Original Cyn (5 page)

Tim was a corporate lawyer who earned shed loads. Mimi was pretty, without an emotion to speak of and so thin that she practically disappeared when she turned sideways. She did squat all day apart from going out to lunch with her expatriate girlfriends and moving salad around her plate. In the afternoons she might partake of a little light antiquing. She spent practically no time with her children. The only things this woman had ever nursed was a vodka glass and her American Express platinum card.

Mimi may have been a rubbish mother, but she was a generous employer. Every Christmas she bought Cyn an expensive gift. One year it was a cashmere twin set.

“I put it on straightaway to please her,” Cyn told the group. “She stood there scrutinizing me and said, ‘Cyn, that looks just perfect on you.’ ” She could imitate Mimi’s cold, haughty voice perfectly. “ ‘But, you know, I’m just not sure about your breasts.’ Anyway, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I asked her what was wrong with my breasts and she said: ‘Well, let’s put it this way. You might want to rethink your choice of bra.’ ”

“So,” Veronica said gently. “What did you say to her?”

Cyn could feel her eyes starting to water. “Nothing. I said nothing. My mind just went blank. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through me, but I didn’t dare be rude in case she sacked me. That would have meant abandoning those poor children. I couldn’t have done that. Anyway, I realized that Mimi was only jealous because she had two fried eggs on her chest instead of real breasts.”

“I sense that you are really getting in touch with your anger,” Veronica said approvingly.

“Too right I am. I mean, I have really nice breasts.” By now she was getting quite carried away. “They’re biggish, but they’re really firm and perky. They’re not remotely saggy. To hear Mimi go on, you’d have thought I was suckling sextuplets. All the men I’ve slept with have been extremely complimentary about them. You should see me in a Wonderbra.” She failed to notice that Ken was shifting uncomfortably in his seat and practically drooling. “Although I say it myself,” she went on, “I have a rather magnificent cleavage.”

By now she was vaguely aware that she had lost the attention of the group. Her voice trailed off.

“Hello,” the voice behind her said. “Sorry I’m late. I’m Joe.”

Cyn swung round in her seat to face the door. Not Jo as in a woman, but Joe as in a man. An exceedingly cute and sexy man, who now knew all about her firm, perky, not remotely saggy tits and magnificent cleavage.

For the second time that night, Cyn was crippled with embarrassment. One at a time, everybody stood up to shake Joe’s hand. “I am so sorry about what happened just then,” she said to him when her turn came. “I’m not usually like that. I mean, I’m not usually so in-your-face with my breasts . . .”

“That’s OK, I understand.” He was giving her the most delicious smile. “But do you think that maybe I could have my hand back now?”

“Oh, God. Yes.” She released his hand from her grip and watched him flex his fingers as if he was trying to get the blood flowing again.

He took his seat between Jenny and Veronica. “Welcome to our little group,” Clementine trilled, raking her fingers through her hair. Judging by his tight-lipped expression, Ken was watching Clementine’s trilling and raking with mounting jealousy. “So, Joe, what do you do for a living?”

He said was a film and documentaries editor.

“Wow, that sounds so creative and glamorous,” Clementine simpered.

“Not really,” Joe said. “I just sit in front of a computer screen all day, cutting film, trying to make it tell a story.”

Clementine soon established he wasn’t married and had no children. What he did have, Cyn couldn’t help noticing, was a broad, toned upper body and the softest, warmest brown eyes that were a perfect match for his short choppy hair. She was particularly taken with what he was wearing. His blokey, un-put-together look really appealed to her. Hugh would have recoiled at the battered suede jacket and jeans, but she liked it. She was less than keen on that magazine makeover look in women. In men, she positively loathed it.

“So what brings you to therapy?” Clementine asked him.

“You know, you really are giving this poor man the third degree,” Ken said, although it was clear to Cyn that Ken didn’t think Joe was remotely poor.

