Cyber Cinderella (26 page)

I think pale colors make your breasts look perkier, too.

The boutique was beautiful and expensive, but I had lost the will to shop. This was like losing my lifeblood, it made me feel like a Lothario without his lustfulness or George deciding he didn’t much like the taste of alcohol. Nothing was as it should be anymore. Clothes had always been both my ballast and my millstone. They gave me comfort and confidence and yet were part of the shallowness that meant I was excited by meeting the daughters of famous men and liked the thought of others envying me my glamour.

I had ignored the siren call of the aquamarine, diaphanous fitted shirt in the shop and was wearing a black dress that day. All girls love to wear black dresses, indulging in their communal crush on Audrey Hepburn. That day I was dressing for women, for me, and not for men; I didn’t need a pulling top as that was the last thing I wanted to do. I would remain alone, I vowed, for at least half the length of time I’d been with George. A year of living celibately.

*

“I heard about you and George,” said a well-meaning acquaintance, head to one side.

“No, it’s great. It’s fine, really I’m fine.”

“You’re being so brave. It must be so difficult splitting up with someone in your thirties.”

I suppose Maggie’s party marked the beginning of a new era for it was the first time I’d been out since George and I had split up. I looked around the bar for escape. It was an old men’s boozer that had been stripped and kitsched up, like an octogenarian displaying her crepey embonpoint in a Vivienne Westwood corset. It was the bastard child of a fifties diner and the Palace of Versailles, where swags of brocade curtain did battle with an old Space Invaders game and antique mirrors mottled our reflections. What was I doing there? I knocked back my overpriced drink. I could at least get drunk.

“Excuse me, I need to go to the loo.” There it was cool and deliciously lonely. I came out only when somebody started pounding on the door. I did the panicked walk of someone coming into a party and not knowing to whom I was going to talk, who’d want to talk to me, did I know anyone. Salvation came in the form of Frank and Camilla at the bar.

“Hello, people.” Kisses all round. They seemed ill at ease, as if I had just interrupted an argument. I started talking breathlessly to diffuse whatever tension I had inadvertently stumbled upon, making a mental note to talk to Maggie about Frank’s odd conversation with me at lunch on Monday. “Look at all these people. Maggie’s obviously really popular at work. I’d hate to have a party with all my work colleagues and my real friends, would be such a strange mix. Don’t think it would be good at all. What do you think?”

They were both staring intently at me, not even exchanging the briefest of glances with each other. I thought I saw Frank grimace.

“Izobel, what would you like to drink?” I turned to the voice at my shoulder.

“You remember Molly, don’t you?” said Frank. “Another from the old alma mater.”

“Of course, hello, Molly, I didn’t know you knew Maggie.” Frank muttered something under his breath. “I’ll have a gin and tonic, thanks. What’s that, Frank?”

“Nothing.”

We were soon joined by Alice and Becksy, who, with Molly, formed a little trinity of blonde cloning clustered around Camilla. Frank and I moved closer together, propelled by the Stepford unity that confronted us. Camilla took a small step in our direction and I could feel that a social evolutionary scale was forming at the bar with Molly, Becksy and Alice forming the prehistoric amoebas of our lineup. Nobody was talking so it was up to me to burble.

“What are your work colleagues like, Frank? Well, there’s that Robert who had his thirtieth for starters, I know him.” Frank and Camilla did at last look at each other and almost smiled at the mention of his name.

“I hear you know him by a different name,” said Frank. “He’s Hot Bob to you, isn’t he, Izobel?”

I ignored the superiority of the coupled man. “And Camilla, you’re still with the management consultancy, aren’t you?”

“Part-time,” she said. “They’re fabulous people. So dynamic. I love them.”

“You’ll miss them if OnLove takes off. Still, you’ll have colleagues there, I suppose. I wonder whether you’ll socialize with them?”

“I’m sure you won’t be able to escape them,” said Frank.

“Frank, please.” Camilla forced a smile.

“It’s true.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“I love my workies,” said Molly.

“I love my old ones and my new ones even more,” said Becky. “It’s so cool working and playing with a big gang.”

