Chapter 32
Buoyed by getting her mother to even consider the possibility of selling up, Olivia has never felt more galvanized.
For the first time, possibly ever, she is trying to be the person she wants to be, rather than the person everyone else wants her to be.
Over the next few weeks, she sets about trying to make things right for her, Nick and the kids, rather than for anyone else.
She is enthused with an energy that not even four large cappuccinos a day could give her, the energy that comes from waking up each morning and Living In Her Truth (?).
She knows she has to be realistic as she does this – she can’t just jack in her job, still has to plan the fucking party for Stephen because, for now, the stability of her home life is more important than seeing him get his comeuppance – but she isn’t going to spend her days teetering in a terrified manner over the vast chasm that often exists between her beliefs, wants and needs, and other people’s expectations of her.
So as she plans the party with Deepti, she also takes the time to mentor her, to tell her all the things she wishes someone had told her back when she was just starting out – about how to write the perfect intro, follow up a lead, and interview someone in a way that doesn’t immediately make them clam up.
Olivia’s even managed to get Deepti on to the Tory Pervert Project (as it’s now being referred to in the office).
She may have asked Lily to do some sneaky digging around the swanky Sussex set whose chakras she tended to, which meant Olivia was able to pass on to Deepti a few golden exclusives: namely that Clive used his tongue while saying goodbye to a woman at a charity bingo event; he was caught watching porn on his phone while he was supposed to be judging the best in show at a local village fete; and finally, that he had an affair with his secretary Barbara.
Let the rubbish take itself out, indeed.
Stephen even approached Olivia’s new mentee to congratulate her on her scoops. ‘Well done, Dippy,’ he brayed, as she and Olivia sat in a breakout area working through last-minute party plans.
‘My name’s not Dippy,’ said the young woman, before Olivia had had a chance to correct him. ‘It’s Deepti. D-E-E-P-T-I, just so we’re clear.’
How proud Olivia had felt in that moment.
She is in constant contact with Rose too.
Her mum has always said that there’s no such thing as a coincidence, and as she and Rose WhatsApp back and forth, Olivia truly believes that it was the universe that brought them together, some sort of fate that intervened to make sure that Rose stood next to her at the bar, as opposed to some other feckless Morning staffer.
What if they hadn’t encountered one another that night?
Would Olivia ever have admitted to herself, let alone anyone else, what happened with Stephen?
This surprising new alliance has brought an unexpected happiness into her heart.
Best of all, Olivia has found a therapist for Saskia …
and one for herself. She is proud of the way she has handled this: in an entirely calm and collected manner, letting Saskia know that even though shit sometimes happens, it’s how you deal with it that counts.
Her daughter still guards her keto bagels closely, and Olivia knows from her own experience that there is a long way to go on this one, but thank fuck they’re beginning the journey now, at sixteen, instead of leaving it until Saskia is middle-aged, and forced to have a drug-induced breakdown of her own.
And although that breakdown was potentially the best thing to happen to Olivia, she’s going to need some help working through the fact that she’d essentially turned into her mother.
Olivia isn’t living a half-life any more, and she’s going to make damned sure her kids don’t either.
At Gail’s, Olivia orders her usual. This has become her routine – a symbolic moment, when she starts the day meeting her own needs before stepping into the office and immediately trying to meet everyone else’s.
‘Do you want chocolate sprinkles on the cappuccino?’ parrots the boy at the till, politely, clearly new.
‘As if you should even need to ask,’ smiles Olivia. ‘If possible, can you make it eight per cent cappuccino, ninety-two per cent chocolate sprinkles? That’s just a joke,’ she explains, when she sees the crestfallen look spread across the boy’s face.
‘I’ll get this,’ says a familiar voice from behind Olivia’s shoulder. She turns and sees Nina, standing with a slouch. Her eyes are bloodshot, her mascara gone. ‘I’ll have the same as her,’ Nina pouts. ‘Cinnamon bun, cappuccino with extra chocolate.’
‘Ninety-two per cent chocolate, eight per cent cappuccino, coming right up,’ nods the boy.
Olivia steps back as Nina reaches forward to pay.
‘How very kind of you,’ says Olivia, in a sing-song voice.
‘Uh-oh, is the old Olivia back?’ Nina slaps her card down on the machine.
‘The old Olivia wouldn’t be here at all,’ shrugs Olivia, taking her cinnamon bun from the boy and moving to the end of the counter, next to the belching coffee machine.
‘The old Olivia would be at her desk, dutifully snacking on some seaweed while apologizing for existing. Good riddance to her. Anyway, what brings you to these parts? Now you’re a hotshot columnist, you don’t have to go out and get your own coffee. ’
‘What happened to turn you into such a truth-teller?’ Nina says, through a mouthful of sugary bun.
‘Let’s say I woke up and smelt the coffee.’ Olivia nods.
They are quiet for a moment as Nina chews her food.
‘Well, whatever happened,’ she says, coming up for breath, ‘I have to admit that it’s an improvement on the simpering suck-up you used to be.
