Single in the City Read online

  Their beery banter is interrupted by the DJ intoning, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Miss Butter Cups!’ A roar goes up from the crowd. Evidently Miss Cups is very good at whatever she does. The music starts and a nine-foot leggy blonde struts on to the stage wearing thigh-high rubber boots and little else. It figures. The boys get a stripper. We get a gassy man’s rendition of show tunes. I’m sure this isn’t what my mother meant when she said I should take in the theatre here. It’s not that I don’t appreciate her obvious talent, but I take issue with breast implants the same way I take issue with a mother who does her adult son’s laundry. Both unrealistically raise men’s expectations about the women they date.

  ‘Watch this,’ Sarah says as the stripper picks up her various bits of dental floss and leaves the stage to thunderous applause, ‘they’re gonna go white pointers.’ A herd of girls are piling on to the stage.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re gonna take their tops off.’

  ‘Really?’ This is so not a church.

  ‘Too right. They might even get in the nuddy.’

  ‘In the…?’

  ‘Naked,’ she winks. ‘I’ve seen it happen.’

  ‘Are you going up there?’

  ‘Nah, those girls are slappers.’

  ‘What’s a slapper?’

  Unbeknownst to me, Gianni is listening in. ‘A slapper isa sluta, no?’ He looks pleased to be so bilingual.

  The naked girl parade is the day’s finale. It’s 3.30. That’s 3.30 p.m. Unbelievable as it sounds, this entire day has only lasted a little over four hours. It feels like midnight, and the room is starting to spin. ‘’Annah, are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, jus’ a liddle tired.’

  ‘We’re gonna go on, do you wanna come along?’

  ‘Nah, I’ll tek the Tube.’

  ‘Ah, guys, let’s go to the Teck insteed.’ Nathan drapes an arm over my shoulder. ‘We can drop ’Annah off on the way. Come on, pumpkin, we’ll getcha home.’

  He’s my knight in shining T-shirt! Yes, his mother ought to be very happy indeed.

  7

  My mother doesn’t sound very happy at all. ‘Mo-om,’ (yes, I’m whining) ‘I told you I was going to find a job here. I didn’t just come for a vacation. I plan to live here.’ How can talking to the woman who gave me life have the power to send me back to pre-pubescence?

  ‘I just don’t see why you couldn’t find a job here at home,’ she says. Again.

  ‘Because I have the chance to live in London! Look, I need to call Stacy. I’ve gotta go now.’

  She’s obviously still taking my move as a personal insult.

  ‘This is what I raised you for?’ she’d said when I first told her. Like I was moving to Mexico to become a drug mule.

  ‘You raised me to be independent.’

  ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I haven’t left yet.’

  ‘You’re not going to stay for ever, are you?’

  ‘Mom, who knows? Are you and Dad going to stay for ever in this house?’ I was brought home from the hospital through its front door. The little pen lines charting my growth are still on the doorframe in my bedroom.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You can’t know that.’

  ‘Of course I can.’

  ‘What if Dad gets his dream job in, I don’t know, LA? Then you’d move, so you can’t know what’s going to happen in the future.’

  ‘I don’t like LA.’

  ‘Well, wherever.’

  ‘Why would your dad be looking for a job in LA?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mom, he just is!’

  ‘Joe, is this true?’

  Poor Dad had looked confused. Even with experience, Mom’s random attacks aren’t easy to deflect. How do you argue with a crazy woman?

  ‘What if your sister has a baby?’

  ‘Mom, it’s a six-hour flight. Pregnancies last nine months. There’ll be some warning.’

  ‘What if I have a stroke?’

  ‘Once again, Mom, it’s a six-hour flight…’

  Despite my mother’s disapproval, I am starting a new job here. And striking the right balance in one’s clothing choices is critical. Like the South Beach Diet, it won’t work if the combination is wrong. The outfit for my first day has to say I’m super-efficient, bright and capable yet fun, stylish and not afraid of a bottle of wine or two at happy hour. Stacy says tweed is out.

  ‘Even in pink?’ My new Chanelesque skirt suit gives me a killer silhouette.

  ‘Not on the first day. You want understated chic. What was everyone else wearing?’