“That’s all right,” Joe replied with an easy smile. “OK, why am I here?” He leaned his head back while he thought. Camper boots, Cyn noted. Nice. “I think I have a problem with emotional intimacy. I tend to keep people at a distance. It’s really affected my relationships with women. They’ve all been pretty casual. I tend to pick women who aren’t looking for commitment.”

Bugger, why was it that all the good-looking men were either gay or damaged? It was a couple of moments before she remembered that she was in therapy and not out on the pull and that everybody here was meant to have issues.

Cyn didn’t say very much for the rest of the session, not that she would have gotten much chance since everybody was focusing on Jenny, who was wittering on about how threatened she felt when a new member joined the group because she felt her position—such as it was—was being usurped.

When Cyn got home, Hugh and Harmony had gone. She went into the kitchen to check on Morris Mynah. He had black feathers with flashes of white on his tail and yellow on his head. She thought he looked like a glitzed-up miniature crow. “Fuck, I need a shag,” he said in a perfect imitation of Keith Geary. “It’s been three months. Three sodding months since I last got my leg over.” Cyn giggled. She’d heard this nonstop for a week. Even though it was starting to drive her seriously round the bend, there was no getting away from it—Morris’s imitative ability was nothing short of genius. Even now he could still make her laugh. She was going to miss him when he went. Keith was due back at work tomorrow and they’d agreed (to be more precise, Keith had agreed) that the simplest thing (since it would save Keith having to make the twenty-minute drive to her flat) would be to do the handover at the office.

“Morris, you need a shag. I need a shag. Join the club. Instead, all I’ve got to look forward to tomorrow is the Pickersgill double-glazing people coming in to discuss their new advertising campaign. God, Cyril Pickersgill’s a miserable, boring old duffer. He must be over seventy. I don’t know why somebody hasn’t had the sense to put him out to grass.” She checked Morris had plenty of food pellets and water and put a towel over his cage. The dark tended to keep him quiet. “Night, night, Mo. Sleep tight.”

Realizing she wasn’t tired yet, she poured herself some wine and went into the living room. The video of
Working Girl
was lying on the coffee table. It needed rewinding, which meant Harmony must have won her arm-wrestling match with Hugh. She decided this was unlikely and that Hugh had let her win on purpose because she was feeling down.

She picked up the tape. Like Harmony, she adored the way the spunky Melanie Griffith character, Tess McGill, sticks two fingers up at fair play and uses guerrilla tactics to get revenge against her slimy, duplicitous boss.

Cyn wasn’t about to go all L.A. flake and start having an epiphany based on a mindless piece of romantic Hollywood tosh. Nevertheless she couldn’t help thinking that Tess McGill symbolized a missing piece of her emotional jigsaw—the disobedient wayward piece.

She slipped the video into the machine, pressed
rewind
and went to fetch a packet of Doritos and the wine bottle.

For the next hour and fifty-five minutes, apart from drinking wine and dipping her hand into the Doritos bag, she barely moved. By the time it was over, the idea of doing something wicked and brave—for the most honorable and noble of reasons, of course—was beginning to hold a certain, almost irresistible, appeal.

Chapter 4

Morris’s cage was three feet by four and Cyn had quite a struggle getting it downstairs without tripping over or spilling his food. On top of that, Morris was frightened by the movement and refused to stop squawking and shouting about how much he needed a shag. Old Mr. Levinson, who lived with his wife on the floor below, was taking in the milk as Cyn and the cage went by. “Fuck, I need a shag. It’s been three sodding months.”

“Three months?” Mr. Levinson chuckled. He’d met Morris on the day he moved in and found him hugely entertaining. “That’s nothing. You want to try living with Mrs. Levinson. It’s been thirty years.” He insisted on carrying the cage downstairs for Cyn and held on to it while she unlocked the car. Then he slid it onto the backseat. “Thanks, Mr. Levinson. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Bye, Morris.”

“I like a woman with a really big arse,” Morris said.

