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Out of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the fourth floor, I could see a glorious sunset breaking across the sky. It was such a beautiful evening and I didn’t want to ruin it for them.
‘You two should stay,’ I said, slipping one foot between the lift door and the wall. ‘I’m going to go for a walk.’
‘No way,’ Brian said. ‘We’re not leaving you alone.’
‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ I insisted, putting on my resolved face. ‘That was admittedly very weird, but I’m fine, I promise. Just not in the mood to go over it all night long.’
Did anyone really like rehashing their break-ups? It felt like a lifetime since Matthew and I had ended things, but seeing him on the big screen had been a shock. I’d done such a good job of wiping him out of my life, such a dramatic re-entry felt like a punch to the gut.
‘As if I’m going to let you go home on your own and be upset over that tosser,’ Miranda said as my resolved face faltered. ‘Matthew was a wanksock, you are the best. It’s like you, then Chrissy Teigen and then Beyoncé.’
‘No way am I better than Chrissy Teigen,’ I argued. ‘Maybe Beyoncé on a good day, but never Saint Chrissy.’
She stared at me with a thoughtful pout and I offered her a genuine, if watery smile in return.
‘Fine, you can go,’ she said, finally. ‘But you have to promise me you’re not going to spend all night stalking their Instagram accounts.’
‘I’m not a sadist,’ I replied, stepping into the lift. ‘I’m going to watch the proposal once or twice, find something he bought me and burn it, have a cry in the bath and then watch QVC Beauty until I pass out in front of the TV.’
‘We can’t argue with that plan,’ Brian said, blowing me a kiss as the lift door slid shut. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow, love.’
My flat was only a five-minute walk from work – if you took the shortest route. But I was in no rush and the long way was calling me. Beautiful weather had been in short supply all summer and it felt good to feel the last rays of sun on my skin as I trotted out into the empty street. Everyone was watching the game, I realised as I peeled off my denim jacket and straightened the sleeves of my pink T-shirt, and the city was mine. Winter had overstayed its welcome well into spring and I couldn’t even count the number of nights I’d stayed late at the office to keep my central heating bill down at home. Such was the glamorous life of a London gal.
There was something reassuring about a warm summer’s evening in the city. People slowed down, they smiled, they forgot their problems and lingered a little longer, another drink, a chat outside the tube station. It was hard to be social when you were running away from the rain or hiding under your hood from an angry gust of wind. But this was perfect wandering weather. A whiff of the chip shop, the clean soapy smell of the laundrette, I could even find a soft spot for City Best Kebabs on a night like this. Or, let’s be honest, any night.
I held my phone in my hand, as I almost always did, and as I turned off the main street it began to ring. I’d been avoiding checking my messages since I left the office. A cursory glance at my inbox on the way down in the lift had revealed more puke-face emojis than I’d had the privilege to see in my entire life. My friends were good people. But this was a call, not a text or a What’s App, and no one called me, save my sister or my mother. This time, it was my mum.
‘Annie.’
‘Mum.’
‘I just saw the news.’
I sighed internally and looked longingly at the fried chicken place across the street.
‘You know I don’t watch the news,’ I replied, keeping my head down and walking on by. I had half a packet of perfectly delicious, three-day-old scones at home that weren’t going to eat themselves. ‘What’s wrong, has the world ended?’
‘Not the news-news,’ she said, sighing externally. ‘The news about Matthew. At the football thing.’
‘Oh, that news,’ I replied, blasé as could be. ‘I saw that. I must drop him a text.’
Mum seemed surprised.
‘Oh.’ It took a moment to choose her next words. ‘I thought you might be a bit upset.’
‘I’m fine.’ How many more times would I have to sing this song before everyone believed me? ‘Me and Matthew broke up forever ago,’ I recited. ‘I’m really happy for him.’
‘Doesn’t feel like it was that long ago to me,’ she replied. Helpful as ever. ‘But that’s age for you. If it wasn’t twenty years ago, it was last week.’
‘Mum, you’re only fifty-eight,’ I reminded her. ‘We’re not carting you off to the knacker’s yard just yet.’
‘You might as well,’ she muttered as I hopped down off the pavement to dodge two tired-looking mothers pushing two double pushchairs. I smiled politely at the women and skipped on quickly. Miranda and Brian were all the children I could cope with for now. ‘Honestly, Annie, I’m falling apart at the seams.’
