To Catch a Creeper (6 page)

It’s the next morning and Rosa’s looking at me askance.

‘One of Declan’s colleagues. But that’s not important.’

‘Your husband killed a colleague and it’s
not important
?’

‘Shh.’ I hold my index finger to my lips and glance furtively around. ‘I said he
said
he killed him. I didn’t say he actually
did
it. How could you think that, Rosa? Shame on you.’ Mind you for a moment before Declan explained himself, the thought had flitted across my mind. Well it would, wouldn’t it? Although being his wife of long standing, I think I’m excused.

‘Cut to the chase, Cathy.’

‘He blames himself for Hugh’s death because Hugh had this heart attack yesterday afternoon and only the night before Declan had to do some appraisal and he said some things which Hugh might have taken the wrong way.’

‘You’re saying Declan bawled him out?’

I nod. ‘The guy had been making some big mistakes and he needed to let him know. It began OK but ended badly. Anyway now he blames himself.’

‘I bet he does. Poor guy. Want me to ring him?’

‘But how can you?’ I say, shocked. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Not Hugh, you wally, Declan.’

‘No, for God’s sake, no!’ I recoil in horror. ‘This is just between us. He’d hate you to know. He hated me knowing. That’s why he didn’t tell me at first. Not only that but something very odd happened afterwards–’

We’re interrupted by the receptionist, Alice, dragging a huge sack behind her, like an anorexic Santa Claus.

‘What the–?’

‘Responses to the Looking for La La billboards. They were all going to the clients’ offices but they’ve no idea what to do with them so Turks is passing the baby your way.’

Rosa and I pull out a handful of envelopes. ‘
To whom it may concern
,’ I read, ‘
I am La La and I understand you are looking for me. How much is the reward
?’

‘
La La is my brother
,’ Rosa reads out hers. ‘
And he disappeared on a trip to India although a recent expedition to K2 reported a glimpse of him meditating in a snow cave
. He’s not expecting us to answer them, is he?’

‘Who knows?’ Alice shrugs. ‘Throw them out for all anyone cares. He just wants them away from reception.’

She walks off, leaving us wondering exactly where we’re going to put them.

And so the very odd thing goes clean out of my head.

***

‘How about Angus Deayton impersonating that presenter from
Grand Designs
?’ I suck on my pencil. ‘He could wear different jackets for each shot.’

‘Angus Deayton’s not an impersonator.’ Rosa looks up. ‘I think you mean Alistair McGowan,’ she adds. ‘But why different jackets?’

‘Because the guy from
Grand Designs
always visits these houses at different times of year. And he has hundreds of jackets. The thin white one he uses in the spring, the khaki sleeveless one he uses in the summer, lovely big leather one he uses for the autumn, soft…’

‘Woolly one he uses in the winter, yeah I get it.’ Rosa squints at her screen. ‘But you know, Cathy, we’re not meant to be writing sketches for comedians – we’re meant to be writing this damn copy.’

Yeah right. Bloody hell. She can talk with that big picture of a baby’s head crowning in front of her. Yuk.

‘Satsuma?’ she offers.

‘Cheers.’ Might take my mind off her yucky picture. Or maybe not. I put the satsuma down and open a pack of my favourite cheese Wotsits instead. ‘So. What’s special about them then? How best can we excite our target audience?’

We always say what’s special, what’s the angle, what’s unique about this company’s product that we can put into actual catchy-sounding words.

We also say things like ‘two-pronged attack’, ‘focus groups’, ‘above the line’, ‘below the line’ and sometimes Rosa goes on about Brad, and I thought she was talking about Pitt at first, but apparently it’s a directory that ad agencies subscribe to.

Rosa consults her notes. ‘Confectionary company. Brief is they’re trying to advertise this new cough sweet like a polo.’

‘What about the mint with the hole?’

‘Been done, drongo head. And it’s more like aniseed than minty. Here try one.’

She makes a little paper plane out of a sheet of A4, sticks one from the sample packet in it and flies it over to my desk.

I chomp on it thoughtfully. ‘Hole. OK.’ I scratch at my head. ‘No let me think…space…circle. Round and round and round and round.’

‘Don’t tell me. And round and round and round…’

‘…like a teddy bear. One step…two step…’ I walk my fingers up my arm in the hope of inspiration.

‘Bloody hot, isn’t it?’ She hops over to my desk, snatches the paper aeroplane from me and turns it into a makeshift fan before starting to wave it in front of her face.

