Snowed In with You

Chapter One

‘Is everyone here?’ asked Sasha, impatiently scanning the meeting room for absentees.

Lucy glanced around for the usual latecomers, namely Jonno, LUNA’s Creative Director, who refused to be held back by something as inconveniently immovable as time.

He sauntered in just ahead of Fran, the agency’s Senior Account Director, who used performative lateness as a way of reminding everyone how busy and important she was.

‘So, Team Titan,’ said Sasha with a warm smile.

Uh oh, thought Lucy. Definitely late-night sloppy pizza and warm Peroni.

Titan was the UK’s number two condom brand – the designer choice of social media influencers and aspirational Gen Zs – and their market share was growing faster than the barrage of weak penis jokes that inevitably followed publication of the latest sales data.

The LUNA team in Bristol had won the pitch to do all their advertising three years ago, when Titan was barely more than a fledgling start-up.

Now it was one of LUNA’s most prestigious accounts and it was a daily battle not to have the business stolen by the team in London.

‘I’ve had an email from Kristoff,’ continued Sasha, raising her voice just enough to bring the room to order. ‘He’s asked us to join them for a planning weekend. In two weeks’ time.’

The room went deathly quiet as everyone weighed up the likelihood of this being any fun.

Titan was a good client with decent budgets, but they were also a bunch of beige, clean-living Americans fashioned from designer athleisure, expensive dentistry and protein shakes.

The company had been founded four years ago by Kristoff Berg, a dazzlingly handsome Swedish-American entrepreneur who’d made his first million before he could legally drink in the US.

He was now in his thirties and, with him at the helm, Titan was carving a lubed-up path through the European market and making their gold-packaged condoms a must-have lifestyle choice.

‘What IS a planning weekend, exactly?’ asked Steve, one of the Design team.

A few people raised their eyebrows in his direction, silently acknowledging his willingness to put his head above the parapet.

Until a year ago, Sasha had been Managing Director of the Bristol agency and strategic lead on the Titan account, but now she was a member of the Group Board based out of London, and topping every patronising industry list of women over forty who were smashing it in advertising.

She may once have been ‘one of them’, but now she wielded untold power and everyone in the room knew it.

‘It’s an opportunity to get together for a few days and review the account,’ said Sasha mildly, as half the team hunkered down in their chairs so they were less visible.

The last time Kristoff had visited the Bristol office, Lucy had heard that he’d declared the deli lunch incompatible with his dietary regime and sent his assistant out to find some Huel, although nobody seemed to have witnessed this incident first hand.

Luckily Lucy never had to spend time with them in person – Senior Copywriter was a backroom job and Kristoff and his team mostly worked out of Geneva for spurious tax reasons.

‘And why can’t that be done during working hours?’ asked Steve. Jonno glared at him, silently entreating him to pipe down before Sasha swept Titan into her designer handbag and took it back to the grown-ups in London.

Sasha sighed heavily and pressed her lips together. ‘Well, the good news is that there are only six spaces. So if you’d rather not go, you can absolutely opt out.’

Steve nodded firmly and crossed his arms. ‘Brilliant, I’m out.

No offence, but my weekends are sacred.’ Lucy knew for a fact that Steve spent his weekends doing CrossFit with no shirt on, because the first rule of CrossFit is that you have to tell everyone you do CrossFit.

Jonno called him the Severn Bore, but never to his face because the veins on Steve’s neck popped out when he was annoyed.

‘None taken,’ said Sasha dryly. ‘And the sacred nature of your weekends is duly noted.’

‘What kind of planning are they thinking?’ asked Kim, loudly flicking to a fresh page in her notebook and writing PLANNING WEEKEND in large letters at the top.

Kim was another keen bean on Jonno’s team, who wrote her entire life in one of those bullet journals.

Once she’d left it open on her desk and Lucy had spotted Can you teach yourself to like spinach?

in the Thoughts for the Day section. If Kim had hidden depths, they were unlikely to pose a risk of drowning.

‘Yeah,’ chipped in Lou, who was the more junior of the two art directors. ‘Where is it?’

Sasha smiled at Lou. ‘It’s in Zermatt. In the Swiss Alps.’ She paused dramatically as the room collectively sat up like a mob of meerkats, then started to chatter excitedly.

‘Wait, what?’ exclaimed Steve, looking around at the group. ‘It’s a ski trip?’

‘I believe skiing is an option. Amongst other winter pastimes,’ said Sasha smoothly.