It was utter nonsense, I’d never seen a midlife crisis go so well. Ever since she’d left London and moved up north, my mother had been through a complete renaissance. My dad left when I was little and Mum hadn’t dealt with it terribly well, then out of the blue, she was thriving. My sister was worried she’d taken herself off to Yorkshire to die but as it turned out, we’d had quite the incorrect impression of Yorkshire. Mum had transformed from a depressed divorcée into a lean, mean needle-wielding machine. One day she was a practice nurse at our local surgery, the next she was opening the first medispa in Hebden Bridge and bringing Botox to the masses. I hadn’t seen my mother’s forehead move in more than two years.
‘You’re sure you’re not even a little bit sad about Matthew getting engaged?’ Mum wheedled. ‘No good can come from bottling up your feelings. You’ll block your chakras, and then I can’t begin to tell you what kind of a mess you’ll get yourself into.’
‘My chakras are absolutely brilliant,’ I assured her. ‘All properly aligned and shiny and fresh and whatever else they’re supposed to be.’
‘Why don’t you take a few days off?’ she suggested. ‘I’m going to Portugal on a yoga retreat tomorrow, with Karen? From the library? We’re adding a studio onto the back of the clinic so I can teach once I’ve got my five hundred hours.’
The image of my mother administering lip filler while in Warrior III tickled me.
‘I can’t take any time off at the minute,’ I said, forcing a little extra regret to my voice. ‘We’re so busy at work and we’ve been nominated for some awards, big ones, so I need to be around. I’m totally gutted though, I’m sure it would be fun.’
‘You’ve really thrown yourself into work since you and Matthew separated,’ she replied with a soft warning in her voice. ‘But you must remember to look after yourself. We work to live, we don’t live to work.’
‘That’s not it at all, I love my job,’ I reminded her. ‘And like I said, everything’s fine.’
‘That’s your theme song,’ Mum said before breaking into song. ‘Everything’s fine, everything’s fine, my name is Annie and everything’s fine.’
‘Mum, you’re breaking up,’ I said, holding the phone at arm’s length. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Phone calls don’t break up any more,’ she shouted out of my tinny speakers. ‘Annie?’
‘Sorry, didn’t get all that.’ I held my finger over the end call button. ‘I’ll call you when I get home.’ A grumpy, fat pug grimaced up at me from outside the newsagent’s on the corner. ‘I’m not going to call,’ I confessed. ‘I’m going to go to bed.’
The pug judged me silently.
They say home is where the heart is but I kept most of my other essential organs at the office. My flat was so small, you could walk from the front door to the back wall in five big steps and if I was being entirely honest, I wasn’t the most house-proud of humans. Piles of ironing, piles of mail, piles of books, piles of absolutely anything that could be stacked on top of each other were dotted around the living room, creating an obstacle course of little leaning towers. Every ounce of energy I had went into my job. Home was supposed to be the place where I could switch off. Not literally, of course, that would be insane. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually seen my phone with less than 43% battery.
Even though it was small, the flat was mine and I did love it. Little bathroom, little bedroom and a tiny open-plan living room and kitchen that might be a bit more inviting if I ever got around to buying a new settee. It turned out getting hold of an entire flat’s worth of furniture after a break-up was expensive – who knew towels could cost so much? And so, instead of the beautiful mid-century modern West Elm sofa of my dreams, I made do with my sister’s hand-me-down Ikea loveseat. It was too small for two people to sit down at the same time and painfully uncomfortable if you ever tried to lie down on it. Once upon a time, I think it had been white but now it was … well, white it definitely was not.
Carefully placing my laptop bag on top of the second-hand dresser I’d wedged in the space by the front door, I turned on the kettle before taking one giant leap from the kitchen into the bedroom and stripping off my clothes. More wine would not make me feel better. This was a night for tea. Besides, I told myself, I had nothing to feel bad about, other than the bag full of dry cleaning I’d been meaning to drop off for almost six months.
