Because I’m totally carried away in some insane fantasy based on your fit body?
‘Me?’ he says. ‘I’m a total wimp. No, I meant service, as in restaurants. I used to run my own pub up in Suffolk. Local, seasonal food, nothing fancy. So, what coffee would you like, young lady? You’re not into this soy chai malarkey too, are you?’
‘Black coffee, thanks.’
‘Good, a proper drink. And any cake or a flapjack?’ he says, eyeing up the selection of goodies on the counter.
In all the years I’ve worked on Fletchers, neither Devron nor Tom has once offered me a piece of cake. I think I love Jeff. Or maybe I just don’t love Devron and Tom. Or maybe I just love cake.
‘That chocolate sponge looks delicious,’ I say. ‘But I can’t be eating cake for breakfast, it sets a bad precedent, don’t you think?’
‘Nonsense. A girl like you should totally have cake for breakfast! Besides, it looks like a giant Suzy Q.’
‘A what?’
‘A Suzy Q! Your name’s Susie and you’ve never heard of a Suzy Q?’ I shake my head. ‘Little American cakes, cream in the middle? Mos Def name-checks them? Go on, get the Suzy Q. You have to, it’s practically named after you. It’s your namesake. Your namecake.’
I let out a pathetically girly little giggle.
‘Go on, it’d be rude not to,’ he says.
‘Really?’
‘Tell you what, if I share it with you does that make you feel any less naughty?’
DO YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND? I sincerely hope not, because this conversation amounts to more foreplay than I’ve had in a year.
‘Deal,’ I say, grinning, and then rapidly not grinning as I see Tom waving to us from across the canteen. ‘Tom’s just walked in.’ I feel like we’ve been caught mid-snog.
‘He’s here already?’ he says. ‘Oh. Right, well I guess we’d better get back to work …’
The man behind the counter comes over to us and gives Jeff a broad smile and a high five. ‘Hey amigo, qué pasa? What can I get you guys to drink?’
‘Hey Miguel, how’s it going? Me pones dos cafes solos y un “soy chai” por favor?’ he says, rolling his eyes as the man laughs. ‘Miguel’s teaching me Spanish, and I’m teaching him knife skills. That’s a good deal, isn’t it?’ he says to me.
‘Knife skills! Did you learn those in combat too?’ I say.
‘Those training kitchens at the Little Chef can be deadly!’ he says.
‘I’m terrible at chopping,’ I say. ‘Whenever you see chefs on the telly and they’re looking at someone else while they’re chopping an onion at a hundred miles an hour – it makes me break into a sweat. I’d have my arm off if I did that.’
‘Nonsense, it’s dead easy. You just need to practise. It’s all about confidence. I could teach you some basic skills, it’d take me half an hour?’
‘When?’ I say, too quickly.
‘Anytime. You’ll have to give me your number,’ he says, grinning.
Tom is hovering a few metres away from us, glued to his BlackBerry. Nodding mostly, but also saying, ‘Sure sure, Devron. Fully strategic’ a lot.
‘So tell me – what do you do at the agency then?’ Jeff says. ‘Do you come up with the ideas for the ads?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘A creative team does that.’
‘That’s a relief!’ he says. ‘So you weren’t responsible for that terrible Perfect Bottom pizza campaign? Find your perfect bottom, we’ll give you the right stuffing …’
‘Actually I did work on that,’ I say, blushing. ‘But I didn’t come up with the idea.’
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘sorry. But they were so cheesy.’
I agree. ‘Sold a lot of pizzas though,’ I say, shrugging my shoulders in despair. ‘Double-digit growth, your boss was very happy with those ads.’
‘So what do you do exactly?’ he says, gesturing to Tom to get off the phone, and pointing at his watch. It’s 9.45 a.m. and I’m sure Jeff had to be somewhere at 10 a.m… .
I reach into my wallet and hand him my business card. That way he has my number and my email too. On the front of the card is a black shiny NMN logo, the legs of the three letters melded together so that the whole thing resembles one big, scary, slightly embossed praying mantis.
On the other side it says:
Susie Rosen
Account Director
That should actually say:
Susie Rosen
Person with the greatest responsibility in the western world
(yes, Obama, that is me, not you). The quest for world peace
is one thing. But do you have any idea how challenging it is
to ensure that there’s always a brand new bottle of Heinz
ketchup on hand for Devron’s bacon sandwich when he
comes in for a breakfast meeting?
On the flip side it should have a little note from my mum:
Really, Susannah
You should have gone to dental school like your clever
brother. I don’t care that teeth freak you out. And now
you’re wasting your life away at that agency while Marian
Bentley’s daughter’s just been awarded an OBE for her
charity work. And did I tell you Sylvia’s daughter now
heads up the cancer ward at UCH? And she’s three months
younger than you!
I’d need an A4 business card.
Jeff stares at my job title. ‘Account Director,’ he says. ‘Like accounts as in finance?’
‘No, accounts as in Fletchers is the account, I look after it. Basically I try to make sure a client’s happy with an idea; if there are any changes I then need to make sure the creatives are happy. Once that’s all happened I try to get the ad made, on time and in budget.’
‘Sounds reasonably straightforward,’ he says.
‘If only,’ I say. ‘The problem is that usually clients and creatives have opposing opinions, so it can feel a little bit like piggy in the middle.’
‘Piggy in the middle; I used to hate that game,’ he says, smiling warmly.
‘Me too.’ I smile back.
His face crinkles for a minute. ‘Actually do you mean piggy in the middle? Aren’t the two sides both on the same side in that game?’
I think about it. I’ve been trotting out this analogy for years but of course he’s right.
‘I am an idiot!’ I say. ‘I’m going to have to think of a different game where two sides attack one person … How about dodgeball, where you’re just getting hit all the time?’
‘Nah, in dodgeball there’s no one’s in the middle.