The One Before The One. Katy Regan

there it is. The kick. The high. The fizzy little bubbles of achievement that start in my belly and rise to my face, which is beaming now. It’s the reason I do this job. The reason I get up at 6 a.m. some days, work weekends, work all hours God sends. Because this feeling, it’s gold. Sales is the crack cocaine of the corporate life if you ask me. Although, on reflection, even I am concerned that getting this euphoric about mouthwash may not be altogether healthy.

      I shake Schumacher’s hand. He has a handshake like salami: damp, limp and fatty.

      ‘Thank you, Darryl.’ He carries on shaking. ‘I’ll get the paperwork to you for tomorrow. Of course, it won’t all be done and dusted before the contract’s signed and it’s all, you know …’

      ‘Bona fide,’ says Darryl, flashing a set of tartar-covered teeth.

      ‘Exactly,’ I say, hoping he doesn’t see me wipe my hand on my skirt. ‘Well, I’m looking forward to working together,’ I lie.

      ‘Yep, we’re onto a winner, Caroline. Awesome,’ he says, eyes boring holes in my shirt. ‘Now, I’ve got some mail to fire off, so I’ll see myself out.’

      ‘Great, speak soon,’ I say, making towards the door.

      As I close it, I see him breathing into his hand, covering his nose and sniffing it.

      ‘Yes! Get in. Schumacher in the bag!’

      It’s only when I stop punching the air that I see that Shona and Toby are looking at me.

      Toby bursts out laughing.

      ‘Fuck me, you really do get excited about selling mouth-wash, don’t you?’

      I feel suddenly ridiculous.

      ‘Shut up you, you’re just jealous.’

      ‘I can’t believe you can even be in the same room as that man,’ says Shona. ‘Look at him …’ She watches him through the glass. ‘Letching at us all with his little piggy eyes.’

      ‘He’s all right,’ I say. ‘Schumacher and I, we have, a personal understanding.’

      ‘Uh. Grim!’ Shona shakes her head, grimly.

      ‘Man, your face though,’ laughs Toby.

      ‘Yeah. Ab-sol-utely-fucking-hilarious,’ agrees Shona.

      ‘Were you spying on us?’

      ‘Course we were!’

      ‘Well don’t! Especially when I’m in with Schumacher. He kept making irrelevant sexual references and then there was the picture of the camel’s arse. GOD knows why I thought that was a good idea. The last person I want to be sharing a joke with – especially a joke about an arse – is Schumacher. He kept laughing, like a braying donkey. And then, you know how I get the dark, twisted thoughts that just pop into my head and then I can’t get rid of them?’

      ‘Sure do,’ says Toby, raising an eyebrow.

      ‘Well, I kept thinking of Darryl and a camel.’

      ‘Oh Jesus.’

      ‘Yes. I know, I am sick, sick in the head. Then I kept thinking he was going to make a move on me.’

      Toby’s snorting with laughter now, Shona’s got her head on the desk and one eye open.

      ‘Your face was like this …’ Toby says, assuming a grimace, somewhere between shocked and offended: flared nostrils, wide eyes.

      ‘You looked like a cross between someone who had poo smeared on their top lip,’ adds Shona, thinking hard, ‘and a hamster in rigor mortis.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘You’re welcome.’

      ‘Hey, but I got the sale though and that is all that matters.’ I raise my hand for a high five. Toby slaps it, somewhat reluctantly. ‘Six hundred units to be in every store by next month!’

      ‘What?’ He wasn’t expecting that. ‘You spawny cow. If you win that award, I’ll kill you.’

      I feel a guilty little thrill of competition. So it’s not just Rachel who wins awards, actually, thank you very much.

      I look at Shona.

      ‘It will be an award tainted with dubious morality, which is unfortunate,’ she says.

      ‘God, people! It’s breath freshener I’m selling, not children!’

      ‘But well done,’ Shona adds. ‘Because I know how much it means to you. It’s just, don’t think that just because Schumacher is now officially on board, that I will ever engage in any conversation with that prick that isn’t ab-sol-utely fucking necessary, okay?’

      ‘Loud and clear, Shona. Loud and clear.’

      ‘Well done, Caroline.’ Janine has a new super-short fringe that makes her look even more like a German lesbian than she did before. ‘You officially kicked ass.’

      ‘Thanks,’ I say, dumbly. I always feel like a disappointment whenever I’m in Cross’s office.

      But it feels great all the same. Sealing the deal. Who would think selling breath freshener could make your heart race? But I think that’s it. The simplicity of it, the lack of anything major at stake. I doubt, for example, if I’d feel this way if I worked for a charity, or as a teacher where real hearts and minds were on the table. The fact we could all quite happily survive well into our nineties without breath freshener allows me to put a hundred per cent of me in without feeling there’s going to be any emotional fall out. And that’s great, because sometimes it feels like work is the only place in my life where I feel safe to operate; like it’s the only room in the Titanic,