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21
Rebecca
I checked my monitor: 5.35 p.m. Officially time to stop replying to emails and leave the office. Looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody was watching me, I opened the Word document containing the application form for the head of press and marketing position. It had taken me hours – literally hours – to complete. I didn’t know why you couldn’t just submit a CV and covering letter, like you used to. For anyone who didn’t get invited for interview the form added insult to injury, didn’t it, because you’d basically wasted several days of your life filling it out?
The Kingsland Marketing HR department was comprised of two women who had been in the job for twenty years apiece and to say they played it by the book was an understatement. Personally, I thought human resources was a terrible name for the department, since they didn’t appear to take actual human feelings into account. When there’d been a spate of redundancies a few years back, for example, the people unlucky enough to lose their jobs had had to pack up their desks and vacate the office in under an hour. The security guard from downstairs had been hovering over them as though they were going to smuggle out top-secret information on Kingsland Marketing and sell it to the Daily Mail. Maybe that’s what people did when they were angry and desperate. Perhaps I’d even feel like that if they gave the job to Amanda. I didn’t think so. Anyway, it was now glaringly obvious that I didn’t really want it, but it felt like a huge step not to apply. I’d be admitting to myself and everyone else that I wanted something to change and then there would be no going back, would there?
My phone rang. Strangely it was Val.
‘What on earth are you still doing here?’ I demanded.
Val was usually out of the door on the dot of 5.30 because she said she refused to give the company a minute of her time for free. I admired this attitude, but I also couldn’t really get my head round it. I was obsessed with not getting complacent, by being at the top of my game all of the time and making myself completely indispensable. I didn’t know what kind of disaster I imagined was going to befall me if I left on time once in a while or – god forbid – took a day off sick.
‘I could ask you the same thing,’ said Val. ‘Let me guess, you’re looking over your application for the twenty-fifth time.’
I laughed. ‘You know me too well.’
‘Step away from the application,’ instructed Val.
‘I’m nearly done,’ I insisted.
‘Got time for a drink in Bar Monaco?’ she asked.
I always had time for that.
‘See you in there at six,’ I said, replacing the receiver.
One more look through the application and then I would force myself to press send.
Val put our drinks on the table and took a seat, waving over at Freya, who was with the art department at a table on the other side of the dance floor.
‘I hope you’re going to tell me you sent that application?’ said Val. ‘Enough with the procrastinating. The job’s yours and you know it.’
I sighed, resting my chin in the heel of my hand. ‘I told you what I heard in the loos the other night.’
Val tutted. ‘Abi and Violet haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about. They’re just up Amanda’s arse because she got them on the guest list at Mahiki a few weeks ago.’
‘Is that place still going?’ I said, thinking back to all the celebrity photos I’d seen of people stumbling out of the door of the Mayfair club what seemed like decades ago.
‘Apparently,’ replied Val, who had much cooler taste in music than I did and would not be seen dead at such an establishment.
I took a deep breath. I had to tell someone. ‘So I’m thinking about not applying for the job.’
Val stopped sucking her drink through a straw and frowned at me. She widened her eyes. ‘Since when?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know, really. A couple of weeks? I’ve been going over and over it in my head, and something doesn’t feel right about it. I’ve got this feeling that I want to try something different and if I take the promotion, I’m stuck here for another couple of years at least, aren’t I?’
Val looked shocked. ‘I had no idea you felt stuck, Becs.’
‘Well, I’ve only just worked it out for myself, to be fair.’
Val nodded. ‘So what else would you want to do?’
I took a sip of my own drink. Someone turned the music up and Dua Lipa’s ‘Physical’ blasted out so loud that I had to raise my voice by about a decibel so that Val could hear me.
‘I’ve seen a job,’ I said. ‘And it sounds perfect.’
‘Go on,’ said Val, nodding with encouragement.
