Chapter One
Christmas Eve Midday
People say I'm a grump. Not to my face – they wouldn’t risk it – but my boss, Marcy Westbury, tells me that’s what people say.
Marcy reckons that my ‘constant bitch face, resting or otherwise’ actually makes me very effective as her PA at the Interior Design firm she runs. She’s a sweet middle-aged soft touch who would design beautiful rooms for free if someone asked really nicely. When I’m around, people do not even dare to ask. If they want aHarmonious Spacesdesigned room, they have to get through me and the six month long waiting list I guard with my life. According to Marcy, I have the best icy stare she’s ever witnessed. I didn’t even know I had an icy stare, let alone the best one Marcy’s ever been privy too. After she told me this I went straight home and tried to recreate an icy stare in the mirror to see if was really as good as rumour suggested. And, oh, it was. My icy stare was colder than an Eskimo wearing nothing but assless chaps and some Vicks VapoRub. My icy stare was so good, so totally terrifying, that I ran away from the mirror and had to neck a G&T just to calm myself down.
I’ve tried super hard at work this year for three main reasons. The first is that this is the best place I’ve ever been employed; my co-workers are mostly boneheads, but the building is within walking distance of my house, my boss is smart and talented, plus she pays me just about enough to live in Notting Hill – my favourite place in the whole of London. The second reason is because I want to train as a designer, just like Marcy. I’d love to start learning the basics for just a couple of hours a week while still being a PA. Marcy’s on the fence with the idea because I have no formal design training, but she’s agreed to reconsider in the New Year. So thereispotential if I continue to impress her. And thirdly, while I wait for the chance to train as a junior designer I would very much like to conduct my PA duties in an office of my own rather than in the current open plan setup with people I mostly want to tell to bugger the heck off. There’s a store cupboard that could work beautifully as my own private sanctuary, but Marcy isn’t so sure we can spare the space. My dastardly plan is to be so good at my job that soon enough she will give me exactly what I want because she, and indeed her business, won’t be able to function successfully without me. I have this little fantasy that I’ll walk into her office one day, maybe wearing a crimson red pant suit with massive shoulder pads. The radio will magically be playing a Lizzo song and I will make all of my demands while affecting a superwoman stance, legs wide, hands on hips. Marcy will respond by pleading and begging and crying out, ‘Anything. Phoebe! Anything you want, you can have it! I, and indeed my business won’t be able to function successfully without you!’ The fantasy’s finale is usually me getting some sort of illustrious award for interior designing, presented by the hot Dothraki guy fromGame of Throneswho also wants to take me on a date. A sex date. But in real life my hope is just to have an office of my own, and eventually to tread the path towards becoming a junior designer. Maybe then I will feel a bit more cheerful about things instead of feeling peeved most of the time.
I never intended to be a grump. I don’t think anyone does, do they? But life happens, shit happens and before you know it, it’s easier to sneer than smile. I suppose angry parents or unkind peers at school didn’t exactly help to form the most chilled out human. I havetriedto be loose and smiley and the kind of woman who coos at fluffy kittens and fat babies and cake. But I just can’t do it. It feels all wrong. I’m much more at ease in a state of mild irritation. I like to think of myself as a hardcore bitch. Someone who has no time for fakeness, or frivolity. Hardcore bitch sounds way more badass. And it’s definitely much easier than considering that I might possibly be a slightly lonely, unlikeable person who has lost the ability to relax or feel joy. But I digress…
Over my twenty-seven years I’ve managed to amass a mental list of things I simply cannot be doing with. The list is extensive and it doesn’t discriminate. To give you an idea, here are seven random annoyances that have made it onto my list:
Ticking clocks
The word ‘chipper’
Cats that think they’re better than you are
Humans whistling
Birds whistling
Kettles whistling
Peas
Every time I come into contact with something I don’t like, I add it to my shit list. There’s a sort of comfort in it actually. Like I’m a collector. A collector of stuff that pisses me off… Okay, I admit, it’s weird. But I never asked to be this way. I justam.
Right at the top of my list of things I can’t be doing with is Christmas.
I was never overjoyed with it, to be honest – such a load of fuss and noise. But Christmas officially debuted on the shit list last year when an architect named Mitch Birch broke my heart over the roast turkey dinner. We’d been seeing each other for thirteen months and I was deeply into him. I dared allow myself to think that he was someone I could grow old with, and he chose Christmas Day to ask me if we could make one of those pacts that you see in films. He said that if neither of us had found true love by the time we were fifty, we could perhaps, maybe, possibly, get married and wasn’t that a neat idea? Not thirty, or even forty. Fifty. I was clearly his end case scenario while he was my best. I loved him. What a dunce I was. My heart was broken by a man wearing a paper crown, to a soundtrack of Band Aid 30. A man who described things as being ‘neat ideas’. A man calledMitch Birch. It sucked. Still sucks. Whenever I think of it, which is quite a lot at the moment, I get the rage. I feel actual anger and sadness coursing through my veins and I just want to kick something.
Today is Christmas Eve. Which means that everyone else in the open plan office is being even more annoying than usual. I wouldn’t mind if I had my own little office, away from everyone else. Somewhere to shut the door and keep my head down. But I don’t. The party atmosphere and the mulled wine the team have been drinking since around eleven this morning has made them brave enough to attempt to get me into the Christmas spirit.
‘Whooooo! Only half an hour to go until we can leave and get pissed!’ yells Ellie the receptionist, draping a scratchy length of ugly red tinsel around my shoulders. ‘It’s Christmaaaaas! Whoo hoo! Parteeeeeeee!’
I remove the tinsel with my finger and thumb and drop it into the wastepaper bin underneath my desk.
‘Who are you spending tomorrow with, Phoebe?’ Ellie asks me. ‘Family? Friends? Ooh, a boyfriend?’
‘No,’ I state in a manner that indicates that this line of questioning is over.
The truth is that my family aren’t even in the country. Mum lives in Australia now where she runs a yoga lodge. And Dad got himself a whole new family after the divorce. I asked Mum if I could go to visit her for the holidays – Christmas on a beach and scoffing my weight in barbecued meat sounded like something I could have enjoyed. But she said she had a party of yoga fanatics staying at the lodge for the holidays and she couldn’t turn down the business and didn’t I have friends in London I could spend the season with? So Christmas is definitely not a family affair and hasn’t been for the past ten years. I push away the feeling of sadness and anger that comes with my own mother not wanting to spend Christmas with me. But then I guess family Christmases were always a bit forced and awkward anyway, so it’s probably for the best.
Ellie gives me a small smile. ‘Well, I hope you have a nice day, whatever you’re doing.’
‘Thanks. You too.’ I give her a small smile in return. I might be a grump, but I’m a well-mannered grump, and I quite like Ellie, even if she sometimes whistles while she’s walking to and from the printer.
Jim, one of Marcy’s junior designers struts over, brandishing a piece of mistletoe like a sword. He wafts it above my head in what I thinkhethinks is an enticing manner.
‘Leave,’ I say.
‘Come on, Phoebe! Don’t be such a bore!’
He leans in towards me and, Christmas joy making him oblivious to my very icy stare, he puckers his rubbery lips and approaches my very own lips. I can smell the mince pie on his hot breath.
I use my feet to push against my desk and wheel away from him in my twizzly office chair. By the time he realises what I’ve done he’s already started tonguing the air.
