Kept (2 page)

Four years ago an evil woman called Penelope Whitter
rejected me – I’m truly not being melodramatic here – but it was pre-Penelope
that this mess truly kicked off. You see, I had just graduated with no clue as
to my next step in life, made even harder by having studied a degree I should
not have read in the first place – one useless for my long buried childhood ambition
of wanting to become the New Forest version of Coco Chanel.

I’m sure this happens to many graduates though, the
realisation that going to university has only postponed the career decision and
you’re as clueless as when you tore open your A-Level results except you now
have a fancy excuse note to explain your career delay. It may have been
presented ceremoniously in an impractical and ugly gown over serving-staff
attire but, nevertheless, it can be the generic get-out-of-games excuse note
you’d beg your mum to write to get out of cross-country: “Arielle has tummy
cramps.”

I’m not tarring everyone though. Some people know exactly
what they want to do and go out and make it happen, like Obélix. He turned his
attentions away from Jacko to veterinary life and I bet he’s doing really well.
My friend Megan landed a graduate job with an investment bank; my friend Liam
won a role with an advertising agency.

A graduate job? No, that wasn’t me.
Any
job? Ditto.

I resolutely ignored my parents’ questions about what I
would do once I had that important piece of paper certifying my three years as
a student hadn’t been a complete waste of money (theirs) and time (my tutors)
in a manner that would have made an al- Qaeda terrorist proud. I avoided the
careers service like the plague – by the looks of the falling-down and mouldy building
I was saving myself from it – and I ran screaming from anyone who dared to ask
the dreaded question: “What next?”

I just didn’t care to figure it out, naïvely assuming that
once I’d applied for my dream job – which would naturally become free as soon
as they heard I was available – not only would I be offered the position on the
spot, but there would be no need for silly references or interviews. After all,
what employer wouldn’t want
me
?

Now
I realise you
have to work bloody hard for the things you want but back then I really thought
magic would happen, that everything would slot into place, and I would be left
to enjoy the finer things in life with none of that wrinkle-inducing stress.

With that fairytale firmly in my head, after graduation I
grabbed the first train out of the New Forest to spend a few months
inter-railing around the Continent, leaving my fairy godmother to sift through
my dream jobs and work her lucrative magic. Conveniently, this debauchery was
the treat of my then on-off boyfriend. That should have been a massive red
light, yet I can still recall the shock I felt when he unceremoniously, and
rather cruelly, dumped me on a station platform in France with not one euro to my
name four days later. I was snookered.

A
sensible
girl
would probably have tearfully phoned home to get some money wired so she could
head home... I wasn’t sensible. I had my
pride
,
you see. I’d have looked like a little girl running home after four days and my
stupid,
expensive
pride spurred me to
stay.

I may not have had any cash, but I had my cards. Problem
solved. I didn’t have an economics degree for nothing. Once my student
overdraft went, I started on my credit cards. They saw more action in the Parisian
and Milanese shops than I saw tourist attractions. I lost my head. I justified
I
deserved
those treats to cheer
myself up from my abandonment and reasoned I’d have a job soon enough to clear
my debts and pay off my suitcase overflowing with expensive fabrics and the
latest designs. If only I had known better – fashions change quickly, about as
fast as credit card debt can amass.
 

I arrived back in Britain skint. Not that my parents knew
this but they still dutifully doled out “pocket money” and went out to work
whilst I lazed around the house and pretended to look for work. Only pretended,
mind you; I knew the fairy godmother was working her magic. But, it turned out
that the fairy godmother didn’t exist. I guess she could have lost my address,
maybe got really stuck in traffic, but it eventually hit me not to expect a
miracle. A job wasn’t going to conveniently fall into my lap – it was down to
me.

Having spent three years in denial about getting a job after
graduating, this proved tricky, until I started receiving ugly letters because
I had defaulted on several credit card repayments, that is. Only then did I
begin to panic, the enormity of my messes finally penetrating my thick,
stubborn skull. It finally dawned on me that I was officially an adult in the
real world. Debt collectors wouldn’t take an excuse note from my mum and they’d
be much nastier and more damaging than a detention with the prefects.

But, what could I do with an economics degree that
didn’t
involve slavishly long hours in
the City yet would pay a decent whack to sort the mess out
and
leave me enough money to live on? I couldn’t take
any
job. I had that
expensive
pride, you see. A false snobbery stemming from that piece
of paper certifying I was a graduate, a graduate with a bit more clout in the
job market, or so I hoped. Rather quickly, after I read the word “bailiffs” and
“court” and spoke to one of my friends who moaned about the hours but gushed
about the cute clients, I decided on financial PR.

