Page 2 of The Book Swap
For fuck’s sake, now I’ll have to clear the windows too and because of this meeting, I now have seven minutes until DIY Duo arrive. Two girls who started filming each other doing their makeup before school and became so successful, they left after their year eleven GCSE exams to do it full-time. Obviously they’re now millionaires, aged twenty.
In my head I scream that if it’s that bad everyone should help tidy it, given we all use it, but I wait until they’re gone and then I bend down and start picking up clothes, desperately fighting back tears at the unfairness of it all.
Suddenly all I want is to get home and see my best friend, Bonnie. She’ll make me feel better. She’ll help me to laugh about all this. She’ll have the wise words no one else will. Frustrated, I pull a lime green T-shirt toward me, and allow myself to sob into it once, before throwing it into the bin bag, where it belongs.
By lunch I’m already behind and have just minutes to bite my way through a chicken wrap, while staring at my calendar. There’s a launch for a new energy drink in there for tonight, which wasn’t there this morning, and when I see it I choke on a chunk of wrap. Tonight’s the only night I have to make my fancy dress costume for the fundraiser back home in Frome this weekend. Everyone has to go dressed as something beginning with b. I’d purposefully kept my evening clear and only one person would have put an event in there. As if humiliating me in front of the whole team wasn’t enough. I throw away my wrap, appetite gone.
I don’t know what I’ve done to make Charlotte treat me like this. I’m good at my job. I work hard. I do everything she’s ever asked of me and it’s never good enough.
I just want to walk out of the office after this meeting and go home to my best friend, drink a bottle of wine or two while I cobble together the world’s worst fancy dress outfit. Instead I have to get home, change and be at the event by seven. I stare at the bin. How quickly can chicken give you food poisoning? The fact that eating tainted chicken is preferable to doing my job ignites something in my brain. Nothing about this is right.
I’m so full of anger toward Charlotte, I can’t even look at her as I take my seat in the meeting. As she talks about figures and plans for the next quarter, I’ve created a whole rap in my head, made up entirely of the words “shut” and “up.”
At ten past three, everyone turns to stare at me because it’s my turn to list my “biggest learning” and my “biggest win” of the week. They’re all wondering if I’ll mention the showroom.
Beside me, Cassie has the bell. It’s passed around the room so that someone can ring it if anything exciting is announced.
I stand up, clearing the rap from my mind. I’m going to have to say aloud what happened with DIY Duo. I haven’t prepared anything else.
“My biggest learning,” I begin, my voice shaking because I always hate this bit, but especially now, “is we need to change the way we allow people to browse our showroom. The girls from Duo tried to take extra free stuff today and I...erm...” I cough and stare down at the table and back up. Everyone’s looking at me. “I told them to put some back, but in the future we should probably—”
“What did they do?” cuts in Charlotte, her long red fingernails drumming against the notepad in front of her as she leans back in her chair.
“They...they...” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Cassie shake her head ever so slightly. She knows what happened. She’s telling me to do anything but tell the truth and I know that’s the right thing to do, but my mind’s completely blank. I can’t come up with a lie fast enough, and Charlotte created the “five-item limit” rule. Maybe she’ll actually be proud of me for enforcing it. “They got really cross and they left with nothing,” I say, forcing the words out as fast as I can.
Cassie visibly shrivels up until she’s nothing but a heap of rainbow-colored clothes beside me.
The finger tapping stops.
Even Charlotte can’t believe I’ve admitted it after what happened this morning. I can tell by the way her head shrinks back, her white neck disappearing under her fake-tanned chin. She’s holding her hand out flat in front of her, fingers in midair. She doesn’t know whether to start tapping again.
“They’ve got over a million subscribers to their channel. The last post they did increased our traffic by two hundred and fifty percent.”
I nod. I was hoping she wouldn’t have all the stats. “But Alicia Gold took some stuff, so...”
“Alicia will get us nothing.” This is the opposite of what she told me yesterday, when she insisted I stay three hours late to let Alicia in. “Whereas the DIY girls...” She turns her hand into a fist, displaying huge diamonds on most fingers. “That wasn’t a lesson, Erin. That was a huge fucking mistake.”
Swallowing, I go to sit back down. Cassie tries to replace the bell and somehow it lets out a ring as it hits the table, so she has to jump on top of it to stop it from further celebrating my huge fucking mistake.
I bite my top lip, shoulders shaking.
“I’d still like to hear your win, if you have one?” Charlotte says once I’m back in my seat, her voice quiet. For a second I think it’s because she feels sorry for how she’s treated me today, but one look at her face says the opposite. She doesn’t know about the result of my meeting this morning, which secured me a double-page spread in a Sunday supplement, boosting our sales by way more than the DIY Duo ever could. She doesn’t think I have a win and she wants to watch me fail one more time in front of everyone. One more time before I have to dash off to an event she put in my calendar because she can’t be bothered to go herself.
I stand back up, my jaw clenched.
“My win would be...” I pause, debating whether to tell her about this morning’s successful meeting or let her see it for herself in all its full-color, double-page glory.
“Of course, if you haven’t got one...” Charlotte sighs over the top of me. I’m about to do what I always do. Ignore the way she treats me and just try, even harder, to impress her with my win. But something about that overexaggerated sigh cuts through the final thread holding me together.
“I’m meant to be back home in Frome today, climbing to the top of Cley Hill, where the ashes of the person I love most in the world were scattered, before going home to cry my way through reruns of Gilmore Girls,” I say before she’s finished speaking. “I should be with my loved ones, but I’m not, because you wouldn’t give me the day off work. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain why I needed it. You just said we were too busy.”
The smirk falls from her face, but the fact that it was even there at all confirms she really doesn’t have a heart. All my fear of Charlotte evaporates. I lower my voice to keep it steady. Everything that’s been building all day is coming out and I don’t know how to stop it.
“I’ve stayed in this job for seven years, hoping it’ll get better. Maybe one day live up to the image I had when I started, but it just keeps getting worse.” A flash of my sister, Georgia, appears in my head, rolling her eyes at me as I complain, once again, about work. “I sacrificed everything, waiting for things to change. But now I think staying here might only turn me into you, and that’s not someone I want to be. Someone who makes everyone’s life a misery and then fucks off home to their bald cat.”
There’s a gasp. I don’t know who it comes from. Looking around, my eyes land on the bell, which is sitting in front of Cassie, shining as though it’s about to fulfil all its potential. I’m shaking. “I did have a win. I got a double-page spread in Hello Sunday, but I don’t think that’s my win anymore.” Cassie’s eyes are bulging as the others stare at me, mouths open so wide I can count at least ten fillings in the room. “I quit.” The words feel so good, I smile and pick up the bell, ringing it as I repeat the words. “I. Fucking. Quit.”
Throwing the bell down, I pick up my laptop and march past Charlotte toward the door. It’s only when I catch sight of her expression that I know that really was my win, because on her face, among all of the anger and shock, there is finally something else. The tiniest glint of respect.