“We should go and pay our tributes to Maggie,” I said and off we shuffled like conjoined contestants in a twelve-legged race. We loitered around Maggie, who was being feted by a succession of colleagues.

“When’s it due, exactly?” asked one.

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“What names have you thought of?

“When’s it due?”

“I like Cormac for a boy and Iris for a girl, like the writers. Have you thought of those names?”

“What about Alfie, that’s a sweet name for a boy.”

“Or for a girl.”

“Short for what? Alfreda?”

“What’s your due date?”

Maggie caught my eye and announced, “It’s due in a month’s time, we don’t know the sex and we’re waiting to see what he or she looks like before thinking up names.” She then whispered to me, “I feel like I should get a T-shirt printed.”

“Is it weird to be stopping work for six months?” I asked, mindful not to ask anything about the now-unmentionable baby.

“Very. And very wonderful too. Isn’t that awful of me.”

“Not at all. I swear we get broody not because we want a baby but because we want time off work.”

“Probably not time off though, is it, but at least I have got a whole five weeks of daytime TV and sitting on my fat arse allowing myself to bloom.”

“Why are you leaving so early?”

“I couldn’t go on; I can’t sleep and I’m so tired. And everyone keeps saying how sad that if I go on maternity leave this long before due date I’ll have over a month less with the baby, or ‘baby’ as the health workers rather yukkily call it, but I’m rather thrilled by that prospect.”

“Bliss.”

“I will go back to work though. I’m not going to be, what’s it called now, a full-time homemaker.”

“A stay-at-home mum. Ouch, Frank, that’s my foot you’re stamping on.”

“Is it? Sorry,” he said without apology. “I wanted to talk to Maggie too, you’re monopolizing her. When did you say it was due?”

“Next month, though they say first babies are often late,” replied Maggie.

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think it’s a girl,” said Camilla. “Because of the way you’re carrying it.”

“That’s tantamount to calling me a big, fat cow who’s bloated all over my body, Camilla. You’re always supposed to guess it’s a boy.” Maggie sighed. “Where’s Hot Bob? I asked you to bring him, Frank. I thought that would cheer you up, Iz.”

Frank sniggered.

“No way. I’m not out there yet. Please God, tell me you haven’t really invited him.” I turned. “Oh, hello Robert, how are you?” I looked down with embarrassment.

“Blinging.” Above his feet clad in old-school trainers were hairy shins and combat shorts, topped with a chain around his neck and a joint in his hand. And, I noticed, a hooded top. It was hot out, but really there was no excuse for shorts in an urban area. Frank was dressed similarly. In the same way that primary school-teachers and childminders get infantilized by their charges, so university lecturers are made studentlike by theirs. It was embarrassing how down with the kids they tried to be, with violent rap on their CD players and trainers on their feet.

“I know your cousin Ivan. He works with me.” They did look alike, but Robert was Ivan gone wrong, like when you see siblings of film stars or supermodels and they always just seem to be compiled from all the leftover imperfections. Ivan’s voice may have been too high, but Robert’s was positively squeaky. Ivan’s nose was straight and his hair thick; his cousin’s nose was slightly snub and his hair coiffed and gelled into a silly but fashionable mullet. Ivan’s body was slim but slightly squidgy, so not to look like he was boring enough to do all the stomach crunches necessary for a six-pack, while Robert had muscles bursting out of a tight cap-sleeved T-shirt.

“You’re kidding me. For real?” he replied.

“Yes, really. He’s the systems administrator for the company where I work.”

“Ivan’s all that.”

“Yes, he seems really competent. Very efficient, knows his stuff.”

Hot Bob was jigging to the imaginary rap track in his head. “Do you want some bone?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I what?”

Hot Bob giggled and pointed to the joint in his hand, before toking deeply on it.

“No, I’m all right thanks.”

“You chilling.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Excuse me, just going to the…” I gestured toward the loos and Hot Bob gave me a wink, which either suggested that he thought that I was going in there to take something stronger than a joint, or that I might be inviting him in there with me. I scooted fast across the room and locked myself into the ladies.’ I was not ready for bad conversations with faked-up interest, especially not with Robert. I think we only thought him hot from the safety of our own relationships. The only thing smoking about him were the embers of his poorly rolled joint.