By sheer luck, the same week I applied for a graduate
position with Benfords and things were beginning to get very desperate
money-wise, I was offered an interview. Maybe I
did
have a secret fairy godmother looking out for me, likely since Benfords
was a company with a very useful connection to something I wanted desperately.
Snagging the interview was a clear sign I was
destined
to get it in my warped opinion. However, the interview
transpired to be the catalyst for my downfall. One which I’m still tumbling
down now…

The day started out well. My hair was straightened in a
sleek impressive manner that screamed groomed. I was wearing a full face of Chanel
make-up, natural and procured from Paris – is there a better high than
strolling down the
Champs
-
Élysées,
arms laden with
boutique bags? I think not – which illogically seemed to draw attention to the
tiny-sleeved, black, boxed-neck dress I was wearing. Or maybe that was because
the dress sat rather tastefully before it plunged straight down to my knees in
an expensive-looking way. (Another Parisian purchase.)

To complete my outfit, a black and white, whippet-thin belt
cinched my waist to show off the curves I did not have, creating bumps of hips
instead of the usual surfboard effect. A pair of black and white Mary Janes,
double-strapped and picked up in Milan made me stand just short of six feet.
With French polish on my fingernails, black on my unseen pedicured feet, a
spray of the gorgeous De
Lacey
perfume (duty-free)
and I was ready to knock them dead. I felt and looked like a million dollars,
albeit borrowed dollars – an issue about to be rectified.
 

The admiring glances I noticed on the Tube as I took the
Circle line to Farringdon only boosted my already-brimming outfit-induced
confidence, although the grubbiness of the Tube seats made me worry about
getting marks on my dress as I nervously clung to the handrail above, hoping
not to totter over when the train came to its abrupt stop.

‘Not pleasant things, are they?’ I confidently shared with
the handsome man stood by me – very dapper looking – only to be treated to a
sour look that did nothing to compliment his beautiful Italian suit. Right...

Still, I looked the part, like a City girl minus the sour
expression most people seemed to be expressing around me. It felt like a given
that I would nail the interview and settle into Big Smoke life, then I could
pay off those nasty bailiffs and spend, spend, spend some more with my fabulous
salary. Life would be grand, or so I thought...

Heads looked up as I strode purposefully and confidently
into the reception. My feet were now killing me in my new Mary Janes – it was
further than I anticipated from the Tube to the offices – but I didn’t falter
for one second. I was PR Barbie. No, I was the lead in a Hollywood blockbuster.
I had lines to deliver and what film heroine have you ever heard utter lines
relating to her aching pins?
Exactly.
None
. I planned to be perfect. With
my outfit, I felt I was already halfway there.

‘Hi,’ I said, extending my nicely manicured hand to the
receptionist who was dressed in a crisp white shirt, sharp grey skirt and a
knock-off
Hermès
-style neck scarf which jazzed up her
dull corporate look immensely. ‘Arielle Lockley.’

‘Nice to meet you, Miss Lockley.’ She smiled at me reaching
out to shake my hand. ‘And you’re here to see?’

‘Penelope Whitter,’ I chirped confidently.

‘Of course, Miss Lockley. Please take a seat.’ She motioned
to some squishy-looking leather chairs.

‘Thank you.’ I smiled at her. ‘And please, call me Arielle.’

She beamed at me. One point to me. The interview process was
going well already; I felt like the rest of the afternoon would also be in the
bag.

As I sat down and surveyed the funky modern art adorned
walls and the expensive-looking glass coffee tables, I thought this was a place
I could see myself working in. No, this was a place I
would
be working in, I corrected, brimming with confidence.
 

I was sorely mistaken.

All my interviews with various members of the company went
well, all except the last one. But, by then I had already established a false
confidence, one that could have cost me the job. Well, it did. Or, rather, that
was the doing of the bitch known as Penelope Whitter, the demon MD of Benfords.

I can honestly say I did not have anything to do with my
downfall, at least not in the obvious sense. That’s because I was rejected
based upon something I couldn’t control: Penelope Whitter’s ugly insecurities.

I’ve seen that look before, you know the one I mean. The
one where someone takes a two-second glance at you and instantaneously hates
you. I mentally replayed my mirror image and found nothing lacking, then
realised that was the problem because it wasn’t as if she could look inside me
to pick out some personality trait to choose to hate. I could see the blatant
hatred in her eyes and I knew instinctively she was going to let me have the
trickiest interview she could muster up in an attempt to make me stumble.
Intellectual bullying. The worst kind.

