‘I really think Steve-o needs to take another barista class,’ I said, walking into Lana’s office on Wednesday morning. ‘Your matcha espresso looks mucho depresso.’ I placed the watery, green, over-spilling shot glass on a napkin on her desk.
‘Can you close the door?’ Lana said, moving some papers to the side and closing her laptop. She never closed her laptop. Something serious was going on.
‘What’s up?’ I said, shutting the door. I pulled the tub chair close to her desk, sat down and leant forward. ‘Are you pregnant? Are we getting the Rita Ora video? Did you go out drinking with Ed Sheeran again? Is there really a limerick about James Blunt hidden in his tattoos?’
‘I want you to take some time off,’ she said levelly.
I sat motionless for a second. Lana looked back at me with steady blue-grey eyes.
‘What?’ I said eventually.
‘I think you could do with a few personal days. You’ve had a lot going on and—’
‘I’m fine!’
‘You’re not.’
‘I am.’
‘When the Sony rep came in yesterday and asked you how you were you said you were still coming down from all the weed.’
‘I am, though!’
‘Yes, but you have to stop telling people that,’ Lana explained calmly. ‘I know this is the music industry and a certain level of drug-taking is almost mandatory but you’ve got to stop bumming out all the clients. They come here for buzzy, zeitgeisty ego-boosting and you’re giving them the moody blues.’
‘They’re actually a great band,’ I muttered.
Lana fixed me with her unwavering gaze. ‘Instead of sending Universal the final cut of the “Taking You With Me” video you sent them a link to an online quiz you’d filled out to see what kind of serial killer you were.’
‘What?!’ My hands flew to my cheeks. ‘Oh my god.’
Lana listed a few other gaffes, which included me wailing ‘I don’t want it to be over’ in front of a very important investor after my favourite pen had run out, bitching to her about a needy, demanding artist in a ‘Reply All’ email that included the needy, demanding artist, and keeping ‘Roger from LA’ on hold for fifteen minutes while I cried because the instructions on the back of a Pot Noodle were too bossy.
‘Jess, I know this isn’t the usual you,’ she said, then gave an apologetic smile. ‘But this is my company and I have to protect it.’
I couldn’t believe how many mistakes I’d made without realising. I was devastated.
Lana got up from behind the desk, pulled the second tub seat close and sat down. ‘You need time to come to terms with your family situation,’ she said, her voice quiet and comforting. ‘And you haven’t properly dealt with your break-up yet either.’ She stopped for a minute to let the words sink in.
They didn’t sink, though. They plunged.
‘This is not a request, Jess,’ Lana continued in a firm voice. ‘I’m telling you to take the rest of the week off. And maybe next week as well.’
My eyes shot up from staring at Lana’s watery matcha disasta. ‘Are you firing me?!’
‘Of course not!’ Lana said, incredulous. ‘Jesus Jess, you’re a woman on the edge.’
‘I know! I know!’ I flumped back in the tub chair. ‘I think it’s the drugs . . .’
Lana gave me a look.
‘Sorry, sorry! I’ll stop talking about it. I promise I’ll stop. Just please don’t make me go home. My job is all I’ve got holding me together. I need to be here and I need to keep busy so the thoughts don’t drive me crazy.’
Lana stood, smoothing down her cloud-grey pencil skirt. ‘No,’ she said, ‘your thoughts are exactly what you need to spend time with.’ She walked back behind her desk and flicked open her laptop. ‘I’ve given your work to Elsie. Go home, Jess.’
I stood and watched Lana clicking at her silver keys.
She looked up and her face softened. ‘I need you, OK? Go home, get your thoughts into order, watch some of that awful zombie shit you like and come back like my old Jess: feisty, faintly psychotic and better at the job than me.’ She flashed her perfect Scandinavian smile. ‘OK?’
I smiled back weakly. ‘OK.’
As I left the office mid-afternoon I called Annabelle.
‘I’m on forced compassionate leave,’ I said, heading to Leicester Square tube station. ‘I’m supposed to be thinking about my problems and working through them but I don’t want to think about Mum and Dad’s lies. Or Pete and I breaking up, and the last time we slept together or the last time we kissed.’ I wove through a clutch of tourists. ‘When you sleep together you never know if it’s going to be your last time, and my last kiss with Pete was just a boring goodbye one and our last shag was just a quick functional one after we went out for dinner. How depressing is that?’
‘It’s like that with kids too,’ Annabelle said and I could hear her tapping at her keyboard in the background. ‘One day you’re lugging your four-year-old around on your hip, complaining about backache and telling him he’s a big boy and shouldn’t need to be carried. And then all of a sudden you realise you don’t carry your son around on your hip any more; that he’s eight and you will never carry him on your hip again. And you’ve already had your last time and you didn’t even know it. You put him down one day and you never picked him up again. It’s sad.’
I stopped outside the tube station. ‘That is sad. I think I’m more depressed now than I was before.’
‘Sorry,’ Annabelle said. ‘Do you want to come over?’
‘Yeah, OK.’
‘Mum’s here.’
‘Then no thanks,’ I said, realising that I felt angry with my mother for this ‘compassionate-leave/crying-about-a-pen/making-mistakes-at-work’ situation I found myself in.
I told Annabelle I’d see her later then called Priya, but she was on set and could only say, ‘Love you, babe. Got a big night shoot tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
So I FaceTimed Jimmy and asked if he was coming to London.
‘No.’
‘Did you turn down the placement?’
‘Not yet.’
‘That means there’s still a chance.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure I even want to live in London.’
‘But London has pubs and beer.’
‘We have beaches and beer.’
‘We’ve got history and architecture.’
‘Beaches and beer.’
‘We have seven Whole Foods Markets at very easy-to-get-to locations.’
‘You can eat organic here for an eleventh of the price.’
‘West End shows?’
‘Cape Town has an acrobatic musical show run by drag queens in a giant velvet tent with an eight-course meal served in time to the music by waiters in fancy dress.’
‘Seriously? How come we never went to that?’
Jimmy laughed. ‘It gets sold out a year in advance. Next time, maybe?’
I felt a thrill at the thought of there being a next time. ‘There has to be something that you like about London,’ I said with a defeated sigh.
‘There is,’ Jimmy said with a twinkly grin. ‘You’re there.’