“Really?” Mr. Levinson chuckled and looked at Cyn. “You know, on second thought, maybe Morris and Mrs. Levinson would hit it off.”

Morris was no better on car journeys than he was at being carried. Cyn covered his cage with the towel in an effort to calm him down.

She arrived at PCW just after nine. Two or three people saw her drive into the office car park. Of course they all noticed the ad, and the jokes started flying faster than you could say
anal fissure.

A bit of her wished she could have left the car at home, but even if she hadn’t had Morris’s cage, she would still have needed to drive. Everybody at PCW drove to work because the office, a converted warehouse in Shoreditch, was a bleak fifteen-minute walk from the tube.

Inside, the place was more industrial workspace than traditional office. The rough brick walls had been painted white and covered with gigantic arty photographs and brightly colored abstracts. There were light wood floors and two metal and wire staircases that led to either end of a mezzanine floor where the directors had their offices. The twenty-foot-high ceiling was supported by a lattice of polished metal girders. Workstations were dotted about the perimeter.

In the middle of the space was an absurdly long, rustic wooden table that was used for meetings and conferences. If people needed to meet in private, they could adjourn to one of four small trailers that were parked as if they were in a campsite in the country. There was also a “thinking area”—a garden hammock on Astroturf—and a “play area” complete with pinball machines, snooker table and miniature trampoline.

The idea was that “creativity and vision” were exchanged in a fun, fluid, informal way. There were no doors and no partitions, and no appointments were needed to see the bosses. A few people like Chelsea insisted on wearing suits, but mostly people slouched around in jeans and Juicy Couture track bottoms.

The entire operation was, to say the least, self-consciously trendy. Most of the staff, Cyn included, saw the trendiness for the gimmick it was. The media was less cynical. Umpteen magazine and newspaper articles had raved about PCW’s “egalitarian management style” and the fact that 10 percent of the agency’s work was for charity, which it usually undertook pro bono. Stella McCartney had been their first big client. Soon, other young cutting-edge fashion designers, dot-com entrepreneurs and other corporates with a social conscience were following in her wake.

Cyn walked into the building and put Morris’s cage down on the big conference table. “OK, now you sit there quietly. If you’re good I’ll bring you some apple later on.” God, she was treating him like a person, as if he really understood. The table was in a major thoroughfare, which meant Morris would get lots of attention from people passing by. It was only when he got bored or frightened that he started his mad chatter. Of course everybody at PCW knew about Keith’s mynah bird and nobody would have found Morris’s perfect imitation of Keith moaning on about needing a shag anything other than hysterically funny. It was the fact that Morris tended to do his impersonations at the shout that eventually drove people mad.

Cyn was thirty when she joined PCW, so, like Chelsea, she was a fair bit older than the other junior copywriters. After university she did an internship at the
Daily Mail,
but quickly came to the conclusion that spending days stalking adulterous game show hosts wasn’t for her.

When the
Mail
offered her a full-time job, she turned it down and spent four years nannying in Europe and Australia. Finally she got the nightmare job in Hong Kong.

By the time the two youngest Clydesdale children had started school, Mimi was quite happy for Cyn to work part time for other families, as long as she was there to pick the children up from school.

It was around this time that Cyn’s interest in advertising began. She had found some extra nanny work during school hours, but not enough to keep her occupied. With time on her hands she started reading. When she got fed up with books, she would flick through magazines. She realized that when she read magazines she always stopped to study the advertisements. It was the same when she watched TV. Instead of going out to make a cup of tea when they came on, she stayed to watch. She found herself analyzing bland soap powder or toothpaste commercials, trying to work out precisely why they were so successful. She found herself staring up at billboards, criticizing the slogans and thinking up ways they could be improved.

