That’s a beautiful ring, anyway. Was it one in the family he had to use?
Me: No, Thom chose it for me. It is an antique, though.
Della: [putting her head on one side] Oh, well, well done you. Flying the flag for anti-consumerism.
Me: [taking a deep breath] Della. What do you do?
Della: Oh, I’m in the City. I’m a compliance consultant.
She saw my baffled/uninterested face, and proceeded to describe her job to me, but I tuned out after a while. Here are the highlights:
It’s mainly about managing client relationships [I start wondering how many strip joints she’s had to take those clients to] and ensuring their prime point of contact … blah blah blah … promotion of services within assigned accounts … blah blah … winning engagements … increased fee incomes … blah blah … supporting a new business direction … blah … allocation of resources for productivity levels … Ten minutes later I’d necked four glasses of wine and she stopped pitching to me, and switched gears to talking about how terrible it was that people were clamouring for any kind of financial regulations, and criticising bankers was a dreadful bore and utterly self-defeating. I suddenly felt very drunk.
Me: How exactly is it self-defeating?
Della: Well, all the banks will just up sticks and go to Dubai, or Singapore.
Me: And is that a problem?
Della: Well, the banks pay billions of pounds of tax every year, don’t they?
Me: But do they pay all the tax they should? Do they make our country’s life better?
Della: [scoffing a little] Yes, they employ thousands of people. Not everyone is a senior executive, you know.
Me: Of course, that’s true. So why do senior executives get so much?
Della: Because they all work so bloody hard.
Me: But what is that work? What do they do? Why couldn’t other people do it? Hasn’t there been a study to show traders are no better at trading than a rolled dice? What do they add?
Della: Oh, Kiki, that’s a bit of a socialist, naïve view of things. We can’t just run the country on nurses and teachers, you know?
Me: Can’t we? Can’t we? What’s the intrinsic worth of the City jobs? What do they do for us? If the company set up just to employ those people didn’t exist, who would employ them? It’s like ouro … orrob … oroboro … shit. Maybe not that. But their employable skills are in an incredibly narrow band, aren’t they? [trying to hold up fingers close together, to indicate narrowness] They don’t make tables, do they, or build houses? [I’m faintly aware of Thom tapping my arm] Do they? Or do you? Does your bank build a house? [Thom drags my chair away, with me on it, and swaps it with his, leaving me next to a smart looking woman in her forties]
New lady: She’s bloody awful, isn’t she? I had to sit next to her last year, and she spent two hours telling me that public sector teachers are a drain on the country.
Me: [sobering up] Sorry, I’m Kiki.
New lady: Liz.
Me: What do you do, Liz?
New lady: I’m a teacher.
After that, I had a gay old time, sitting with Liz and chatting about our work and families. But I felt Della and her husband glare scornfully at me for the rest of the night, before Thom got me home and gave me quite the talking-to.
If that’s what you want to call it.
December 15th
Bad days. Tony invited me into his office today just to remind me how much we’d spent on Jacki’s book, how much that represented of our annual budget, how much space our Sales team had had to beg for in the supermarkets, and how, basically, the first book I’d ever officially been given for Polka Dot would be the deciding factor in whether any of us got a bonus this year. ‘So you’d better make sure this Perfect Wedding is pretty perfect, yes?’ If I didn’t think that thought about four hundred times a day anyway, I would have brought it to Tony’s attention that no one at Polka Dot had received a bonus in the four years I’d been working there. But thank you for the added pressure. I sulked back to my desk and tried to go over the publicity plan with Alice.
Then his mother arrived.
I could hear her coming from the other side of the building, clattering up the stairwell, banging her oversized golf umbrella against everyone and everything she could, calling out, ‘Anthony! Anthony!’ like her forty-seven-year-old son was a runaway pup. She knew exactly where he’d be, and eventually made her way into his office after knocking piles of books over and pushing paper off any surface she could reach. The door slammed, but we could still make out every word she barked at him.
Pamela: Anthony, what the devil is this I hear about a bloody wedding book? What kind of trash is this?
Aha.
Tony opened his office door.
Tony: [nervously] Kiki! Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?
Pamela, apparently, is disgusted that we’re publishing the book of a soap actress, convinced that we’re essentially becoming Heat magazine because we’ve got a celebrity telling us her wedding plans. I’m unsure what the difference is between this book and any of the other celebrity stuff we’ve done in the past – could it be that people may actually have heard of this celebrity? – but Tony had told his mother that I’d bought this book, that he hadn’t been happy about this but I’d argued him round and it was on my head. Pamela looked me up and down and gave a snort.
Pamela: I hope you know what you’re doing, young lady.
Tony gave me a beseeching look. I toyed for a moment with the idea of pleading innocence, of explaining the unlikelihood of me being able to buy so much as a dictionary for the office, let alone a red-hot celebrity wedding book, and turning a mystified face to Tony for an explanation. But I also knew in the long run that yes, Tony would take the credit from Pamela if this book went right while I would take the blame if it went wrong, but Tony would not be able to defer my promotion again, once I took his side on this.
Me: I think we’ve got a great chance with this title, Pamela – the market’s there, the product’s good and the costings add up.
I suddenly thought: Shit, if she actually asks me about the costings I’m going to have to faint or something, as I hadn’t seen a single figure on this; but she just looked me up and down again and shooed me out of the office. Phew.
Thom didn’t have a good day either. After last week’s PowerPoint debacle, the pig-men came back as predicted but Thom’s boss, Rowland, has also made it clear that he’s not in his good books. Thom suddenly has to put all the figures past him, and – horror of horrors – has to ‘come and see him’ each night before he goes home. There is no more humiliating discipline at that level, and none more difficult. Thom must time it perfectly – too early and he’s a soft-handed workshy, too late and he’s made his boss sit and wait for Thom to decide to go home, and probably ruined a perfectly good booking at the Ivy. He’s really struggling with this, so it’s probably not entirely my fault that our conversation tonight went:
Me: How was your day?
Thom: Don’t ask. Please, tell me about yours. Distract me from the horrors of the corporate crunch.
Me: [delighted to be asked] Well! Jacki’s cakes were finally ready to be photographed today, and they were … amazing. There was one classic wedding cake with a giant silver crown on top, and one bombe glacé entirely covered with gold leaf, and forty tiers of cupcakes that were individually iced with Jacki and Leon’s initials, and a six-foot wall of cake pops that made up a giant portrait of Jacki and Leon. Now, while I think it’s got impact, I priced up the wall of cake pops and I think that, aesthetically, it might be a bit … de trop.
Thom: