As Good As It Gets?. Fiona Gibson
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film with Jack Nicholson set in a psychiatric hospital. Brilliant, but not really known for the outfits. I mean, it’s not Breakfast at Tiffany’s …’ I break off, realising I’ve lost her. ‘Why are you looking at this stuff anyway?’
‘For the thing after school.’
Ah, the agency meeting. ‘You don’t have to swot, you know. They’re not going to quiz you about hem lengths and trouser shapes …’
She pushes away a frond of dark hair that’s escaped from her sensible ponytail. While Rosie enjoys rummaging through the rails in Top Shop, she’s never been remotely interested in cutting-edge trends. She errs towards the casual: jeans, baggy sweaters and pretty embellished tops. ‘Look,’ she says, sighing, ‘I’ll feel better if I’m prepared, okay? You’re always telling me that.’
‘Yes, for an English or history exam. This is different …’ I glance at her dressing table, on which she appears to have tipped out every item of make-up she owns. Not that there’s much; she only tends to wear it for a night out. ‘Remember they want you to look natural,’ I add.
‘Yes, Mum, I know. Why are you and Dad coming anyway? I mean, I’m not going to get lost, you know. And it’s not a family outing. It’s not like we’re going to Madame Tussaud’s …’
‘We’re coming, Rosie, and that’s that. No need to be so snappy.’
With another dramatic sigh she shuts her laptop. ‘Sorry. I’m just a bit nervous, Mum …’
‘Hey,’ I say, pulling her in for a hug, ‘it’ll be fine. And it’s no big deal, is it? It’s just—’
‘A chat,’ she chips in, mustering a big, brave smile, before grabbing her jacket and scampering off.
Back downstairs, I give Will a hasty kiss goodbye as I, too, should have set off by now. As I step out into the bright sunshine, I thank my lucky stars – not for the first time – that I have a job to go to.
I enjoy my drive to work, despite the strange whiff in my car – fermenting apple cores, laced with stale biscuits – which I think is a hangover from when the kids were little, and couldn’t cope with a ten-minute journey without a huge array of snacks, and which never seems to fade, no matter how vigorously I go at it with the hoover. In fact, driving is blissful compared to dealing with Gloria’s well-meaning natterings, and ogling ‘pale plaster’ tabards, which reminds me that our kitchen desperately needs a lick of paint. We went for bare plaster walls, seduced by pictures in a magazine where it seemed to evoke a sort of faded beauty, like a Toast catalogue. In fact, it just looks like we couldn’t be bothered to finish the room. We can’t afford decorators, and I’m holding off suggesting that Will does it, in case it further delays his return to the world of paid employment.
As I’m heading out of London, and away from the worst of the traffic, I soon make up for lost time, and by the time I pull into the car park at Archie’s, I’m all soothed. I have a quick chat with Freya and Jen, who run the visitors’ centre and shop, then trot upstairs to the light, airy office. Our website implies that our potato chips are hand crafted in our home kitchen, deep in the Essex countryside. It is the country, just about; i.e., we’re not quite on the Tube, and are surrounded by flat, scrubby fields, and the building I work in is a converted village school with a small, tidy garden in front. But this isn’t where our crisps are actually made. That happens in an ugly gunmetal-grey manufacturing plant, concealed by a dense row of conifers. It’s why we don’t offer factory tours. The public would come expecting to see a kindly granny carving Maris Pipers, and discover a terrifying slicing machine and several enormous vats of bubbling oil manned by twenty-odd employees.
I pull off my jacket, and consider texting Rosie to ask if she’s feeling okay about the model agency meeting – as she clearly isn’t – then decide against it. She’ll be at school, and anyway, the more I try to reassure her that it’ll be okay, the more terrified she’ll be. That’s a thing I’ve noticed about teenagers: how very opposite they are. If you want to put them off buying some terrible shoes, all you have to do is go on about how gorgeous they are.
I click on my computer and check my inbox. There’s a ‘missive’ – as my boss calls his perky team emails – from Rupert, AKA King of Crisps.
Wednesday, July 9
From: [email protected]
To: all teamsters
Subject: Just a few odds & sods!
Hi folks,
How’s tricks, my lovelies? Just a line to say thanks for all being so awesome! We’ve had a crazy time and you’ve all been incredible. No distribution probs lately, and we’re all set to take the world by storm, or at least the highlight of our crisp calendar – The Festival of Savoury Snacks!
Just a tiny thing. With a few new peeps having joined the team, can I just – sorry to be a pain here – mention a few words we don’t use here at Archie Towers?
I should point out that there aren’t actually any towers. It’s just one of those cuddly things that Rupert likes to say.
You know how pernickety I am! he goes on, sprinkling exclamation marks around as liberally as his favoured hand-harvested sea salt. Just give me a punch next time you see me, haha. Anyway, here goes:
Instead of staff we say team (singular = teamster)
Not company but family (i.e. you’re now welcomed into the bosom of the Archie family!)
Not fry but cook (yes, I realise that’s technically what we do here, but we all know the connotations of the word ‘fry’ – i.e., greasy, artery-clogging and frankly pretty horrid. Which isn’t our bag here at Archie’s, right?)
Not meeting but gathering
Not supplier but friend (i.e., our potatoes come from our friend Mickey Hunter’s farm in Kent)
Okie-doke?
Love,
Rupe xxx
‘Sounds like someone’s said “fry” again,’ I tell Dee, who’s arrived pink-cheeked, having cycled from her village a couple of miles away.
‘Oh, Christ,’ she sniggers, removing her jacket and helmet and dropping a contraband snack (raspberry Pop Tart) into the toaster. Dee and I look after events, PR and social media together. I’m also in charge of updating our touchy-feely website. Rupert insists on lots of photos of ‘teamsters’ doing fun stuff together, to convey the message that we’re a happy gang, forever larking about, and never have to do anything as mundane as sit at a desk or attend a meeting. I’ve had to stage garden parties and bike rides to show what a jolly time we all have. However, despite the tweeness and Rupert’s relentless enthusiasm for making everything ‘fun’, I do enjoy working here, especially since – and I feel awful even admitting this – Will’s been at home. It’s my escape, of sorts. Is it okay to want to run away from your own husband? I don’t mean in a packing-my-bags, forever sort of way. But I’m aware that I cherish my time away from the house.
‘I still don’t get the family thing,’ remarks Dee, who’s fairly new here, as she makes coffee.
‘I thought it was weird at first,’ I reply, scrolling through the rest of my mail, ‘and I did try to point out to Rupert that we’re not really a family, in that we’re not a biologically related unit who all go on holiday together …’
She laughs. ‘How did he take that?’
‘He said that to him, we are family.’
‘Scary,’ Dee says, handing me a mug of coffee and proceeding to make the first