The Time of Our Lives Read online

  It is in every way an offence to feminist sensibilities. A haven of pink, it has a glittery dressing table (a present from Grandma), a fairytale bed (also Grandma’s work) and more Disney Princesses paraphernalia than you’d find in all the store cupboards of the Magic Kingdom.

  But she adores it. And, given that I’ve brought my daughter up to know her own mind, I can hardly complain when she asserts it – even if I wish she’d find something to replace the subject of her current obsession: a pink vacuum cleaner. I refuse to buy it, despite her tearing out a picture of it from an Argos catalogue and sticking it on her wall, like some sort of shrine to domestic servitude.

  It’s her big eyes I see first. You can’t miss them, even when part-hidden behind her wild, dark ringlets. Then I’m diverted.

  ‘I’ve done my nails. But I smudged a bit,’ she declares, holding out her hands.

  Courtesy of a bottle of cherry-red polish (again, my mother’s work), her fingers look like she’s fed them into an office shredder. And, yes, she has smudged them. All over her duvet.

  ‘Florence!’ I gasp, diving across the room.

  It’s only when I’m halfway there that I realise my movement has prompted Spud to stir from one of his lengthy snoozes. He bounds towards me to give me a kiss, knocks over the nail polish and proceeds to leap around until there are bright red doggy footprints all over the carpet.

  Barely pausing for breath, I grab the bottle and race to my room to locate some nail polish remover, which I proceed to sprinkle about the place in a futile bid to clean up.

  ‘If only I had that pink Hoover to help,’ Florence sighs.

  Then my phone rings. I press ‘Answer’ and wedge it under my ear. It’s my boss, David.

  ‘Imogen, you asked me to call. Don’t you know it’s Saturday?’

  David is a dream boss on many levels, and I owe him for reasons that go beyond my recent, scarily stratospheric, promotion. He’s the chief executive of one of the UK’s foremost food-manufacturing companies, Peebles Ltd. You might not recognise the name, but we are an omnipresent force, producing some of the world’s best-known brands of biscuits, crackers, breakfast cereals and confectionary. Basically, if there’s wheat and sugar in whatever you’re eating, it’s very likely that we’ve made it, something we do in no less than twenty-one other countries.

  Unfeasible as it might seem for a 29-year-old single mother, I am its UK marketing director. Or, at least, acting UK marketing director, which effectively means I’ve got the job but not the salary, for the moment at least. It’s a position for which David plucked me from relative obscurity after my two predecessors went off with stress.

  The position is everything I’ve ever wanted in a job and has come earlier in my career than expected. But that’s not the only reason why I love it. It’s made me feel as though I’m really going places; it’s proved to me that hard work does pay dividends. It’s not just the new office, or the fact that I now sit in team meetings important enough for crustless miniature sandwiches (although they are marvellous). I’ve suddenly become – or at least am on the way to becoming – a woman who can make things happen, who people listen to and respect. Which is a very good feeling, I can’t deny it.

  On top of that, Peebles is quite simply a nice place to work; an office where camaraderie comes easily. In my pre-Florence days, this manifested itself in impromptu sessions in the Punch & Judy after work. Although these days I have to settle for grabbing a sandwich once in a blue moon with Stacey, Elsa or Roy, my friends on our floor, I still know I’m lucky to work with people I – largely – enjoy being around.

  The only downside is that being a high-flyer or, at least, pretending to be one, isn’t exactly family-friendly. Although nobody explicitly says so, it’s not the done thing to slope off from work to get back in time to eat dinner with your daughter. I constantly feel like I’m slacking, whether or not I’m stuck in front of my computer every night until past midnight. Which I am. Every. Single. Night.

  ‘Sorry, David. I actually left the message last night while I was tying up a few loose ends from home, but thanks for getting back to me. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve now sent you an email detailing everything you need to know while I’m away.’

  ‘Yes, I got that. And the two earlier ones.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I wanted to cover all bases, particularly for anything to do with the merger.’

