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Chapter Five
Ahhh…the sound of silence. It was so strange. It was 9.30 a.m. on a Sunday and I’d just stepped through the grand glass double doors of our Covent Garden office. If this had been a weekday, there’d have been the buzz of the team discussing projects, plus the excitement of journalists, celebs and bloggers coming in for meetings or to get a sneak peek at our clients’ latest beauty launches. But today it was just me.
Now that there was less than a week until my birthday and my trip to Tuscany, I was trying to get as much done as possible before leaving so that I couldtryand relax a little whilst I was there.
Yes. I was going to Italy. After my last catch-up with Roxy and Bella, I’d gone home and spent hours researching cookery holidays. I’d found a small business called Taste Holidays who did package deals to Italy that welcomed people like me who were flying solo. There was no hotel as such, which ruled out a lot of my normal checks. Instead you stayed in an authentic Tuscan villa with other single travellers and got daily cookery lessons from the onsite Italian chef. All food, booze, accommodation and a couple of excursions, such as a trip to Florence, were included in the price.
It had amazing press reviews, and having quizzed the founder on the phone about the number of people on the holiday, their gender and age range, what their rooms were like and a million other questions, I’d decided to bite the bullet and book it.
Was I terrified? Definitely. But although I was taking a leap into the unknown, this would allow me to tick the educational holiday goal off my list. So I was going to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Although coming in on a Sunday didn’tappearto demonstrate that I was making progress with my goal to achieve a better work-life balance, I actually was. How? Well, rather than working for several hours, which I would typically do on the weekends, today I would be leaving at 1.30 p.m. and going to Bella’s for Paul’s second birthday party. Usually I’d say I was too busy, but this year I thought I’d make more of an effort to be a better godmother and take time out to attend.
Seeing the office peaceful like this gave me a rare moment to take stock and think about what I’d achieved. When we’d moved here four years ago to celebrate the business’ tenth anniversary, Rich’s architecture firm had helped design the office to bring my vision to life and they’d done an incredible job. This was the glamorous yet down-to-earth working environment I’d always dreamt of creating, and even now I still had to pinch myself to check it was real.
As you entered the reception area, individual freestanding illuminated yellow letters of the company name, BeCome, stood on a platform, flanked by large, lush indoor palm trees in white stone pots either side. I’d never wanted to name the agency after myself. So instead I had chosen something that would convey both our specialism (Be was taken from the first two letters ofbeauty) and what we did for brands. Every company wants tobecomesomething—whether it’s the market leader or the most luxurious salon in London. And we could help thembecomewhatever they wanted to be.
I scanned the area again. To the right sat a grand red sofa in the shape of giant lips, and on the left was a glass reception desk with the words ‘hellobeautiful’ imprinted at the front. There was always a stunning display of bright fresh flowers in a tall, elegant glass vase. This week it was a pretty peach-and-cream arrangement.
The walls were adorned with prime editorial features we’d secured for clients inVogue,Cosmopolitan,Stylist,Graziaand everything between. There were celebrity front covers, quadruple-page spreads and certificates displayed in platinum frames highlighting the multiple accolades secured for the brands we represented, as well as awards the agency and I had won in our own right. It was a hall of fame that never failed to impress everyone who came to visit.
I walked across the solid oak floor and followed the corridor round to the main open-plan office space, which was flooded with natural light coming from the large oval windows that were surrounded by exposed brick. There were rows of glass-and-chrome desks, which I’d had designed and made especially for us, and on each one sat a shiny MacBook laptop or iMac.
I headed to the centre of the room and began to climb one of my favourite features: the eye-catching floating glass staircase that led to the mezzanine directors’ floor. I had my own individual glass office there, as did Harrison, my younger brother and the head of our digital division; Robyn, my senior account director who’d been with the company for almost a decade after joining us as an intern when she’d graduated; and Joe, the financial director. The beauty of the unique design was that the front panel of each office was also created to be a large sleek sliding door, so that we could slide it across to feel part of the open-plan atmosphere but could also close it for privacy.
My office, the largest on this floor, was quite minimalist. Exposed whitewashed brick walls, glass desk, charcoal Herman Miller Aeron chair, solid oak drawers, a small glass cabinet proudly displaying some of our clients’ hero products, small rectangular glass coffee table with a matching vase that was always filled with bright cheery flowers, and a comfy two-seater mustard-yellow sofa.
As I often went to events after work, I’d also had an en suite installed to allow me to have a shower, get changed and do my hair and make-up in privacy. It also meant that the loo was only ever a few steps away, which as a workaholic, or I should say areformedworkaholic, meant that I could spend more time working and less time going up and down the stairs to get to the main toilets.