‘Oh that’s just your progesterone. Pregnancy hormone. Boosts your temperature.’

‘I meant the sweet, Cathy.’ She spits it out. ‘Tastes like it has chilli powder in it or something.’

‘Chilli? Wait.’ I put my index finger high in the air, like a shepherd might test the wind direction. ‘I think I’ve got it! Try our new chilli-willy cough sweets. Stops that tickle…’

‘Tickle and willies.
Really
. We’re aiming at a child’s market.’

‘All right. OK. Back to the drawing board.’ I chew on my sweet again before spitting it in the bin. She was right, it is
bloody
hot. ‘Concentrate. What else about a circle? What exactly is a circle? It’s a shape. No sides. What’s Pi? Three times radius halved or something?’

‘Ten years ago I might have known, but at the moment, darling, in my present state, I couldn’t tell you what two twice two is. Right then,’ she closes her catalogue and grabs her bag, ‘just popping to Mothercare. They’ve some latex nipple shields on offer, Alice said might be worth checking out. Be back in five.’

***

Twenty minutes later the door opens. It’s Lewis.

‘Trust you to be slaving away while half the staff are on a space/time talk.’

‘They are?’

‘Well our office is
totally
deserted.’ He hands me a slip of paper. ‘Alice asked me to pass you this.’

It’s a message.

To: Cathy O’Farrell, Younger and Wilding

From: James Pansy, Western Advertising.

And a number. A London number.

‘Pansy?’ I say puzzled. ‘Do you know any Pansys?’

‘Quite a few, dearheart. All down the Heath Saturday night.’ Lewis gives a shrill laugh as he peers over my shoulder. ‘Ooh. James from Western. Who hasn’t heard of him in the industry? Beefy, tall. Lookswise kind of early Donald Trump. Always on the hunt for heads. Ah so that’s what he’ll be after.’

‘What?’

‘Take a guess, Pussycat. After your La La campaign.’

‘Not just mine…’

‘Don’t be so modest, Twinkletoes,’ he laughs lightly. ‘It was you who thought it up.’

‘Yes, but if it–?’

‘Rosa just carried it forward to the right people,’ he cuts in. ‘Everyone knows that. In many ways she stole your thunder.’

‘She did not!’ I say outraged. ‘We both con–’

‘Shhh.’ He puts his finger to my lips. ‘Now, now, Petal. Walls have ears. You know you’ve quite a reputation round the industry.’

‘I have?’

‘Turks doesn’t appreciate you, Pudding Pie.’ He peers over at my computer screen. ‘Wasting your talents writing mundane hotel descriptions. Any minion could do that. Even Slack Alice,’ he plucks a dog’s hair from my cardigan then grabs my arm. ‘Use my office to make your call if it helps. Further from prying ears. The rest of the team won’t be back for at least an hour so you’ll have plenty of privacy.’

‘Well, maybe I…’ I hesitate. ‘I’d better just wait for Rosa. She’s just popped to…er, check on an account.’

‘Don’t tell me. She’s carrying out another pram survey? Or is it a new food craving? I swear if I see another
Baby Bits
catalogue being passed around, I’ll commit hari kari. Heaven knows what she’ll be like when the brat actually arrives. Now come on. No time to lose. Says urgent on there. And from all I’ve heard, Mr Pansy loathes being kept waiting.’

He sticks my arm through his and leads me down the corridor to his large open plan office. ‘Never know, darling,’ he gestures me forward. ‘Working for Westerns. Your salary could be doubled.’

Doubled? Wow, I mean I’m not on a bad wage as it is, top whack really. What would Declan say? I could end up earning more than him. Wouldn’t that be a turnaround?

I feel a bit bad not waiting for Rosa, but after all, I’m only returning a call. Would be rude not to. And, as Lewis said, I’m only fact-finding, not making any decisions or anything. About going solo.

Going solo
.

So…lo… I roll the word up to the roof of my mouth and around my tongue until I can almost taste it with the tip.

So…lo…lo…

Could I handle it? How would Rosa react? In many ways she’s been carrying, or rather mentoring, me, because I know nothing about the structure of the advertising industry and how it all fits together, and she’s guiding me through it slowly, carefully, like she’s the Master Kung Fu person and I’m a young Grasshopper or Karate Kid 5. But Lewis is also right, in some ways, because of Rosa’s pregnancy, I’m kind of also carrying…or to a certain extent covering for her. I mean, I love her to death but if I really sat down to think about it, how much work had she done today? Or yesterday? Or the day before that?

