Jenny Colgan - Where Have All the Boys Gone?

Katie turned her attention to the pile of work on her desk. Today she was working on a new diet, which substituted chocolate-covered peanuts and cheese for every meal. Apparently once separately considered high-fat foods, it had been discovered that taken in combination and omitting all other food groups, it had a staggering effect on weight loss and had caught on like wildfire, and was called the CCPC plan, which looked really scientific and everything. Katie’s job was to minimise the coronary or acne scare stories that popped up now and again. She was busy.

She wandered into a reverie for a second about what it would be like doing press for a Forestry Commission. Then she realised she didn’t have the faintest idea. Maybe a lot of people stole the trees at Christmas time. No, hang on, that would be a matter for the police. Maybe they were trying to attract campers…to a forest in a remote part of Scotland? No, surely not. Only the intrepid would survive, she didn’t want to be responsible for deaths by hypothermia…although…she looked at the latest CCPC files and sighed.

Miko bundled into the room, her lovely face looking furious. ‘How much better-looking than you did we say I was again?’

‘Fifty to a hundred times?’

‘So he hasn’t called, why?’

‘Because you have a bad personality?’

‘I scarcely think so.’

‘Because you’re frightening?’

‘It’s 2005. ALL women are frightening.’

She examined her blood-red talon nails carefully. ‘Do you think these nails are a bit much?’

‘Do you gorge nightly on human blood?’

‘Look at me. I’m a size six. I gorge on NOTHING.’

‘Well, we’re back to the whole personality thing…’

‘Olivia wants you,’ said Miko, curtly.

‘How are you? Keeping well I hope? What did you have for breakfast this morning?’

Oh no, Olivia was in ‘I’m your boss now’ mode.

Katie had eaten the last four chocolate digestives in the flat. ‘Two bananas and a fruit smoothie,’ she said.

Olivia’s brow furrowed, but not very much. It looked suspiciously taut. ‘Smoothie? You know there’s dairy in smoothies.’

‘A whole dairy?’ asked Katie.

‘Well, we can’t be too careful. NOW.’ She placed her arms on her desk in what was meant to be body-language-speak for ‘Look at my wide stance! How approachable I am!’ This wasn’t good at all. ‘Now, you won’t believe this…it’s just the funniest thing.’

Katie’s ears pricked up. Was this going to be one of those kind of nettle-drinking sample things she got in her office that she was always stuffing down unsuspecting juniors, to check their vomiting reflexes?

‘Yes?’

Olivia’s office was full of crystals that made annoying tinkly noises whenever anyone moved even a finger, and scattered various colours in different parts of the room. Years after everyone else had moved on from Feng Shui, Olivia was still clinging on to it with the tips of her fingers.

‘We have,’ she said, opening her eyes very wide in the manner of a nursery teacher, ‘a new client!’

‘Great,’ said Katie. ‘Well done.’ She hoped it was shampoo. Her hair had been all tired and gritty recently – not entirely unlike her mood. Plus, she’d plucked a grey one out in the mirror.

‘And it’s in a completely different field to our usual one!’

Now she had her attention. Ooh, maybe it was celebrities? She saw herself suddenly being one of those barky dog PRs who sit in rooms with celebrities and growl when cheeky journalists bring up their drugs hell/adultery.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. this is really going to put the LiWebber name on the map. It ticks all our boxes, does our bit for the environment, fills our charity requirements…oh, it’s perfect really. Of course, you know I’ve always been very in tune with the environment…I’m not surprised they came to us really…’

‘What is it, Olivia?’

Olivia spread out her hands in excitement. ‘The Fairlish Forestry Commission! The one you saw in the paper!’

Katie took a step back, felt a chair behind her legs and collapsed onto it.

‘…and, well, apparently, would you believe this, they couldn’t find anyone to take on the job. So they called us.’

Katie looked up. Hang on. She would have taken the job. Well, possibly. That wasn’t the point. The point was, that bloody Harry whatever his name was hadn’t ‘offered’ her the job. That was the point. But she’d given him her card…and now presumably he was calling to see who else was available. But if she told Olivia she’d already been up for the job without telling her, Olivia would mince her innards. Crap!

‘And, well, I spoke to Miko and she agreed with me that, well, you do seem to have been a little under the weather recently, with Louise and the mugging and everything.’

Under the weather? The weather has been FARTING on me, thought Katie savagely to herself.

‘So we thought, maybe a bit of fresh air…change of scenery for a few months…go up there and sort them out…gorgeous scenery I’ve heard…take a few photos…get our charity bit in the annual report by next year and Bob’s your uncle. What do you say? Fantastic, eh?’

‘Well, I’m not sure the outdoors is quite…I mean, my hayfever gets quite bad.’

Olivia looked up, her face instantly less beatific. ‘When I said “fantastic”, Katherine, you understand I meant “pack”.’

God, Katie hated ‘boss mode’.

‘You can’t leave me too,’ said Louise, clinging to the toaster as if it were a life preserver (which, given her lack of cooking skills these days – all built up to cater for Max, all immediately abandoned – it was).

‘Yes, that’s what I’m doing,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve been planning this all along. Put the toaster down, I’m running a bath and no longer trust you.’

‘Oh God,’ said Louise, in a tone of voice that Katie recognised was gearing up to start on about the future course of her life, involving loneliness, misery, telly and gradually slipping into obesity brought on by sadness inspired TUC-biscuit blowouts. Louise put on a good face in public, but once they were back in the flat it was a different story.

‘I’m having a bath,’ said Katie heavily. ‘I have a premonition it’s going to be my last one for six months that isn’t shared with goats or something.’

‘Do you want to go?’

‘Durr! No. It was just a stupid whim at the time. Which has come right around to bite me in the arse, because now, do I have a choice? No. Is everything going great guns for me here? Not, as it happens, necessarily.’

‘Things aren’t going that well for me either,’ said Louise, sticking her finger in the Philadelphia.

‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Where is this place?’

‘It’s on a higher latitude than Moscow.’

‘Is it pretty?’

‘If you like that kind of thing.’

‘What kind of thing?’

‘Lambs. Fresh air. Stink. That kind of thing.’

‘What kind of stink?’

‘It might have been the fresh air. Or some cow thing.’

‘Does it smell worse than the litter bins on Oxford Street on a hot day?’

‘No. It’s in Scotland, not the devil’s anus.’

‘It might be fun.’

‘I’ve been there. It is not fun. It has no cable, no Joseph, no proper coffee, and everyone up there is horrible. I know I moan about the shallowness of London life, but I’ve kind of got used to these staples.’

‘How many people did you meet?’

‘Only one. But there’s only about twelve people there anyway, so it’s a reasonable statistical sample.’

Louise stirred her coffee thoughtfully. ‘When do you have to leave?’