‘I’m taking that,’ I explained with added petulance. ‘You can knock it off my generous package.’
It was strange where your mind went when you were in shock.
Seven years of work and my boss hadn’t even had the decency to come in on time to fire me himself. I’d missed weddings and birthdays and dates to meet deadlines, deliver projects, give presentations, and I’d done it all with a smile. While all my friends were out puking in the street and snogging strangers, I’d spent last New Year’s Eve sat in the meeting room, throwing a stress ball at a wall for three straight hours while I attempted to come up with an innovative campaign for knock-off Toilet Duck. And I bloody well did it. My flat was full of books I’d bought but never read, DVDs that had gone unwatched and CDs I hadn’t got round to listening to. Good God, it had been so long since I’d listened to music, I still had CDs. But it hadn’t mattered before. Because this was the plan. No matter how often my two remaining friends had told me to ease up, that work wasn’t everything, I hadn’t listened. I was happy. I wasn’t missing out on my life; my job was my life. And now I had neither.
But what really stung, I realized as I rode down to my floor for the last time in the lift that always smelled ever so slightly of cat food, what really stung wasn’t the loss of the actual job, it was everything that went with it. Most importantly, it was the dream of moving into my own place and leaving my demonic flatmate behind. Because once I was in my own flat, living would really start. I’d buy fancy dinnerware and nice curtains and learn how to make sushi and buy a cool TV with an amazing audio system. And then I’d invite Charlie round for dinner and we’d end up drinking a little too much and watching a movie which would almost certainly be something starring Emma Stone, and just when she was being her most endearing for the ladies and sexy for the men, I would rest my head on his shoulder and he would realize that I was his Emma Stone and we would kiss and then we would be together for ever. But no. That couldn’t happen now. Because I didn’t have my job. So there wouldn’t be a flat. And there wouldn’t be a dinner or an Emma Stone movie night or a kiss or any happiness ever again. Poof, it was all gone.
Having never been fired, let go or otherwise excused before in my life, I wasn’t sure what the correct protocol was. For the first time, I was thankful everyone else in the office were such lazy bastards. There was no one to see me snivelling and shoving my belongings into a reusable Tesco shopper, except for a terrified-looking intern and the graphic designer who everyone knew sniffed Bostick in the toilets. The company was going under and I was being let go, but the glue-sniffer kept his job. It was perfect.
I picked up my stapler and stared at it for a moment. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t have a plan. Whether it was setting up the girl’s football team in junior school because I had declared the PE teacher sexist, turning a profit on the refreshment stand at the village panto, or making sure I was sitting next to Jason Hutchins on the year ten bus trip to Alton Towers, I always had a plan. And the Cloverhill Panthers had come third from last in our local division, watering down the Ribena at the panto until it was basically pink piss had made exactly four pounds and seventeen pence, and for two precious hours and thirteen minutes, Jason Hutchins had been all mine. I always had a plan and that plan always worked. I dropped the stapler in my bag and walked out the door.
After a ten-minute wander down Theobalds Road, I found myself in Bloomsbury Square, shopping bag in one hand, dignity in the other. Hobbling over to an empty bench, I kicked off my new shoes without worrying what the British summertime mud would do to the gorgeous nude suede and stared vacantly at two dogs running up and down the park. They always looked happy, I thought, as I pulled all the pins out of my elaborate updo one by one. Dogs were always happy. Dogs didn’t have a plan. Dogs hadn’t been climbing up a career ladder for the last seven years. Dogs hadn’t been hopelessly in love with their best friend for the last ten. Well, I couldn’t hand on heart say that was definitely true, but it seemed unlikely.
I rifled around in my Tesco bag looking for something to spur on an emotion that wasn’t pathetic. All that was in there was my stolen stapler, three framed photos, a brand-new box of Special K cereal bars and about seventeen different pens. (Lots of highlighters. I liked a highlighter.) That was it. Seven years and I’d erased all evidence of my very existence from the office in one half-full environmentally-friendly shopping bag.
I pulled the photos out, one by one, and laid them on my black-clad knee. The first was of me and Amy, little-girl versions of me and my best friend, dressed up as princesses and hugging desperately for the camera. The next one was a more formal shot of me, my sisters, my mum and my grandmother, looking considerably less chipper. We weren’t huggers, the Brookeses. Someone basically had to die to convince my mother to go further than a stern pat on the shoulder. When my first granddad had passed away, she had ruffled my hair. It was intense. The third and final photo was of me and Amy again, this time all grown-up and joined by Charlie, my co-worker, best boy friend and the man I had been in love with for the past decade. The three of us were slouched on a sofa in some random Parisian hotel in front of a huge mirror with another one behind us. My face was obscured by the camera that had gone everywhere with me that summer, but my denim cut-offs and stripy T-shirt echoed endlessly in the reflections of the two mirrors. Charlie and Amy’s reflected faces smiled back at me. Amy was on my left, deep in her Amélie phase, black hair cropped close to her head and legs stretched out, draped across me and Charlie. To my right, the love of my life rested his head on my shoulder and held a lit cigarette off to the side, so as not to drop the ash on my bare skin. Even though you couldn’t tell by the photo, I remembered I was smiling. We were the three musketeers. Rock, paper, scissors. Amy was the scissors, Charlie was the paper and I was the rock. I was always the rock.
Slowly but surely, I felt my breathing return to normal and the tension in my shoulders ease ever so slightly. Just in time for me to realize someone was sitting beside me on the bench.
‘Morning.’ An incredibly average-looking man with a shaved head and a black bomber jacket gave me a sideways nod.
‘Morning,’ I replied, carefully placing the photographs back in my bag. No reason not to be polite. This was my life now, after all. Just sitting around, talking to the other non-workers-slash-vagrants in London’s parks while I lived vicariously through the dog ownership of others. I wondered if the Tesco near Russell Square sold White Lightning. It felt like the day was missing a bottle of White Lightning.
‘Don’t make a scene,’ the man said, moving down the bench towards me and looking straight ahead. ‘Give me your wallet and your phone.’
‘Sorry?’ I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard him properly. Was I being mugged? After seven years in London, was I actually being mugged? Not bloody likely.
‘Phone and wallet. Now.’ He pulled a small Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and gave me as scary a look as he could muster. ‘Don’t make me make you.’
Still not quite with it, I tilted my head to one side and stared. I couldn’t help but think he’d be scarier with hair. He looked like an overgrown baby.
‘I haven’t got a phone,’ I replied. This was actually happening. I was being mugged by a giant baby in a bomber jacket. ‘And you can’t have my wallet. There’s nothing in it anyway and it was a present.’
‘Everyone’s got a phone.’ He sounded a bit taken aback. ‘Give it to me now.’
‘No, really.’ I opened up my handbag and tipped it upside down, emptying the contents out onto the bench between us. Three lipsticks, a powder compact, my keys, more tampons than anyone could ever feasibly need and even more pens clattered against the wooden slats. I picked up my wallet and stuck it between my knees. I meant what I said – I’d already told him he couldn’t have that and I wasn’t about to go back on my word to a criminal. ‘See? No phone. I just got fired. They took my phone. Have not got one.’
‘You haven’t got a phone at all?’ The would-be mugger