1
LONDON, UK
‘Put your guess in here!’
Orla Bradbee flinched in her office chair as the A4 piece of paper was whisked in front of her and slammed down on her desk.
‘Alan!’ she exclaimed, cupping her mug of hot chocolate in fear that his frenetic energy was going to upend it all over the Christmas cards she shouldn’t be writing on company time.
‘Be quick!’ Alan ordered, looking over his shoulder. ‘Because Sharon is chasing me, desperate to guess ten, but she has insider knowledge so I don’t think I can let her compete.’
Orla had no idea what was going on. She looked at the sheet of paper. ‘Whatisthis?’
‘Oh, Orla, I knew you had your head stuck in work this week! You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘For working too hard?’ she clarified.
‘It’s nearly the end of December,’ Alan said, as if this explained everything. ‘Anyway, it’s the long-awaited sweepstake. How many Cadbury’s Heroes can Sonil fit into his mouth in one go!’
Orla shook her head. What was it with Alan and his need to make a challenge out of every event on the calendar? Last month, allegedly for Movember, he’d made everyone grow cress heads with moustache cut-outs and there’d been a prize for the thickest one. After a particularly intense meeting she’d been starving and had ripped the cress from hers and eaten it. She picked up the pen. ‘Sonil doesn’t celebrate Christmas.’
‘That’s the beauty of it, though,’ Alan continued. ‘Cadbury’s Heroes aren’t just for Christmas, and it makes it an inclusive event for him, doesn’t it?’
There was so much wrong about that sentence, but Orla didn’t have any energy to unpick it. She had already promised that after work tonight she would take her sixteen-year-old sister, Erin, for some extortionately priced coffee at the place their mother said ‘exploited the youth of today’ and ‘did nothing but encourage rich rivalry’.
She wrote a number down on the paper and passed it back to Alan.
‘Fifteen!’ Alan exclaimed in horror. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to guess something else? I don’t think you’re considering the length of those miniature Twirls.’
‘Well,’ Orla began, eyes already back on her computer screen. ‘If you really want me to make my guess based on the science of it, I’d have to ask whether the sweet selection was random or pre-determined. And who is making that choice because then they have to be completely neutral in the contest and it absolutely cannot be Sonil.’
In the reflection of her computer screen, she could see that Alan had not thought about any of these things and, now someone had pointed them out, the likelihood was he was imminently going to go home with a migraine to rethink the whole thing. She was about to luxuriate in a few seconds of joyful abandonment as Alan backed away, when her mobile erupted. Itwas Erin. What could her sister want now when they were going to be meeting in less than an hour? She picked up.
‘Hello.’
‘Bruh, do you think blonde highlights would suit me?’
‘Sorry, what did you call me? This is your sister, not Central Cee.’
‘Answer me, ’cos hair appointments in December are like table reservations at Club Class.’
Club Class was the latest night spot everyone wanted to be seen at. Their mother called it ‘tits and ass’ and Erin was banned from going there or anything like there since her not-known-about tattoo was exposed on the club’s social media and their dad’s old building crew had made him aware. And there was also the fact she was only sixteen and shouldn’t have ever been going there in the first place.
‘Erin, we’re seeing each other in approximately fifty-six minutes, can’t we talk about it then?’
‘Yes or no?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I didn’t give you that as an option. Yes, or no?’
‘Aren’t highlights expensive?’
‘Boring and still not a yes or a no. Quick!’
Now Orla felt like she was in the middle of a countdown on a gameshow with the top cash prize about to slip through her fingers.
‘What happens if you don’t like it?’ Orla answered. ‘You know your hair as it is, right? You know it and you’re comfortable with it and it looks nice. I’m not saying a change wouldn’t look nice too, but if it’s a lot of money and?—’
