‘Look at the letters, Jenny,’ Chad said, pointing to the corner of the room. ‘Look at the twatting letters!’
There was a tap on the side of my wee pod. It was Chad’s assistant, Loosie. She climbed in, notebook attached to her hand, blocking my view of the boardroom. She harrumphed before speaking just to let me know how tiresome she found me, and everything to do with everything to do with me.
‘Kate Winters,’ she began, ‘on the assumption that you are responsible for the advert that ran unauthorised in the last edition of True Love, and Lord knows the way you have been pining after your ex-boyfriend we all assume that it’s you, that and the fact that no one else would be stupid enough to a) actually pitch the idea to Chad, be rejected, then pursue it anyway and b) publish what is for all intents and purposes an advert actually encouraging our readers to, Lord forbid, get in touch, you have another 29 postal sacks of letters addressed to Pirate Kate. They were by your wee pod but Chad, and by Chad I mean me, dragged them into the boardroom. You also have a gift box from a motivational speaker called Bob. He wants to take a meeting with you. And by you I of course mean “Pirate Kate”.’ She made inverted commas with her fingers. ‘And you have phone messages: your grandmother called three times wanting to speak to you about someone called Mary, someone called Delaware and someone called Beatrice. She spoke as if I should know who these people are. She also wanted to know why you didn’t start work at 9 a.m. Personally I would like to know the same thing. Your friend Leah called, twice, wanting to talk to you about her love-stolen dreams, and a man called Peter Parker called—’
I knocked over my coffee at the sound of his name. Loosie watched me, as if I were poo on a sheet, as I tried to mop it up.
‘Peter Parker—’ she paused, waiting to see if she could make me spill it again ‘—spelt his name out for me, twice, very slowly. Please tell … Peter Parker … I am not a retard. And does he know he’s got the same name as Spiderman? Don’t answer that. Federico asked to see you when you get in, Jenny Sullivan’s on the warpath for you, and Chad said to say, and I quote, “Don’t even think about starting your twatting day sitting your skinny little arse down or sniffing at a cup of morning twatting coffee before seeing me,” and by me I mean Chad—it was a quote. BTW there is a stain on your top that looks like tomato juice, but it could be ketchup. Either way we both know that it’s not from any kind of vitamin drink. Kate? Kate, where do you think you are going?’
‘I am going to get fresh coffee,’ I said, clambering out of Big Red.
‘Didn’t you hear me, Kate? You need to go to the boardroom. We are having an Early Morning Focused Focus Meeting. Go! Now!’
the boardroom | true love
As I nervously slipped into the back of the boardroom Chad was a partial blur, silently spinning himself in fast circles on his special velvet heart-shaped chair. Federico was attached to the Nespresso machine and frantically waved as I walked in. Jenny Sullivan was sitting straight-backed and straight-faced at the blood-drawing tip of the glass heart. It looked as if the heart were literally growing out from between her perfect breasts. The rest of the office were skim-reading a Time Magazine article that Loosie was silently handing out but with a noisy sense of self-importance.
The 2009 article claimed there was a link between obesity and love. It stated that within a few years of getting married women were twice as likely to become obese compared to women who were merely dating. The research had monitored over 7,000 women and found that unmarried women living with partners for up to five years had a 63% increased risk of obesity. One of the researchers wrote that, ‘The longer a woman lives with a romantic partner, the more likely she is to keep putting on weight.’ This was by no means the first piece of research to highlight this link, or the more general negative effects relationships can have on women, but it was the only piece of research Chad could get his hands on before our ironically named Early Morning Focused Focus Meeting—a meeting that has never once been focused, never once (before today) been held early in the morning and has occasionally involved several members of staff crying. Afternoon Mothers Meeting would have been a more appropriate name, or Let’s all listen to one of Chad’s never-ending monologues and try to guess how many expletives he will use.
‘I’ve decided I want to take True Love in a new direction,’ Chad said, mid spin, the words flying from his mouth as if from a spinning top; the sounds of the beginning and end of his sentence whizzing off in different directions. ‘Now, I know I didn’t run it past you lot first, but why the fuck would I? So keep up. I’m introducing a new section to the magazine and I’m calling it Love-Stolen Dreams.’ He locked eyes with me for a split second of every spin. ‘LSD for short.’ He grabbed the edge of the glass heart and came to a violent stop. ‘I want True Love to start having a more balanced view of love and I’ve decided to start with the twatting fat people.’ He got up to start pacing around the boardroom, but his legs buckled under him like a puppet with no master—too many spins—so from the boardroom floor he began his focus meeting speech. ‘Now, before any of you get all squeaky and high-pitched I’m not judging the fat, OK, so let’s just get that out there for any of you liberalists who are pro the obese and all that. My mum had a lifelong battle with the bulge so I know first-hand how a larger lady can feel. But our readers fessed up, OK. They put it out there. They wrote in, in twatting sackfuls, to say they blamed men for getting fat. Obviously it’s not true. I have about as much effect on a woman’s weight as a plastic satsuma but we are going to write about it anyway because apparently they give a crap. Marketing guy, put up advertising rates by 15% and call out all the diet-pill companies. In fact call anything weight-loss related: step machines, personal trainers, Paul-twatting-McKenna and his I Can Make You a Skinny Fuck book. We want it all. Yellow WEE Pod, I want a selection of short articles about celebrities whose weight has been affected by love, maybe something about the amount of calories sex burns, but how they got fat afterwards, otherwise we’ll lose the fat readers. Blue, black and silver WEES, I want to know about readers who lost material possessions because of love: houses, iPads, cars and so on. Pink WEE, I want you to write about people who cancelled travel plans for love. And I want something about how love killed someone, preferably through starvation, or through having an actual broken heart. We want the readers to go on a roller coaster of twatting emotions. Jenny, read up on queens or princesses, find one who gave up something for love, the right to the throne or something.’ Jenny rolled her eyes and huffed so heavily she could have blown herself, on her chair, across the room. ‘And, Kate—’ I went cold as he said my name ‘—let’s not forget little Kate Winters.’ I could feel everyone in the room bristling with delight at the prospect of seeing me publicly fired. ‘Kate, you have illegally published something in my magazine. You are therefore responsible for all these twatting letters.’ He pointed to the far corner of the room and I turned to look. ‘It was the ultimate breach of trust, not only that you found a way to access my copy, ergo millions of our readers, but that you then used that open channel to involve them in your own quest. Give me one magnificent twatting reason why I shouldn’t fire you then call the police and have you arrested?’
I didn’t know what to say. All I could see were the letters: thousands upon thousands of them on tables in the corner, towers of letters bigger than any paper forest Peter and I had ran around as kids. And each one was a woman, a living breathing woman wanting to share, wanting to speak, wanting to reach out and connect; every letter a different voice, a different soul. Women did want to take back their love-stolen dreams. They were like paper towers of hope. I felt my eyes twinkle at the prospect. This would keep me busy forever.
‘Oi! Pirate Kate! Give me one twatting reason why I shouldn’t fire you!’
Everyone in the room expected me to crumble, or beg or just pack up my desk and leave. But not now, not with all these love-stolen dreams laid out in front of me. Chad would have to drag me from the building by my ankles if he thought I was going to give