Chapter 12
‘The top ten tennis mishaps of all time’
‘How to hit the perfect kick serve’
‘Gain explosive power with this one easy trick’
I am still in two minds about what to do about next Sunday’s Rusty Racquets and have told Nora I’ll decide closer to the time.
I can’t deny I enjoyed it more than I dreamt I would.
But the last thing I want is anyone thinking I’m a prospective future member of this women’s team they’re attempting to revive.
More importantly, I feel weird about bumping into Sam Delaney again.
Which I know is silly given how much time has passed, yet somehow that almost makes it more awkward, not less.
Our head office takes up three floors above the Manchester branch of Fable & Punk, the ‘lifestyle’ brand that I work for.
That isn’t as wanky as it sounds, by the way, though I speak as someone who’d shop here even without the staff discount.
We mix up fashion and homeware with gifts, beauty products and jewellery, with each small but perfectly formed unit aiming to create a browsable, welcoming and generally lovely experience for anyone who steps inside.
Our primary audience is the thirty-to-forty-five-year-old woman and we’re not afraid to be bold, eclectic, at times even eccentric.
I am a buyer. And like most of our senior staff, since the pandemic I’ve spent three days a week in the office and two working from home.
Although that was a lifesaver when Frankie was around, it was always a double-edged sword, as I proved once when I was caught practising ‘face yoga’, oblivious to the fact that the video meeting I was waiting for had already started.
‘Perfect timing!’ Kayla, the branch manager, waves to me from the other side of the store before I have a chance to head up to the office. ‘Any chance you could give me a hand?’
‘What are you trying to do?’ I ask, crossing the shop floor.
‘Attach these pendant necklaces to the stand. They’re so fiddly!’
The fact that she has a new manicure to rival Edward Scissorhands has apparently not occurred to her as the problem. I put down my bag to help.
‘How’s the week been so far?’ I ask.
‘Pretty steady,’ she says happily. ‘Everyone loves those retro cocktail glasses, by the way. A woman came in earlier to buy some for her best friend’s birthday. She’d been racking her brains and said they were perfect.’
My heart still skips a little beat when I hear this kind of thing. I’ve worked here for nearly a decade and still love this part of my job – even if the company has faced some challenges lately, to put it mildly.
‘Hey, did you see that link I sent you on WhatsApp this morning?’ Kayla asks. ‘Jenny in the Birmingham branch forwarded it.’
I did see it – and tried to pretend I hadn’t. The piece in question was from a business website, with the headline ‘Fable & Punk in takeover rumours.’
‘Seemed to be speculative,’ I say. ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about it. There was a similar one last autumn that came to nothing.’
From me, this is rich. But I haven’t got the headspace to panic about one more thing on top of my daughter’s adventures right now. Besides, the conjecture has been going on so long, we’ve almost learned to live with it.
The frustrating thing about this company is that, while it is beloved by its customers, steadily rising costs and high turnover have meant that it continues to underperform.
I’m no Bill Gates, but I know enough about business to recognise that our lovely CEO Angus is unlikely to ever get Fable & Punk listed on the stock market.
The firm has tootled along, while other companies have opened stores at breakneck speed.
I believe firmly in the identity of our brand, but this has been demoralising to say the least – and frankly, if another advert for our biggest competitor’s aroma diffusers pops up on Instagram, I won’t be responsible for my actions.
I clip on the final necklace and stand back to take a look.
‘Oh, how was your date?’ I ask, remembering Kayla was due on one at the weekend.
Her expression darkens. ‘Awful.’
Part of me wonders why I asked. Kayla is twenty-seven years old.
When I first met her, she’d had a steady boyfriend since her schooldays, but they split up eighteen months ago and since then she’s been on a never-ending Tinder treadmill which has seen her dating men from every walk of life.
There have been plumbers, finance directors, landscape gardeners, and once, in a particularly low point, an amateur magician who kept pulling pound coins out of her ear.
‘How disappointing,’ I say, sympathetically. ‘He looked nice on his profile, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, and his messages were lovely,’ she agrees. ‘But having now met him in person, I suspect his mum was sending them on his behalf. He couldn’t stop firing questions at me. I’m convinced he had a pre-prepared list he’d got from Chat GPT.’
‘Maybe he was just nervous,’ I wince, trying to be positive.
But she’s clearly not in the mood. ‘Well, it was exhausting. By the time I’d answered, “What hobbies do you have and why?” and “If you could have one superpower what would it be?” I was considering climbing out of the bathroom window.
Then he brought out the pièce de résistance: “What’s your favourite word? ”’
‘What?’
‘His was “specific”, in case you’re wondering.’
‘Why?’ I ask, bewildered.
‘Who knows?’ she shrugs.
‘What did you tell him yours was?’
‘“Clusterfuck”. For some reason it was the first thing that sprang to mind.’
I can’t help but laugh.
‘Honestly, Jules. I don’t even expect anything as unrealistic as love anymore. Just stumbling across someone vaguely fanciable would be something.’
‘You’ll find someone soon enough,’ I reassure her. But it’s with more confidence than I feel.
Because all this proves to me is that when I met Ed every star in the universe must have been aligned. It was a once-in-a-century occurrence, as rare as a supernova, never to be repeated.