‘I’m so glad you’re finally here,’ Cici said as we made our way around the open-plan office. ‘How is baby Ellis? Such a cool name. Alex pick it?’
‘Ellis is a cool name but my baby is called Alice,’ I answered, following her away from the hodge-podge of standing and sitting desks. ‘She’s named after my grandmother, actually.’
Fantastic. Now I was not only anxious about my first day at work, I’d also have to spend the rest of the morning wondering whether or not it was too late to change my baby’s name.
‘How old is he now? Like, three?’
‘She is ten and a half months, remember? You were there when I took the pregnancy test. How fast do you think babies age?’
‘Is that all? I guess they do say time flies,’ Cici said with wide eyes. I could tell it was taking an awful lot of energy for her to show this much interest in my personal life and I appreciated it, even if I knew she didn’t really give two shits.
‘They do and it does,’ I replied. ‘But I’m excited to be here, back at work. I’ve been going kind of crazy at home, I can’t wait to get stuck in with my site. I’ve got some really fun ideas—’
‘Yeah, I’m sure they’re great, that’s why I hired you,’ she interrupted. ‘So this is the conference table where we have most of our editorial meetings.’
She paused in front of a giant slab of crystal, propped up on a metal frame. If Coachella made office furniture.
‘The crystal channels your energies and creates a more harmonious working environment,’ Cici explained. ‘And it cost thirty-five thousand dollars.’
‘Bargain.’
‘I got it from an artisan I met at Burning Man.’
‘Of course you did.’
It really was just crying out for a ritual sacrifice with unicorn dip-dyed hair and a flower crown.
‘Over by the elevators we have our reading rooms, our privacy pods and meditation centre.’ She pointed at a row of frosted-glass doors. ‘While we encourage all our team players to invest their energy in our open-plan dynamic, we understand sometimes they need privacy.’
‘Oh yeah, sometimes,’ I agreed, trying not to vom at the term ‘team players’. I couldn’t help but wonder which Instagram influencer she had hired to do her HR. ‘Phone calls, difficult conversations, lactating.’
‘Lactating?’ Cici reared back as though I’d slapped her in the face.
‘Breastfeeding,’ I explained, making unnecessary honking motions in front of my own boobs. ‘Or pumping, I suppose. I have to pump.’
‘Still?’ she screwed up her pretty face. ‘Isn’t it a little old for that?’
‘Again, she, and again, not even eleven months,’ I repeated, staring at the privacy pods and wondering how many times a day they were used for the very important purpose of crying at work.
‘So gross,’ she muttered, adjusting her own perfect B cups inside her Tom Ford jumpsuit. ‘Anyway, this is where you would do that, I guess. The kitchen is right by the movement studio and the bathrooms, showers and dressing rooms are over there.’
She pointed off in the vague distance as I tried to log all the information. Things like this were more difficult to remember these days but I was fairly sure I’d be able to remember the place where the food was and where I needed to go for a wee.
‘And before you freak out and call HR, it’s one bathroom for everyone. That way no one can get offended.’
I lit up with a smile. ‘Like Ally McBeal?’
Cici looked back at me, stony-faced.
‘Don’t make that reference again,’ she warned. ‘People know I hired you. Don’t make me regret it.’
‘I promise you will not be the one with regrets,’ I assured her.
This was your choice, I reminded myself. You could have been sitting in your cosy office at Spencer Media right now but, nooo, you had to take a chance, you had to trust your gut and leave. Only my gut had a baby in it when I made that decision. It couldn’t be trusted. I should have been stopped.
‘And that’s it. I’m sure corporate culture went over the basics with you: no official start and finish hours, vacation is taken as and when it’s needed. We have a chef on staff to create round-the-clock snacks and beverages for all possible dietary restrictions and no orange in the office. I think that’s it.’
‘Sorry, what?’ I said, tearing my eyes away from the man who had just arrived with a small pig on a leash. ‘No oranges in the office?’
‘No orange,’ she repeated. ‘The colour. I hate it so I banned it.’
Brilliant. Starting her own company definitely hadn’t sent her mad with power.
‘Right. So, is now a good time to discuss my ideas for my site?’ I asked as she started back towards the elevators. ‘I have a name. It’s going to be Recherché dot com, it’s French and it can mean “to search for” or “exquisite”, which I think is perfect, don’t you? And content-wise—’
‘Sounds great, go for it,’ she nodded. ‘Have the design team get started.’
‘How do I get in touch with the design team?’
‘They’re in the directory,’ Cici replied.
‘And where is the directory?’ I asked.
‘On your computer?’ she answered.
‘And where’s my computer?’
‘I have to go to my office,’ Cici said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I have a conference call.’
‘I thought we didn’t have offices,’ I said as she pressed her fingertips against a touch screen to summon a lift.
‘You don’t, I do,’ she replied. ‘If you have any questions, please go talk to corporate culture. Otherwise, get started. I hired you because you’re good at what you do so, like, do it?’
The lift dinged softly and I felt a wave of panic wash over me.
‘But we haven’t actually established what I’m here to do, have we?’
‘You know, I think this whole mom vibe is working for you,’ Cici said as she stepped into the lift. ‘I mean, I get it. Once you have kids, it’s hard to not be lame but you’ve really leaned in to mom-dom, Angela. Maybe you were fighting against this normcore vibe all along.’
Normcore? Did she just call me normcore? Admittedly I wasn’t one hundred percent certain what it meant but I was one hundred percent certain I should be offended. What did this woman want from me? Higher heels? Tighter clothes? Should I have whipped out the Sherbet Dip that lived in the bottom of my handbag and pretended it was a gram?
‘I’m going to go and find a desk,’ I said, smiling politely as the lift doors closed on my smiling CEO. ‘I’m so excited to get started.’
Hell hath no fury like a British woman mildly offended.
‘Right,’ I said, turning my attention back to the sea of desks in the middle of the bright room. Squeezing the strap of my satchel, I steeled myself