Just as I reach my desk our MD's office door flies open. 'ISABEL. IN HERE,' he announces through his hand-held tannoy which he insists on using even though I could probably reach over and touch him.
Gerald is a sharp-looking man in his late forties. He has dark hair that is always neatly combed into place and sports a slight paunch. He is our much-vilified managing director and deservedly so, for he is without doubt the rudest, most sarcastic man I have ever met. And I quite like him. He doesn't believe in beating around the bush, he says it's tedious. No 'good-morning-how-are-you' stuff for him.
I follow him into his office and shut the door behind me.
'How was the rehearsal?' Gerald demands as I go over to his coffee percolator and pour myself a mug.
'Awful. Sean insisted on swapping all his props with Oliver. Coffee?'
'Please. I need something to get me through this Godawful day. Sean and Oliver will probably end up killing each other. We can only hope. Are you on the Ice Feast all day?'
'Unfortunately. Lady Boswell is in later. It's going to be a very long week.'
'Where's Aidan?'
'In the rehearsal room.'
'He's going through one of his phases.'
I grin. Aidan always goes through one of his phases if he feels some difficult questioning from Gerald coming on. 'Has he blown his budget again?' I ask.
'Into orbit. I don't really know why he bothers doing cost projections at all.'
Gerald eyes me carefully at this last comment. It's a well-known fact in the company that Aidan wouldn't be caught dead next to a cost projection. I think Gerald correctly suspects I do them all for him. 'Nor do I,' I say flippantly.
'Every time I question him about the cost he throws one of his fits.'
'Ah.' This involves Aidan throwing himself down on the nearest piece of furniture and wailing something along the lines of, 'Questions, questions. Why must I deal with so many questions?' Occasionally he compares himself to Picasso or Bach in that genius must be given licence to express itself. I love Aidan's fits; he always has a small crowd gathered around him by the end. 'I'll deal with him, if you want.'
'Do that. Get him to cut down somewhere.'
'I'll try. No promises.'
'Got over being dumped yet?' he asks bluntly. 'You're not exactly a ray of sunshine at the moment.'
My relationship with Gerald is not such that I can weep silently on his shoulder for twenty minutes so I simply tell him that I'm fine.
At lunchtime Aidan reappears, sits eagerly on my desk and crosses his Versace-clad legs. Aidan is my best friend here at the office. When I first arrived at the company I was his assistant for a year before I got to plan parties of my own. He's been here for ages and is the most requested organiser in the company. He is, as he often likes to remind us, creative. It is his get-out-of-jail-free card with Gerald. Any slight misdemeanour and it is put down to his creative nature. Aidan has murdered four clients with a party popper and a tablecloth? Oh, that's because he's creative.
'So how are you today?' he asks. 'I haven't really seen you to ask.' This is accompanied by much face-pulling. You can't have a conversation with Aidan without these facial contortions; you know you've been with him too long when you find yourself incapable of saying a sentence without sucking in your cheeks, rolling your eyes and pushing up imaginary bosoms with one arm.
'Fine!' I say brightly and pull a face back.
'You don't look fine.'
I can't keep it from him any longer. 'Something happened to me on the Tube,' I groan. 'Someone thought I was pregnant and offered me their seat.'
'Oh.'
'Don't you dare laugh, Aidan,' I say sharply, seeing him bite his lip hard. 'Because it simply is not funny.'
'Oh, I'm not laughing, Isabel. I'm merely, em … So what did you do?'
'What could I do? Tell them that my slightly swollen stomach is due to an excess of Cornettos since Rob dumped me? I did the only thing I could do. I thanked them very nicely and sat down.'
Aidan puts out a comforting hand. 'Darling, you know it always goes on your stomach and never on your breasts. Nature is a bitch like that.'
'Why couldn't I have simply said that I have put on a few pounds since my boyfriend dumped me? We could have had a nice chat about the pros and cons of the Hay diet versus the Atkins and a jolly time could have been had by all. But no, I was too British about the whole thing. Someone accuses me of being pregnant and I am far too polite to disagree.'
'Come on, Izzy. It's only been three weeks. Besides, I think it's very useful to put weight on your stomach. At least it can't sneak up behind you and cunningly slip on your bottom while you're not looking.'
'But then people don't think you're pregnant.'
'No, they just think you've got a large arse.'
'Thanks so much. Why can't I be one of those women who drop four dress sizes when they've been dumped?' I complain.
'Ahhh, ducks, because then you wouldn't be you. I like you being you, apart from the anal cost projections thing of course.'
'I just wish I could figure out why Rob dumped me,' I say. 'We used to have such a marvellous time. Maybe I was too keen, Aidan.'
He snorts derisively. 'Keen, smeen. Darling, we're not in kindergarten any more.'
'Do you think I should call him and ask?'
'No, no and no,' says Aidan. 'We have been over this. Anyone who finishes with someone by telephone, and don't forget that he tried to time the call to get your voice mail because he couldn't be bothered to actually speak to you, is simply not worth the time of day. Also, may I point out, leaving a message on your
work
voice mail is simply the most gutless, horrible thing I have ever heard.'
'I know,' I whisper, my voice wobbling.
Stephanie wanders over to us with a fag in her hand before we can say any more. 'Lady Toss-well is here.'
'Stephannnieee,' I hiss, standing up and smoothing down my skirt. 'I told you not to call her that. Did you put her in the boardroom?'
'Yeah.'
'Thanks.' I pick up my notebook, take a deep breath and march briskly over to reception, up one flight of stairs and into the boardroom. Lady Boswell is sitting bolt upright on one of the chairs with one hand lying gracefully in her lap and the other on top of the handle of a large umbrella she likes to carry everywhere.
'Lady Boswell, how nice to see you,' I say smoothly. 'Did Stephanie offer you a cup of coffee?'
Lady Boswell looks at me as though I have just offered her a cup of cat sick with a couple of teaspoons of maggots stirred in.
'Coffee, Isabel, coffee? You must know that I never take caffeine in the afternoon. We are living in a coffee-obsessed age. Those dreadful bars are everywhere.'
Lady Boswell is fairly typical of some of our more traditional clients. A stickler for the rules and Debrett's, she is also terribly thin, which does not endear her to me at all, and is today dressed in a navy blue suit complete with stockings and gloves. A large handbag accompanies her everywhere and she has been known to take a swipe with it when things aren't going according to plan. Hence my nervousness about the Nordic Ice Feast.
She purses her thin lips, which she always over-paints with cerise lipstick, while I open my notebook. 'Now, how is the party planning actually progressing? Are the Vikings going to look like Vikings? You know I can't have Mrs Sneddon-Wells showing me up. Her Caribbean banquet is still the talk of London.' She pauses for breath and looks me up and down critically. 'Have you put on some weight, Isabel?'
C h a p t e r 2
P
arty planning hasn't always been my natural vocation. I wish I could claim a childhood of glitzy events had prepared me for it but the closest I had ever got to any excitement was when my father took me to a Don MacLean concert at the age of twelve. The whole thing was a disaster and we had to leave at the interval. My father thought things were getting out of hand because people were throwing their ice cream lids at the stage.
My father was in the army so my sister Sophie and I were continually being uprooted and moved around the world. Perhaps due to my rather chaotic childhood I always craved a very solid career. Once I graduated from university the need for money and ambition took a strong hold of me and I went to train as a financial analyst. I didn't think you could get more solid than reassuring columns of figures and tables. After my training course, a nice City firm gave me my very own office, along with their assurances that they thought I would be very happy with them. I hoped I would be.
On my first day I popped my head out of my office in search of a friendly face and the possibility of sharing a lunchtime sandwich. I was met by a maze of desks and people who were eating their lunch while still talking on their phones. I went back into my office and did the same. It doesn't matter – people who work so hard must play hard too, I thought to myself. We'll all be in the pub on the stroke of six. But as the days went past, we weren't in the pub at all. We weren't even in McDonald's. In fact, the only person who really spoke to me was the girl I bought my sandwich from.
The days plodded on and it came as quite a shock to me when I found myself positively envying the sandwich girl. I envied her mobility. I envied her careless chatter with people. I envied her flexible hours. Things came to a head when I was showing some visitors around the building and we happened to meet the chairman outside his office. Once he had shaken hands with everyone, he turned to me and said, 'I hope we're impressing you!' with great joviality. He thought I was one of the visiting dignitaries.
It was then that I started to wonder whether I hadn't in fact made the wrong choice. How could I be valued if my chairman didn't even know who I was? An uneasy period of indecision followed until one day, while in a conversation with one of our middle-aged employees, I discovered that she hadn't wanted to work in the finance industry at all. She'd taken the job as a stop-gap over eighteen years ago and had stayed because she didn't know what else to do. Peculiar how a conversation like that can shape your life. I didn't want to be her in eighteen years' time.
So I packed up my pot plant and my photographs and left my safe little office in the City. By luck, I answered an ad for Table Manners, and the rest is history. What the advert for an administrative assistant in a trendy party planning firm didn't tell me was that all new employees have to spend a compulsory month being trained in the kitchens, which resembles some sort of boot camp. I was up ridiculously early, peeling and preparing endless mounds of vegetables. I always had at least two of those extremely attractive blue catering plasters on display (that month did nothing for my love life).
But I learned how to make most of the basic sauces, when various ingredients were in season, the best way to cook all kinds of fish and meat; in short, I developed a real sense of food. Not that I hadn't been fairly aware of it before – I always knew immediately if chocolate biscuits were in close proximity – but I came to know instinctively which flavours and textures would work well together.
My knowledge of figures also meant I was good with the foundations of party planning. I could craft into beautiful tabular form the basic costs of an event, so I still had my reassuring figures but without the loneliness of the City. Maybe in a few years' time I might set up my own business because I think I have the foundations to manage it. And I had no idea work could be such fun! Even on a bad day like this one. It seems immoral somehow.
I stomp up the steps to my flat in a thoroughly bad mood and press the buzzer impatiently. I know Dom, my housemate, will be home before me – he always is – and I can't be bothered to fish around in my handbag for my keys. This bugs Dom a lot but I know he will answer because he has learned his lesson from last time when he just picked up the handset and yelled, 'I'm not letting you in, you lazy slut!' Mrs Lawrence was only trying to drop off some Neighbourhood Watch leaflets. It took a card and several bunches of flowers before she would speak to him again.
'Hello?'
'Dom, it's me.'
'Where are your keys?' he demands petulantly.
'Don't know. Pl-ea-se let me in.'
'No!'
'Go on, Dom!'
'Oh, all right.'
He presses the release key in a half-hearted gesture, giving me exactly a second to elbow my way into the hall. Once inside I trot up two flights of stairs, cursing the woman's mag that told me I should do it two at a time or I'll have a backside the size of China, and push open the door to my flat. I bought this flat when I was more profitably employed than I am now and Dominic is my lodger. My period of flush employment didn't run to huge amounts of furniture but Dom claims he likes the minimalist look anyway, with our few well-chosen ornaments of Mouldy Toast on Plate, Dying Plant and Half-Empty Mug. Our bedrooms lead off from the hallway and we share a connecting bathroom. We have a rule that whoever gets any part of their body across the bathroom threshold first in the morning gets preference. This leads to downright dangerous bursts of speed at seven a.m. and even the occasional rugby-like tackle. Dom has been known, after his more drunken nights of revelry, to sleep in the bath in order to guarantee his slot.