Five

      Next morning we staggered around pretending to be more hungover than we really were so that we wouldn’t have to talk to one another.

      Fran had an audition, and I wished her good luck with it then set off for work. My boss was waiting in my office. That could not possibly be a good sign. I couldn’t remember him ever being in there before. I hoped he hadn’t been pawing through my desk: it was full of ‘I love Alex’ doodles.

      ‘Ah, yes, good morning, Melanie.’ He smiled at me, even more politely than usual. He was about five foot tall, but perfectly in proportion: you always had to resist the urge to pat him on his bald head.

      ‘Erm, mm, there’s been the most terrible fuss with marketing about the new brochure. Apparently the word “Fabricon” has been misspelled throughout.’

      I sighed. ‘It’s a made-up marketing word though, isn’t it?’ I pointed out. ‘It doesn’t matter how you spell it, it still means sod all. I can hardly check it in the Oxford English, can I?’

      ‘Nonetheless –’ oh no, he was sounding pompous – ‘nonetheless, it was the brand name of our latest product and was already on £45,000 worth of marketing literature. Which should be £48,000 worth, if we hadn’t missed the window in the production schedule due to your – and I’m sorry to have to say it – frankly substandard work.’

      Suddenly I felt incredibly small. Substandard work? Yup, I was back in the lower fourth. But this time it wasn’t my lack of comprehension of wave motion that was the problem, it was my own sheer laziness. I ran through all the possible options in my head, and chose the worst, nastiest, most pathetic one of all.

      ‘God, I’m sorry. It’s just … well, my flatmate has bulimia, and it’s been a really difficult time.’

      I looked like I might, possibly, burst into tears. I was scum. I was lower than scummy scum scum. Truly, that should be a sackable offence.

      ‘Oh, gosh, that must be really difficult for you.’ My boss looked so heartfelt and sensitive and upset I nearly started crying for real. ‘My sister had that.’

      Shit! That was it: hell, handbag, me, en route.

      He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I think it’s just as hard for those around the person, sometimes. It’s so frustrating, isn’t it?’

      I nodded plaintively, and embellished it a little. We revelled in our mutual caring personae for another ten minutes, and I reckoned I’d just about got off scot-free when he said:

      ‘I’m really sorry, Mel, and I know this isn’t going to help, but marketing have asked if you could move downstairs into their office – so you can all work a bit closer together, as it were. You’re going to be in their department from now on.’

      He looked genuinely regretful. It was all I could do to speak, so I just nodded woefully.

      ‘We’ll get your stuff moved down as soon as possible. My dear, it’s been a pleasure working with you.’

      It couldn’t have been, but I accepted the outstretched hand numbly, a billion growing threads of horror spawning through my head. The marketing department! Oh God, they had orange walls down there! And they used the term ‘conceptual’! And now I would have to get drunk at the Christmas party and make a fool of myself! Oh no – I did that already. Anyway, it was going to be work, work, work all day from now on, just like real people had to! I groaned heartily to myself. The phone rang.

      ‘Well, I can see you’re busy, so I’ll leave you to get sorted out.’ My boss got up gracefully and floated off on his little handmade shoes.

      It was Fran, of course.

      ‘Well? Have you spoken to him?’

      ‘Fran! I’m being shifted! They’re putting me in marketing!’

      ‘Oh my God, is that good or bad?’

      Fran had no concept of what goes on in the world of work. To her, corporate affairs meant copping off with City blokes.

      ‘Well, I’m going to have to work all day and never talk to you again surrounded by a big bunch of people who think it’s really cool to be in marketing, and sit in a cubicle, not in an office, and suffer the smell of other people’s baked potatoes at lunch time and hear their constant boring chatter about focus groups, and have people watching what I’m doing all the time and making bitchy comments about how I never wear anything orange … But apart from that it should be fine.’

      ‘Oh, OK. Anyway, have you spoken to Alex yet?’

      ‘Fran! This is IMPORTANT!’

      ‘More important than your boyfriend moving in with a rapist?’

      ‘Yes, actually!’

      There was a bit of a pause. Fran couldn’t see anything in life more important than the vagaries of our personal lives, and normally I agreed with her. So finally she must have sensed this was pretty bad.

      ‘I’m sorry. Have you been sacked?’

      ‘No, I haven’t been bloody sacked. Oh, forget it!’

      ‘Are you going to make less money?’

      ‘Fran, I’ll speak to Alex now, OK?’

      Damn. Still, at least she didn’t get the audition, or she’d have told me. I lived in constant fear that she would get unbelievably famous and never hang around with me ever again, and I’d be the old sop in the bar telling strangers boring stories they didn’t believe about how she used to be my best friend.

      I was pretty upset and frustrated and tired and pissed off, and the last thing I wanted to do was phone Alex and ask difficult questions. I wished he’d phone to tell me how he’d seen the light about that creep Charlie last night and beg to come and live with me instead, as he loved me SO MUCH. Then I caught a glimpse of my unhealthy pallor and dribbling mascara in the window and realized that: (1) I was actually crying a bit, and (2) if I were Alex and saw me, I’d run ten miles.

      Fortunately I’m not, because the phone rang, and