I’d come across it at university when people had flaunted
their “knowledge” in an attempt to make others look stupid and uninformed. The
really ironic thing about those people is that their material came from
snippets they had memorised from the
Telegraph
or
The Economist
–
maybe the
Washington Post
if they
were feeling international. I always know people are incapable of original
thoughts when they pepper their sentences with long words and sound pompous
because of it. Ostentatious they’d call it.

I knew her game though. I’d done my research, but I had also
formed opinions. I wasn’t going to give her any reason to fault me, especially
since I’d sat through three other interviews with her colleagues and I knew
they had all been impressed with me. Really impressed. Penelope though, she was
another matter. I suspect if I had confided to her that I had discovered the
cure for AIDS in a shed in my back garden with no medical training her opinion
wouldn’t have altered in the slightest.

‘Ah yes,’ she finally said, rubbing her hands together in a
way that reminded me of my old headmaster. ‘Harriet.’ She extended her hand out
towards me.

Harriet? What? Wait? Who was Harriet?

‘No, no.’ I smiled, trying to keep calm. ‘Arielle. Arielle
Lockley.’

I reached for her extended hand but she quickly snatched it
away like I’d just announced I enjoyed abusing children. She looked at me with
that much contempt. I wasn’t worth the bother of politeness, not worth her
disguising the derision in her voice.

I took a step back, surprised at her rudeness, then watched
her slowly and extremely deliberately sweep her eyes up and down me. That look
again. The one that spoke volumes to me without another word having to spring
from her thin-lipped mouth; she hated me. In turn, to show I wasn’t intimidated
by her, I looked her up and down. I wasn’t going to take this but I should have
realised I would be fighting a losing battle.

Penelope Whitter was around forty years old. She’d either
had Botox very recently or had been administered far too much years ago and had
never truly recovered; both would explain the freaky non-movement of her eyes
and forehead. It was a look that would easily scare small children, even in
their graphic, desensitised violent world where they become “adults” at four
compared to my slightly more sheltered childhood. Still, if I’d have known her
fate then, despite her meanness, I would have warned her about the dangers of
excess Botox – she died a few years ago from Botox poisoning, but I doubt she
would have listened. Maybe if I was Harriet she would have.

I towered above her. About a foot shorter than me in her
kitten heels, her dirty blonde hair was piled in a beehive on top of her head.
It added to her height but looked awful. The pioneers of that eighties
hairstyle have a lot to answer for.

To top it all off, she looked like a clone of the Boden
catalogue. I don’t mean that offensively either. It’s just that I suspect she’d
ordered the outfits exactly as they were modelled on the pages. I doubt she
would have dared to team a Boden shirt with a Whistles skirt, for example. Oh
no. She seemed far too straight-laced to risk an outfit that hadn’t been
demonstrated for her. She should have looked friendly and corporate with her
attire; to me she looked like a Rottweiler dressed up in a pink tutu. It didn’t
matter how friendly she tried to make herself appear, you just somehow knew
otherwise.

Is it really possible that some people are born without a
sense of style? I mean, she was co-ordinated to within an inch of her life, but
she wasn’t giving off that certain clothing confidence that comes from knowing
you’ve put a really good outfit together.
Yourself
.
She came across as manufactured and a little bit false, like a “cashmere”
jumper that’s only three per cent cashmere, the rest being an angora-
lambswool
mix. Fashion confidence is what gives me my
overall confidence, always has been, and I had to really use it then to try and
propel myself above Penelope Whitter’s unfounded and obvious dislike of me.

She narrowed her already squinty eyes at me into a full-on
glare at my retaliated sweep of her. ‘Ariel?’

I wasn’t sure if she was questioning the name choice of my
parents or why I wasn’t Harriet. I hated the way she pronounced it as well,
like I was the little mermaid or, even worse, the washing powder.

I laughed nervously, mostly to myself. Penelope Whitter
looked like the sort of woman who lacked a sense of humour, but I hazarded her
husband must have had one to have married her.
 

‘It’s Arielle, actually,’ I corrected. ‘Arielle Lockley.’

Pronounced “arry-el” – not that tricky – and I threw in another
winning smile, one that had charmed her PR manager earlier on. She wasn’t
charmed though. Oh no. At that she abruptly swept out of the room leaving me to
sink back into my chair in shock.

This was much worse than previous bitchiness I had
encountered in life, like the girl from my class at university who had
repeatedly kicked my chair because she suspected we fancied the same guy. I
know, right! This woman was an MD. Where was her sense of professionalism?
These games were supposed to stop once you left the playground behind, even
though I had been surprised to learn that cliques still dominated at
university. I’d had high hopes for the workplace. After Penelope’s appalling
behaviour, I realised how wrong I was.

