Page 1 of Last Christmas in London

Chapter 1

‘Happy Assistmas!’ Josh and I yelled into my phone camera, our voices competing with the strain of an old jukebox belting Christmas music from the pub corner, and the cacophonous cheer of Friday-night revellers. It was a blend of chaos and joy that only a traditional London boozer can conjure up, a pub where, every time you sat on the ancient banquette, a waft of dust would rise half an inch into the air, mingling with the lingering scent of cigarette smoke from the nineties.

‘How dare you leave us!’ Josh wailed theatrically, flinging himself across my arm with the exaggerated flair of someone three cocktails deep. It was a miracle I could hear him over the sound of the post-work drinkers, dodging their spouses, housemates, and perhaps sobriety, by having one more drink at the bar.

‘I’m sorry!’ I cried, pocketing my phone, already planning which TikTok sound to slap over the moment and which effects might brighten the dim, overhead lighting. I hugged Josh’s head, which promptly disappeared under the table to rest on my lap. I was drunk. No, scratch that, I was very drunk. Five hours of drinking will do that, especially when you start at 2.00 p.m.

I had left my boss, Pim, at the St Pancras Hotel spa and taxied her Chow Chow, Gerald, to her ex-husband’s house in Clapham for his custodial visitation. Glamorous, right? But now it was just me, Josh, and my other best friend, Megan.

‘I wouldn’t leave you if I could help it. Either of you,’ I told them firmly.

Megan, who’d joined us an hour ago, sat across the table nursing a large sauvignon blanc, her face etched with the kind of pained resignation usually reserved for completing jury service. She wasn’t enjoying our choice of venue. This was definitely the wrong end of Greek Street for her tastes. Megan was more The Ivy than the Hand and Shears, but there were limits to how often I could leverage my connection to Pim Hardcastle, the once-Bafta-nominated-actress-turned-TV-personality to get us into high places.

‘You could just stay here?’ Megan lifted her glass to her perfectly lined lips. ‘And not go to Canada.’

I raised my eyebrows in reply. ‘I’m hardly getting head-hunted in London. I’ve barely spent any time here since I started working for Pim. No one knows who I am.’

Josh threw up his arms. ‘We do!’

‘I know, babe.’ I kissed the crown of his head. ‘But not the industry. It’s one of the downsides of the life of a nomad – but there have been perks!’ I added, less insistently. There was something about my job and life choices that I always felt I had to defend, especially to Josh and Megan, who, if they had their way, would have my ‘Find My Friend’ always pointed to London. But that hadn’t been the case since I was twenty and I got the job with Pim Hardcastle, as her hard-working – saint of an – assistant.

My time with Pim had been an adventure. She had once been hailed as a bright young thing in the eighties, some heralded her as the next Maggie Smith after her bold, gender-bending turn as a female Heathcliff in an audacious LGBT+ retelling of Wuthering Heights. But in the unforgiving nineties, a decade that was particularly cruel to ageing starlets, Pim became infamous rather than famous for her countless on-set tantrums, a series of ill-fated marriages to men who loved their vices more than her, and a tabloid legacy of drama that she wasn’t getting any nominations for.

Since then, Pim had tried everything to cling to relevance. She’d written scandalous tell-all autobiographies that alienated her from the industry even further, appeared on C-list celebrity shows across the globe, and re-invented herself as often as she needed to, to keep her fortune, if not her fame. Now, thirty-five years after her last major success, she was travelling like a Real Housewife without the franchise, flitting from one country to the next, sponging off production companies, and ensuring she wrung every ounce of luxury from contracts and ex-husbands’ alimony. And dragging me around to organise her battered Dior suitcases, manage her chaotic schedule and make sure she never left a hotel room with mismatched earrings or shoes that clashed with her outfit. But that was about to change.

