Christmas on Primrose Hill (3 page)

The cheers grew yet louder still.

‘Hear that? They reckoned it was a bloke in that suit,’ Jules said. ‘What a surprise for them seeing a pretty little thing like you in there.’

‘They probably assumed it was another of the riders,’ Daisy added. ‘Who else would be
able
to go down there like that?’

‘I can’t believe I’m alive,’ Nettie muttered, her eyes wide as she watched her wan self, trying to smile, to stand. ‘Honestly I can’t. It’s a miracle. My dad must never see this.’

Mike pressed ‘pause’ – freeze-framing the short on an image of Nettie being held up, her head lolling to the side – and perched himself on the corner of the conference table, his arms crossed loosely over his thigh as he leaned in slightly towards her.

‘Well, Nettie, I think we can all see for ourselves there the incredible response to your . . . uh, slide.’ He smiled. ‘How would you feel about repeating the success?’

‘Terrible.’ She shook her head firmly, reaching for another biscuit.

‘No, no, don’t make a rush decision. One thing you must bear in mind is that it would never be as bad as the first time. You’ve done it already, remember, mastered the course.’

Mastered the course?
Mastered the course?
She had slipped and crashed and bounced her way down a sheet of ice! How did that constitute mastering the course? There had been no technique, no free will involved at all. ‘I could have died, Mike.’

He gave an earnest shake of his head. ‘I think the bunny saved you, Nettie.’ His forefinger stabbed onto his own leg. ‘You were as safe in that costume as a kitten in a drum.’

There was a pause. ‘That’s not very safe,’ she said, flummoxed.

He looked at her for a long moment, before inhaling sharply and pulling back. ‘Well, far be it from me to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m merely looking for ways to help you.’

She frowned. ‘Help me?’

‘Well, yes. You’re in charge of charitable donations. It’s no secret that when Jules was doing the job two years ago, she exceeded her targets by forty-six per cent, whereas you are down fifty-one per cent. The clients keep asking me if there’s a problem.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘And what am I supposed to say, huh? That my head of CD has personal problems? Is that
their
problem?’

‘Of course not, but . . .’

He nodded repeatedly, and the ‘but’ rippled into the room like a big, fat excuse. ‘You see what I’m saying here?’

‘Um . . .’ Nettie hesitated, keeping the biscuit to her mouth, as though for protection rather than ingestion.

‘I can’t carry dead weight. Everyone has to earn their place on the team.’ He pointed towards the window. ‘I’ve got people queuing up to sit in that chair you’re sitting in right now. Young graduates, hungry for the exposure, the experience . . .’

Nettie wasn’t sure that was true. She opened the post every morning. He got five CVs a week at most.

‘I know your personal circumstances have been difficult, Nettie, but I think you need to take some time to think, really think, about whether or not this is the industry for you.’ He slammed his fist into his palm. ‘It takes drive, commitment, hunger, passion. You used to be so . . . so . . . hungry, Nettie.’

To her surprise, no one cut in that she still was. Nettie eyed the girls on the team. There wasn’t much evidence of drive or passion in any of them, and the only hunger in the room had been just about sated thanks to the plate of biscuits. Daisy was checking her hair for split ends. Caro had the iPad secretively tipped towards her, which meant she was playing solitaire. Only Jules was paying full attention, resentment burning her eyes black.

‘What happened to you? Where did you go?’

Nettie wanted to slap him. He knew exactly what had happened.

‘From what I was told by my predecessor, you used to be first in, last out every day. You knew if we were low on tea or needed to order more print cartridges. You answered every phone on the first ring. But now?’ He frowned. ‘Now . . . ? I know things have been difficult for you, but I want you to take a long, hard look, Nettie, at where you’re going with your career. Is this still right for you? Because if so, we need to start getting some results, and fast. The bunny worked. Don’t dismiss it out of hand. You should be thinking how to make it work for you again. Make it your USP.’

‘What, Giant Flying Bunny?’ Jules grinned, leaning forward and squeezing Nettie consolingly on the shoulder.

Mike shrugged. ‘Why not? Think big. You could become White Tiger’s mascot.’

Caro frowned, momentarily ceasing chewing her gum. ‘Well, if they were to have a mascot, wouldn’t that be a . . . white tiger, then, Mike?’

