Chapter Six
The reception at Organic PR is manned by Piranha One and Piranha Two.
I don’t bother learning their names anymore as they are replaced by updated identikit models every couple of months.
Whatever that job ad promises, it must be a pack of lies because they never last long.
The necessary qualifications must include a rigid expression — or they’re paid in Botox treatments — a distant superior manner and the ability to wither plants at ten paces with one icy look.
Yet all of them have this unnerving ability to morph into a human being the minute they spot an important client or a board director.
Forget asking them to order a courier — which I believe is part of a receptionist’s duties.
From the twitch of their immaculate lips — so much Botox they don’t curl any more — you’d think that you’d asked them whether their Prada handbags came from Next.
As Emily and I crossed the hall to the lifts, carrying hot drinks we’d picked up from Starbucks next door, Piranha One lifted her head and said in clear, cutting tones, ‘Emily! Could you explain to your boyfriend that we are not here to pass on personal messages to staff? And remind him that our email is working perfectly.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I think you heard,’ and with that she turned back to her wordsearch hidden below the desk.
‘She is so bloody rude,’ Emily seethed. ‘How much longer has she got?’
‘Another six weeks of that one. Time’s nearly up for Piranha Two. What was she on about? I thought Daniel always phoned your mobile?’
‘Haven’t a clue. Probably got me muddled up with Emily Parr in Accounts.’
I’d just sat down at my desk, prised the lid off my hot chocolate and fired up my computer when a grumpy-faced Emily appeared in front of me.
‘Olivia, I’ve had another bloody email.’ Scowling she handed over her phone.
----Original Message-----
From: Peter Cooper [mailto:PeterC23@] To: ‘Emily’
Subject: Tardiness
Dear Emily
I emailed you yesterday and I haven’t heard back from you. I was worried you never got my email. Your receptionist tells me, however, that this is unlikely and that your system is very reliable. (She’s rather abrupt for one in her position.)
However I wasn’t confident she knew what she was doing so I popped in to ensure that she had checked properly.
A proper little madam but that’s so many women for you.
Knowing you as I do, I’m sure there’s a good explanation as to why you haven’t answered my first email.
That stupid female on the front desk was covering up her own incompetence . . .
Oo er and yikes.
‘He popped in!’ My voice went up. ‘No wonder the Piranhas were ruder than normal.’
‘Bloody cheek. How dare he?’ exploded Emily. ‘Who does he think he is? Checking up on me? He can fuck off.’
‘Emily, calm down. There’s obviously been a mix-up. Poor chap. Thought Santa had done a personal delivery when he heard you’d ticked his box.’
‘I didn’t tick his sodding box! I’ve a good mind to ring your cousin. Get him to explain the cock-up to this Peter.’ She was pacing furiously up and down in front of my desk, oblivious to the curious looks she was getting.
‘As far as he’s concerned you did tick the box,’ I said gently.
‘Well, I didn’t,’ she roared at me. ‘I’m going to email him. How the hell did he find out where I worked?’
‘Emily, just let him down gently,’ I pleaded. ‘Imagine how he feels.’ In this mood there was no knowing what response she would fire off.
‘I was hardly going to email, “Fuck off you loony and don’t darken my inbox again”, was I?’
Actually, I wouldn’t put it past her. She wasn’t renowned for her subtlety. ‘Just do the standard-nice-girl fob-off, “you’re-far-too-good-for-me-and-I-just-want-to-be-fair-to-you.”’
She looked at me quizzically.
I heaved a big sigh. ‘Do you want me to do it?’ It was the only way to stop her upsetting him or so I thought.
‘Would you? You’re so much better at that sort of thing.’
I rolled my eyes. She was the one that wrote press releases about magical lipsticks staying put for forty-eight hours, when everyone knew they’d never pass the ‘one swig of a Bacardi Breezer’ test.
I picked up her phone.
‘Should it be, “Hi Peter” or “Dear Peter”?’
‘Try “Oy Weirdo”. Works for me.’
‘Ever considered a career in the diplomatic corps?’ My sarcasm was wasted.
Emily looked blank. ‘I couldn’t give a toss. We just need to get rid of him.’
I blinked at the casual ‘we’ but let it go. It was easier for me to get on and compose a gentle but firm rejection email explaining that ‘I’ wasn’t ready for a relationship just at the moment.
Emily tutted and tossed her head throughout. Every time I asked her opinion she pursed her mouth. Half an hour later, after much negotiation, I had an email that we were satisfied with. Emily pressed the magic ‘send’ button.
