When Lauren tells him, Angus confides that quite a few of the regulars here have stayed at this shelter, including ex-chef and cinnamon roll baker Sander, who spent a couple of weeks there last year. ‘Apparently his roommate snored like a train, his entire bed shook at night.’
‘They gave me a single room,’ Lauren replies, no life in her voice either.
‘Lauren, I’d love you to start next weekend, what do you say?’ Nina asks.
She doesn’t reply.
‘Lauren, Nina is a great boss,’ Angus says, ‘and it’s worth working here for my brother’s chips.’
Nina agrees about the chips. Scottie makes them with olive oil, rosemary and garlic, and they’re even better dipped into ketchup. ‘Why don’t you get here by half past nine or at the latest ten, and how about we make you a general helper, but mainly Holly’s assistant on pudding duty?’
‘Yes, Chef,’ she says to me, avoiding eye contact, her foot tapping against the floor.
‘Oh, you don’t have to call me chef!’ I say, strangely moved. ‘I think that’s a great idea. We’re going to havesucha lovely time,’ I vow, attempting to sound far more confident than I feel, but instead coming across like a desperate mother telling their child school is going to besuchfun. Unsurprisingly she doesn’t look up and agree.
5
It’s Monday, two days since I met Lauren at the café, and as I grab a takeaway coffee on my way to work, a thirty-minute walk to Grove Park, in Chiswick, I notice my Monday blues aren’t as bad this morning as they were a few weeks ago. For starters, I felt far less inclined to swear at my phone when the alarm went off this morning. As I showered, I thought of Lauren waking up in the night-shelter, and wondered how her day would go, what she might do, or who she might see, if anyone. I feared Monday could be no more distinguishable than Tuesday, or Wednesday, or any other day of the week for that matter, except Saturday, if she chooses to become a volunteer. A part of me hopes she does. Another feels anxious I won’t know how to talk to her, but I suspect my anxiety barely touches hers, so I need to get over myself.
As I continue to walk down the Chiswick High Road, the early morning sun also lifting my mood, my mind returns to Lauren being stuck in her bedroom, alone. I know, from experience, it’s a long day with only your thoughts for company. I think about Angus, who’d mentioned that while he loathed his commute into the city, work did at least give him a sense of purpose. A reason to get up. Scottie told me he used to work in finance, but was sacked, but I don’t know any more than that. Again, I feel grateful that at least I’m employed, and enjoy my job.
I never planned to work in PR. I read English at Royal Holloway, London, but had no idea what to do with my degree. But I didn’t care. Moving away from my parents spelt freedom and independence. After being cooped up in my bedroom, reading, and years of being at an all-girls school, men were a novelty. I lost my virginity during freshers week, to a tall blond rugby player called Christian, who was in the same halls of residence as me. After an awkward first time, the second attempt was infinitely better, and quickly I began to see what all the fuss was about. I couldn’t believe how long I’d waited to have sex. Christian and I went out for six months and after our break-up, I wasted no time finding a new boyfriend to go clubbing with and share my bed.
When I graduated, I stayed in London without a clue what I was going to do. I signed up to a temping agency, and gratefully took the first job going, working for the Royal Horticultural Society, putting together an exhibitor’s brochure for the Chelsea Flower Show. I knew next to nothing about plants and flowers– my phone bill to Mum soared, and so did Mum’s ego– but it turned out to be a dream job that didn’t even feel like work. I loved ringing up each exhibitor to find out what they were putting on their stand and can still recall the pride in seeing my words on the page. My name,Holly Lawrence, in print. From that moment on, I knew, at last, I’d found something I wanted to do. Admittedly not all my jobs have been as idyllic as the first. I moved from that job to a global PR company, where I worked on London Fashion Week (fun, got to go to all the shows) before moving on to ‘FMCG’– ‘Fast-Moving Consumer Goods’– like sun creams, lip balms and tights. I spent my entire working day hurtling around the office like a woman possessed, attending endless meetings to discuss advertising campaigns and brand positioning, and when I wasn’t in these ‘brainstorming’ meetings, I was busting a gut sending tons of samples of sun cream and tights to journalists and clients on time– parcel tape became my constant companion. I was on the bottom rung, working for an account manager, so I was the one given all the mundane jobs like clearing out the promotion cupboards and making the tea and coffee. Over the years I climbed the ladder to become Account Manager and then Senior Account Director. I became the person who told her assistant to clear out the promotion cupboards and make sure copy deadlines were met. But I never demanded that anyone should make me a coffee. Nor did I dream of running my own empire. I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. My ambition was simply to keep working hard enough to pay my rent and go on decent holidays abroad, in the sun.