Eventually Cyn decided she wanted to come home and find a job in advertising. But she refused to leave the Clydesdales’ children until she had found a replacement nanny. It wasn’t hard. Marcia, an old friend of Barbara’s whose husband had just left her, was desperate for “a fresh start” and was looking for a nanny-housekeeper job abroad. Marcia, who was in her late fifties, had raised four children of her own and was endlessly patient, loving and maternal. She flew out for an interview. Within five minutes the children were jumping all over her. The Clydesdales hired her on the spot. Cyn stayed on an extra month to help with the changeover, and the last she heard Marcia was still there and had no plans to come home.

Cyn’s interview at Price Chandler Witty hadn’t gotten off to a good start. It was a scorching hot day and she had decided to wear her new Monsoon flip-flops, which matched her pink skirt. Before she left, she had painted her nails and moisturized her legs and feet, which were tanned from having spent a week sunbathing in her parents’ back garden. She’d bought the cream in Selfridges. A woman at one of the cosmetics counters had seen her looking at it and had then spent a solid ten minutes rubbing it into various bits of Cyn’s person in order to demonstrate how richly nourishing and rehydrating it was. Of course by then, after all the trouble the woman had gone to, Cyn had felt compelled to buy it—even though she thought it had a rather tacky feel to it.

It was only on the long walk from the tube to the office that she realized that all the pavement dirt was sticking to her feet. When she arrived they were nearly black. There wasn’t time to clean herself off in the ladies’ room, so she spent the entire interview trying to hide her feet under the chair.

If that wasn’t enough, Messrs. Price, Chandler and Witty—who were playing on one of the pinball machines when she arrived and greeted her with “we are so totally chilled out” mockney accents—suddenly seemed to sharpen up and made it clear they had their doubts about a candidate who had left it until she was thirty before deciding to make a career in advertising. Graham Chandler lay back in his chair, hands behind his spiky gelled head, and suggested that her outlook on life was less than focused. “You see, focus is what it’s all about.” Then Phil Witty started asking her what she knew about brand building (not a lot, really), balance theory (umm, something to do with equilibrium?). What about awareness-consideration-reaffirmation-confirmation-action-reinforcement theory? (Right. Well, you’ve sort of got me there.)

At this point Andy Price took off his narrow rimless specs, leaned forward and asked her if she knew there was such a thing as white salmon. She frowned, wondering where on earth this was leading, and said she didn’t. “Well, there is. Now, this is a true story. In the twenties, a fish canning company in Alaska got landed with tons of salmon, which for some reason was white. Now, as you know, salmon is either pink or red, but they managed to shift all their white salmon in record time and make a huge profit, thanks to a brilliant advertising slogan. Can you guess what that slogan might have been?”

Jeez. How in the name of buggery was she supposed to know? “God, well . . . I mean . . . hmm.” By now she realized the whole thing was hopeless and was on the point of getting up and leaving.

“It’s not easy,” Andy Price said, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Look, why don’t I put you out of your misery?”

“No, hang on.” An idea had come to her. In a flash—in one of those “Holy-Riddler-Robin-Gotham-City-is-saved-fetch-the-Batmobile” moments—she had it. “OK, it would have to be something about white salmon being superior to the pink or red . . . What about ‘The salmon that doesn’t turn pink in the tin’?”

Price, Chandler and Witty sat there stunned. Andy Price picked up a red rubber stress ball and kneaded it a couple of times. “Bloody hell. That’s right,” he said. “That was the exact slogan. Come on, you must have heard it somewhere.”

She assured them she hadn’t. The three men exchanged gobsmacked glances and said the job was hers if she wanted it. “The post is junior copywriter, the money’s pretty crap, but we offer excellent opportunities for promotion.”

“Yes, please,” she said.

Her hope that people in the office would tire of the hemorrhoid one-liners after a couple of hours couldn’t have been more in vain. Like Hugh, they immediately christened the Smart Car the “Butt-Mobile” and not one of them got remotely fed up—even when the jokes became really infantile. All morning people kept trying to outdo each other by making more obscure pile references. Work was “really
piling
” up. Carpets had “a really soft
pile
.” “Ooh, what’s that terrible noise outside. Could it be a
pile
driver?”