  ‘I have no idea. The only person I saw when I interviewed was Felicity.’

  ‘What’d she look like?’

  ‘She’s gorgeous. She’s Maltese –’

  ‘Like the falcon.’

  ‘Exactly. Very exotic, shiny dark hair, olive skin, hooded eyes and great curves.’ In a bar, I’d hate her on sight.

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘A great suit.’

  ‘Pants?’

  I hope so. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Designer?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Identifying Donna Karan or Kate Spade from across the street is a gift that I take pride in, but being less familiar with English labels, I’m a magician without her wand here. I don’t label-spot for snob value, but for purely practical reasons. If a woman has something that I love and I know where she got it, then I can have it too. And though I’m not above asking, it’s amazing how jealously some women guard their fashion secrets.

  ‘But not tweed, right?’

  ‘You’re right. I need to go shopping again.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Let’s take this step by step. Describe everything in your wardrobe.’

  ‘The new stuff?’

  ‘Everything. Hang on, let me get a cup of coffee.’

  This is why I love Stacy. It’s a rare person who’ll suffer all of your fashion, beauty and romance crises twenty-four hours a day, and still not screen your calls. Besides, she’s being incredibly supportive about my staying here, which I appreciate now that I know she really doesn’t want me to. I underestimated her. Worse, I betrayed her, if only in my thoughts. That’s possibly more insidious, because she didn’t even get the chance to defend herself. There are rules in law against accusation in absentia. Not so in friendship. I suspect we’ve all done it, whether in big matters or small. I take some comfort in the safety of numbers, though it still makes me feel like an unworthy friend.

  Considering that it’s a job I know nothing about, in a city I know nothing about, for a woman I know nothing about, my composure is admirable this morning. Except for the sheen on my lip you’d never know I was about to throw up.

  ‘Welcome, Hannah!’ Mark looks super-sexy. What are the chances that he happens to be here, at the elevator, at the exact second I arrive? Talk about fate. Unless he’s been waiting for me, because it’s my first day, because he can’t wait to see me…

  ‘Good morning, Mark.’ Listen to me. You’d think we were just business acquaintances.

  ‘Here, let me show you to your desk.’

  He’s just offered to accompany me twelve feet. This has to be a sign, right?

  ‘Felicity, Hannah’s here. Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ His wink threatens to dislodge my breakfast. Definitely a sign.

  ‘Good morning, Hannah.’

  ‘Hi, Felicity!’ She’s wearing the most superb suit, navy blue with yellow pinstripes and mustard-yellow snakeskin heels. I’m very tempted to ask her where she got them, but we should probably bond first.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Uh, coffee, if you have it.’

  ‘Come, I’ll show you where the kitchen is.’ Our office is in a converted bank, with big brass chandeliers hanging from two-storey-high ceilings and tall windows all along the front of the building. The conversion was not, however, sympathetic to the building’s architectural integrity. Royal-blue partitions dissect the
giant room into cubicles. In a sci-fi film there’d be white-coated giants hovering over us with clipboards to document our oblivious progress through the maze.

  Felicity and I are the only ones in suits. Everyone else is wearing trendy urban footwear, jeans and funky T-shirt/blazer combos. They all look incredibly cool. They all look incredibly cooler than me. I wonder how many of my skirts are returnable given that a) right now I’m Felicity’s mini-me and b) it is an established fact that only Uma Thurman can get away with a skirt and sneakers. That ensemble makes the rest of us look like we save tin foil and think our cats are people.

  ‘This is my mug.’ It’s a blue glazed cup with a fish on it. Interesting crockery statement. ‘And I like my tea strong, white with no sugar.’

  ‘Okay. I like my coffee strong too, with milk and two sugars.’

  ‘That’s nice, though irrelevant.’

  ‘I thought we were sharing.’

  ‘I’m telling you how to make my tea. I drink it when I first get in, which is eight-thirty by the way, so you’ll have to be here by then in future, and at eleven and three. Don’t be late. Any questions?’

  I guess telling me where you got your shoes is out of the question.