‘Happy now?’ she asked.
God, she could be a pain. If we weren’t sharing a flat, I would have stuffed the phone down her throat.
Instead, I went back to my cold hot chocolate and a curt voicemail message.
My usually mild-mannered boss, Max, was pissed off.
Where was I? Thanks to Emily I was five minutes late for a client meeting.
* * *
By lunchtime I’d eaten my homemade sarnie. In fact it had gone before eleven. I needed something else; something nutritious and filling like a pack of Marks & Spencer’s Percy Pigs.
I set out down Oxford Street with good intentions, but the minute I got to Marks my stomach took charge, making outrageous demands and before I knew it my basket had mysteriously been filled with essentials like feta-stuffed olives, pastrami bagel chips, and chocolate-covered peanuts.
If I hadn’t been so absorbed in my Percy Pigs I might have been paying more attention as I shouldered my way through the damp crowds, dodging umbrella spokes on the way back to the office.
Someone rushing by shoved me sharply and glancing up I caught a fleeting impression of glasses mended with electrical tape.
Whipping my head around, I tried to get a second look but whoever it was had vanished in the flow of people undulating around me.
Bloody Emily and her emails. Now I had Peter on the brain .
. . and a wet neck, as I barged into an umbrella knocking a torrent of water down my collar.
I planned to sneak into the office hiding the telltale bag under my coat to avoid the universal chorus of ‘I wish you’d said that you were going’.
I needn’t have worried — my entrance went completely unnoticed.
An excited crowd was gathered around Emily’s desk.
Had some major coup in the beauty world happened while I was out?
‘What’s all the excitement?’ I asked, as Helene, a junior on Emily’s team, bustled by importantly.
‘Miranda Baker has just said she’d do it,’ she gushed. ‘It’s a real coup.’
The mind boggled. Just what was it that Miranda had agreed to do? The ex-star of one of those teen soaps, she was one of those irritating minor celebrities who popped up everywhere and pretty much did everything.
‘Do what?’ I asked.
‘Miranda has agreed to wear our dress at the premiere of the new James Bond film,’ burbled Helene. ‘We’re so chuffed. It’s amazing.’
I glanced quickly at her. What dress? What premiere?
I hadn’t heard anything about this before. I glanced over at Emily’s blonde head, pennies dropping at speed.
‘For the Luscious Lips launch by any chance?’ I asked.
‘That’s right. It was Emily’s idea. Isn’t it amazing? We’re having an amazing dress made especially for Miranda.’ Helene’s eyes shone with enthusiasm.
I couldn’t resist saying, ‘That’s amazing.’
She didn’t bat an eyelid, instead she leaned forward confidingly and said, ‘Do you know . . . the dress is going to be white with big lip prints all of over it.’
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘Each one will be in the new season’s colours.’
‘Yes!’ squealed Helene, squeezing her hands together.
‘Amazing,’ I said cuttingly this time.
‘Emily is so clever.’ Helene was almost skipping with excitement.
Wasn’t she just? Although it wasn’t that long ago, on a car journey along the M4 no less, that Emily had thought the very same idea clichéd. I looked over at her, surrounded by an adoring crowd. She looked up and caught my eye.
Some people might have had the grace to look sheepish. Not Emily. She just looked at me defiantly. Shocked, more by the insolence of her expression than anything else, I turned away and went back to my desk.
I realised that it wasn’t that much of a surprise, Emily presenting the idea as hers.
She did tend to cut corners, and if she could get away with something she would.
I remember her once walking out of Topshop with a dress accidentally tucked under her arm, which she didn’t realise she’d done until we were halfway down Oxford Street.
Funny that, and I might have believed it was an oversight if she hadn’t spent ages cooing over the dress, pouting when I reminded her she still had her half of the electricity bill to pay.
Funny too, I said, that the security tag hadn’t gone off, to which she’d responded that there’d been men working on the electrics at the door.
No, honesty and Emily didn’t sit that well together.
Ignoring everyone else I busied myself at my desk, pressing the send and receive button on my email several times, hoping somewhere out there in the ether there was a message that needed an urgent response or something to keep me very busy for the afternoon. Nothing appeared in my inbox.
* * *
Emily found me as I emerged from a cubicle in the ladies later that afternoon. She was leaning against one of the sinks. I nodded, letting her do all the talking.
She threw her hands above her head dramatically.
Looking into my face, she said in a low urgent voice, ‘Look, I know it was your idea but I honestly didn’t think it was a goer. When I got to the meeting with Fiona, it just came out.’
‘Really?’ My tone was dry.