(Did I say it’s boring hearing about people’s jobs? Too bad, dudes. I have the conch. Heh.)
‘I’ve never seen this before,’ I say, looking up at him. He shrugs.
‘Where is this copy from?’ I try again, blushing slightly. I find his obvious contempt hard to deal with. I repeat my mantra: posture is confidence, silence is poise. (It’s not a particularly clever mantra, I know, but it stops any nervous babbling when I’m confronted with a difficult situation. And it really does make me stand up straight.)
‘I wrote it,’ he says breezily. He means he copied and changed things from my previous work, the douchebag. ‘And Charlotte approved it.’ Charlotte is the account manager. She’s in charge of making sure the good people at Shiny Straight are happy with everything we do, and prone to giving me briefs that say things like ‘it’s bespoke and tailored and personal’, not realising these all mean the same thing. She is not responsible for writing. If anyone is responsible for writing in this 12-person agency, it’s Cooper, or it’s bloody well me. ‘Just proof it, Sass. It’s not a big deal.’
‘Why, um, was that?’ I ask, trying to look calm as I stare at the dreadful copy on screen. ‘Why didn’t you ask me?’
‘Last-minute brief. Didn’t have time to include you. I’ve read enough of them to know what to say,’ he says. ‘Anyway, it’s the design that counts. Words are bricks, as they say.’
I glance over at him, my scalp prickling with anger, and see him looking at his design underlings with a smug smile.
‘Well, I can’t, um, approve it,’ I say. My cheeks are burning. ‘I can’t approve that copy.’
The entire creative department—Andy, his two art directors and a freelance illustrator—is looking over. Laura, who they put over on my side of the room because she’s a girl and they love their little boys’ club, is staring at me. Even Amanda, our receptionist/Office Manager (she prefers the latter title, always in caps, so I tend to call her Amanda The Office Manager in my head) says ‘one moment please!’ and puts her caller on hold so she can devote all her attention to what’s going on.
I want to tell him that it’s crap copy, and words aren’t bricks, and he’s an arsehole, but I can’t. As you know, I hate confrontation. Plus, I think everyone else really likes him, though I have no idea why, so they’re all probably laughing at me.
‘Well, I’m not staying here all night waiting for you to write the fucking thing. So proof it, or I’ll just get Charlotte to.’
‘Cooper…’ I hesitate. I’m sort of friends with Cooper, more than anyone else is anyway, and everyone knows it, so I try to never use him as a pawn in this sort of battle. I wonder if that’s why I always lose them.
‘Cooper would probably prefer we didn’t miss the deadline with the printer. Which is in ten minutes, by the way. So just fucking proof it. Fix the essentials.’ He’s being openly hostile now.
I take a deep breath. I can feel tears sneaking into my eyes. Why do I cry whenever I’m angry? This is the last thing I need today. It’s not that important. I’ll just give in. I lean over the computer, fix the punctuation mistake (an errant apostrophe in ‘its’) and look up at him.
‘There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ he smiles. His lips are dry and cracked. And I know if I got within two feet, his breath would smell of coffee and badly-brushed teeth.
I turn around and walk back to my desk. Andy snickers and covers it up with a cough.
Who cares? It’s only a stupid ad.
But copy is my job. I could have written the shit out of that. And they should have briefed me.
Ignore it.
Now a crap ad is going out. What if Cooper sees it? What if the client realises how crap it is?
It doesn’t matter. At times like this, I really miss Chris, the art director I worked with at the big agency. He was talented and nice. Which shouldn’t be as unusual a combination as it is.
I hide behind my monitor at my desk as our little room goes back to normal, and get an email from Kate. She can’t join us for drinkydinks tonight, so we’re catching up tomorrow night instead.
I don’t know why I just said drinkydinks. I’m sorry. I’m not quite myself today.
Andy leaves me alone for the rest of the day, talking instead to his art minions about Doom, or some other sociopathic computer killing game, and how good he is at it.
I try to work, but my mind keeps wandering. I’m sure that by now, you know what it’s wandering back to. Dumped again! Six times. Etc.
OK, let’s get it over and done with.
The man I caught shagging a Pink Lady.
Break-Up No.5: Rick. I didn’t even really fancy him at first, honestly. We met outside the Westbourne in Notting Hill one sunny Sunday afternoon in late summer two years ago. From that very first meeting, he pursued me with an intensity that was hard to resist. I mean, he really pursued me. Sarcastic texts, funny emails, more wordplay than you could shake your innuendo at, flirty flattery…As you can imagine, I was a bit of a skittish dater by this stage and tried hard to see the potential bastardo in any man. And I thought he was too slick, too arrogant, too charming, so I tried to stay away from him when I could, and was sarcastic and flip when I couldn’t. That seemed to interest him even more. His flatmate worked with Bloomie, and they were friendly and somehow we seemed to run into him a lot at bars and parties. Loads of women were always after him—I wouldn’t call Rick the most handsome man I’ve ever dated, but he had charisma. And he always made a beeline for me, which was flattering, obviously.
So, after about four or five months of Rick’s charm offensive, during the dark, endless depths of January when it’s really, really depressing to be cold and single, I said yes to dinner. We met up one Thursday at Notting Hill Brasserie, where the food and wine and ambience combine to make you feel important and happy and interesting, all at once. And we talked till they closed. It was the best first date I’d ever had. He bared his soul, and I bared mine, and I realised that what I’d thought was slick arrogance was just hard-earned confidence (he’d won several scholarships to school and university) and genuine charm. We found each other interesting, and funny, and smart—at least he kept telling me he thought that…I now think he was lying, of course. But I thought he was wonderful. We kissed, and sparks went off in my chest. At the end of the night he said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering if I’ll call tomorrow. I’ll do better than that.’ He called me the minute I got home and we talked till I fell asleep. I was smitten. (I mean smote. No, smitten.)
For the first three months, I was in dating heaven. Rick was sharp and witty and worldly and attentive and all those other attractive things that make a girl flexible at the knees. But then, almost overnight, he started to, well, be not quite so nice. He stopped emailing and texting first (an absolute must, and yes I am a feminist, dash it, but all the same), and didn’t suggest meeting up as much as he used to—in fact, he would wait for me to gingerly bring up the subject and then say ‘let’s play it by ear’ to see if something (someone?) more exciting came up. He never asked how I was, or what I had planned that week. He’d ignore my call on a Thursday and not return it all weekend while I tried to remain positive and think, ‘It’s cool! He doesn’t have to see me! I love me-time!’ and then on Sunday afternoon would text me to come round for, well, not-particularly-interesting hangover sex and a DVD. Which he chose. So it was something like Sin City. Or Death Proof.
A bastardo, in other words. A Class-A bastardo cockmonkey that I should have ditched the minute he turned sour, like milk. But I didn’t. I tried to pretend I was fine and happy, and made excuses to my friends and myself: he’s working, he’s stressed. I felt him