  ‘Ah, Sam, there you are,’ she says like she’s finally found him at the end of an exasperating search. He looks disappointed to have been noticed. ‘This is Hannah. Hannah, Sam.’

  ‘Hi, Sam, nice to mee–’

  ‘She needs her email account set up. And her building pass. Any more questions?’

  Given that Sam now has his back to her, wedging in beside me to concentrate on his coffee, I assume her question is for me. ‘Uh, when do you have lunch?’

  ‘I don’t eat lunch.’

  ‘Ever?’ What normal woman doesn’t eat lunch?

  ‘No.’

  I swear Sam just muttered, ‘Feeds on her hostility.’

  ‘Er, when do I have lunch?’

  ‘Well, whenever you want. I certainly wouldn’t dictate when you should eat. You can find your way back to your desk, right?’

  ‘Sure, yes. Sure,’ I say to her retreating back.

  ‘Come on,’ Sam grins, ‘I’ll walk you back and set up your email.’

  ‘She wasn’t very friendly to you. What’d you do to her?’ He looks familiar. Maybe it’s his curly hair, à la Adrian Grenier.19

  ‘She doesn’t need to be. I’m the office bitch.’

  ‘Is that your official title?’

  ‘I’ve got business cards to prove it. You American?’

  ‘Yep. You too?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Long live the colonial empire.’

  So my boss is either a slave driver trying to act laid back or a daisy-sniffer with an anal-retentive streak. Either way, my main job appears to be keeping her sufficiently caffeinated. I’m also supposed to make sure nobody gets to her without her say-so. I get the sense I’m to tackle anyone who slips past, which may be why everyone wears comfortable shoes. I also make all her travel arrangements. And book her client dinners. And drinks. The power is intoxicating…

  I’m bored out of my skull. The phone has rung twice. I can’t understand what they’re saying because of their accent, and I made one guy spell his last name. S-m-i-t-h. I’ve familiarized myself with everything on, in and under my desk. I’ve written a long email to Stacy describing how sweet Mark is and Felicity isn’t. My desk is near the ladies room, so I’m running a tally of how many times it’s being used and what direction the women are coming from (two corridors meet at my desk). Pouring hot water on a teabag has been the highlight of my morning.

  ‘Um, Felicity?’

  She’s flipping through a folder that’s stuffed with torn-out pages from magazines. I’d give my eyeteeth to do that.

  ‘How’s everything? Settling in?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ I’m going to fall asleep if I get any more settled. ‘I was just wondering, is there anything I can do, between phone calls?’

  ‘Have you been on the Internet?’

  ‘No!’ Already she thinks I’m a slacker.

  ‘Why don’t you do that? I’m sure you’ve got a lot to take care of, having just moved over.’

  ‘Uh, okay.’ What kind of boss encourages you to goof off? She can’t be paying me this kind of money just to answer her phone. A monkey could do this. In fact, the monkey would get bored and quit.

  In the corridor, a tiny woman is rushing by with a tray full of mugs. Clip-clop, clip-clop, ‘Shit, fuck!’

  It’s a slingback malfunction, surely caused by the misguided notion to wear them with pantyhose.20 It’s like watching a Jenga tower as you pull out one of the blocks. You hope it’s not going to topple but there’s a sick inevitability about it. The cups splash and shatter across the floor. Felicity rolls her eyes. ‘Go and help her.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ I say to this diminutive colleague attempting to pick up her dignity from the office floor.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she says, ‘’e’s gonna make me pay for this.’

  ‘Who?’ It’s hard to take her swearing seriously when her Irish accent makes her sound like a foul-mouthed leprechaun.

  ‘Mark. That’s, like, the third bloody tray this month.’

  Seriously? I’m no Olympic champion when it comes to hand-eye co-ordination but that’s clumsy even in my book.

  ‘I’m Shivawn, his secretary. You’re Hannah, right? I heard you were starting today.’

  ‘Yep, nice to meet you.’

  ‘I’ve gotta make another batch now. Fancy goin’ for a drink at lunchtime?’

  ‘Sure!’ She can’t mean a drink-drink, can she?

  At 12.58, Mark appears at my desk. ‘Coming for a drink?’