  Eight weeks from now, Peebles will be announcing to its staff, the stock market and the world’s media that it is joining forces with Uber-Getreide, which is basically the German equivalent of us. It’s all entirely hush-hush at the moment, but the result – the imaginatively entitled Peebles-Getreide Ltd – will create Europe’s biggest-ever food-manufacturing giant.

  David and his opposite number in Germany will be making the announcement at a press conference on 2 September, but it’s my job to get everything ready for him behind the scenes: from liaising with the marketing department at Getreide and appointing a PR specialist here, to determining what colour tie will imbue David with an aura of gravitas on the day.

  ‘That email includes details of everything, from the key contacts at Getreide to the market research results, the PR company we’ve just appointed, and every contact name and number you might need. Although I’m confident you won’t need any of them. They’re just in case.’

  He sighs extravagantly. ‘You know what I think, Imogen?’ He pauses. ‘I think you need to relax.’

  I breathe out, only now realising I hadn’t done so for several seconds. ‘I am. I mean, I will. And, anyway, Laura knows absolutely everything and I’ve told her not to hesitate to call me if anyone needs me. You’ve got my mobile, but I’ve also included a number for the hotel, and my friend Nicola’s number too, just in case. As I say, none of it should be necessary but—’

  ‘Imogen!’

  ‘Um . . . yes?’

  ‘What do I always say at times like this?’

  ‘Oh. Er . . .’ I am hesitating because there are any number of multiple-choice options to answer this. David is fond of philosophising, although the truth is he’s no Aristotle.

  ‘Think long. Think deep. But think.’ His voice drops an octave, in the same manner employed by Churchill when delivering his war speeches. Then he pauses, reflecting on his thoughts. As do I. Though I haven’t the faintest clue what it means.

  ‘I’ll do that, David.’

  ‘That’s what holidays are for, Imogen. And you must be overdue one. When was the last time you had more than a week off?’

  ‘Hmm . . . 2007. After I gave birth.’

  ‘Since then?’

  ‘There hasn’t really been a full week, more the odd day here and there. I’ve had long weekends. I went to Center Parcs in—’

  ‘Then it seems to me you’re overdue some time out. We will cope, Imogen! It’s not like this place falls to pieces without you.’ He laughs. ‘And, anyway, it’s only three days.’

  ‘A week. Well, a week and a day as far as work is concerned – I’m back at my desk next Tuesday.’

  ‘A week and a day? Holy baloney . . .’ My heart skips a beat. ‘I JEST! Oh, Imogen, a week’s fine.’

  ‘A week and a day.’

  ‘Just get some sun on your skin!’

  ‘I will,’ I assure him.

  ‘Let your hair down!’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Get plastered a few times!’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Sleep with one of the waiters!’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Take some drugs! Go skinny dipping! Have a threesome!’

  ‘David, I don’t think—’

  ‘I mean it, Imogen. You work too hard. And I promise you this – if that phone of yours rings, it will not be anyone from this company. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘Well, it’s fine if it is.’

  ‘Imogen. Switch it off. I mean it. Switch the damn thing off.’

  My palms dampen. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Now, you
run along and have a fabulous time. I don’t want to hear from you until Thursday.’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, that’s really kind of you, David—and, thank you.’

  ‘Not a problem. Oh, before you go, did you send me what you’ve done so far on the presentation I need to deliver to the board next week?’

  ‘Yes.’ Twice.

  ‘Okay, good. And the new images I’d requested?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And the additional data?’

  ‘All there.’

  ‘Okay. Hmm.’ He hesitates.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That phone of yours . . . ’

  ‘I’ll leave it on, shall I?’

  He hesitates again. ‘Probably for the best.’

  Day One

  Chapter 2

  There’s excited, there’s very excited, and then there’s Meredith. Nicola and I spot her in Departures in Terminal 5 at Heathrow when we arrive just before 8 a.m. She’s flying towards us with her silk Missoni batwings flapping like a designer phoenix poised for lift off.

