I nod. This is a fair assessment. “It doesn’t.”
“To say I was unhappy would be an understatement.” Jack smiles widely and it looks absolutely nothing like a smile. “But Barry sat me down and explained that while my ideas were genius, they might need a tweak to hit a wider demographic. Just a soup?on of editing, if you will. And I could see, when he showed me the results and I checked the sales with Gareth, that a few adjustments could be—and indeed were—effectively made.”
I stare at Jack, then at Barry, who immediately makes his eyes go all round and strained—but I have no idea what that’s supposed to be communicating, so I frown at him and look back at Jack again.
“But I told you that. Repeatedly. I said your ideas wouldn’t work.”
Barry coughs. “Sometimes it is less what you say, Cassandra, and more the way you say it. Anyway, I think the most important thing is that coverage has been good, sales have been strong, and everyone is happy. Well done.”
“I quite like it.” Jack nods thoughtfully. “Our skin care is so good you’ll want to stop people stealing it. You should have come to me with that in the first place, Cassandra.”
I stare at him, trying to work out if he’s joking or not.
“And I admit I may have judged you too quickly,” Jack continues, regarding me carefully. “First impressions are important, Cass, and you can be... What’s the word I’m looking for? Aggressive. Rude. Arrogant and smug? Cold. Haughty and entitled. Uptight and superintense, for sure. I’m freaked out by the jumpsuit thing. But I’m a big enough man to confess that I may have been wrong about you.”
Okay, that is so much more than one word: he scattergunned that approach.
“Cassandra,” I say sharply.
Jack frowns. “Sorry?”
“Cassandra, not Cass.” I stare him down. “That’s reserved for people close to me. If you’re going to call me names, Jack, please start with the correct one.”
Is this how everyone exists, under a constant barrage of unasked-for observations? Reported on and narrated about endlessly, as if I’m listening to a looping David Attenborough documentary about myself?
Sometimes it feels like I am drowning in adjectives.
“Hey!” Jack holds up his hands and grins in what I assume is either a peacemaking gesture or an attempt to replicate the shrug emoji. “What can I say? We all jump to conclusions about others. I bet you had initial thoughts about me too!”
“Yes,” I say tightly. “But I kept them to myself.”
“Anyway,” Barry says, clapping his hands and jumping up from the desk. “Good job, Cassandra. Water under the bridge and so forth. This is a lovely chance for us all to start fresh, isn’t it? And, as a gesture of goodwill and gratitude, Jack was just talking to me about a charity ball you might quite like.”
“Okay,” I say in confusion, holding my hand out. “Thank you.”
Barry and Jack both stare at me for a few seconds, then glance at each other and lift their eyebrows; men are so bloody weird sometimes.
“Is it bigger than that?” I hold out my other hand and cup them together. “Football size? I’m not going to have room in my handbag.”
“Not a ball from a charity, Cassandra.” Barry rubs his nose. “A charity ball. You know, black tie, pop music, round tables, dancing, tiny food on large plates, that kind of thing.”
“You want to take me to a ball?” I turn to Jack with a sense of mounting confusion. “Like...Cinderella?”
“It’s not a ball,” my client says quickly, and now I can feel the horror pouring off him like a shower of blue icicles. “It’s a gala, and I’ve bought a table for the entire SharkSkin team. Marketing, sales, development. Everyone involved. It’s a way of saying thank you for the hard work running up to the launch. As a group. Not individual. Not just you.”
I think about this offer carefully for a few seconds. Strangers, packed together in a loud, flashing room in scratchy clothes, making pointless small talk, eating food I don’t like from plates that might not be properly clean, using cutlery with little bits of dried food still stuck to it. Intermittently dancing. Yeah: if Hades ever dragged me to the Underworld, that’s exactly what I’d find there.
“No, thank you,” I say as politely as I can. “That sounds horrible.”
Barry and Jack lift their eyebrows at each other again.