I met Harriet, who would eventually become my boss, at a press event thirteen years ago, when I was thirty-one, and Harriet must have been in her late forties, as she’s sixty-two now. I was single at the time, since I had no energy beyond keeping my job, but I’d met Jamie, who’d made me realise how much I wanted a social life again. I worked for a luxury food and drinks company and at night I’d lie awake in fear, panicking about my never-ending to-do list and all the things my boss, Clarissa Pope, would reprimand me for not achieving. ‘It’s PR,’ my mother would say to me when I turned up for a weekend out of London (they live in Oxford) looking haggard and grey, ‘not saving lives, darling,’ which actually annoyed me, since I loved my job, but she had a point when she said I should, at least, be able to sleep at night. ‘Leave, Holly,’ my dear father had said, ‘Clarissa doesn’t deserve you.’ Thinking of Clarissa now gives me goosebumps. I see her striding into the office, dressed all in black, demanding her skinny latte, and telling me I needed to present her with a comprehensive list of my goals ‘pronto!’ I can still feel her heavy-breathing down my neck while I was on the phone, and then scolding me in front of the entire office for saying something ‘inappropriate’. I almost had a breakdown organising a grand press event for one of our champagne brands. It was the last job I did for Clarissa. I hadn’t slept for days leading up to the event as everything I did was wrong. I can still hear her screeching that the packaging for the goodie bags was too yellow in tone: ‘I wanted off-white, not cream! Change it,pronto!’ In my dreams I gave her a satisfying Jackie Collins-style slap around the face as I told her to fuck off. Yet in real life, my knees buckled, my voice dried up, and I did as I was told. On the night itself, I had no desire to socialise with anyone. I kept on disappearing to the loo to have a rest and breathe. I can recall vividly dropping my handbag on the bathroom floor. I was literally down on my hands and knees, grabbing everything off the pristine tiles, feeling desperately sorry for myself, especially when I saw my rose hand cream had lost its lid, leaving a creamy mess all over my new leather wallet, house keys and the silk lining of my favourite evening bag. Mum was right, I thought to myself tearfully. This isn’t worth it.
‘I think this might be yours too,’ said a woman, holding a tampon towards me.
The night that just keeps on giving, I thought to myself. Yet I was too tired to care. I burst into tears before telling the poor long-suffering stranger my entire life story.
‘Crikey, most people only last a week with Clarissa,’ she said.
‘You know her?’
‘The whole industry knows her. How the hell have you survived a year?’
‘I don’t know. I’m either brave or spectacularly stupid.’ It’s funny how tiredness reveals the truth. ‘Clarissa Pope makes Cruella de Vil look like a saint. I’m Holly by the way.’
‘Harriet.’ She handed me her card, saying she was launching her own company. ‘Call me.’
Clarissa made it so very easy for me to quit my job by being particularly vile, even by her standards, the following morning. I called Harriet as soon I left the office and reclaimed my life.
That was also the day when Jamie and I kissed for the first time.
All in all, that was one of the best days of my life. It taught me that you never know what’s round the corner…
‘Got forty pence, lovely?’ asks a woman slumped outside Turnham Green Underground Station, interrupting my thoughts. She’s sitting on a piece of cardboard, her hair greasy, and she’s dressed in an old tracksuit, with no shoes, dirty feet. When she smiles at me, I want to stop. Ishouldstop. But what will I say? I don’t have any cash on me, not even forty pence, only my credit card. Do I have time to grab her a coffee or a cup of tea? Should I tell her about Soul Food? ‘Not everyone on the streets is legit,’ Craig had told me when we were eating lunch. Craig is the volunteer who helps clear up in exchange for free meals. His passion is tarot cards and horoscopes. He says he’s a gifted palm-reader, but I don’t let him anywhere near my hand. He also knows everyone and everything about living on the streets. ‘Don’t be fooled, Holly, you get some real con artists, people begging when they have a four by four sitting in their drive. It makes me mad, it does.’ Yet this woman doesn’t look like she has a four by four. Or a drive. She doesn’t even have a pair of shoes. But by the time all these questions come and go I’ve walked past, and it’s too late to walk back. If I had, what would I have said? Besides, she doesn’t want conversation, does she? She wants cash. Forty pence. That was all she wanted. And I couldn’t even give her that.