Mike straightened up irritably. ‘You know what I mean.’ He clapped his hands together, looking round at the lethargic, now completely demotivated team. ‘Right, well, on the
plus
side, the Ice Crush event brought in more than two thousand pounds in total. I don’t have the exact figure here, but let’s take heart from that.’ He punched the air feebly and everyone sighed collectively as he tried to rally them, as though his comments to Nettie had been a mere pep talk and not thinly veiled threats about losing her job.

‘Next week the Christmas countdown begins in earnest, so I want you all in on Monday and working at high revs. You don’t need me to tell you it’s our biggest week next week, so rest, take it easy and come in refreshed and good to go. Have a good weekend, everybody.’

Mike had barely got the words out before the women were scraping back their chairs and showing more energy than they had at any other point in the day. Caro already had her phone to her ear, finalizing the arrangements for her evening plans. Nettie watched as Jules grabbed the last two biscuits and slipped them into her pockets ‘for later’. Everything was always ‘for later’ with Jules – the crumbs on her shirt, the cake in her bag, the cheeky chappy standing by the bar.

‘Ignore him. Tosser,’ Jules said under her breath to Nettie as they walked back into the office.

Nettie hugged her papers closer to her chest. ‘He’s right, though. I’m terrible at this job.’

‘No, you’re not. He’s just a bad leader. He couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery and he expects you to coin it in for the charities?’

‘Well, you managed it.’

‘Only because I was going for his job and trying to impress the bosses,’ Jules groaned.

‘You should have got it. It’s a travesty that they gave it to him. We all know he only got it because his wife’s father knows the Middletons and they’re hoping to wheedle an introduction.’

It wasn’t just Jules who’d been disappointed by the decision. With no obvious career progression at the agency, Nettie had been mentally bracing herself for the news that, any day now, Jules would be leaving. She knew headhunters contacted her on a regular basis but her friend always stopped them in their tracks and Nettie suspected the only reason she was still working there (apart from tormenting Mike whose inept people skills meant he was clearly vastly out of his depth in the job) was to keep an eye on her.

It was a suspicion that she couldn’t articulate, not least because Jules would deny it and Nettie didn’t want to face the guilt, because she didn’t care about the job like Jules did. Sure, she liked the team, the commute was fine and the hours were pretty regular, but this wasn’t where she had thought her career would end up – shaking buckets at sporting events, begging for spare change in the name of big business charity. Not to mention wearing grotesque fancy dress costumes for a living.

No, in her previous life, she had wanted to be in advertising, giving people added narratives in their everyday lives and sprinkling happiness over the prospect of purchasing car insurance or washing powder. She would come to the rescue of ailing giants like Tesco and RBS, and single-handedly rewrite the public’s perception of them before setting up her own company. She’d graft for a few years and then sell at a great profit to Ogilvy & Mather. This was her plan; this had always been her plan, ever since she’d fallen hard for the Diet Coke guy in the Noughties and mended her heart after her first proper breakup. Only, the dream job in advertising hadn’t materialized in time – too many graduates, not enough jobs – and she had settled on this one as a short-term stopgap, justifying it as a lateral move into marketing, which everyone knew was inextricably linked with advertising. One and the same really.

But then she hadn’t ever anticipated the schism that would one day rip through her life like a tear in a sheet of paper, and ever since then, new rules had had to apply: six months had turned into almost six years, life twisting away from her at all the pertinent moments so that this was all she could cope with, anyway – something low-level, doing just enough to get by. Jules’s arrival on the team nearly five years ago had undoubtedly helped make this office and those meetings bearable – the two of them had connected immediately, Jules buying her first flat just around the corner from Nettie, and they worked and played together as a team – but was Mike right? Was it time to move on? Were she and Jules actually holding each other back, clinging to each other like bindweed, their grip too strong for the other to grow?

Jules was quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah well, bygones and all that. No point in dwelling on it. Far more importantly, what are you up to tonight?’

‘I was supposed to be seeing Em, but she’s doing another double shift,’ she groaned. Emma was Nettie’s best friend from university, a Titian-haired, porcelain-skinned willow wand with a brilliant brain, luck on her side and men at her feet, and who was on the fast-track to becoming a consultant obstetrician. Subsequently, she cancelled their plans a lot.

