Picture Imperfect - By Nicola Yeager Page 0,18

was my mother’s, which was about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. For her, it was just another thing which proves that all her opinions about me are right, so it’s really not worth worrying about.

The place where I work is on the first floor of a large building off Wigmore Street in the West End. It’s quite handy for the shops in Oxford Street which are only a few minutes’ walk away, but that’s really all it’s got going for it. Sorry – did I sound unenthusiastic just then?

I’ve been working there part-time for almost eight months now. I’m a sort of permanent temp. The whole building, which is pretty old, must have been home to some incredibly rich family at one point, but now it’s full of companies like the one I work for, which is called Melton’s Graduate Recruitment. It’s an agency which gets jobs for female graduates, who usually find themselves doing PA or secretarial jobs instead of running television production companies and the like. I feel that I have quite a lot in common with many of them.

Luckily, my job doesn’t entail actually meeting or talking to any of the clients. They tend to be sour-looking girls in their early twenties who are all very bright and bubbly when they arrive and downtrodden and depressed when they leave. I feel sorry for some of them. They’re only just realising that their degrees in English Lit or geography or whatever aren’t going to get them some fantastic job after all. I bet they all wish they’d partied harder while they were at uni.

By the way, even though I just said ‘uni’ a second ago, I can’t stand hearing other people use it. It’s like they badly want you to know that they went to university, but at the same time are trying to make light of it so it doesn’t seem like they’re showing off that much. There. Got that off my chest. Uni. Uni, uni, uni.

When I get there, the girl that I share an office with, Kristin, is on the phone and waves at me without looking up. Kristin is from Tauranga in New Zealand. Whenever she talks to clients on the phone, they always ask her if she’s from South Africa. This annoys her terribly and I’ve seen her slam the phone down on some hapless client on more than one occasion. She points to my in-tray where there is a large stack of letters waiting to be typed up.

Mrs Goddard, the manager, or manageress if you prefer, likes to write her letters in longhand as opposed to using some sort of dictating machine. I’d prefer the dictating machine, as her writing is absolutely awful and I always having to ask her what certain words are meant to be, which I know she doesn’t like as it disturbs her thoughts. She’s forty something and is divorced. Whenever you have to go into her office, she’s swivelled her chair around so she can look out of the window. The only view is that of a big chemist across the road and the traffic. I get a terrible vibe of unhappiness from her.

I can only imagine that her marriage must have been bloody great and it’s almost killed her that it’s over. It all happened about five years ago, according to Kristin, and no one knows what happened. I don’t know if kids were involved. I don’t think they were. The awful thing is is that’s she’s really, really attractive. Beautiful, even. She has a real va-va-voom figure that reminds me of a fifties pin-up girl. You could easily imagine her as one of those Gil Elvgren paintings. She’d be wearing some tight-fitting blouse and a short skirt which the wind has blown up to reveal black stocking tops and matching suspenders. I don’t ever mention this to her, though. I somehow don’t think it would be a good idea.

Kristin, on the other hand, is the complete physical opposite to Mrs Goddard. When I first came to work here I thought she must have been over six foot five. It was only when I was standing next to her that I could see that she was slightly shorter than me, and I’m five foot six. I have no idea how this effect is achieved. She wears heels, but only two inch ones, so it can’t be that. She’s very thin, has short, jet black hair, long legs and no boobs. Men go crazy