Ignoring my colleagues, I roll it noisily through the office.
“Don’t mind me,” I say, pushing it into the meeting room and finding a place at the darkest end of the room. This is my fourth session, and if anyone thinks I’m sitting on a ball or a swing yet again, they’ve lost their minds. I simply do not have the core strength for this kind of nonsense.
As the room steadily fills with people and snacks, I put my sunglasses on: the light has become unbearable. Then I lean over the table, prop my chin on my arms and do my best to pass out with my eyes open. Just before Sophie perches next to me, I roll away slightly so her shoulder doesn’t keep bumping into mine. When I’m tired, even the faintest touch feels like a brick through a window.
“Right.” Anton pauses, glances at my sunglasses and clearly decides it’s not worth a commentary. “Thanks for coming, everyone! Help yourself to snacks and bed in. We could be here for some time.”
He can say that again: I’m still grappling with the concept of time itself, but I can say with some certainty this meeting is going to take up at least half of it.
Sunny sunny sunny, I doodle idly in my notepad.
“Our client is Original Sun,” Anton continues expansively, leaning on the meeting table with the gravitas, confidence and poise of a man who has never been dumped while naked. “Which as you can probably tell is a luxury self-tanning brand. We’re looking for a mantra that really encapsulates everything we’re trying to represent. Think glamor. Think sophistication. Think that straight-from-the-beach feel and sand beneath your toes. Let’s Hurricane!”
We all simultaneously flinch. “Let’s Hurricane” is what Barry wants us to say before every brainstorm—it’s an agency branding thing, apparently—but Anton seems to be the only one who wouldn’t rather rip off his toenails with a staple remover. It works: he gets a promotion in about nine weeks’ time.
“How about Sunny Sunny Sunny?” Miyuki suggests, eating candy floss, and I write What UV Is What You Get. “Or What UV Is What You Get?”
“Been There, Sun That,” I mutter under my breath, because one really big perk of knowing everything is that I get to be right a lot.
A dude at the other end of the table shouts, “Been There, Sun That!” and Sophie turns to stare at me like a tiny owl.
My phone buzzes, so I pull it out under the desk:
Hey! Just wanted to see if you’re free tomorrow? Brunch? :)
What you up to?
Will x
With as little movement as I can manage, I type:
Yes, I’m free! I’d love b
“No phones, please!” Anton smiles fiercely at me until I put mine back in my pocket. “The outside world is not allowed in the Ideas Brewery! We’re trying to create a fully immersive creative experience here!” He pauses so everyone can absorb his marketing superbrain. “Also, great ideas, everyone, but I don’t think they’re quite on-brand. Puns aren’t really the pinnacle of sophistication. We’re looking for something a little more nuanced. So let’s keep thinking!”
Original Sun is very obviously a pun, but when I pointed it out in the last full cycle, Anton moved the doughnuts away from me. Instead, I write Text Will back on my notepad. Our communications are starting to blur into one.
“Oh my gosh,” Jessica interrupts, and that’s it: brainstorm over. “Guys, we’ve got, like, three weeks left until our company Away Day and Barry left the organization to me again this year, so I’ve had the literal best idea ever.” She looks triumphant about her misuse of figurative language. “I was thinking...wait for it—”
“Don’t go paintballing,” I interrupt without thinking.
“Cass-an-der-a.” Jessica swivels on her ball to stare at me. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you always like this?”
You know what? I was going to tell her that Amir is going to get shot in the bollocks and sent to hospital squealing like a mating fox and Grace will drink so many shots that she vomits into her own handbag and Anya + Miyuki have a giant fight outside McDonald’s and Barry is furious at our “unprofessionalism” and it goes down in history as the worst-planned Away Day our agency has ever had, but with the way Jessica just added a vowel to my name, I don’t think she deserves my warning anymore.
“Has anyone been to that new bar around the corner?” Grace twists her swing from side to side, gazing at the ceiling. “I’ve heard they’ve got this shot called Sex with an Alligator, which is raspberry liqueur, melon liqueur, sweet and sour and J?germeister, and if you really want to amp it up you can add some absinthe.”
