Thirty
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Every once in a while, everything comes together and for a single day, your life is amazing.
‘Hands up if you think Annie Higgins is the most wonderful human being in the whole wide world?’ Miranda yelled, lining up an armful of champagne bottles on her desk. Well, leftover Marks & Sparks cava. It was cold and it was fizzy and it would do.
Brian immediately raised his hand in the air. Modesty kept mine down but it was a challenge.
‘And hands up if you’re excited that we’re up for not one, not two, but three very important and exciting awards?’
This time, my hand shot right up. That was an actual stone-cold, verifiable fact. They’d already tweeted it and you could not take back a tweet. Ask literally anyone.
‘Our first award ceremony,’ Mir said, with eyes so dreamy you’d think she was preparing for the Oscars. ‘Our first mandatory fancy-frock professional event for Content. You know they hold it in the ballroom at the Haighton Hotel and everyone wears black tie and—’
‘And everyone does coke in the toilets,’ Brian interrupted. ‘Don’t you pop that cork, I want to make a Boomerang.’
Miranda wrestled with the bottle of fizz, her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as I counted down. ‘One, two, three …’
The bottle opened and a shower of champagne arced high into the air, dousing the office floor to wild applause. There was a reason Rodney the cleaner didn’t like us. Actually, that wasn’t true – there were lots of reasons.
‘Such a waste,’ I said, holding out my plastic cup for a pour from the already half-empty bottle.
‘But it looks so cool,’ Brian said as he uploaded the loop to Instagram. The cork went in, the cork came out, the cork went in, the cork came out. He had a point.
‘To Annie, a verifiable goddess,’ Miranda said as she filled my glass before passing on pouring duties. ‘This is going to make us, you know.’
‘Is it going to make us rich?’ I asked, bracing my face for her big, sloppy kiss. ‘In fact, I’d settle for financially solvent. Do any of the awards come with a cheque?’
She held up a finger to shut me up, knowing full well if anyone else had done that, I’d have bitten it off.
‘Not interested in hearing about real life right now,’ she replied. ‘Today is for celebrating, so shut up and let me tell you how amazing you are. This is the start of it all for us, Annie. It’s all upwards and onwards from here on in. Our little company just put on its big boy pants.’
‘Big girl pants, I can’t stand boy shorts,’ I corrected, rereading the confirmation email from TechBubble on my phone. Content London has received nominations in the following categories: best social media campaign, best boutique agency and best new agency. ‘Do you know what? I don’t even care if we win.’
Mir said nothing. Instead she slowly raised one eyebrow.
‘I already feel like a winner,’ I insisted. ‘I don’t need some industry prize or shiny trophy to validate me.’
Up went the other eyebrow.
‘Just being nominated is an honour in itself?’
My best friend shook her head. ‘Yeah, the problem is, I still remember when you didn’t win the three-legged race at school and decked Marie Brown with a tennis racket.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I mumbled into my drink. ‘It was a hockey stick.’
‘It was brutal,’ she assured me. ‘Very Tonya Harding.’
Somewhere along the line, I’d missed the memo about not being competitive.
‘Shall we go up to the roof and celebrate properly?’ Miranda suggested, gathering up the unopened bottles. ‘It’s such a gorgeous evening and the weather’s been awful all week.’
‘Mir, it’s only Tuesday,’ I reminded her as she walked away.
‘And the first five days after Sunday are always the worst,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Can you tell the boss I’ll be late in the morning?’
‘You just did,’ I replied, chasing after her.
Just over a year ago, Miranda and I pooled every penny we had and moved Content London, our ‘two girls, one laptop’ digital marketing agency, from the settees in the back of Costa Coffee to a tiny corner of a very trendy new co-working space in East London called The Ginnel. The manager sold the building on stories of its ‘history’ and ‘character’, a description that roughly translated to ‘people used to get mugged outside, but not any more’. Exactly the kind of place that would fascinate your father and worry your mother. Of course, that meant that after the cheap deal he used to lure us in expired, the rent was extortionate. But Miranda insisted it was worth it, for the location and the connections we could make and because you never knew who you were going to bump into at the barista station.
Because of course there was a barista station.
The best part of the entire building was the honest-to-goodness actual roof terrace. It wasn’t fancy – we didn’t have a bar or a sophisticated sound system or sexy, lounging furniture – but we did have a load of waterproof beanbags, someone’s second-hand settee and the most beautiful view of the London skyline I had ever called my own. It was all very DIY chic but I loved it. I’d even brought in a few potted plants to hide the electrical boxes. Nothing I could do about the man across the road who liked to parade around naked of an evening, but Miranda assured me he added to the rooftop’s character.
A few months after moving to The Ginnel, we expanded our work family to make room for Brian, another of our oldest friends who both happened to know his way around a website and was prepared to take a chance on a fledging company. I still wasn’t sure if it was because he had so much faith in me and Mir or because we never complained about him rolling into work after ten a.m.