Authors: Marisa Mackle
I found myself scowling at my cheese-and-coleslaw
sandwich. I should have ordered a salad like Sally. “I feel like I’m obese,” I said morosely.
“Hey, stop that! You’ve just had a baby,” said Sally.
“What an achievement that is. Come on now, don’t beat yourself up for having put on a few pounds. It’s the most natural thing in the world. The average woman would be happy with your size.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it, but who wants to be average?
Anyway, I just feel enormous today. Everyone else is so skinny compared to me.”
Sally cut a lettuce leaf in half with her knife and fork.
“But our office isn’t normal,” she said. “We work for a fashion magazine. I’m sure if you were working in an insurance office or something everybody would just look like regular people. We’re bombarded by fashion images of skinny models every day. No wonder we feel guilty eating chocolate!”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, forcing myself to
cheer up slightly. I started tucking into my sandwich. The carbs felt so good. I could sense that Sally was looking at my plate longingly.
“Tina is on a strict diet at the moment,” Sally said,
eager to fill me in on all the gossip. “It’s called the Heartbreak Diet. It’s the most effective diet in the whole world.”
“Heartbreak?”
“Yes, didn’t you hear? She split up with her boyfriend a few days ago. She caught him in bed with another bird apparently when she arrived home early from work.”
“What! Are you serious? That’s terrible.”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God, poor Tina!
She must have been devastated. So I guess they won’t be buying a house now.”
“I guess not. Well, not together anyway,
Although she’s still banging on about the fact that property prices are still dropping and have even further to go. It really annoys poor Annette from accounts who bought her house in the middle of the boom and is now drowning in negative equity.”
“Well, she can be annoying all right. She just doesn’t
seem to know when to shut up and her mouth tends to start moving before her brain has a chance to engage. But she didn’t say anything to me about the break-up.”
“As if she would!
Tina likes to pretend to everyone that her whole life is wonderful. I think the break-up was supposed to be a secret but she stupidly told Louise and now the whole office knows about it. Now she’s starving herself in the hope of losing weight and getting her boyfriend back. No breakfast, black coffee all day, an apple at eleven, a half a tub of cottage cheese and some fruit at lunch and vodka in the evening. Apparently, she’s lost a half a stone already.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, and although it nearly kills me to admit it, she does look amazing. Bitch!”
I couldn’t help wishing a little that I was on a
Heartbreak Diet. Why does it never work like that for me? When Clive dumped me all I could do was stuff my face with sweets and cakes! I was so skinny when I met him and now I’m fat and disgusted with myself. How can these people simply stop eating over the loss of a man? I envy them!
I decided not to waste my lunch-break worrying
about losing weight and I asked Sally about Louise. I mean, where had she even come from? And how long was she staying? Not too long, I hoped.
Sally popped a cherry tomato in her mouth an
d pretended to savour the moment. “Well,” she said, “Creea took on Louise and another girl as interns, basically in order to save money by not employing a real person to do the work, and then the other girl left last week and Louise was kept on. I believe she’s on a six-month contract, not that you’ll hear that from her. That one wouldn’t tell her left hand what her right hand was doing. She’s a bit sly.”
I raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “Sly? How do you
mean? In what way?”
“Well, I’ll give you a good example. The invitations
came in the other day for the premiere of that new romantic comedy starring Colin Firth. You know the one everyone’s raving about? So, the tickets were naturally like gold dust for that. Tina opened the envelope and left the tickets on her desk, but then she said she couldn’t find them on the afternoon of the premiere. Myself and Tina had intended on going together and making a girls’ night
out of it but, as we had no tickets and it was too late to
phone the PR people to see if we could get new tickets issued, we couldn’t go. Anyway, the next day Louise came into work as usual and said nothing, and that afternoon I saw a picture of Louise and a friend of hers in the society pages of th
e
Evening Heral
d
! They had been at the film and the after party and they had even met Colin Firth. Can you frigging believe it? Her new Facebook profile photo
is
a photo with her standing next to him!”
“Oh my God, I feel sick!”
“Tell me about it! I swear on my life, myself and Tina were livid. Then when I asked her about the film tickets that had gone missing she said she didn’t know what happened to them.”
“Did
Creea say anything to her?”
Sally shrugged.
“No, of course not. Creea doesn’t give a hoot about who gets to go to see what film. Now there’s a woman who thinks she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders at the moment. And she’s right to be worried. There are too many women’s
magazines
in the current saturated market, all vying for the same advertisers. You wouldn’t believe the amount of companies that are reducing their advertising budgets, even the staples such as the cosmetics companies and the hair-care companies. This is serious. And we’re in competition with the internet now. People aren’t really interested in magazines anymore.”
I knew she was telling the truth and, although I didn’t
say it, I was worried too. What if I lost my job? Okay, I knew I was being paid a pittance and I had little security, but I had a baby to support now. Where would I go if I wasn’t here? Who else would allow me work half the week from home? Many employers were just not interested in mums with commitments. If I didn’t have Tanya at home right now holding the fort, I’d be in right trouble. I felt uneasy about my future. The fact that I was being made share a desk with a newbie was definitely not a good sign. It undermined my status at work and it would eventually erode my confidence. Would the next step be out the door for me? I didn’t even want to let my mind
wander
there.
The afternoon dragged on and on and on. It seemed
like any time I took a call or phoned somebody, Louise would whip out her mobile and start talking loudly as though she were trying to drown out my voice. It was extremely difficult trying to work in such close
proximity
to somebody else. It felt at times like she was practically sitting on my knee!