Chelsea came in about twelve. She’d spent the morning visiting a client.

Cyn noticed her about fifteen minutes later, standing at the coffee machine. She decided there was no point going on the attack—at least not yet. First, she would listen to what Chelsea had to say.

“So,” Cyn began lightly, “did you happen to notice my Smart Car in the car park?”

“God, sweetie, what can I say?” Chelsea said, raking her highlights. “Everybody’s talking about it. I am so, so sorry. I was certain both cars were going to be carrying ads for painkillers or something. It was a complete shock when the guy at the showroom gave me the Stella McCartney car. I feel really bad. It’s awful the way everybody’s making fun of you. I’d give anything for it to be me. If it hadn’t been for this excruciating abscess on my tooth, I would have waited until the next day to go to the showroom.” She gave a sudden (rather theatrical, Cyn thought) wince and brought her hand to her jaw. Then she explained that the only appointment she could get at the dentist had been precisely when they were due to pick up their cars.

Hang on, Cyn thought, this didn’t make sense. “But if you were in so much pain that night,” she said, “how did you manage to go and pick up the car?”

“I was on extra-strength painkillers. I figured it was the lesser of two evils. The pain was bound to be worse the next morning. I talked to the people at the showroom at about four that afternoon and by pure chance one of the cars had already arrived. It just happened to be the Stella car. I’m so sorry I didn’t phone you. I just forgot. I think it was probably the pills making me feel a bit weird. I don’t know how I managed to drive home.”

“But you’re all right now?”

“Oh, you know,” she said with another grimace, “the pain comes and goes.” Then her face broke into what Hugh would no doubt have described as a martyred smile. “But I’m dealing with it.” Cyn didn’t know what to make of her story. She knew what Hugh and Harmony would think—that Chelsea was putting on an act and that she had taken the car on purpose.

“You know, I feel so guilty about this whole thing that I just phoned Stella’s people to see if it would be OK for us to swap cars, but they said there would be a problem with the insurance. I didn’t quite understand, but apparently . . .”

“That’s OK,” Cyn said. “Don’t worry. I’m going to phone the Anusol people in a minute. I’m sure I’ll get it sorted out.”

“You sure? What can I say?”

“It’s OK,” Cyn said, “you don’t have to say anything.”

Cyn had been completely thrown by Chelsea’s thought about wanting to swap cars. Now she didn’t know what to think. She was still dithering, wondering whether to let the whole thing go or just come out with it and say, “Look, Chelsea, I’m not sure I buy any of this toothache nonsense. I think you have a problem with me and wangled it so that you got the Stella car,” when Graham Chandler interrupted them.

“OK,” he announced, “show-and-tell session in trailer one at two o’clock.” He sounded a bit irritable, Cyn thought. No point mentioning the Anusol ad to him and seeing if he would phone the company to try and persuade them to tone the ad down a bit. He clearly had more urgent matters on his mind. She knew it wasn’t just work pressure. He was also exhausted. Three months ago his wife had given birth to IVF triplets, and judging by the dark circles under his eyes, they still weren’t sleeping. “Hang on,” Cyn said to Graham, “I thought that meeting wasn’t until the day after tomorrow.” After a brainstorming session the previous week, Graham had sent everybody away to “think wild” about ways of promoting the new Droolin’ Dream low-fat doughnut. It was agreed that those thoughts would be discussed at the next show-and-tell meeting.

“I know what I said,” Graham said briskly, “but things have changed. I’m off to New York this evening. This Droolin’ Dream account is worth a fortune. We need to get some ideas up and running before I go.” Andy and Phil had been in New York for a couple of months setting up PCW NY. Apparently Andy had phoned a couple of hours ago to say things were going seriously wrong with the attorneys and Graham’s presence was needed urgently.