“It’s not voluntary, Cassandra,” Barry says with a chuckle, and I stare at him in surprise: I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him laugh at something I’ve said before. “Jack is asking you to go to the gala as an official representative of SharkSkin and Fawcett PR, so you’re going. Please just say thank you and go buy a nice dress.”
“It’s not a reward if I don’t want to go, is it,” I point out. “But thanks. I guess. You’ll need to invite Sophie too because the entire campaign was her idea. She did all the hard work too. I just copy-and-pasted emails for her.”
Brightening—at least Sophie might enjoy being tortured—I turn and rap briskly on the office window. She spins round, along with every other person in the office. Now I’ve got so much attention, I’m not quite sure what to do with it, so I wave like a member of the royal family until they go back to their computers.
Sophie waves jubilantly back—a phone trapped under her chin—and something about the scene makes me catch my breath.
“...a lot of notice,” Jack continues behind me. “But you’ve got a few days, which should be enough to—”
I can feel my brain downloading something.
“Hello, Cassandra? Nope, she’s gone again.”
Come on, brain: just work out what the—
No.
No no no no no—
“Gotta go,” Sophie says as I charge up to her desk and stand next to her, trying desperately not to interrupt her and knowing I’m going to fail. “Do not suggest pizza again, Darren.” She puts the phone down. “Hello, Ca—”
“Someone called me. Last Wednesday evening, when I was leaving work. You said you’d take a message, but there wasn’t one.”
“Oh!” Sophie frowns. “Did I? Hang on. Just trying to remember.”
I am trying very hard to be patient, but it is bewildering how other people’s memories seem to have giant holes in them. Where do all the memories go? Why haven’t they filed them all away properly? Why is everything not tidy and immediately searchable, like a perfectly arranged larder? Why can’t they pick and choose exactly when to open and replay a specific memory, and when to make sure the lid is kept on as tightly as physically possible?
“It’s important,” I prompt, starting to breathe loudly. “Please try.”
“Right.” Sophie nods obediently. “Yes. A phone call. It was a woman. I don’t remember her name, but she said she knew you. Something about art. From art school? Did you go to art school, Cassandra? I did not know this about you. Where?”
“Focus, Sophie.”
“Yes. Anyway. She said she was supposed to meet you, so I said you were already on the way to the exhibition.”
The karate chop turns into two full fists directly in my windpipe.
“And what did she say?”
“She said, which exhibition again? I’m such a clutter-brain, I’ve forgotten the name. So I said it was something to do with animal photography in Shoreditch, just like you told me, and I could take a message. But she said not to worry, she’d just catch up with you there.” Sophie pauses. “I guess that’s why I didn’t take a message. I thought she’d...you know. Caught up with you there.”
“FUCK!” I yell at the ceiling, grabbing my bag.
Sophie’s eyes widen. “Did I do something wrong?”
“When I get back we are going to have a little conversation about information security,” I say sharply. “Namely, not sharing my exact location with whoever casually asks for it over the phone. In the meantime, Sophie, please go into Barry’s office to be congratulated and invited to a ball.”
“Huh?” Sophie says. “Where are you going?”
My intestines are liquidizing, my cheeks are heating up; a rash is forming across my chest and so on and so forth. Dull pain begins to wrap itself around my neck, like a scarf pulled tight.
“Out,” I say in exasperation, because here we go again.
I don’t wait for the lift this time: I run down the stairs.
“Miss Dankworth? I—”
“Nope,” I say, striding past the receptionist, pulling the door open, standing in the sunshine, and it’s happening again: lights are flickering, exploding at the corners of my eyes like safety glass shattering. Reminding myself to breathe, I attempt to work out what to do next. Given that the entire universe is now falling apart around me, I’m going to need all the comfort and consistency I can get.
The blue café door tinkles and it makes me think of the bell at the end of class, which was so many years ago but also somehow still ringing now.
“Hello, Cassandra!” The old man smiles at me. “You’re a little earlier than usual. Banana muffin?”