One Step Too Far by Tina Seskis

Author:Tina Seskis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Kirk Parolles
Published: 2013-03-04T06:00:00+00:00

24

As I cut through the back streets, past Liberty’s, along Great Marlborough Street (I long ago learned to avoid the tourists on Oxford Street) I try again to ignore why I’m thinking about my old life today, why although I have tried and tried and tried, now it is actually May I cannot forget that the anniversary is this Friday. That’s why the timing of this new promotion has been good for me in some ways – I’ll have three accounts to manage, two people reporting into me, and I’ll have to work directly with the fearsome Tiger Carrington. I won’t have time to dwell on what happened almost a year ago.

“The cat and the tiger,” Simon had laughed over lunch the day it’d been announced, and I had shushed him crossly. “It’s not funny,” I’d said. “I’m sure she hates me.”

“Cat Brown, no-one could hate you,” Simon had said, and I’d known that wasn’t true, what about all the people in the office who thought I’d shagged my way up the agency? What about my husband?

As I arrive in front of the soaring glass doors, with the four names etched high above my head, I no longer feel intimidated, out of place, like I did that first Friday, in my dreary black dress and borrowed scarf. Now I can sashay as well as the other girls, I’m fully made up, my look is expensive and sleek, I’ve been seduced by the gloss in a way that surprises me. Yes, I’m a fully-fledged fake these days.

I walk like I own the place into the lobby, past the weird-shaped furniture, past the latest beautiful receptionist, and I get in the glass-walled lift up to the third floor. I’m the first one in, and I sit down at my desk, power up my laptop, check my schedule although I already know what it says. Deodorant client status meeting this afternoon, creative presentation for car account Wednesday morning, awards do Friday.

Friday.

I don’t want to go but I know that I have to, Tiger will expect it and I can’t think of an excuse, not one I can tell her anyway. We’re up for an award for Frank, the deodorant brand, for a TV commercial we shot in Spain, up in the hills behind Malaga. I’d been glad then that I’d stayed legitimate, had chosen to go back to my maiden name – it meant I could use my passport, after all it said Catherine Emily Brown already. I’d still been a wreck going through customs though.

That trip to Spain had been the first fun – proper, memory-free fun – I had had in months. The sun had shone, and everyone had got along, helped by the Sangria of course, and on the last day the main character (the sweaty one) had been dumped into a bush by the pony he was meant to be riding, and once it was clear he was OK we’d laughed until it had hurt, especially as it had all been caught on camera.

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