Page 6 of The Reno
Stopthinking about funeral
Stopthinking about Dad’s stupid house
Client rebrand prep
Therapist???
“Kat!” Willa’s melodic shout bounced off the stark white office walls, giving my co-workers Clara and Kieran—a.k.a. the twinsfromThe Shining—a rare opportunity to look up from their laptops.
As graphic designers, staring at screens was what we did best, but even by those standards, Clara and Kieran were robots. They hadn’t looked up from their screens since nine this morning. It was noon, and there wasn’t a fidget in sight. Meanwhile, I’d got up three times to make myself a coffee. Twice, I forgot what I was doing. The first time, I got distracted by my phone and the second, I reorganised the stationery cupboard. And after all of that, the coffee sat next to me, cold, amidst scrunched-up Post-it Notes and a graveyard of chewed biros.
Willa, my boss and best friend, came hurtling around the corner to where I hid in my little booth. She was wearing a nude structured dress, usually reserved for client meetings. Her blonde hair was styled in immaculate waves, never a root in sight, thanks to her award-winning hairdresser, whom she visited every three months. Willa stepped her nude stilettos into the booth I’d picked on purpose four years ago. I figured if I was having a bad ADHD day, I could hide my hyperfixation. Last month, it was the Russian royal family and the conspiracy theory that one of them survived their downfall. My cubbyhole meant the office could be spared from my Wikipedia rabbit holes.
Now, I’m realising that Willa may have cottoned onto my most recent hyperfixation.
Willa threatened to freeze me with her icy-blue eyes. The two of us met at university when we were studying graphic design. Willa had always planned to start her own agency. She’d even told me that first semester that it was , making me feel sufficientlyinadequate, given I didn’t know what I was having for dinner. But that was Willa—a force of nature. We were the same age, but I always looked up to her like she was my big sister, something that an only child like me could only dream of having.
“Willa, I can explain.” I frowned, unsure what she was actually angry about. I know that last week, I forgot to send a client brief and the week before that, I’d felt so heavy and tearful that I couldn’t get out of bed without bursting into tears. And then, there was a general state of tardiness that followed me around like a bad fart.
I am such a fuck up.
Since the funeral, I had been a liability across every single aspect of my life, and I wanted to fix it. I wanted to fix it badly but couldn’t pull myself out of the ditch I’d created.
She took a deep breath. “Did you hand our biggest client a business card with your used gum on it?”
Clara and Kieran exchanged looks.
“Ah—yes.” A strangled noise came from Willa. “But Alan seemed to find it pretty funny.”
Alan had been perplexed when I’d wiped off the piece of gum and handed the card back to him. I would have handed him a new one, but I’d forgotten to order more. What else was I supposed to do? Dinosaurs like Alan didn’t know how to AirDrop. I wasn’t even sure if Alan had a phone.
“They’ve been on the phone.”
“Oh.”
“They want you off the account.”
My mouth fell open. “No. Alan was fine! He laughed. I’m surehe laughed.” I wasn’t sure he laughed. It was more like a wince.
Willa groaned. “Kat, that was your last chance to impress them. They have itchy feet! They’re one foot out of the door. Especially after you went on that call with a penis straw!”
“They were left over from Sam’s hen do!” I exclaimed. “What was I supposed to do? Throw them away?”
Willa and I met Sam on our graphic design course at Brighton University, and we became close. Since then, Sam got married, had a baby and bought a house in Brighton. Meanwhile, I still rented an apartment in Camden with five other people, could barely function at my job, had no boyfriend and was just a general fuck up.