I found it difficult to believe that he shared genes with Ivan.

“Maggie.” I grabbed her on my way out. “Sorry to talk about myself for a change, but how could you have invited Hot Bob for me? He’s a prat. Thinks he’s in South Central LA rather than West Central London.”

She giggled. “Is he awful? I am sorry. I think he’s rather handsome, in a boy band kind of a way.”

“Not a patch on his cousin Ivan, the bastard. Thanks anyway, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to be Hot Bob’s honey. Speaking of stickiness, what’s with Frank and Camilla? They seemed a bit weird with one another.”

“They did, like they’d been discussing something and then I saw Frank rather hilariously visibly groan at the invasion of the schoolgirl hordes.”

“Those girls are ubiquitous, aren’t they?”

“I heard him say something like ‘I’m going out with you, not your schoolmates.’”

“Really? Juicy. I wonder if he means any one of them in particular.”

“Or he could mean you, you were at that school too, weren’t you? That’s it, he’s still in love with you.”

“Yeah, right. Though we did have a weird lunch together. He was a bit funny and kept on wanting to talk about what would have happened if we’d stayed together and hinting that things weren’t perfect between Camilla and him.”

“I’m right, he is still into you. That would make him site man, wouldn’t it? That would be so great, you two going out with one another again. The childhood sweethearts who grew up enough to realize that they’d never find anyone sweeter. I love it. University didn’t teach them that they were in love with each other…”

“Never going to happen.”

“Hello,” said Alice or Becksy, appearing from nowhere once more. It was Alice, I divined, the smaller one. Maggie escaped to talk to more of her public and I suddenly felt very tired.

“How are you?”

“Really well, thanks.”

“And the Internet dating thingie?”

“Really brilliant.”

“Great. I’ve got to go,” I told her. “I was ill last week.”

“Yes, Camilla told me.”

“You seem to hang out with each other a lot.”

“Sort of.”

“Have you been friends since school then? I only have one friend from school.”

“No, we haven’t, not really. I had to go to a different place at sixth form, so we hadn’t seen each other in ages.”

“I see.”

“Then I read on Friends Reunited that she was a management consultant so I got in touch with her about OnLove.”

“So you really do believe that important partnerships can be created through the Internet?”

“Oh yes. And though this started out as a business partnership, I suppose we’re friends now too.”

I saw that I could be there for a long time. “Like I say I was ill, so can’t really stay,” I said, knocking back the gin and tonic. “Nice to see you again.”

“Thanks.” I saw her melt back and disappear into the crowd, while I escaped with an apology to Maggie and a quick “when’s it due and have you thought about names” conversation with Mick.

*

Thursday: same site, same sort of day at the office. No hangover from Maggie’s party, that was the advantage of having had such an awful time. I didn’t want to be out there, back in the place where parties were significant, especially if out there involved men like Hot Bob.

I had expected photos from the party or me emerging from the party but there were none to distract me from another busy day of PR. I already felt the loss of Maggie the e-mailing friend, as she settled into her new life of daytime television. I didn’t want a baby, not yet, but how I envied her the six months of maternity leave. Maybe I should just have a baby for that reason alone, though it didn’t seem a very good reason to bring a child into the world. Couldn’t be any worse than Maggie’s argument that she’d needed to get pregnant in order to finally give up smoking.

It had sunk to this level. Contemplating having a baby just to get out of coming to work for a few months. There must be easier ways of leaving PR O’Create. I could leave right now if I wanted to. I had a high-interest account that I’d kept secret from George, even when he was about to get sued by his divorce lawyers for not having paid his fees. I could use that money to retrain or live off. And hadn’t Tracy hinted that there would be redundancies in the company? Please, please make me redundant with my six years of service.

Even if I didn’t get made redundant, I didn’t need to stay there, did I? I mean, I was Izobel Brannigan who rocks her world. I wasn’t even causing this office to tremble. Every educated office worker has a fantasy about the manual job they wish they were doing. I quite wanted to be a hairdresser, or if not that a waitress. All the women I knew daydreamed about chucking in their office jobs and becoming a waitress, while most men I knew seemed to want to become cycle couriers. Both would free the mind and slim the thighs.