The front of my built-in wardrobe was mirrored from floor to ceiling, meaning at least once a day I had to give myself an all-over once-over. No matter how many body positivity videos I watched, I still preferred not to stare at my backside for too long. Objectively, I knew this was not a worst-case scenario situation; I liked my hair when it didn’t frizz, I liked my legs and thanks to a thirty-day plank challenge, I felt strong in the middle, if not especially skinny. And who wanted to be skinny these days, anyway? Being able to see your ribs was so 2015.
‘I’m happy for him,’ I told Mirror Annie. ‘Because I am a whole and complete person who only wishes joy for everyone in the universe.’
Mirror Annie frowned.
‘Fuck it,’ I muttered. ‘I hope he trips down the stairs and breaks both his legs.’
Yep, that was better.
Sometimes I wondered what would happen if my flat ever made it on to Through the Keyhole. Who would live in a house like this? A smart, small newbuild on the outside, the hoarder-like tendencies of a Deliveroo addict on the inside. The many devices covering every available surface suggested it could be the kind of professional troll who thought Piers Morgan talked a lot of sense. The endless polystyrene cartons and pizza boxes suggested someone who didn’t know how to turn on an oven. So far, so slightly worrying; very single middle-aged shut-in. But the lack of porn and huge stack of online shopping packages to be dropped off at the post office was a real curve ball. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d ordered something from ASOS only to realize, when it arrived twenty-four hours later, that I’d already ordered and returned the exact same thing a month earlier.
I plugged my phone into its charging dock, turned on the tiny TV in the bedroom and fired up my iPad, all while the kettle boiled. Time for one last circle around the socials to make sure everything was good and well with our clients. The influencers, the style vloggers, Fitspo and BoPo specialists, gamers and the mummy, travel and beauty bloggers, we worked with all of them. I’d learned more about different walks of life in this job than I could have ever come across in any other profession, whether it was how to apply perfect winged liner, where to stay on the island of Vanuatu or how to improve your vertical reach in Street Fighter V. Not all of my newly acquired knowledge had proved helpful yet, but who was to say when I might find myself invited to a formal video game competition in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?
As far as I could tell, all was right with the world of social media. Or at least, as all right as it ever would be, I was good at my job but I wasn’t a miracle worker. I carefully avoided my own pages. Even with all the filters and blocks and mutes I’d put on Matthew’s name, there was still too great a chance of seeing their happy, shining faces, and I didn’t want to give myself nightmares. With a fresh mug of tea and the last three broken Hobnobs in the packet, I retreated to my bedroom. My safe, beautiful, man-free bedroom. It was wonderful, not having to explain my every move to someone the way I had when I was with Matthew. I loved not having to justify another late night at work or an after-hours cocktail. I loved eating biscuits for dinner, scheduling my own weekends and never finding softcore porn in my Netflix queue. I loved my life. Would it be nice to occasionally have someone to snuggle up to while I yelled at the TV during Question Time? Maybe. Would it be nice to have a second pair of hands to help bring the shopping back from the supermarket? Of course it would. And yes, perhaps an actual living, breathing man might beat creating a nest of pillows in the middle of the night once in a while, but I was very much of the opinion what was meant to be would be. My life was full and fun and I was happy. Something I couldn’t always say when I was with Matthew.
Munching the last of my crumbly dinner, I turned off the TV and turned on my podcast app. Behind the Scenes had an interview with Mark Ruffalo. Maybe if I listened to it as I fell asleep, I could trick my brain into dreaming he was my boyfriend.
Because that was the behaviour of a perfectly happy, single thirty-one-year-old.
Wasn’t it?
CHAPTER THREE
‘It’s shit, Annie,’ Miranda growled, blinking into the bright morning sunshine. ‘I feel like I just got told off by my dad for spending all my pocket money.’
We’d been to see the bank manager. It had not gone well.
‘Can we just go back to the office and talk about it there?’ I asked. Yesterday’s beautiful weather had turned into a sweltering, sticky day and all the things I loved about London in the summertime had been washed away by the sea of sweaty bodies pressed against me on the Northern Line. ‘I can’t be angry and outside at the same time, Mir, it’s making me feel stabby.’
There were many difficult factors in running a real business but far and away the hardest part was money. There was never enough. Every single month we had to find rent, we had to find wages and for some reason, clients kept expecting us to do things for them before they paid us. It made literally no sense. I didn’t walk into Topshop, pick up a frock and flash the girl on the till a peace sign with a vague promise to get her the money within thirty days. Also, no one ever paid within thirty days. Ever.