At least this meeting has clarified why her vomit was bright green.
“I’ve had the Leg Spreader,” Anya chips in. “Can’t remember what’s in it, but it sure worked hahaha.”
Miyuki kicks her under the table yet again and nope nope nope, I cannot do this, I will not, I categorically refuse to spend any more of my time listening to this: I don’t care how much of it I have, it’s still not enough.
“What about the Puss—”
“Does anyone have any ideas for a moisturizer brand?” I abruptly sit forward. “Sorry to commandeer this meeting, but this isn’t the place to discuss private lives and I feel like our time could be put to more efficient use.”
Everyone stops chattering and slowly turns to look at me.
I’d name them all for you, but I’m going to be completely honest here: at this point, they are basically a Greek chorus. Faceless, noisy and popping up at irritating moments to interrupt my plot.
“I have a new client,” I say, glancing desperately at my watch. By my calculations, I have about four minutes before Barry turns up to “see how things are going” and congratulate Anton on being “such a team player,” so I need to work fast. “I’m really struggling. They’re called SharkSkin, their packaging is so ugly and they want to run a skin-care campaign ‘for real men.’ It’s not going to work, the client will blame me and I’m starting to panic. Can anyone help me?”
I can’t read each of their facial expressions, but I can say for certain: combined, the colors are not pretty. Not that I can really blame them. I guess that’s what happens when you treat individuals like an ensemble, which I’m fully aware I do and it’s another massive flaw in my character.
“Please?” I suddenly remember to add. “I forgot to say ‘please.’”
“Hey hey.” Anton’s smile is searing, like a steak held to a hot plate. “Totally get it, Cassandra, we’ve all been there! Difficult clients are the worst. But—correct me if I’m wrong—this isn’t your meeting. If you want your own Idea Hurricane, you’ve got to write it down on the blackboard wall outside the day before.”
“I know that,” I admit. “But I don’t have time.”
I mean, I do have time, but there is absolutely no way I am going back and undoing my amazing first date with Will just so I can write SharkSkin on a wall in chalk. All I need is one faintly acceptable idea. It doesn’t need to be genius, and it doesn’t need to be award-winning. It just needs to get more results than zero.
“At least the name is on point.” Jessica beams from where she’s arching her back on her ball like a large cat. “SharkSkin? That’s not going to need changing.”
“Really?” I blink at her, genuinely surprised. “Is it good?”
“No,” she laughs, and I realize this is her revenge for the paintballing revelation. “I’m being sarcastic. It’s shit. Obviously.”
“Great,” I say sharply, glancing at my watch again. Three minutes. “Thanks for that, Jessica. Now I’m being sarcastic too, in case it wasn’t clear. It’s too late to change either the name or the packaging, so does anyone have an idea that doesn’t come with a large salted side of sneering and derision?”
Silence. Then a faint mumble comes from my right shoulder.
I turn to look at Sophie. “Sorry?”
“My boyfriend.” She clears her throat, flushes and rallies bravely. “He uses my products. I spend all this money on skin care, and he steals it. We have so many fights about it, because I’m, like, fine with sharing, obviously, and I love him, so it’s not a problem, but he lies about it and it’s not a little purchase. I’m only a junior account exec and he earns way more than me, so he should honestly just buy his own.”
Brain clunking in incredibly slow circles—which is about as fast as my PR brain gets—I turn to the rest of the company.
“Who here has used skin care they didn’t actually pay for?”
A few hands go up, then a few more, and within minutes almost every hand in the room is in the air. Apparently, my colleagues have stolen from their partners, their siblings, their flatmates, their parents, their friends, their children, each other. I am genuinely shocked. It’s not just dishonest and unhygienic: Is this how other people live? Just weaving seamlessly in and out of each other’s lives and beauty products, with no barriers between them at all? Meanwhile, I carry my skin care in and out of the bathroom with me every day in a little net bag, like oranges.