Chapter Nineteen #2
If no one else were here, I would go up to the television set and kiss it. I honestly would.
“What have they asked him so far?” I murmur to Artemis.
“They’re talking to him about how he works. His inspirations, his partnership with Pete Laidler, stuff like that.”
“Shh!” says someone else.
“Of course, it was tough after Pete died,” Jack’s saying. “It was tough for all of us. But recently…” He pauses. “Recently my life has turned around and I’m finding inspiration again. I’m enjoying it again.”
He has to be referring to me. He has to be. I’ve turned his life around! That’s even more romantic than “I was gripped.”
“You’ve already expanded into the sports drinks market,” the male interviewer is saying. “Now I believe you’re looking to expand into the women’s market.”
There’s a frisson around the room, and people start turning their heads.
“We’re going into the women’s market?”
“Since when?”
“I knew, actually,” Artemis is saying with a smug expression. “Quite a few people have known for a while.”
I remember those people up in Jack’s office. That’s what the ovaries were for. This is quite exciting! A new venture!
“Can you give us any further details about that?” the male interviewer is saying. “Will this be a soft drink marketed at women?”
“It’s very early stages,” says Jack. “But we’re planning an entire line. A drink, clothing, a fragrance. We have a strong creative vision. We’re excited.”
“So, what’s your target market this time?” asks the man, consulting his notes. “Are you aiming at sportswomen?”
“Not at all,” says Jack. “We’re aiming at…the girl on the street.”
“The ‘girl on the street’?” The female interviewer sits up, looking slightly affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean? Who is this girl on the street?”
“She’s twenty-something,” says Jack after a pause. “She works in an office, takes the tube to work, goes out in the evenings, and comes home on the night bus…Just an ordinary, nothing-special girl.”
“There are thousands of them,” puts in the man with a smile.
“But the Panther brand has always been associated with men,” chips in the woman, looking skeptical. “With competition. With masculine values. Do you really think you can make the switch to the female market?”
“We’ve done research,” say Jack. “We feel we know our market.”
“Research!” She gives a scoffing laugh. “Isn’t this just another case of men telling women what they want?”
“I don’t believe so,” says Jack, still pleasantly, but I can see a slight flicker of annoyance pass across his face.
“Plenty of companies have tried to switch markets without success. How do you know you won’t just be another one of them?”
“I’m confident,” says Jack.
God, why is she being so aggressive? I think, feeling indignant. Of course Jack knows what he’s doing!
“You round up a load of women in some focus group and ask them a few questions! How does that tell you anything?”
“That’s only a small part of the picture, I can assure you,” says Jack in even tones.
“Oh, come on,” the woman says, leaning back and folding her arms. “Can a company like Panther—can a man like you—really tap into the psyche of, as you put it, an ordinary, nothing-special girl?”
“Yes. I can!” Jack meets her gaze square-on. “I know this girl.”
“You know her?” The woman raises her eyebrows.
“I know who this girl is,” says Jack. “I know what her tastes are, what colors she likes. I know what she eats; I know what she drinks. I know what she wants out of life. She’s size eight, but she’d like to be size six.
She…” He spreads his arms as though searching for inspiration.
“She eats Cheerios for breakfast and dips Flakes in her cappuccinos.”
I look in surprise at my hand, holding a Flake. I was about to dip it into my coffee.
And…I had Cheerios this morning.
“We’re surrounded these days by images of perfect, glossy people,” Jack is saying with animation.
“But this girl is real. She has bad-hair days and good-hair days. She wears G-strings even though she finds them uncomfortable. She writes out exercise routines, then ignores them. She pretends to read business journals but hides celebrity magazines inside them.”
Just…hang on a minute. This all sounds a bit familiar.
“That’s exactly what you do, Emma,” says Artemis. “I’ve seen your copy of OK! inside Marketing Week.” She turns to me with a mocking laugh, and her gaze suddenly lands on my Flake.
“She loves clothes, but she’s not a fashion victim,” Jack is saying on-screen. “She’ll wear, maybe, a pair of jeans…”
Artemis’s eyes run in disbelief over my Levi’s.
“…and a flower in her hair…”
Dazedly I lift a hand and touch the fabric rose in my hair.
He can’t—
He can’t be talking about—
“Oh…my…God,” says Artemis.
“What?” says Caroline, next to her. She follows Artemis’s gaze, and her expression changes.
“Oh, my God! Emma! It’s you!”
“It’s not,” I say, but my voice won’t quite work properly.