This was my last month as Pim’s assistant, and it happily coincided with Christmas. Making this my last ever ‘Assistmas’, as I and my 250,000 TikTok followers had christened my series of TikTok videos about working in the glamorous world of TV during the insanely busy festive season. Viewers loved seeing the behind-the-scenes of production companies, offices, and studios, from the perspective of an average assistant. No aesthetic content here, what you see is what you get – but that seemed to resonate with people online.

I tried to suppress the grin that came with the remembrance that this was my last month of being a personal assistant. Soon I would be a Broadcast Production Assistant – okay, still an assistant, but a company one with an actual career ladder to climb, not just climbing another escalator with a Chow Chow in a carrier making a bid for freedom.

‘It’s been a good few years,’ I said, allowing my grin to develop as Megan and Josh stared sadly at me. ‘I’ve seen more of the world than most people could dream of. Sure, it’s been for work, but I’m not unhappy with how things have turned out.’ I put my head on Josh’s shoulder.

I knew both of them thought my life was a catastrophe and inconsistent, but I truly was happy with it. I never understood societal pressures to get a degree, go travelling for a year, get a nine-to-five job, date some losers, then find a winner to marry, and have children. That was never going to be the life I had. I decided that early on, ever since I saw Eat, Pray, Love.

I had always wanted the nomadic, no-strings and no-pressure lifestyle and that was precisely what I got with Pim. Yes, she wasn’t the perfect boss and yes, there were days I was incredibly lonely but TikTok and sharing experiences online helped with that. Viewers commented and had conversations with me in my DMs, asking me questions and valuing my opinion. A novelty in television and film. It helped to know that there was a community of people who valued my advice and insights into the industry, who actually wanted to hear from me and not just for me to hold the door open for them.

Originally, I had started the channel in the hopes it would get me noticed by people in the industry. It wasn’t long before I discovered my channel reached more people trying to break into the industry instead. But that wasn’t a bad thing; it gave me and my TikTok channel a purpose. To be educational as well as entertaining.

It did open some doors for me, just not career-based ones.

And I got to document all the days that I got to experience the world of television, which is truly exciting. I had to remind myself regularly that, while my job wasn’t the most glamorous day to day, it did allow me the chance to spend time talking to icons on television sets and in green rooms, attend premieres with A-list celebrities walking the carpet, to pee in toilet stalls next to Oscar winners, and to hand out shots to the entire England football team.

My life has been a whirlwind of activity that no one could ever plan for.

I was sad to be leaving Pim behind, and I imagined she was just as stressed as I felt because I was leaving her.

But it was time. More and more, the loneliness was creeping in with TikTok and online interactions only going so far, and the exhaustion of travel and setting my watch to new time zones every day, while making short-term friendships with staff members was draining me to the point of carelessness.

After all, I’d grown up with the reality that time could slip away without warning. My mother died in her early forties. It was a reminder that life wasn’t a guarantee; and I shouldn’t wait forever to start doing what mattered to me. That’s why I wanted to start fresh and settle down, finally open my arms to the universe and say, ‘Come on in!’

Megan took a breath and seemed to shake herself out, back into supportive friend mode. ‘I’m really proud of you.’ She lifted her wine glass in cheers. But then her lip twitched. ‘I mean, it’s about time,’ she added, her trademark sarcasm slipping through.

‘Oh, Megan, it’s okay!’

‘It’s not okay,’ she shot back, scrunching her face in exaggerated disdain. ‘You’ve been with Pim for nearly eight years, and in all that time, the only raise she gave you was to meet legal inflation. That and when you went viral the first time.’ TikTok content as Pim’s assistant was perennial. My life was quite glamorous to an outsider – jet-setting across continents, staying in hotels, fancy dinners, mingling with a revolving door of celebrities – but the reality was… different. Still, I couldn’t complain; I’d loved it. ‘You couldn’t even afford rent in London on that salary,’ Megan pressed on.

‘Good thing Pim covers my hotel expenses,’ I muttered breezily.

Megan’s eyes raised further and even Josh groaned in a way that translated to Did she though?