Page 1 of People Skills

Summer

1

HILLARY IS STANDING on the stage of the town hall, looking down at me, making a disgusted face. She turns, paces in one direction, turns back, and makes the face again. Well, there goes the rest of my morning, my carefully planned-out day. She’s discovered the mystery smell and it’s about to send her into a full-blown meltdown.

It’s my job to know what Hillary is thinking, to anticipate what she needs before she needs it, to read her moods and her facial expressions, and I’ve become pretty good at it over the past few months. If she’s furious about an innocuous email before lunchtime, it means she missed her second morning coffee. If she says ‘Let’s table that for later’ it means she wants me to deal with it and never mention it to her again. If she says ‘interesting’ that means whatever I’ve mentioned is absolutely not of interest to her.

Pacing is never good.

It’s 11 am. At 6 pm, we are holding a sold-out event to announce the upcoming Barwon Bay Literary Festival. It was originally called ‘The Barwon Bay Literary Festival—Presented by Hillary Hobbs’, but after that was said out loud a few times even Hillary realised it was too much. The festival will feature one hundred events set over three days, and take place during winter when Barwon Bay loses its coastal summertime charm and needs new attractions to pull in visitors. It’s Hillary’s baby, her latest project, an event she’s not just organising but also partially funding. It’s her comeback move after the TV show she spent several years working on, an interview-style program called Women You Should Know, was cancelled after airing only three episodes.

Tonight’s announcement is not just to officially let the town know about the festival, but to schmooze with potential supporters and donors, and give everyone a taste of what it will be like by having Hillary in conversation with political journalist Antonia Li.

‘Charlotte! Up here,’ Hillary calls down to me.

I walk up the stairs and out onto the stage next to her. We stand side by side, and gaze out at the rows of empty seats together. The town hall is an old heritage building with high ceilings, huge windows, chandeliers down the middle of the room and red velvet curtains. It has great atmosphere. It does not have great air conditioning. It’s a hot summer day, which is only serving to make the mystery odour even worse.

I wait for Hillary to speak first, even though I know what she’s going to say.

‘Do you smell that?’ Hillary says. The four words I have been dreading.

‘No,’ I say, lying through my teeth. I noticed it earlier this morning, I just haven’t had time to do anything about it yet. It’s the kind of problem Hillary will obsess over, so I need to downplay its severity.

‘There’s a definite stink. Get lower,’ Hillary says. She hitches up her pants a little, and moves down into a deep squat, which is impressive considering she’s wearing heeled clogs.

I kneel down. My pants are from Target, they can touch the floor.

‘Lower,’ Hillary says.

I hover my face near the stage floor and breathe in deeply, pretending to discover the smell for the first time. ‘Okay. Yes. I smell it. That’s unpleasant.’

‘Unpleasant! It’s foul. It’s putrid.’ And she’s off. It will occupy her thoughts for the next six hours if I don’t intervene.

‘It is. Why don’t you go back to the office before it attaches itself to your clothes, and leave me to sort it out?’

‘It could be a sewage leak,’ Hillary says, ignoring my suggestion. She likes to go immediately to the worst-case scenario. ‘We’ll have to relocate tonight. Or cancel.’

‘It’s more dead animal than sewage,’ I say in my most reassuring tone.

‘Whatever it is, it’s getting stronger,’ Hillary says. ‘It’s gaining power, Charlotte. We need to get down there and investigate. Find the body.’ She’s wearing five-hundred-dollar silk pants, so obviously by ‘we’ she means me.

‘You’ve got that meeting. You head off,’ I say to her. ‘I’ll take care of this.’

Hillary hesitates. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ My voice is firm, unwavering.

‘You’re sure you can handle it? Because I won’t relax until I know that smell is gone.’

‘I know. I’ve got this. I’ll message you as soon as it’s sorted.’ My mantra since taking this job. I’ll handle it. I can deal with it. I’ll find a solution. I decided early on to just always calmly tell Hillary I can do something and then wait until she leaves the room to panic and figure out how to get it done. Hillary is like a highly strung racehorse. She needs a firm hand and a calm energy. She feeds on panic. She loves drama. I need her to believe in me as an unflappable, perfectly competent, hyper-organised personal assistant, which most days feels like an elaborate charade. She once stood behind me while I was working and complimented me for responding to every email and reaching inbox zero when, in reality, I had simply moved all my outstanding emails into a folder marked ‘To do—urgent!’.

‘Thank you,’ she says now. ‘What would I do without you?’

I’ve only worked for Hillary for three months, so I imagine she’d do whatever it was she did before. But, still, I appreciate the sentiment. I’m mostly in this for the praise.

She starts to go and then turns back for our standard pre-meeting checklist.

‘Hair?’ she asks.