Lucy could tell how much she was enjoying herself, and wondered for the umpteenth time exactly how old she was.

The glossy dark curls and glowing skin suggested early-to-mid forties, but Lucy also knew that she’d been working in the industry for well over twenty-five years.

Either she’d started very young, or more likely was the human equivalent of her dad’s car.

The chassis was original, but several parts had been replaced.

‘Fucking hell,’ grinned Steve. ‘I’m back in, then.’

Sasha shook her head and picked at a bit of fluff on the shoulder of her cashmere sweater.

Her fingernails were dark red and immaculate, which prompted Lucy to tuck her flaking festive manicure under her armpits.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said smoothly.

‘I’m afraid you opted out, and that’s very much a one-way ticket. Any other questions?’

‘So what’s it all for?’ asked Kim, as Steve slumped in his chair, looking mutinous.

‘A prize,’ said Sasha. ‘For all the awards we’ve helped Titan win over the last year. They’ve offered to pay for six members of the Titan team to go. There’ll be a working session or two, but primarily it’s a reward for all our hard work.’

‘What if you don’t ski?’ asked Matty, who was in his mid-twenties and had recently taken over responsibility for Titan’s TikTok output.

Lucy knew he’d grown up on a council estate in south Bristol and joined the agency as part of a social mobility initiative.

Half the agency disappeared off to the Alps every winter, not that Lucy was one of them.

Her mother was an orthopaedic nurse who’d seen too many horror-movie fractures, and her dad had arthritis in his lower back from thirty years of bending over lab specimens.

So skiing hadn’t been part of her childhood, and adulthood hadn’t exactly been a big adventure so far. But that was a whole other story.

‘Skiing isn’t mandatory, obviously,’ said Sasha, giving Matty a reassuring smile.

‘But you can have a day of lessons, if you fancy it. According to the email I’ve had from Kristoff, there’ll also be spa treatments and snowshoe walks, that sort of thing.

All equipment provided. And, of course, some actual work. ’

Everyone chattered excitedly again, the work aspect now entirely forgotten and irrelevant.

‘So who’s it going to be?’ asked Sasha, looking around the room.

‘We need to agree on six.’ Lucy did a quick headcount – there were fourteen people in the room, including Sasha, so this was about to get messy.

She grinned at Jonno, who was clearly thinking the same thing, and sat back to enjoy the show.

‘Can’t the agency pay for ALL of us to go?

’ asked Rachel, who’d recently been promoted onto the account and liked to give the impression she was a warm and inclusive human being.

But Lucy knew that Rachel would happily trample every one of them to get a place on this trip, then throw her grandmother under a speeding bus for good measure.

‘No,’ said Sasha. ‘The Titan team have hired a chalet. Four of them, six of us.’

‘We have to share?’ asked Rachel, looking aghast. Lucy said nothing, but silently agreed. She’d rather shit a Swiss army knife than share a bedroom with Rachel – there was a good chance she’d wake up with a pillow over her face.

Sasha shook her head, pressing her lips together in a silent gesture of suppressed annoyance that Lucy had seen a thousand times. ‘No, it has ten bedrooms.’

‘Fuck me, they’ve hired a chalet with ten bedrooms?’ It was the first time Jonno had spoken, and his voice boomed out in the small room. Jonno only had one volume, and it was ‘East End fruit and veg trader’.

‘Yes. Well, it’s more of a small hotel, apparently. Titan have exclusive use. So everyone has their own en-suite room.’

‘So how do we choose?’ asked Rachel hopefully. ‘Pick names out of a hat?’

You wish, thought Lucy. Rachel had only joined the account six months ago, long after the award-winning campaign was finished. A lucky dip was the only way she was going.

‘No,’ said Sasha emphatically. ‘We discuss it as a team, like sensible adults, and agree who deserves to go.’ She put on her glasses and checked the notes on her phone. ‘We’ll be heading out on Thursday the nineteenth of January and flying back late on the Sunday. Can anybody not make that?’

A jolt of pain pierced through Lucy’s chest, forcing her to suppress a gasp.

The twentieth of January was Leo’s anniversary, which she’d booked off to spend with her parents.

It was never an occasion she looked forward to, so maybe being out of the country wasn’t such a bad idea.

She could feel Jonno looking at her curiously, and flicked through the notebook in her lap like she was looking for something important.

‘Anyone?’ repeated Sasha impatiently.

Video Derek put his hand in the air. ‘I, umm, have a thing.’