Gemma Burgess - A Girl Like You

As I head in to work the next morning, I realise that Robert was right. I’m sure you’ve already come to the same conclusion: it was a bad date. I’m trying to chalk it up to experience, rather than chalking it up to my so-I-WILL-end-up-alone-and-lonely theory.

My office is just behind Blackfriars. I’m a financial analyst for an investment bank. Basically, I need to know everything about the retail industry in order to help our traders and clients make money.

When I first started working, I loved my job. I loved winkling out information that no one else had. I felt like a little truffle pig snuffling for gems. Then the recession hit, and with no gems to snuffle, it became hard to get excited, or even care, about any of it. And then I – rather belatedly, as tends to happen to me quite a lot – realised that my job wasn’t about research, it was all about helping rich people get richer. Which doesn’t exactly fry my burger. Though perhaps work isn’t meant to be enjoyable, you know?

Full disclosure: I only joined this company because its stand was next to the bar at my university careers day.

I am not kidding. I was finishing a difficult and essentially useless degree in medieval French. The university careers day was stressful and weirdly humiliating. Plum and I discovered the bar during happy hour, the two investment guys at the company stand spotted us and, after our second bottle of half-price wine, came over for a chat.

I didn’t know what else I’d do with my life, and the salary sounded pretty good, so I applied for the grad scheme, got in, got a couple of qualifications, and now, here I am, an associate analyst. Stuck halfway up a job ladder I never knew existed till I was already on it.

I sit in a quiet corner of a very large, very grey open-plan office, on the 6 thfloor. My boss, Suzanne, is a managing director and has her own office (glass fronted, so she can keep an eye on us). I work in a small team, specialising in luxury retail, with two other analysts, Alistair and Charlotte. Sitting around us are the other teams: pharmaceutical, automotive, banking, construction blahblahblah.

Today, at 6.40 am, I’m the first one in from my team. The workday starts very early for research analysts. Just one of the many things that I don’t like about my job.

I sit down, turn on my laptop and sigh. Oh fluorescent lighting, how I hate you. I swear the one above my head flickers and buzzes an abnormal amount. At least my team doesn’t have to present at the 7.15 am sales meeting today. Instead, all I have to do is check Bloomberg and Reuters and see what’s happening in the markets. Nothing so far. Yay. If there was, I’d need an opinion. And it’s hard to have an opinion when you don’t really care.

This is how easy it would be to improve my quality of life: let my work day start after 9 am and let me dress how I want. Today I’m wearing my uniform: a cream top with grey trousers and heels. The top is a bit silky and the trousers high-waisted, so this is haute fashion in my office, which is exceedingly conservative even for the City. Most women here wear utterly boring skirt suits with ill-fitting shirts and sensible, closed-toe low heels; anything too fashionable attracts attention. I think my job is why I don’t speak style quite as well as Plum does. You need to be trying out new looks all the time in order to develop a real instinct for what suits you.

I take out my notebook and am looking over yesterday’s list (I’m big on lists, as you’ve probably noticed), crossing off things and rewriting instructions on today’s fresh list when my phone rings.

‘Plummy plum,’ I whisper. ‘I’m—’

‘I know you’re already at work,’ she says. Plum works in PR, so her day doesn’t start till at least 9 am, and right now I can tell she’s still in bed. ‘I need 10 seconds. How the fuck was it?’

I sigh. ‘Pretty bad. I need more than 10 seconds.’

‘I thought perhaps you’d fall in fucking love and end up marrying him!’ she says, yawning. Her voice is croaky in the mornings. She smokes too much. And swears too much.

‘Dream on,’ I reply, and hang up quickly as Alistair approaches. Maybe Robert’s right. Love’s got nothing to do with dating.

‘Everybody’s got a dream!’ He’s very cheerful in the morning. ‘What’s your dream? What’s your dream? Welcome to Hollywoooooood.’

‘It takes a real man to quote Pretty Woman,’ I say, as he sits down.

‘Really? Can I rescue you right back? Remember, you shouldn’t neglect your gums.’

Alistair seemed shy and hardworking in his interviews, but quickly revealed himself to be quite the opposite, and we’ve ended up becoming almost-friends – as much as I ever make friends at work, anyway.

Charlotte, on the other hand, who I can see trudging up the hallway now, is, well, dull. Yes, I feel bitchy for saying that about a colleague who’s never done anything bad to me, but honestly, she doesn’t inspire affection. I might be a bit quiet sometimes, but she’s practically a mute. Her hair, skin and clothes are all varying shades of taupe, and she wears ponchos (ponchos!) over her suits in winter and so inevitably, because she isn’t Elle Macpherson-shaped, looks like a mushroom. I’m not the most stylish person in the world, but I know a ‘don’t’ when I see one.

‘Morning, Charlotte,’ I say cheerfully, as she sits down at her desk.

‘Morning . . .’ she says flatly. See? No effort.

A text arrives from my sister, Sophie.

Date. Details. I need to know everything.

I sigh. I wish I hadn’t talked about my first date so much. Now I have to tell them all how terrible it was. Though one bad date doesn’t mean that I’m going to be single forever, right? Or end up with Lonely Single Girl Syndrome, miserable and . . . desperate? (I’m starting to hate that word. The d-word.)

I open a new email to Plum, Henry and Sophie:

I will only discuss this once, so read carefully. It was a disaster. I had total verbal diarrhoea. Read entire menu out loud. Asked in-depth questions about everyone he knows. Told him all about my break-up with Peter. Made stupid comments constantly. He left as soon as he could. No goodnight kiss. And I was pretty hammered.

At about 11 am, the replies arrive. My sister, Sophie, is first:

Oh Abigail. Maybe you should call him to apologise.

Is she out of her fucking mind? There is no way I am ever calling him again, ever. Why line up to get rejected outright? Far better that he just doesn’t call me. Sophie is too sensitive sometimes.

I reply:

I might be a dating virgin. But I’m not an idiot.

Plum replies:

Sounds like you can chalk that one up to fucksperience, sugar-nuts. x

Ah, thank you, Plum.

Henry replies:

I can’t believe you didn’t jump him.

Another useful response.

I field emails all morning, in between phone calls to traders expressing my opinions on what’s happening in the market (very little and very little). Then finally one email, from my ever-perceptive sister Sophie, cuts through all the shit.

Abigail – do you even want to see him again? If not, stop torturing yourself.

I think for a few minutes. I don’t. I didn’t really have a good time. I just feel like, well, since he asked me out, I should really give it my best shot. Try to make it work. Surely if he’s a nice person, and I’m a nice person, there’s no reason we shouldn’t keep going?

This, it occurs to me, is the kind of thinking that kept me in a relationship with Peter for seven years.

God, that’s brutal.

Wait. That was something that Robert had said about dating. I should write it down. I take out my notebook and add ‘Act brutal’to the list. Fine. I won’t even try to see Paulie again. He is erased from my mind forthwith. How’s that for brutal?