‘Well, I want to check out that new vodka bar on Prince Albert Road. Come with.’ Jules dropped her iPad, jotter and pens on their shared desk. Jules’s side of the desk looked like it had been raided by the police, with skewed sheets of paper scattered everywhere, coffee rings on the only visible bits of grey veneered desktop, the paperclips linked together in an industrial daisy chain – testament to the amount of staring out of the window she did – and sitting in the corner, a bug-eyed lemur toy she’d been given by her ex and couldn’t quite part with yet.

Nettie’s side, by contrast, was neat and tidy, with everything in its place and a motivational placard that read, ‘Your breakthrough is just beyond your breakdown’, which never failed to amuse Jules, who joked that the lot of them were fast heading towards one – now that Mike was running the show.

‘I really shouldn’t. I need an early night,’ she said, filing her paperwork into her top right desk drawer. She didn’t need to look up to know the expression that would be on Jules’s face at her words. ‘And before you say it, Em and I had promised to have a quiet one – she’s strung out, and I’m all bruised from the other day. She says I need a hot soak to bring it out properly. Bath salts. Doctor’s orders.’

‘Pah! What does she know? A night on the tiles is what you need. It would help you unwind properly. You’ve got to relax, Nets. Have some fun and go nuts. It’s much better for you. Blow off the cobwebs.’

Nettie arched an eyebrow but didn’t reply. Ever since Jules and her Big Passion ex had broken up, Jules’s answer to everything was a Big Night – promotion, engagement, winning a tenner on the lottery . . .

‘Would it hurt you to come for one drink? It’s on the way home anyway.’

‘But it’s never just one with you – that’s the problem.’

Jules slapped her hand over her ample chest. ‘I promise, just one. On my life.’

Everything hurt. That was all she knew.

Hitting ice walls at sixty miles per hour had been bad. But this was worse. So much worse. So,
so
much worse.

Her head was falling off, for one thing. Well, that had to be what it was. It was the only possible explanation for the throbbing above her neck.

And she must have been punched in the stomach for it to feel quite so battered.

And who knew her
tongue
had a pulse?

Downstairs, she could hear the sounds of Radio Four already blaring in the kitchen. That meant her father was up; it also meant pigs everywhere were running for their lives as the fat hit the pan. Should she go back to sleep? If she could just doze till, say, a week Tuesday, she’d get through the worst of this.

But John Humphrys wouldn’t be denied, his voice carrying through the gaps in the floorboards like water running through the pipes, and she stared at the wall for what seemed like an epoch, but according to her clock was only eleven minutes, before attempting verticality.

She had just managed it – her hands actually holding her head, like it had come loose – when she heard another voice vibrating through the floorboards of the draughty house and knew Saturday was well and truly underway. She sighed.

A few minutes later she was being propped up by the kitchen doorway. She stared at the familiar scene. Both her father and Dan were standing in the middle of the kitchen, working on her father’s bike, which was upside down in the middle of the room, the front wheel spinning.

‘Ah! It awakens!’ her father boomed – or so it seemed to her, anyway.

‘Dad, please?’ Nettie winced, simultaneously holding her hands up as though trying to push back the sound waves while marvelling at her own voice: seemingly it had grown hairs overnight.

‘Sorry, love,’ he chuckled, his eyes twinkling at the sight of her, bedraggled and broken. His Saturday mornings were never like this. He didn’t drink, never sat still; the man radiated busy-busy-busyness, always doing something, and everything about him suggested bonhomie: the bosky beard, sparkling hazel eyes, the rounded tummy that paid testament to his great love of French cooking and none whatsoever to his second great love, cycling.

Dan turned round to face her, just as bad as her father, a laugh already on his lips. ‘Oh, it is you. I thought Barry White had come back from the dead.’

He laughed freely at his own joke. Nettie had always thought it would be a lot easier to hate him if he didn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to Damon Albarn – both of them tall, cheeky-chappy types with round blue eyes and mousy hair, scruffy (perpetually wearing jeans, Pumas and hoodies), heads always hung low, usually from avoiding ex-girlfriends or irate customers. Currently, Dan was without a girlfriend, but she expected that to have changed by Friday night.