  How I’ve fantasized about those words. Granted, my fantasy doesn’t involve half a dozen co-workers, but it’s something. And his look is definitely lingering. ‘Love to!’ This is possibly the best decision I’ve ever made.

  There’s a pub around the corner (though there seems to be a pub around every corner).

  ‘I’ll get us drinks.’ Mark clearly enjoys playing host. ‘What’s everybody having?’

  ‘Pint of Stella.’

  ‘Boddingtons, please.’

  ‘Glass of Chardonnay.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Make it three.’

  ‘Hannah?’

  ‘Er, make it four.’

  ‘I’ll get a bottle.’

  Where are the drinks that lubricate normal American business culture, the Diet Coke, the iced tea? Drinking at lunchtime? Our fathers might have sipped their lunches, but this isn’t 1972. And yet here we are. There’s not even a hint of pinch-faced disapproval or winking titillation at flouting the rules. These are the rules. I can’t wait to email Stacy with an update.

  Clearly this pub ritual is a) daily and b) a microcosm of wider office dynamics. This could be the most informative glass of Chardonnay I’ve ever drunk.

  ‘Hey, Mark, I’ll get some crisps for the table. What kind…?’

  ‘By the way, Mark, I managed to source that wine for the Asprey launch. Thanks, I thought it was impossible too…’

  ‘So after the hundredth time that she changes her mind, Mark finally says, “Sweetheart, if you keep worrying, you’re going to need more Botox by dinnertime.” Remember that, Mark? I thought she was going to kill you, but she just laughed.’

  Look at him. He’s the master of all he surveys, organizing the first round and picking up the tab with casual benevolence. He laughs, he jokes, he somehow gives his undivided attention to everyone at the table. You just know that when he arrives at a party, the hosts have to resist the urge to run round the living room whooping, ‘Mark’s here, Mark’s here, Mark’s here!’ He’s a charismatic leader, a Dalai Lama for the party-planning world. I’m incredibly proud that he’s practically my boyfriend. I don’t usually date guys this assured, this grown-up. This sexy. ‘Tell me, Siobhan,’ he says, ‘what we all want to know. How was your date with the barrister?’

  ‘Ugh, Mark. Remind me t
o add the legal profession to my list of the undateable.’

  I’m trying not to be jealous as Mark trains his gorgeous gaze upon his secretary. I’d feel better if she wasn’t so tiny, with that sweet pointy face and those sparkling green eyes. I’ve often wished to be petite, but I’m five foot eight, so it’s never going to be a fitting adjective. Instead I get called sturdy. I’m sure it’s meant as a compliment, but it conjures up visions of meaty-armed women in housecoats.

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘Jaysus,’ says the blasphemous elf, ‘what went right? The guy shows up half an hour early, half an hour, insisting I let him in because it’s raining. Like he’s made of sugar. Naturally, the timing’s perfect. I’ve just put bleach on my lip, my hair’s wet and I’ve got loo roll stuffed between my toes. So I beg my neighbour to let him in so he doesn’t see me. My neighbour, of course, pisses himself when he sees me, making the chances of getting off with him in the future nil. Shame too, because he’s fit…’

  ‘So, the date?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Cipriani’s mysteriously lost the reservation–this is eight o’clock on a Saturday, mind you. They’re looking at us like we just weed on their floor, my date is trying to bully or buy his way into a table, and all I can think is, I can’t believe I bleached my lip for this. By the time we end up at a dodgy Chinese buffet, I’m so hungry I’m considering eating their moo shu cat. It gets worse from there. I would have climbed out the ladies window, but the restaurant was such a dive there wasn’t a window in there. I checked.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘If only.’

  Felicity has been following the conversation with the intensity of a KGB agent sent to keep an eye on things. I wonder why she’s here at all, given that she claimed never to eat lunch. She certainly didn’t join us so she could talk to me; she hasn’t said a word. That’s no way to behave towards your new hire on her first day. I think she knows about me and Mark. Did she hire me because she had to? Or did she want to hire me and find out later that she’s got something to resent me for? ‘Felicity, can I get you something else to drink?’ Maybe she’s nicer when she’s drunk.