leggings delivered to my door that I will probably feel a bit sick about taking from the delivery guy. Especially when I still have two pairs of jeans I have yet to wear that I bought in the last ASOS sale. Cream and burgundy seemed like a good idea at the time.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for an online bargain – and for browsing the internet at inappropriate times.
. . . which is why I have sandy eyes and a permanent yawn today.
Luckily for me, the traffic isn’t too bad this morning, and I manage to make it to Stratagem in relatively good time – having made up a few minutes by breaking the speed limit to the extent that I’m lucky there are no coppers about.
As I pull frantically into the large car park that serves the whole ten-storey office block, I have to slam on my brakes so I don’t crash straight into a tall man in a slightly ill-fitting suit as he crosses in front of me.
My fault entirely. I’m going way too fast – such is my desire to get up into the office as quickly as possible. He looks at me through the windscreen of the Mercedes in horror, backing away a few paces as I screech to a halt. I return the look with one of harassed apology. He’s a good-looking guy, which makes this near collision even worse. The first attractive man I’ve been around in ages, and I nearly kill him.
It’s at this moment that the car decides to give me the biggest clobberdy-bang of the day yet, accompanied by a billow of black smoke from the exhaust that travels straight over to the poor man I’ve nearly just shuffled off this mortal coil, enveloping him in its toxic miasma, forcing him to cough out loud.
Mouthing ‘sorry’ for all I’m worth, I drive slowly past him as he recovers from the gassing I’ve just delivered, and carry on deeper into the car park, my heart hammering.
I find a parking space right at the back, near the bins, and leap out of the car, grabbing my Boots Meal Deal as I do so.
It’s only ten past nine by the time the elevator door pings open, and I hurry across the fifth-floor atrium towards the company’s main doors.
That’s not too bad, is it? Not a sackable offence, to be just ten minutes late? It was all the fault of the poor selection on offer at Boots.
As I walk into Stratagem PR’s offices, the familiar blanket of gloom enshrouds me like an unwanted relative.
It’s been like this for weeks now. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to work in a coffin, pop by sometime.
Okay, I may be slightly exaggerating for effect, but not by much. My place of work has gone from one I thoroughly enjoyed, to somewhere I dread coming into each and every day.
It’s a little hard not to feel that way, when you can see the place falling apart in front of your eyes, like a slow-motion car crash that just won’t end.
It was a tractor crash that started it all, two years ago . . . but that was only the first in a long series of misfortunes that have plagued Stratagem PR.
Not least of which was when Pierre left Peter. That was the real turning point, I think. A company can’t really survive the break-up of its founders. Not this one, anyway.
Peter and Pierre Rothman have been the beating heart of this PR firm since I joined five years ago – and when one half of that beating heart decided it didn’t want to be with the other half any more, it stopped beating completely.
Poor old Peter has tried his best to keep going with Stratagem on his own, but it’s been like watching a pining dog circling a gravestone. Without his partner by his side, Peter has been lost, distracted, and the whole business has suffered for it.
Clients started deserting us like rats leaving a sinking ship after Pierre was gone – the biggest rat being my ex-boyfriend Robert, of course. I pleaded with him not to take his property development company away from Stratagem, but he was having none of it – which meant I was having none of him from that moment on.
I broke up with him right in the middle of Stratagem’s offices. It was highly embarrassing for everyone concerned. Except Robert – I doubt he has the capacity to be