Even though I was insanely proud of owning our own business there were other downsides too. I couldn’t call in sick and take to my (non-existent) settee with a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and watch an entire season of RuPaul’s Drag Race when I was having a particularly bad day. Like today, for example.
Miranda and I started Content because we were out of other options. After spending the best part of ten years in miserable marketing and advertising jobs, me withering away at a giant agency, nursing a sense of integrity that just wasn’t welcome, in a dark corner – literally a dark corner, I couldn’t even see a window from where they’d shoved me – and Miranda bouncing between every company in London, we decided it was time to become masters of our own destiny. And so we pooled our meagre resources and decided to live the dream.
With hindsight, I did sometimes wonder if we mightn’t have been better off just going to Disneyland for a fortnight then getting jobs at McDonalds when we came home but, you know what they say, you live and learn.
‘I’m so pissed off,’ Mir said, rolling up the sleeves of her oversized white shirt only for them to flap back down by her sides like an angry penguin. ‘He talked to us like we were children.’
‘He wasn’t angry, he was just disappointed,’ I agreed, wiping a film of city sweat from my forehead. ‘But not nearly as disappointed as Brian’s going to be when he finds out we can’t pay him at the end of the month.’
‘We’ll work it out, we always do,’ she muttered before automatically checking her phone. ‘All we need is breathing room. Maybe we could get another company credit card? Or we could sell something.’
I looked at her while she angrily swiped at her screen.
‘Like what? A kidney?’
‘Not helping,’ she replied.
‘You’re right,’ I said, unable to stop myself from bending down and picking up the Starbucks cup and depositing it in the closest bin. ‘We need our kidneys. We drink too much.’
‘Didn’t we start our company because we didn’t want to spend the rest of our careers listening to sanctimonious old men telling us what to do?’ Mir was still lost in rantland while I melted into an Annie-shaped puddle on the side of the road. ‘I want to march back in there and show him just how badly I have overextended myself.’
‘We don’t give up and we don’t give in,’ I reminded her, blocking her path. I was fairly certain she wouldn’t really walk into Barclay’s and deck the business manager but there really was no telling with Miranda Johansson. ‘That’s our motto, isn’t it?’
She frowned and shook her head.
‘I thought it was “Yes, I will have another”?’
‘We can’t afford the first one, let alone another,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go back.’
‘Fine,’ she sighed, opening up a rideshare app on her phone. ‘We can work this out without the bank. I believe in us.’
‘I believe I’d rather not be bankrupt by Christmas,’ I told her, covering her screen with my hand. ‘We should get the tube back.’
Mir threw her head back and howled out loud, attracting the attention of more than a few confused onlookers. ‘But it’s so hot,’ she whined. ‘And the station is miles away.’
‘Mir.’
I hated it when she made me sound like my mother.
‘Fine,’ she said, grudgingly cancelling the car. ‘I’ll just sweat through my shirt and look like a skank all day.’
‘That’s my girl,’ I replied, patting her on her sweaty back. ‘One day we’ll have drivers at our beck and call, hot and cold running drivers, ready to ferry us here, there and everywhere.’
‘Hot, cold, moderate, I don’t care,’ Miranda said, rolling up her sleeves once more and putting her best foot forward. ‘I just want to actually make some money for a change.’
It was always nice to have a dream.
‘Morning.’
Just what I needed. I looked up from my important tea-making activities to see Martin and Charlie flanking either side of the office kitchen. Rather than reply, I offered a tight smile and kept my eyes on the kettle hoping it was politely rude enough to send them on their way. On the walk back to work, I’d made a deal with myself. If I managed to call in at least one invoice and made it through the entire day without brutally murdering the first person to mention Matthew’s proposal, I was ordering Domino’s for dinner.
‘How are you feeling this morning?’ Martin asked in a sympathetic tone of voice I assumed he usually reserved for his grandmother’s best friend.
‘Amazing,’ I replied without looking at him. ‘Thank you for asking.’
Keep your eyes on the prize, I told myself. There’s pizza at stake, don’t murder them.
If only they hadn’t approached me in the kitchen with all its bright and shiny sharp things.
‘Everyone’s been talking about last night,’ Martin said while Charlie hovered at his elbow, monitoring my expression. ‘Must have been weird for you?’