I found myself looking at my watch a lot more than I
should have. I never remembered doing that before when I was at work. And I even found myself looking at photos of John on my mobile phone at one stage. Seriously, was that pathetic or what? I missed John. I mean, I really did miss him way more than I thought I would. I wondered if he was missing me. Then I chided myself, telling myself not to be completely ridiculous. Of course he didn’t miss me. He was in the very capable hands of the lovely Tanya. She was like a second mummy to him almost.
For a few self-pitying moments I found myself
wondering why I was sitting beside a hostile stranger in a cramped office space, doing a job that paid peanuts, when another woman was in my home not having to put up with any office politics crap and playing bunnies and teddies with the person that I loved most in the world. I fought back a lone tear. I didn’t want to come across as pathetic. I wondered did all mums feel this bad going back to work or was it just me? Was I just a weakling? When the time came to go home that evening I practically ran all the way to the train station. I didn’t want to be a minute more away from my son than I had to be. There was a train parked in the station just as I came up the escalator. I rushed towards it, nearly catching myself in the sliding doors. Phew! I made it.
As I sat on the train, looking out the window so as
not to catch anybody’s eye, I wondered if I could do something else. Working as a part-time stylist was all very well for somebody in their twenties, living at home. Somebody like Louise, say. But was it really a proper job for a mummy who didn’t have every second night off to go and schmooze at fashion shows? Maybe I needed to rethink my priorities. I mean, just because I was a stylist now didn’t mean I had to remain one forever. Maybe I could still be a lab technician. Then again, maybe not. I had been caught by the fashion bug and I didn’t want to completely opt out now. Anyway, I wasn’t going to be pushed out by a youngster like Louise. I needed to get a grip. The sun was shining when I got off the train and I had a skip in my step as I walked along the road, looking forward to seeing my baba again. You’d have thought I hadn’t seen him in a month!
I was feeling a lot more
positive now. Why was I worrying about a teenager? She
didn’t
have half my experience and I had spent the last few years gathering an impressive amount of contacts in the fashion world. I knew I could produce great, imaginative shoots. I’d done it before and I’d do it again. Suddenly I spotted a very familiar figure walking towards me. She had a shopping bag in each hand and a child running along either side of her. She looked worn out and exhausted and far from her usual pristine itself. I nearly stopped dead in my tracks when I saw her, and for a fleeting moment wondered whether there was time to cross the road without being noticed. But then she looked up and stared straight at me. It was Joanne. And I had stolen her nanny!
“Oh hi, Joanne!”
I said breezily, hoping like hell that she would be in too much of a hurry to stop and chat.
“Hello,
Kaylah, how are you? Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s lovely to see a bit of sun, but there’s a strong
wind.”
“I suppose we should be thankful that it isn’t raining.”
“Yes,” I agreed, feeling very uncomfortable indeed. Did she know? I mean, did she know that Tanya was living with me? And was it the end of the world if she did know? I mean, why was I mentally beating myself up about it? People switched jobs all the time. Samira left me to work for another family and I had got over it. After all, it wasn’t as though I had stolen Joanne’s husband or got her fired.
“Are you doing much reading?” I asked.
Books were a safe subject and reading was something we both had in common. In fact, it was probably the only thing I had in common with this other mother who was at least a decade older than myself and, according to Tanya, had never worked a day in her life. Her husband was a senior bank executive who made enough money to afford her a nice comfortable life without ever having to worry about little things such as electricity and food bills. Tanya had confided in me that Joanne’s life consisted of the book club, her Wednesday night bridge, her Thursday morning golf and the parent-teaching meetings at her children’s schools.
“I’m not really reading much at the moment,” Joanne
said with a sigh as her two boys hung out of her, pulling each arm. “It’s hard during the summer when the kids are off school. There really isn’t five minutes to yourself when they’re that age. It’s been a fairly hectic summer and, to top it all, our nanny walked out on us with no explanation. Didn’t even say good-bye.”
There, she’d said it.
I found myself frozen to the spot. Shit! I felt like I’d been just caught cheating in an exam by a teacher. I’m sure I went the colour of beetroot. My mind was racing. Hang on, I thought – no – it sounds as if she doesn’t actually know. What should I say? Should I just come clean? Confess all? Would she forgive me? Then again, would I forgive her for treating Tanya so badly? After all, Tanya and myself had become good friends now.
We’d gone on holidays together and she was almost like
a second mum to Baby John. I felt almost protective towards her. She had come to this country to improve her English and experience a new way of life. Joanne and her husband had more or less treated her like a slave. I opened my mouth. I knew I should say something but the first word was trapped somewhere halfway down my throat and I couldn’t get it out.
“I . . . I know,” I managed at last
.
“Oh yes, I’m sure you know what it’s like. It must be
so tough being a single mum. I don’t envy you.”
So she definitely didn’t know.
“How is your little girl anyway?”
“I’ve a boy actually – John. He’s great.” Why did
everyone ask me about a little girl? “I’m back to work now. In fact, today was my first day back.”
“And how did it go?”
“Oh fine, I . . .”
“Com
e
o
n
, Mum!” said one of the boys. Both her sons looked bored and sulky.
“I’d better go,” Joanne smiled apologetically. “They’ve
been promised ice-cream and they’re holding me to it.”
“Okay, well, I’ll see you at the next book-club meeting,
I suppose?”