Your desperation to fit in used to make me and Joe cringe.
’ Nina wipes the flakes from her chin. ‘In the spirit of honesty and all that. Though I grant you, he finds it hard to be genuinely nice to anybody.’
‘Well, in the spirit of honesty, I think it used to make me cringe. It’s hard work being ingratiatingly pleasant to people as they stab you in the back.’
The barista begins sprinkling chocolate on their cappuccinos. ‘More please,’ says Olivia, smiling. ‘So much that it extinguishes the froth entirely, preferably.’
‘I don’t blame you for letting rip.’ Nina swipes her cappuccino before the barista has the chance to turn it into a chocolate milkshake. ‘They’re a bunch of psychopaths. I hate them all.’ Her pretty face crumples and she begins to cry.
‘Do you want to sit down?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
They take refuge tucked away in a corner of the café.
‘Stephen completely humiliated me,’ weeps Nina, shredding her pastry.
‘Said that he couldn’t bring himself to ask me to write a searing polemic about the Tory sex scandal because, and I quote, my last couple of columns have been about as insightful as the toilet paper he wipes his arse on. ’
‘Nina! That’s awful, no wonder you’re upset.’
‘And then Andrew came in and said that he could print his toilet paper instead of a column by me, and it would probably get better engagement. And then Stephen said that maybe he should give my column to a proper truth-teller, and that maybe he should have promoted the mentor not the mentee.’
Nina brings her hands to her face to try to cover the shame of it showing on her cheeks, dusting herself in flakes of sugary pastry in the process.
‘The thing is, Nina, I wouldn’t want your column.
’ Olivia realizes as she says this that she really, truly means it.
‘I know I’ve turned into a bolshie so-and-so, but there would still be a part of me that would shrivel up and die if I had to come up with an outspoken opinion each week, especially one that was needlessly mean to someone, as about ninety-nine per cent of newspaper columns are.
Honestly, I couldn’t deal with the stress.
And anyway, you’re really bloody good at what you do.
Every piece you’ve written has been on point.
Don’t listen to that prick Stephen, and for god’s sake, don’t take it personally.
You know he enjoys behaving like this? Like, he actually gets off on all the discomfort he causes in a room, all the unease that everyone is desperately, fearfully trying to suppress …
it actually gives him joy.’ She takes some of her bun, starts chewing and speaking as Nina begins to dust pastry from her cheek.
‘He derives pleasure from the pain around him. Without it, he is nothing. Without it, his power vanishes. He’s like me before I had my epiphany, Nina.
He’s entirely reliant on the people in the room to validate his existence.
He would collapse into a pitiful husk without them.
But at least I used to get my validation being nice to people.
He just does it by being a nasty old cunt. ’
An elderly woman enjoying a honey cake at the next table turns and gasps.
Olivia carries on regardless. ‘He’s basically like this boy who used to bully my son.
He’s the horrible football kid at school, forty years down the line, his Shmooshie snatched away and replaced with a news organization.
I’d laugh, were it not for the fact that this kind of psychopathy basically runs the Western world, and is responsible for all of its ills. ’
‘His Shmooshie?’ Nina sits up.
‘Like his comfort blanket.’ Olivia waves her hands to signal that it’s not important.
‘Anyway, here’s the crucial part, Nina. And it’s that it wouldn’t be good karma for me to take your column, however satisfying it might feel, because I really, really wanted it a few weeks ago.
I dreamed about it, for years! And I was totally deluded enough to believe it when Stephen manipulated me into thinking it might be mine.
I was even secretly furious with you for getting it.
I felt as if you’d taken it to spite me, or to prove some point about how crap my advice had been, when in actual fact, you’d taken it because you’re a human being with hopes and dreams too! ’
‘Your advice wasn’t that bad.’
‘It was terrible, Nina. Terrible. I basically told you to make yourself tiny and small so as not to take up space that was meant for the big boys. Thank fuck you didn’t listen to a word of it.
Thank fuck you trusted yourself. I need to thank you for showing me how to put on my bloody big-girl pants. ’
‘No, it’s me who needs to thank you, Olivia. You’ve been my rock these last few weeks. I don’t think I would have lasted five minutes in this job if it wasn’t for your support and advice and kindness.’
Olivia takes a sip of her cappuccino. She’s vaguely aware that there is chocolatey froth on her nose, but finds she doesn’t care, given that Nina’s face is covered in sugar. Instead, she scrunches it up in a look of extreme distaste.
‘Don’t do that.’ Olivia shakes her head. ‘Do not go into fawn mode on me, not right now, Nina. We are not going to be overly grateful when someone treats us with the respect we deserve. OK?’
Nina nods. Olivia wipes the froth from her nose and licks her finger.
‘Good. Stay bitchy. Stay in fight mode. We’re all about to need it.’
She tilts her cup against Nina’s in a toast and they stand up to leave together. She is about to start the battle of her life.