenue generation...And not the day before the apocalypse. Extraordinary, eh?’ It was Dominic, of course, having popped up like Mr Ben about an inch from where Juliet leaned over Larry’s desk. Just what she needed.
She thought quickly and picked up a pen. ‘So, Larry, how long did you spend on that Smithfield’s aisle end copy last week? I’m just catching up on billing.’
‘Two, maybe three,’ Larry said, not bothering to look up from the paper.
‘OK, three days, I’ll put you down for a week, once you’ve done corrections and checks.’ That should please Dominic, at least; he was always reminding the planners to round creative hours up not down.
‘No, three minutes, not three days,’ Larry said, bored.
‘Three minutes?’
‘It was only about fifty words.’
‘He does write very fast,’ Kate confirmed. ‘But you can make it up on my design time if you like, Juliet. I haven’t even started it yet, I’m way behind.’
This was going from bad to worse, but when Juliet looked up she saw that Dominic was already eavesdropping on a conversation at the neighbouring desks. Thank God, she couldn’t face another cuffing.
‘Hey, listen,’ Kate said, when he’d moved away. ‘I thought maybe we could go to that Canadian sports bar place after work.’
‘I’d rather eat my own arm than hang out with all those jocks,’ Larry scoffed.
‘But there are men there,’ Kate protested.
‘Yeah, men watching sport,’ Larry said. ‘I mean, is that the sort of man you want? Someone who drinks in a Canadian bar? Someone who wears one of those stupid elk baseball caps?’
Kate sighed and Juliet smiled sympathetically at her. She was the youngest of their three, only twenty-five, and for all their teasing Juliet liked it that Kate hadn’t let the world jade her, not yet.
‘How about a margarita?’ she said. ‘That’s if Mexican sympathisers are more acceptable to Larry than Canadians.’
‘How about we just go straight to Guy’s bar?’ Larry said. ‘You know we’ll end up there eventually.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Juliet smiled, ‘Guy and I are not joined at the hip.’
‘I though that was precisely where you were joined,’ Larry said, grinning. ‘Why else do we have to spend the only decent summer evenings this year in a basement?’
‘You suggested it,’ Juliet pointed out.
‘Guy’s, then?’ Kate said.
‘OK,’ Juliet said. But she wasn’t sure if seeing Guy was such good idea. Would she be able to get through the night without comparing him with Luke? Seven years versus two and a half months. The man she had known as well as herself versus the one she’d known so briefly he had yet to appear in her dreams. Then versus now. Everything versus…what, exactly?
‘See you by the lifts at six,’ she said to Larry and Kate.
Back upstairs in the account suite, an altogether more civilised space than the pit with its glass desks and leather chairs, she spent the next half hour moving her eyes restlessly between the computer clock and the empty seat opposite. Until recently it had been occupied by Michelle, the Smithfield’s team’s account director, not yet three months pregnant but already with some unpronounceable complication that kept her bed rested for most of the time. Michelle’s work was now being shared between Juliet and another account planner at no additional reward – monetary or verbal. Instead, Dominic had hinted that he would make an internal promotion during Michelle’s official maternity leave, which started in the New Year. Juliet was the natural choice – though relatively new to Imagineer she had more experience than the others over all – but a leapfrog was never out of the question with Dominic. He prided himself on spotting talent in the lower ranks and shaking everyone up with a sudden reshuffle of seniority. That was the sort of thing a Baron of Brand Builders liked to do.
She checked her email for new tasks. A reminder from Mark Kendall to send the proposal they’d discussed at lunch. That took forty-five seconds. A meeting request from the head of production. Clicking ‘accept’ took less than five. Then she noticed the job description template attached to Emma’s message.
There were three parts.
‘1. Encapsulate your role at Imagineer in a single sentence.’ She thought for a moment and then typed, ‘I push paper.’ That would make Larry and Kate laugh.
‘2. What key strengths are required for the role?’ ‘Paper pushing.’
‘3. Suggest any talent evolution that could enrich your role and add value to brand-building within Imagineer?’ Talent Evolution: that was what HR called staff training. It was a wonder they still called themselves HR. Larry had a few ideas for an alternative. She thought again, was tempted to write ‘Sex with Dominic’, but decided against it and typed: ‘Wrist-strengthening exercises for longer, faster paper pushing.’ Then she attached the file to an email and selected Larry’s name.
Perhaps it was the lunchtime drinking, perhaps it was the run-in with Dominic, or perhaps it was the fact that it was July 16th and she was struggling to care if the world was still turning by the end of it, but she suddenly wanted to hit the self-destruct button good and hard. So she replaced Larry’s name with Emma’s and pressed ‘Send’.