I pulled up my chair and fired up my iMac Pro. This morning I wanted to spend a few more hours working on the MIKA Cosmetics lipstick launch campaign.
As their target audience was females aged eighteen to thirty-five who were very social media savvy, several months ago, we’d handpicked two key influencers with a huge following and flown them to MIKA’s beauty lab in New York to create a lipstick in their own custom shade. Céline, fromAspiremagazine, the UK’s biggest glossy, was one of the most influential beauty directors in the industry, with an Instagram following of 200K, and she’d developed a wearable pretty pink-nude shade. Amelia, who, with a gazillion followers (well, over 5.5 million), was a big-deal blogger, had gone for a nude-beige hue. She literally could post a photo of a slice of burnt toast and get thousands of likes in less time than it takes to boil a kettle.
We’d planned a launch at Harvey Nichols, where both influencers would invite their followers to come along to meet and greet them, discover their beauty tips and, of course, buy the limited-edition lipsticks. Now the date was confirmed, I needed to go over the details today to be sure that everything was in place before I jetted off to Italy.
Right on schedule at 1.30 p.m., I locked up the office and then jumped in a taxi to Hampstead for the party. I would’ve preferred to spend a couple more hours working on a few other campaigns, but this was thenewme, and the new me would no longer spend all weekend working.
Repeat after me: it’s all about balance, it’s all about balance…And who better to spend my new-found downtime with than my best friend of over two decades and my godson?
I’d met Bella at the bus stop on the way home from college when I was sixteen. For weeks I’d seen her getting the same bus as me to the main garage in Croydon, and when we found ourselves huddled under the shelter in the rain, waiting for what felt like hours, we’d struck up a conversation. We vented about the weather (we wouldn’t be true Brits without having a meteorological moan), then found ourselves chatting about everything fromThe Jerry Springer Showto the gruelling homework and our plans to learn to drive the second we turned seventeen to avoid having to rely on public transport.
Even when we had gone to separate unis, we still used to speak daily. We went clubbing and took our first ‘adult’ holiday together (i.e., without parents, notthatkind of ‘adult’ holiday). Plus, when I lived in France, because we didn’t have our own email, and On Demand TV hadn’t been invented, she used to send me ten-page letters with comprehensive updates on what had been going on inHome & AwayandNeighbours. Now ifthatisn’t the sign of a good friend, I don’t know what is.
We’d been there for each other through first jobs, first proper boyfriends, first mortgages, and also when she’d first met Mike at her uni freshers’ week. At the time, they were both going out with other people, so they didn’t get together until they saw each other at a ten-year reunion. They got married a few years later, and now she was enjoying bringing up their first child. We’d both been through ups and downs in our lives, but the one thing that had always been constant was our friendship.
Yes. After far too much time focusing on work, taking a few hours out of my day to attend Paul’s party was the least I could do for such an amazing friend.
‘You came!’ squealed Bella with delight as she opened the door. ‘Look who’s here!’ she said, signalling to Paul. Dressed in a long red-and-black patterned top with light blue fitted jeans, a slick of pink gloss, mascara and eyeliner, and her long curls tumbling past her shoulders, she was glowing as always. ‘It’s Aunty Sophia! Come and say hello!’
‘Hello, gorgeous!’ I said as I held my arms open for Paul, who had grown significantly since I last saw him, to run into. Paul, however, had other ideas. Sporting a full head of cute brown curls, dressed in a long-sleeved white t-shirt imprinted with a multicoloured ‘It’s My Birthday!’ slogan and the cutest blue jeans, he stared at me as if to say, ‘Who is this woman?’ Then he paused and ran off into the living room to play with his friends.
‘Ah, don’t worry, Soph,’ said Bella, trying to make me feel better about the fact that my godson saw me so infrequently that he didn’t even recognise who I was. ‘He’ll warm up later and will give you a big hug. Come, come.’ She gestured me inside.
In the homely-looking living room and adjoining dining room, which were both decorated with blue helium balloons and ‘Happy Birthday’ banners, there were about a dozen little people running up and down and a scattering of adults both seated and standing.
‘Bella!’ I recognised Mike’s voice coming from the kitchen.
‘Sorry, Soph,’ said Bella, looking flustered. ‘It’s all go at the moment! I’ll be with you in a sec. Come and take a seat.’ She scanned the room, then directed me to a space on the green sofa near the patio doors. ‘Soph, this is Felicity. Felicity, this is Sophia,’ she said, introducing me to the lady who was dressed in a cute floral dress with her dark blonde hair cut into a neat bob. ‘I’ll be back in a mo,’ added Bella before she rushed off into the kitchen.
