My Fake Wedding(11)

‘Er, right.’

The office is already humming with activity. There’s Melanie the Mouth. Spreads office gossip like cheap margarine and is about as harmless as a redback. Delilah, who has neck cords from too much dieting and always looks as though she’s knocked back a petrol and floor polish cocktail. Audrey, who’s just popped out a pair of twins and has breasts like nuclear war-heads. Men swarm round her like flies round a fresh cowpat and she says it has done wonders for her sex life. Hilary, who never speaks but spits in her boyfriend’s sarnies every time they have a row. Fat Claire, her flabby chip shop arms on display as usual. She’s into all that holistic claptrap. Aromatherapy. Reiki. All manner of herbal hocus-pocery. I don’t know why she bothers. It’s obvious it doesn’t work. Otherwise she’d have managed to feng shui her cellulite or something by now and her double-decker arse would be a thing of the past. There’s Serena Bum-lick, the office brown nose. Her tongue is permanently wedged so far up the editor’s bottom, I’m surprised she ever manages to get any work done.

Jabba the Slut, all fifteen stone of her, wedging in an iced bun.

And so on.

‘Hi, Katie,’ calls Audrey, dabbing at a milk spot on her silk blouse.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Did the twins enjoy their first Christmas?’

‘Oh, they did.’ She immediately starts talking in a stupid goo-goo voice. ‘Ickle wickle Theo and Toby had a wonderful time. Loved the fairy lights. I said to Jim, “They’re taking it all in.” ’

‘Lovely,’ I say. Ickle wickle Theo and Toby have been ‘taking it all in’ since the nanosecond they were born. I’m already longing for the day one of them comes home shitfaced. Or sky high on glue. Audrey and Jim will be ‘so disappointed’.

Of course, I realise that even by my reckoning, ickle wickle Theo and Toby’s drinking days are a good fifteen years away. So hopefully I’ll miss their first night out on the Blue Nun. Surely to God I won’t still be slogging my guts out for 10p a word at Suki by then. Something life-changing is bound to have happened to me before that.

I put down my raspberry latte and park my bum on my swivel chair, pondering the possibility of a sausage sandwich from the canteen downstairs. I’ve already had an industrial sized pain au chocolat, but there’s something about work that makes me just want to jam food in my face all day.

‘Hi, Katie.’ Fat Claire’s thick, cakey voice oozes out from behind the photocopier. ‘Did you have a good holiday?’

‘No,’ I mutter, switching on my grape-coloured iMac. ‘You?’

‘Fantastic.’ She smiles fatly. ‘I found my Chi.’

‘How lovely.’ I grimace. ‘Was it lurking at the bottom of a bag of chips?’

‘What?’ she wobbles.

‘I said you must be fucking thrilled to bits.’

‘Oh.’ She looks surprised. ‘I am. You really should try it. I feel so…so…’

‘Well, that’s lovely then.’ I turn round purposefully and bury my head in a sheaf of papers.

God, this is depressing. I hate the hum of computers, the constantly shrilling phones, the irritating buzz of chatter. Actually, the chatting wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that everyone who works here is a complete Humour Eunuch. This place is about as much fun as AIDS. The only person who has ever laughed at a single one of my jokes is David. Gorgeous, sexy David. At ten thirty, he wanders in, positively ambrosial in a Daz-white T-shirt and a pair of faded Levi’s, which cling seductively to his cute-as-a-cupcake bum. David gets away with being even later than me every day because he’s a bloke. We haven’t had a man in our office since Maurice the janitor left. A man as eminently bonkable as David has never before crossed our threshold, so there’s no protocol regarding male lateness or couldn’t give a toss-ness in general. Consequently, David could stub fags out on our editor’s eyeballs and people would smile indulgently. Sometimes, if he’s feeling especially tired, he puts a Post-it note on the back of his head which reads, ‘Please wake at 2 o’clock.’ Then he kips at his desk for the entire lunch hour. The rest of us think ourselves bloody lucky to get a lunch hour.

Watching him plonk down his caramel macchiato and his double chocolate muffin, I heave a gigantic sigh. Despite David’s gorgeousness, I can’t help feeling downright miserable at being back at work.

‘Hi, David,’ trills Melanie the Mouth.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello, David,’ purrs Serena Bumlick, rewinding the tape in her dictaphone for some serious transcription.