“It is!”
A few people start nudging one another and turning to look at me.
“…She reads fifteen horoscopes every day and chooses the one she likes best…” Jack’s voice is saying.
“It is you! It’s exactly you!”
“…She scans the back of highbrow books and pretends she’s read them…”
“I knew you hadn’t read Great Expectations!” says Artemis triumphantly.
“…She adores sweet sherry…”
“Sweet sherry?” says Nick, turning in horror. “You cannot be serious.”
“It’s Emma!” I can hear people saying on the other side of the room. “It’s Emma Corrigan!”
“Emma?” says Katie, looking straight at me in disbelief. “But…but…”
“It’s not Emma!” says Connor all of a sudden with a laugh. He’s standing over on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. “Don’t be ridiculous! Emma’s size four, for a start. Not size eight!”
“Size four?” says Artemis with a snort of laughter.
“Size four!” Caroline giggles. “That’s a good one!”
“Aren’t you size four?” Connor looks startled. “But you said—”
“I…I know I did.” I swallow, my face like a furnace. “But I was…I was…”
“Do you really buy all your clothes from thrift shops and pretend they’re new?” says Caroline, looking up from the screen.
“No!” I say defensively. “I mean…yes…maybe…sometimes…”
“She weighs 135 pounds, but pretends she weighs 125…” Jack’s voice is saying.
What? What?
My entire body contracts in shock.
“I do not!” I yell in outrage at the screen. “I do not weigh anything like 135 pounds! I weigh…about…128…and a half…” I trail off as the entire room turns to goggle at me.
“…hates crochet…”
There’s an almighty gasp from across the room.
“You hate crochet?” comes Katie’s disbelieving voice.
“No!” I say, swiveling in horror. “That’s wrong! I love crochet! You know I love crochet—”
But Katie is stalking furiously out of the room.
“She cries when she hears the Carpenters…” Jack’s voice is saying on the screen. “She loves Abba, but she can’t stand jazz…”
Oh, no. Oh no, oh no…
Connor is staring at me as though I have personally driven a stake through his heart.
“You can’t stand…jazz?”
—
It’s like a bad dream. One of those dreams where everyone can see your underwear and you want to run but you can’t. I can’t tear myself away. All I can do is sit in agony as Jack’s inexorable voice continues.
All my secrets. All my personal, private secrets. Revealed on television. I’m in such a state of shock, I’m not even taking them all in.
“She wears lucky underwear on first dates…she borrows designer shoes from her roommate and passes them off as her own…pretends to kickbox…confused about religion…worries that her breasts are too small…”
I close my eyes, unable to bear it. My breasts. He mentioned my breasts. On television.
“When she goes out, she can play sophisticated…but on her bed…”
I’m suddenly faint with fear.
No. No. Please not this. Please, please—
“…she has a Barbie bedspread.”
A huge roar of laughter goes around the room, and I bury my face in my hands. I am beyond mortification. No one was supposed to know about my Barbie bedspread. No one.
“Is she sexy?” the interviewer is asking, and I feel a stab of shock. I can’t breathe for apprehension. What’s he going to say?
“She’s very sexual,” says Jack at once, and all eyes swivel toward me, agog. “This is a modern girl who carries condoms in her purse.”
Every time I think this can’t get any worse, it does.
My mother is watching this. My mother.
“But maybe she hasn’t reached her full potential. Maybe there’s a side of her that has been frustrated…”
I can’t look at Connor. I can’t look anywhere.
“Maybe she’s willing to experiment. Maybe she’s had—I don’t know—a lesbian fantasy about her best friend…”
No! NO! My entire body clenches in horror. I have a sudden image of Lissy watching the screen at home, wide-eyed, clasping a hand over her mouth. She’ll know it was her. She’ll know! I will never be able to look her in the eye again…
“It was a dream, OK?” I manage as everyone gawks at me. “Not a fantasy! They’re different!”
I feel like throwing myself at the television. Draping my arms over it. Stopping him.
But it wouldn’t do any good, would it? A million TVs are on, in a million homes. People everywhere are watching.
“She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened.” He pauses, and adds in a softer voice, “Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her.”
As I watch Jack’s warm, serious face on the screen, I suddenly feel my eyes stinging slightly.
“But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.” He shakes his head and smiles at the interviewer. “I’m…I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened there. I guess I got a little carried away. Could we—” His voice is abruptly cut off by the interviewer.
He got a little carried away.
This is like saying Hitler was a tad aggressive.