  ‘This is going to be immense!’ Meredith is dressed like a flame-haired version of Paris Hilton – white hot pants, coordinating Alice band, and Balenciaga sunglasses perched above her mischievous, cerulean-blue eyes. The other notable thing about Meredith’s appearance is that she’s pregnant – thirty-three weeks to be precise, which leaves just under two months before she gives birth to Nathan’s baby. Meredith has been calling it her ‘final fling’, which belies the fact that she sees motherhood as the equivalent to a quick but painful death for her social life.

  She never did marry Nathan, although we notched up four hen nights before she woke one morning vomiting like a supermodel after twelve chocolate eclairs and, a hasty pregnancy test later, discovered she was to become a mummy. Which isn’t something she’s entirely taken in yet.

  The development has also added an interesting twist to the ebbs and flows of her relationship with Nathan. Once they gave up on the idea of getting married altogether – about three years ago now – the on-off set-up they had had melded into a strange, twilight world in which nobody could work out whether or not they were actually together.

  It wasn’t an open relationship exactly, not officially. But there is no doubt that a certain amount dabbling went on, albeit fleetingly, and on the unspoken assumption that they’d always end up together again.

  Then came the surprise pregnancy, something that changed things all over again – particularly for Nathan. Perhaps he’s grown up a little, or maybe it’s brought into focus what he feels for Meredith. Either way, he’s no longer acting like a man who wants ambiguity between them. And – although all her dabbling has ceased – there’s no doubt that these developments scare the living daylights out of my friend.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Meredith continues. ‘I’ve been up since two. I don’t know what the matter is with me lately – I can’t get through the night without peeing at least three times.’

  ‘That’s pregnancy, Meredith.’ I shrug. ‘There’s more capacity in the bladder of an incontinent gerbil than yours at the moment.’

  ‘God, that again? Are there any benefits to being this size, apart from a better chance of a seat on the Tube?’

  ‘Well, there is the baby,’ Nicola teases.

  ‘Obviously,’ Meredith replies with mild indignation, as she pushes her overburdened trolley to the check-in desk.

  I think back to when Meredith and I first met, properly, on the fourth day after I’d moved to London, into the significantly pokier flat below hers. I’d become intimately acquainted with her musical tastes – largely in the early hours of the morning – from the start, but it was only when my eardrums were still jangling to the tune of various dance anthems several hours after I’d left the house one day that I had decided to bite the bullet and to confront her that evening.

  I had prepared myself for the worst, but she couldn’t have been more apologetic, erupting with remorse that she’d kept me awake. Then she had turned up on my doorstep that weekend with a bottle of something expensive and bubbly, which we’d demolished with a KFC bargain bucket in front of the newly revamped Doctor Who, before heading to Clapham High Street and pulling two short but enthusiastic engineering students from Belize. Our friendship had been sealed. And, soon afterwards, so was that between Meredith and Nicola. Because although they met through me, a few years, copious nights out and a string of personal dramas (the lion’s share of which belonged to me), they were good friends with each other too.

  The funny thing about Meredith is that, in every way apart from her money, she is the absolute antithesis of her family. Her sister, Gabriella, is a human rights lawyer, a relentlessly serious type who disapproves of her sister’s every move and considers her job as a freelance beauty writer to be so frivolous as to be barely worth mentioning.

  Meredith partly has herself to blame for this. Despite loving what she does, and earning a good living – which actually amounts to pocket money compared with the inheritance she received after her father died a few years ago – she’s forever repeating the words that could have come straight from the mouth of her mother: ‘I’ll get a proper job one day.’

  My thoughts are interrupted by a little girl – about the same age as Florence – giggling uncontrollably as she heads to the check-in desk with her mum and dad. Since I completed the round trip to Liverpool yesterday – to take Florence and Spud to stay at my mum’s, and pick up Nicola – I have been consumed by thoughts of my daughter.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Nicola asks me, pulling her dark blonde hair into a loose topknot.