Besides I can always insist she comes too, can’t I?
Like she did with me
.

I pick up the receiver as Lewis silently closes the door behind him.

My mouth instantly turns Sahara, so I put it down, walk over to the water dispenser and fill a quick cone. Headhunted. Me?
Moi
. It means, well they want my head…want my brains… How flattering is that? And again that won’t mean an interview will it? – which is the one thing I just so hate. All that prying into qualifications. Ugh. No this means they, the Western Conglomerate, are trying to woo me. Rather than the other way round. I suppose in a way I’ll be interviewing them. I might need to think up clever psychometric-type questions for them. Like,‘If your company was a fruit what would it be?’or ‘What do you consider is your company’s weakest point?’or ‘How are you at time-keeping?’

My knees start to jellify as I take another sip of water.

The door opens again and I jump about a foot in the air but thankfully it’s only Lewis. ‘Oh and he apparently likes to be called Jim.’

Jim. Right.

He closes the door again and I quickly dial the number, running through some possible scenarios in my head. I could pretend to take notes and say, ‘Hold on, while I jot this down’.

‘I said, can I help you?’

I realise the phone’s already been answered.

‘Er, yes.’ I clear my throat and say in my best telephone voice, ‘Can I speak to…Mr Pansy please, James…or should I say, Jim?’

‘Yeah yeah yeah.’ The switchboard operator sounds bored to tears. ‘Well you might have been able to earlier but he’s back in his cage now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I’m confused.

‘Along with Mr Lion,’ the guy continues, ‘Don Key, G. Raffe, Anna Conda, Elly Fant and all the other bloody animals that people call for. This is London Zoo for crying out loud! Don’t you people have
lives
?’

‘Pardon me?’

The phone goes dead.

Instantly I hear a snort coming from behind a big black screen. Then another snort. The screen falls to the floor to reveal…what seems to be…half the bloody staff. A gaggle of creatives, planners, media buyers, secretaries, even the bloody phone cleaner has turned up.

‘April Fool, Cathy! April Fool!’ Lewis also somehow managed to creep back in through the other door. He’s doubled over in fits of laughter.

I start to blush. ‘Oh. Right, ha ha. That was the zoo, yeah? Yep you got me there. Old but good.’

‘Headhunted!’ cackles Vicious Viv. ‘You!’

‘Jim Panzee!’ shrieks Lewis, clutching his stomach.

‘Jim-pan-see. Chimpanzee!’ screeches Alice, looking around. Just in case someone didn’t get it.

My face is burning from neck to forehead.

‘What a hoot!’ titters the phone cleaner.

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ say all the others.

Take back everything I’ve ever said about colleagues. Isobel was
so
right last night. Sometimes they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.

***

‘It’s not that I can’t take a joke, Rosa,’ I confess. ‘But it’s not even April.’

‘And even if it had been,’ sympathises Rosa, ‘it still wouldn’t have been funny. But like I said yesterday, you’ll need to develop a hide like a rhino to get by in this profession.’

When Rosa finally returned from Mothercare and Boots and Mamas & Papas, and every other shop on Oxford Street that does maternity wear, I told her what happened. Although of course I didn’t mention the going solo, double salary thing. She might have misunderstood.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t even be working here,’ I say miserably.

‘Look, really I think it’s a positive thing.’ She slips three new magazines into her big box file. ‘It means you’ve been accepted.’

‘How?’

‘Well, it’s like an initiation rite. Playing a joke on you. Letting you know you’re one of them.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes, yes. Like when you’re in primary and they stuff your head down the loo or at these posh public schools where they bugger the younger boys or–’

‘So what did they do to you when you first started?’

‘When I first started? Um…well,’ she hesitates and hands me over an éclair from a white paper bag. ‘Oh, they…it was dreadful. They–’

‘Go on spit it out.’

She shakes her head. ‘No I’m trying to remember. I kind of blocked it, it was so hideous… They,’ she glances across at the paper bag, ‘…um…they made me eat all these cream cakes…and I…I
had
to do it.’

‘Doesn’t sound too hideous.’ I narrow my eyes.

‘Without licking my lips.’

‘And?’ I’m still not convinced it was as bad as mine.

‘And…and each time I did…lick my lips…which I did tons of times, then…then they cut pieces out of my blouse with these enormous scissors.
Completely
ruined it.’