Page 5 of The Love Hack

‘Not to me, they aren’t.’

‘But you want to find out about them, don’t you? What makes them tick? They’re just another puzzle, like those lateral thinking things you were obsessed with when you were little.’

I smiled. ‘I remember those! Like, why did the man take the lift up to the eleventh floor when it was raining, but get off at the third and walk when it was sunny?’

‘Exactly! So come on, let’s write a proposal. Seriously, this is genius. There’s no way they won’t go for it.’

Amelie had already put down her notebook and whipped open her laptop, and I could see words appearing at the top of a blank document on her screen.

PITCH: ‘ASK ADAM’ WEEKLY COLUMN FOR MAX! ONLINE.

THREE

‘They’re ready for you now, Lucy.’ Marion’s PA gave me a tight smile and whisked away from my desk.

Knees trembling, I tucked my laptop under my arm and made my way to the boardroom. Marion was seated on one side of the shiny wooden table, flanked by a balding, sandy-haired man who she introduced as Greg, Editor-in-Chief of Max!, and a woman in a suit who was apparently in charge of advertising sales.

The air smelled of furniture polish, coffee, and the deodorant I’d frantically applied in the ladies’ loo a few minutes earlier, hoping it would mask the smell of fear. My fingers fumbled as I plugged my laptop into the jack that worked the big screen at the head of the table. When I took a sip of water, my arm jerked and sent a load of it dribbling down my chin.

‘Thank you for joining us, Lucy,’ Greg said, in a tone I guessed was meant to be reassuring. ‘Marion tells us you have a proposal. We’re looking forward to walking through it with you.’

Personally, I felt more keen on the idea of running away, as fast and as far as I could.

But I said, ‘I appreciate you all taking the time to be here. I’m Lucy Masters, and I hope you’ll find the presentation I’ve put together of interest.’

Be keen, Amelie had advised. Poised, but keen. And remember, you’ve done nothing wrong. They’re going to love it. I wished I felt anything like as confident as she’d sounded – in that moment, I felt small, scared and vulnerable, and the ideas we’d come up with seemed flimsy and stupid.

My finger slippery on the trackpad of my laptop, I fired up the slide deck my sister and I had worked on and I’d completed late the previous evening, fuelled by coffee, culminating in a panic attack when Astro had walked over my keyboard and almost deleted the whole thing.

The thought of my cat made me smile, and almost magically my nerves receded a bit. I looked at the opening slide on the screen, took a breath and began, barely hearing my voice over the rush of blood in my ears.

‘There’s very little out there in the way of relationship advice for men,’ I explained earnestly, beginning to get into my stride as I reached the third slide. ‘There are Reddit subs, of course, and TikTok, but that only appeals to a very niche demographic. Max!’s readers are all ages, and at all stages of life. ‘Ask Adam’ will offer advice on everything from first dates through to sharing parenting responsibilities to caring for elderly parents – a burden which falls predominantly on women, but which affects their partners and sons nonetheless.’

Even to my own hyper-critical ears, it sounded pretty good, and I could see my audience going from sceptical to interested to impressed.

Then Greg said, ‘Hold on. You’ll be answering all this yourself? You? Posing as this Adam guy? What about the legal ramifications if something goes wrong?’

Fortunately, Amelie had anticipated that question. ‘We’ll include a disclaimer, obviously. That Ask Adam is first and foremost entertainment. It’s intended to provoke thought and discussion. And if I find myself stumped by a question’ – or rather, if Amelie, my secret weapon, found herself stumped – ‘I’ll reach out to experts. Psychotherapists, sexologists, even financial planners. People like that are always delighted to help if it means getting their name in the media.’

Marion nodded. The advertising woman scribbled some notes on her pad. Greg flipped through the print-out I’d given them all, then asked a few more questions that I was able to field easily.

‘Of course, we’ll have to discuss this some more amongst ourselves,’ he said, when I’d reached the final slide.

‘And run some numbers on potential sales,’ said the advertising woman.

‘Of course, if this all goes through, you know how unhappy we will be to be losing you here at Fab!, Lucy,’ Marion said.

‘You were going to lose me anyway,’ I pointed out, emboldened by the success of our discussion so far.

A few days later, I had a follow-up meeting with Greg, who seemed delighted by the idea. The day after that, I signed a contract for my new role as Sex and Relationships Editor, Max! Online. And the day after that, I packed up my desk, got in the lift and ascended two floors up to take my place in my new team, my photo of Astro under my arm, my venus fly trap in its pot balanced carefully on one palm and my special coffee mug hooked over my pinky finger.

I don’t know what I’d expected to see when the lift doors opened and I walked out onto the Max! Magazine floor. I’d been there before, of course, for meetings and to drop off a phone someone had left on our floor – just occasional forays into the world of our brother publication. Except now it was my publication, and Fab! wasn’t mine any longer.

The floor was a mirror of the one below it. There was a reception desk by the lift and meeting rooms to the left. To my right, rows of desks arranged across a bright, window-lined space, with private offices for management and team leaders along one side. If the layout was the same, the client services and sales teams would be nearest the entrance, then art, then editorial at the far end. Which meant I’d have to cross the entire space before reaching my own desk.

And the space was full of men.

I should have anticipated that, of course, but I hadn’t – not really. I’d been too busy focusing on clinging on, rather than being let go. If I had, maybe I’d have reconsidered the wisdom of my sister’s idea – that joining this team would mean not only being the recipient of men’s romantic dilemmas, but being surrounded by them at work every single day.

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