Jules Preston - The Map of Us - The most uplifting and unmissable feel good romance of 2018!

‘I don’t know.’

Would have been good for starters.

‘What do you think?’

Would have been a fairly safe follow-up.

He wanted to talk about it. I had just made sure that the conversation started without a heartbeat. I didn’t do it on purpose.

‘Oh,’ he said again, as if that would resuscitate anything. It didn’t.

I said nothing. That didn’t help. What else could I say? I had already answered his question. And with a level of accuracy that I rarely manage to achieve in my day job.

I couldn’t help myself. Me being me isn’t always easy on those I love.

Loved.

Both. I guess.

It’s complicated.

Read the report.

It’s all in there.

Read it.

You’ll see.

My mother always called me Matilda. Always. She was the only one that did. Everyone else calls me Tilly. It is who I am. More or less. I have an older brother called Jack and a sister that is older still called Katherine. No one has ever called her Kate or Katie. Never. They wouldn’t dare. Katherine does not respond well to familiarity.

My father makes sand sculptures. He wears shorts and sandals and trails sand around wherever he goes. He drives old estate cars that are always French and don’t like to start when it’s damp. They are full of sand, too. And buckets and trowels and brushes and tarpaulins and tent pegs and half a dozen identical straw hats in different sizes to suit the prevailing wind conditions. When my father finds a slightly younger French estate car, he gives the old French estate car to me. Then I drive it until the wheels fall off. Literally. Or sand gets into something important and the engine seizes up. Whichever comes first, really.

I like numbers, but numbers have not always been my friend. Not always. We had a disagreement. Early on. We got over it. It may have taken a reversing caravan to resolve the problem, but I cannot be sure. Numbers are beautiful and complex and do not always tell the truth even though you think they should. Numbers are not as straightforward as they seem. They have the capacity to lie and deceive and betray and confuse. That’s why I work in statistics. I like numbers. We get on okay now. Most of the time anyway.

At the time, I was working for a company called Compass Applied Analytics. Their offices were on the first floor of a recently redeveloped building that once housed an industrial-scale launderette. They were called Super Efficient Laundry Services. You could still see where their name had been painted over on the wall outside. They had a logo, too. It was hard to make out, but I always thought that it looked like a pair of sprinting underpants.

My job was to compile sophisticated market research data for product evaluation and assessment. I specialised in low-fat snack bars for the health-conscious sector. I didn’t eat them myself. I am health-conscious though. Not always. Sometimes. I prefer chocolate.

‘So, what do consumers think of the name?’ The Marketing Executive from Bearing Foods asked.

‘Loved the name,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, writing something down.

‘“Seedy-Pea-Nut-Slices” got a positive 86% approval rating from the focus group of average supermarket shoppers that we interviewed.’

‘Pretty good figures,’ Helen added, eager to be involved.

Helen doesn’t usually attend my presentations on low-fat snack bars for the health-conscious sector. She’s a strategist for new product development in the pre-packaged smoothies segment. She can’t drink anything with pineapple in it though. It makes her tongue go numb.

Our head of department thought I might need a little moral support towards the end of the report. I disagreed, but I assumed that Helen being there was a sign that the company were taking no chances. Bearing Foods was one of our biggest clients.

‘What about the packaging?’

‘Loved the packaging, too. The packaging received a solid 75% approval. Potential customers thought it was fresh, bright and informative,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, making another note.

‘Without being too fresh, bright and informative to scare off an older demographic,’ I added.

‘That’s a big thumbs up on the packaging,’ Helen said. I nudged her with my elbow. She scowled at me.

‘What about the ingredients?’

‘Loved the ingredients. 79% approval on the ingredients. Peas, quinoa and seaweed were generally perceived as innovative, natural and nutritious. They loved the passive product claims, too. “Wholegrain.” “Additive-free.” “High in fibre.” All had excellent penetration.’

‘Great work on the ingredients,’ Helen said, pumping the air with her fist.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, thankfully not looking up from his notepad.

Pineapple, I thought.

I knew what was coming next.

‘Visual appeal?’

Now this was where things got tricky.

‘Not so good on the visual appeal of the product itself,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, looking up this time. Helen crossed her arms and looked at me too.

‘Only 29% of respondents were entirely positive about how the snack bar looked.’

‘We had a few comments, too,’ Helen said before I had a chance to stop her. ‘“Looks like squirrel poo,” mostly,’ she said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said. The temperature in the conference room seemed to dip a few degrees. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was being overly sensitive. Helen took the awkward silence that followed as an opportunity to whisper in my ear.

‘Sorry to hear that you and Matt have split up, Tilly.’

‘Thanks, Helen,’ I whispered back.

Pineapple.

‘It must be difficult for you both,’ she said.

‘Yes. Thanks, Helen,’ I said.

Pineapple.

‘So, did your marriage last longer than the national average, or was it slightly less?’ She sneered.

Suddenly it all made sense. This was payback for a comment I may have been overheard making about Helen being married and divorced twice in 64.726% of the national average. It was a statistics joke. We like that sort of thing around here. It was funny at the time. Helen waited patiently for a response.

Pineapple, I thought.

‘Taste profile?’ The Marketing Executive said.

I was glad that we were moving things on. The results for visual appeal were always disappointing with any granola-type snack bar. They all looked like rabbit food, or worse. ‘Chewy’ in the name didn’t help. If it had ‘Chewy’ in the name, you could expect a further 6-8% drop in positive responses.

‘Loved the taste,’ I said. ‘Significant approval ratings for the taste.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said writing something down.

‘Once they got over the fact that it looks like squirrel poo, of course,’ Helen said.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said drawing a line through the thing that he had just written down.

Pineapple.

While I tried to murder Helen with the power of my eyes, he flicked through his notes dejectedly.

‘So, what you’re saying is that we have a fantastic product that could reshape the market in low-fat snack bars for the health-conscious sector if only it didn’t look quite so much like squirrel excrement?’

‘Essentially. Yes,’ I said.

There was no getting around it.

‘In a nutshell,’ Helen said, trying not to grin.

‘Uh-huh,’ he said.

Pineapple, I thought.

‘Seedy-Pea-Nut-Slices.’ So many things to love. Just a few important things that weren’t quite right.

A bit like Matt really.

The bottle of ‘sturdy’ Rioja we had chosen tasted thin and vinegary. It wasn’t our usual choice. It clung to the side of the glass in an odd way. I swilled mine around just to have something to do with my hands.