I blinked back the few tears that had begun to well up in my
eyes, tears that had the serious intent to fall, and started pushing back my
cuticles to distract myself. I had no clue what I had done wrong, or what I
could do to try and rectify the bizarre scenario. Did her crazy input have that
much clout in the decision to hire me? I hoped not because I needed this job, I
needed the link it provided me. That link was far more important than paying
off a few silly credit cards... at least until the next round of threatening
letters came and shook me from my lovesick state. Whoever said you don’t need
money when you have love clearly never had to speak to an angry bank manager.

A few minutes later, after I had just managed to calm down
by wrecking my manicure, I heard muttered whisperings outside the meeting room
and Penelope finally re-emerged, shutting the door behind her. Disarmingly she
sat down and smiled at me like she’d never seen me before. Her eerie smile made
me feel like a caged animal, not helped because Penelope was between me and the
closed door. With her not-so-balanced behaviour I was feeling very
uncomfortable, uncomfortable enough to consider the window behind me if an
extreme panic scenario arose. I figured I would survive the three-floor drop
with nothing more than a broken ankle, if luck was on my side.

It was all getting too weird for my liking and I was losing
my enthusiasm with every passing second but I had to get this job regardless of
Penelope. I could overcome this obstacle, I was strong. I would demonstrate a
truly enviable professional character, one beyond my twenty-one years.

Perhaps this was the final challenge of the interview
process. Perhaps Penelope Whitter was actually a lovely person outside this
room. I doubted that though when she just sat there, the evil dancing in her
eyes. She was wasting her talents in the PR world; Penelope Whitter was more
suited to handing out a prison sentence judging by the intensity of hatred in
her (contact-lensed) blue eyes. Her schizophrenic mood changes would definitely
have helped to keep her confused citizens in check.

MD must really mean Manic Dictator. Forget Sweeney Todd’s
notoriety as the demon barber of Fleet Street, Penelope Whitter was the demon
MD of Farringdon Road.

‘Sooooo,’ she finally drawled at me.

It was a tone too young for her. I wondered if she had
picked it up from her children but who on Earth would want to breed with a
demon like her? I hazarded if someone did though, the children would be packed
off to boarding school, wisely so considering the emotional scarring her parenting
would inflict on said children. Women like Penelope Whitter are why UNICEF’s
children’s rights rules were created, and you can quote me on that.
 

‘Ariel’s an unusual name,’ she continued with a smirk. ‘Who
came up with that one?’ Her tone would have suggested to the casual observer
that she was really interested – I knew otherwise.

‘It’s Arielle, actually,’ I corrected her. Again. I wasn’t
going to let the viperous cow succeed. I shot her a polite smile, but she
ignored me. It was like I hadn’t spoken.

‘Parents fans of
The
Little Mermaid
perhaps?’ she tinkled to herself. ‘Or were you conceived in
a laundrette?’

I almost choked at that. Surely there are rules and laws
especially in today’s politically-correct world regarding interview conduct? Nervously,
I giggled, unsure how to respond. Maybe she would be pleased I found her
“funny”.

‘And Demi! Equally as lovely,’ she trilled sarcastically,
leaning back in her seat. ‘After the film star, I assume?’

OK, she was right with that one, but I was named back in the
eighties when celebrity name mirroring for offspring wasn’t copied to the
extent it is today.

I managed a weak smile.

‘Although...’ Penelope chose to lean forward
conspiratorially – and stupidly I mirrored her. ‘You do know what Demi means in
French, right?’ She didn’t even pause to let me answer. ‘It means incomplete.
Are you incomplete, Ariel?’ She sneered.

I gulped back tears, my throat tightening. I was too shocked
to laugh this one off, let alone answer her. I felt like I must be on some
dodgy “surprise” TV show because surely no one would act like this in a normal
job interview? Surely it had to be against some law, be a crime against
humanity? Not that Penelope Whitter was human. She was a rabid dog that
deserved to be put down but I remained mute at her onslaught. I sat there in
shock, causing her to smirk once again from behind her magenta D&G frames –
frames purely there for effect because you could easily see her contact lenses.

With that, she changed tact, satisfied she had rattled me.
‘So,’ she continued politely, which threw me, ‘why do you want to work at
Benfords?’

‘I don’t,’ I muttered. I was too shell-shocked to realise
what I was saying. After all, I needed that job.

‘Well then.’ She stood up. ‘We’ll be in touch,
Arielle
. Thanks for coming in.’

And with that she walked out of the meeting room, leaving me
to sit there in a daze trying to process what had just happened.