‘I’m back!’ I call out to Harriet, after a quick trip to the shops during my lunch hour. I head towards Harriet’s kitchen, my favourite room in her house because Jamie worked on it. After he’d finished Milla’s kitchen, I recommended him to Harriet. I used to tease him, saying that in time most of the kitchens in west London would be designed by him. It’s large and open-plan with glass doors that open out on to the garden, where Harriet grows vegetables and herbs. The walls are painted in teal, but everything else, from the shaker-style cupboards to the trio of lights hanging over the island, is white. I assemble the food on her granite-topped island and stroke Billy, her black cat, who always slinks in when he hears rustling noises in the kitchen.
‘One or two?’ I shout, knowing the answer as I slice four bagels in half.
‘Two! And there should be some chocolate puds in the fridge. A reward for getting through Monday morning!’
As I wait for the bagels to toast, I think that what I most admire about Harriet is how she worked her way up the career ladder. Nothing was handed to her on a plate. Her mum was a housewife; her dad a mechanic. No one in her family went to university– ‘Not that that’s the be all and end all,’ she’d said, ‘it’s debatable you have to go at all these days, unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or saddled with debt.’ Anyhow, Harriet told me she was never expected or encouraged to do anything much with her life, except marry and have a family. ‘Nothing wrong with that,’ she’d admitted, understanding how much I wanted that for myself. But Mum was disappointed when I gave her no grandchildren. “Children are forlife, Harriet,” she used to say. “They are your future. Work is just work.” Harriet claimed she was rubbish at school, didn’t pass any exams, doesn’t have a single A level. She wasn’t thick, she explained, something I worked out for myself the moment we met. ‘I’m dyslexic, but didn’t know it at the time.’ It makes sense, as Harriet often asks me how to spell certain words. We have an enormous well-used dictionary in our office. ‘I’ve always been more visual, creative, I’m cack-handed with words,’ she’d continued. ‘My kind of hell would be a game of Scrabble.’ Her mother sent her to a secretarial course instead of sixth form college, vowing shorthand would be a skill she’d always find useful, especially when she married. She could type her husband’s letters, joy of joy. Yet Harriet was bottom of the class at typing. It was another failure according to her mum. ‘I don’t blame her, Holly, that’s how it was in those days. She wanted me to be happy, and to be a mother, which probablyisthe best job of all, probably far harder than working for some of the dickheads I’ve come across.’ Thinking of these dickheads, her first boss at the advertising firm was called Harvey. ‘ThinkMad Men, Holly. Very little work, lots of drinking,’ she’d described. ‘If you can believe it, I used to strut around the office in my hot pants, purple knee-high boots, striped sweaters and hipster belts. I still have all my old clothes, lurking somewhere in the back of the wardrobe, cruelly reminding me I used to be a size ten.’ Harriet isn’t overweight; she’sa tiny bitplump. Like me. She sees a personal trainer every week, unlike me, and I think she looks amazing. ‘Don’t you dare sayfor my age,’ she says whenever I compliment her on her flawless skin and glossy hair. ‘Anyway, Harvey, at the advertising firm, was in charge of the graduate training scheme. Very smooth, think Pierce Brosnan,’ she said, ‘but sadly far too proper, no action.’ Harriet’s role was to sift through CVs from students. ‘I don’t know what got into me, Holly, I guess I was bored, but I decided to spice things up by applying for the position myself. I thought “What the heck?” I walked into his office and planted my CV on his desk and guess what he said?’ Harriet was so absorbed in telling me the story that I had no time to guess. ‘“Have you been to Oxford and Cambridge?”’ she continued. ‘So I said “No” and he says, cool as a cucumber, “Well then, you’re wasting my time.” So I said back, cool as a cucumber, “If you don’t want me to progress, you’re wasting my time too.”’
And so she left, taking with her this hunger to prove him wrong and to be successful. Harriet sailed to the top of her industry, thankfully scooping me up along the way. Thank God I dropped my handbag on the floor that night.
