“We’ve got Callum from Creative for absolutely smashing it and working so hard for Crystal Vodka. You know he’s been working late for… God, I just thought you lived here now, pal! When was the last time your wife saw you for dinner? Maybe you’ll get to take her and the kids out with your winnings.”
The crowd applauded. She sorted through more of the paper slips.
“We’ve got Felicity from Client Services for…” The director laughed that wide-mouthed laugh again. “No! You lot are so naughty! I’m not reading that out. Although I’ve got to say I do agree. Okay, I’ll read it out. Felicity from Client Services for wearing that rather fabby pair of short shorts last week. You cheeky girl!”
Laughter from the crowd. Felicity waved her hand like she was the queen. The director pulled out another slip. My heart thundered in my chest. This must be me. The Dev team had all said they were going to vote for it. It had to be me.
“And finally, we have”—she raised her eyebrows in surprise—“Tamsin from CRM Services for”—she squinted at the paper and leaned on Alan’s standing desk—“developing a template to automatically populate customer emails with tags.”
She said each word as if it were the name of an exotic dish on an unfamiliar menu, or the taxonomy of some long-forgotten lizard.
The director shrugged. “Whatever that is.”
I thought watching it from a distance would feel better, that time would have softened the hurt, that I would find it funny even.
I did not find it funny.
The buzzing in my ears was a fine ringing. Without even thinking my hands had tightened on the axe’s handle. The director swung lazily against Alan’s standing desk, her hand draped over the crossed struts beneath its crowded surface.
“In which case, this month’s Star Award goes to… Felicity! Come here and bring your gorgeous behind with you, you lucky bitch!”
Felicity danced as she leapt up to collect her vouchers. The crowd was applauding. My hands were shaking.
Come on, Tamsin. I breathed deep. You can do this.
“I see you and I understand,” I said. “You, uh… the way you try so hard to pal about with the younger ones. The clothes, the hair, the nails. When you were coming up through the ranks, the answer was to be tougher than the men. Take the jokes with a laugh and then out-do them. You never realised you were pulling the ladder up behind you.”
I squeezed my fists to try and bring the shaking under control. Over the ringing in my ears, I could hear the crowd laughing around me.
“And can I blame you? You don’t get many women in their fifties directing a company like this. You had to sell confidence and creativity and now-ness all while facing the same shit you’d had to fight through to get where you are. I don’t know how much you must have worried. We all worried.”
The laughter got louder. I felt the rage rising. Hot tears came to my eyes.
“It’s a hard industry with new competition all the time. No one wants to be seen as stale, but no one wants to take the risks. And no one wants to admit they’re scared, like admitting it means making it real.”
The realisation dawned on me.
It was okay. I got it.
I looked up at the director, watched her laugh with her mouth. But her eyes darted about the other faces, nervously.
“You didn’t understand what I’d made. You said it like we were putting tags into emails. You got it wrong. You didn’t know what it was. You didn’t understand and it scared you not to understand. So, you made a joke instead.”
I looked around at my old colleagues.
“It was a tough job. You were all working so hard. You just wanted to enjoy yourselves when you could. I just wasn’t the partying type.”
My fists relaxed. Oh my God, I was going to do it. The sting of the memory was released and cool relief washed through me. I reached for the thread.
“It was never about me. You—”
But I was wrong. This was exactly about me.
I watched as I appeared at the back of the crowd. Not the me-watching-this-happen. The me-back-then. The me-shuffling-purposefully toward the desks.
The me-that-did-what-I-did.
Helpless, I watched as I skirted a few steps behind the crowd toward Alan’s standing desk. The desk was overloaded as usual, with monitors and books and all those rattling mugs and whatever weights he repped while he marched back and forth during a client call.