‘You don’t really expect to turn on the game and see your ex getting engaged in 4K HD, do you?’ I replied. Deep, calm breaths. Think of the garlic dipping sauce. ‘Seems like more of a Facebook thing.’
‘Seems like you’re well out of it to me,’ Charlie said, passing me the milk from the fridge. ‘What a cock.’
They mean well, the voice in my brain whispered, let them live and you can have garlic bread as well.
‘The only thing that’s getting to me is having to talk about it, to be honest,’ I said as I aggressively dunked my teabag. ‘It’s really not a big deal.’
‘My mate Will just got dumped. I could set you up with him if you’d like?’ Martin offered helpfully. ‘I‘ll give him your number.’
They’re only trying to help, do not disembowel them with a Nespresso pod.
‘Recently dumped Will sounds lovely,’ I said with as much grace as I could muster. ‘But just because my ex got engaged, it doesn’t mean I’m desperate for a boyfriend.’
The two of them exchanged a glance and I knew what they were thinking.
It was the same thing I was thinking, lying in bed, wide awake at three o’clock that morning and scrolling through Bumble, Tinder, Happn, Hinge, Huggle and god help me, even Farmers Only. As soon as you ended a relationship you were in a game of snakes and ladders with your ex, there was always someone keeping score and, right now, Matthew was winning. Any points I’d earned from technically doing the dumping had been wiped off the board by his proposing to his supposed soulmate twelve months after we called it quits.
‘I’m dying of thirst, Higgins. Where’s my tea?’ Miranda strolled into the kitchen, having traded her oversized shirt for a cropped neon yellow T-shirt. She was the best, all faux leather trousers and fuck-you attitude. It was something I needed more of. The attitude, not the trousers. I got thrush from just looking at them.
‘Martin offered to set me up with his friend,’ I told her, handing over her My Little Pony mug. It didn’t really go with the rest of her look but when it came to a cup of tea, Mir would have drunk it out of a lightly rinsed bedpan if it was the only option. ‘Because I’m a sad and lonely spinster.’
‘Are you joking?’ she asked, looking astounded. ‘Have you seen this woman? Annie’s amazing. Any man alive would jump at the chance to go out with her. She’s funny, she’s clever, she’s generous, she doesn’t mess about and have you seen those getaway sticks? Annie, pull up your jeans, show them your legs.’
‘Get off,’ I muttered, slapping Miranda’s hands away from my knees. ‘Can I go back to my desk now please?’
‘Obviously, Annie is amazing,’ Charlie spoke extra loudly to make sure we knew he really meant it. ‘And if it’s all right for me to say so, you have got a cracking pair of legs there, Higgins.’
’It isn’t,’ I assured him. ‘But thank you.’
‘You’re looking at the empress of social media,’ Miranda was really on a roll. ‘She’s a kingmaker, best in the world at what she does. The fact you even get to stand in the same room as this woman is mindblowing to me. She’s the Meryl Streep of socials. In fact, I’m fairly certain you should bow whenever you see her.’
‘Yeah, yeah, she turns in a good tweet,’ Martin said, looking at the door and clearly wondering how his morning had taken such a wrong turn. ‘We’re all very impressed.’
‘What did you just say?’ Miranda slammed her cup down on the table, hot tea spilling everywhere. ‘She turns in a good tweet?’
I winced as I sipped my tea. What an idiot.
Martin paused and looked at Charlie. Charlie shook his head. Martin did not take the hint.
‘That’s what you do, isn’t it?’ he replied. ‘Twitter?’
‘Do you even know what we do?’ Miranda asked. ‘Do either of you have any clue?’
Martin shook his head. Charlie apparently knew better than to react. Mir sighed sadly and gave me the look. I shrugged apologetically and leaned back against the counter to watch the show. This wasn’t the first time we’d had to explain our actual jobs and I very much doubted it would be the last.
‘OK, so, Charlie, say you’re trying to think of a clever tagline to go on your thirty-second advert for a chicken cooking sauce?’ Mir began, gesticulating wildly as she went. ‘And you’re dead excited because the advert is going on in the middle of Coronation Street.’
He nodded.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said, clapping her hands right in front of his face. ‘No one watches the adverts any more. They’re all on their phone, interacting with content we created instead.’