  You know how some celebrities claim to love charity-shop chic, but wouldn’t actually set foot in Age Concern even if they were escaping a serial killer? Well, Nicola really loves it – and pulls off the vintage look beautifully. Today she’s wearing a floaty cotton dress adorned with yellow roses, which sets off the warm copper hues of her eyes to perfection.

  ‘Just worried about leaving Flo, that’s all.’

  Nicola puts her hand on my arm. ‘She’ll be fine with your mum.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ I reply. ‘My only concern is that she’ll come back dressed like Kim Kardashian and asking for eyelash extensions for her birthday.’

  Nicola laughs. ‘Try to relax. This trip must have been five years in the making.’

  ‘Six, isn’t it?’ asks Meredith.

  Nicola thinks for a second. ‘You’re right. I set up a standing order for my savings account as soon as I got back from Zante. Good job we didn’t have to rely on that, though – I’ve pilfered so much of it on the days my rent is due, I’d only saved up enough for a weekend in Pontins.’

  She’s not the only one to have failed to save successfully – I spent two days before Christmas in Euro Disney with Florence last year, and have similarly depleted resources.

  ‘Good job one of us bothers to enter these competitions, isn’t it?’ Meredith points out.

  Our friend, it seems, is the luckiest woman alive: she’s only ever entered two competitions in her life, and won both of them. The first was for a year’s supply of incontinence pads, first prize in the raffle at the summer fair run by her great aunt’s church. Then, last month, she did one of those giveaways on Facebook that everyone enters but, suspiciously, never seem to win. Well, it turns out that some do – and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Only a couple of weekends earlier, when Meredith had tagged along on a trip home to Liverpool, we’d all bemoaned how we wished we’d taken our pledge six years ago more seriously. I was feeling the strain of my new job, Meredith was desperate for a ‘babymoon’ – though with us, rather than Nathan – and Nicola, for a reason I couldn’t put my finger on, seemed more stressed than I’d seen her in ages.

  I don’t think it is her job, because she loves that. Nicola is by nature a modest, down-to-earth type who doesn’t have a flashy bone in her body, yet she is food and beverage man
ager of one of the City’s hippest venues, Fire and Brimstone. It’s a huge, converted warehouse that only the coolest dare enter, and occasionally me if I’m feeling brave. Although Nicola is insistent that the atmosphere is relaxed – they have smoked alfalfa-seed soup on the menu, and regular art fairs to prove it – I can’t set foot in the place without feeling as square as a chessboard.

  Anyway, the trip Meredith won was billed as a ‘romantic getaway for two’, but the holiday company who ran the competition agreed to let us pay for a third person, which we did by splitting the cost. So, basically, we’ve got the most luxurious holiday imaginable, in a hotel that could happily grace the cover of Condé Nast Traveller, for a fraction of the cost.

  It’s so fabulous that Nic’s girlfriend, Jessica, was tempted to join us, even though she hasn’t come on our previous holidays. But she had to attend a medical conference: something there’s been a lot of since she qualified as a junior doctor at Liverpool’s Cardiothoracic Centre. I like Jess a lot, and she’s good for Nicola: funny, feisty and loyal, the first person my best friend has ever got really serious about. That was nine years ago – ages after she’d confided in me, aged sixteen, that she was gay (I hadn’t had the heart to break it to her that I’d already worked that out).

  Despite it being an almost-freebie, I didn’t immediately jump at the trip. Although I’m owed tons of holiday at work, I knew I’d miss Florence too much. But, one evening, after a horrible day when I was one of only two people who’d remembered it was ‘Wear Your Pyjamas To Work Day’ for Comic Relief (the other being our 84-year-old security guard, Graham), I mentioned the possibility of the trip to my mother on the phone.

  I should have known better. Having grumbled constantly since the day Flo was born about how deprived she is of opportunities to look after her, the decision was virtually made for me.

  ‘So, the bit I didn’t tell you,’ Meredith says, grinning the way she did when she last had a cold and combined one too many doses of Benylin with a heavy night out, ‘is that our luxury treat starts now. Not when we get to Spain, but now.’