Who's Afraid of Mr Wolfe? (12 page)

‘What do you mean? What kind of effort?’

In reply Sam looked her up and down.

He started to move around the flat, putting things into black bin liners. Ellie saw the little wooden box she had bought him for Christmas go in, the book she’d got signed by the author.

When he’d finished, he came and sat beside her. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie, I’m going now. I’ll give you a call about the flat, about the mortgage and everything … Don’t suppose you feel like talking about it now.’ He reached out to hold her hand and she let him. ‘I’m genuinely sorry, Ellie. I should have had the guts to tell you earlier, not keep lying to you. It’s a rubbish way to treat a friend. I wish you hadn’t found out like that.’

‘You mean you wish I hadn’t found out at all,’ she said, pulling her hand free.

Sam didn’t answer and Ellie couldn’t say anything for a while. She had a horrible, cramping pain in her chest, and when Sam got up to go, she just sat there. She was battling to retain some dignity, let him see what he’d chucked away, but then he’d said something about having to rush and before she could stop herself she had spat out, ‘Yeah, better run. If you leave Lotte alone in the car too long, she might chew the upholstery.’

If only at that point Sam had got angry, instead of giving her a ‘you sad little person’ look, she might not have added, ‘Still, at least you should be thankful that she’s housetrained.’

It had given Sam the perfect excuse to slam out of the flat, probably feeling like the injured party.

Funny how having the last word had felt so unsatisfying and so final.

The sound of Mike’s voice cut into her thoughts. He
was outlining some initiative that major book retailers were piloting involving child-friendly e-books.

She watched Mike’s arms waving around like windmill sails for a while and then asked herself why she hadn’t become angry with Sam after he had gone. There was still some of his stuff left in the flat. She’d read about women trashing their ex-boyfriend’s suits, even their cars.

But perhaps there was a set sequence to betrayal and loss. Perhaps anger came after sorrow, and sorrow came after shock. She figured she was in the ‘mooching around feeling numb’ stage and—

‘I said, Ellie, what do you think of that?’

It was Jack’s voice.

Ellie was aware that nobody else was moving. The room had gone completely quiet. One look at Jack’s eyes told her that he knew she hadn’t been listening. The way they were boring into her, she wouldn’t be surprised if he knew exactly what she had been thinking about.

‘Well?’ The little word snapped out into the silence.

Lesley was furiously scribbling some words on her pad, but Ellie couldn’t make out what they said.

It didn’t matter, though; she knew where the meeting had got up to, and she had done a bit of homework on the e-book market.

‘Well, Jack,’ she said, ‘I think we could work with the libraries on this one. They needn’t see this as a threat. They could in fact open up a whole new market for
themselves by acting as the access point.’ She stopped, aware that Jack’s face was looking more and more granite-like and that Zak was making an unsuccessful attempt not to snigger.

‘The libraries act as the access point?’ Jack repeated slowly, dangerously.

‘Uh-huh.’ Ellie had a horrible feeling that she was about to walk over the edge of a cliff.

‘Well, that’s brilliant, quite brilliant, Ellie,’ Jack said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head. ‘What a fantastic idea … if only we hadn’t actually moved on from e-books to the new morning-after pill being trialled by Liphook Masters. Still, I’m sure that local government will leap at the idea of their libraries handing out contraceptives along with Harry Potter and Tracy Beaker.’

Ellie expected Jack to rip her head off there and then, but he didn’t. He carried on with the meeting and then asked her to stay behind afterwards.

‘It’s not as though it’s the first time, Ellie. You’ve been acting like you’re on a different planet for weeks now,’ he said, scowling at her. ‘Look, we all have personal problems from time to time, but they should stay just that, personal. And private. And. At. Home.’

Ellie looked at the floor.

‘I mean, how long is this sick bloody cat routine going to go on for?’

Ellie kept looking at the floor.

‘Will you stop looking at the bloody floor?’ Jack shouted, and brought his hand down on the desk.

Ellie looked up and purposely focused on the sky outside the window. She was fed up with this, with him picking on her. Fed up with his horrible hard eyes and that glower. What a bully. Next he’d be speaking ruddy German and pointing out how boring and stale she was.

‘Look, this is a business, not a sodding bus,’ Jack continued. ‘We can’t afford to carry passengers. God knows there are enough of them around here already.’ He pushed a piece of paper over the desk towards her, his eyes almost colourless. ‘Read that.’

Ellie read, recognising a piece of work she’d done last week. It was terrible: clunky, incomprehensible in places, clichéd. She’d rushed to get it done for Hugo. The swine could have told her it was rubbish, not handed it on to Jack.

‘This belongs here.’ Jack tore the paper from her hands and threw it into his wastepaper basket. ‘I wouldn’t accept that pile of rubbish from a student, let alone somebody who is meant to be one of the agency’s best copywriters.’

‘Right. I’ll go away and write it again,’ Ellie said, standing up. ‘I’ll go and polish it to Zak’s high standards.’ She was aware her voice was getting more and more strident with
every word. ‘And while I’m about it, I’ll go and put on a goth T-shirt and black nail varnish so I can match his extremely high standards of sartorial elegance as well.’

‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, it seems there’s one rule for some and one rule for me. I’m slightly off my game for a couple of weeks—’

‘Slightly off your game? You’re not even on the pitch. And this isn’t about Zak, it’s about you. Stop trying to take attention away from yourself by pointing out other people’s shortcomings.’

Ellie felt hot and put upon. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot nobody’s allowed to have emotions. We’re all supposed to be carved out of Yorkshire granite like you.’

Jack had suddenly gone incredibly still, but Ellie didn’t really register it. She was on a roll. ‘Why am I bothering? You have no idea how I feel. How could you, Mr Interchangeable Girlfriend for Every Day of the Week? It’s like talking a foreign lang—’ Ellie stopped. She hadn’t actually passed that last bit through her brain before she said it. She felt her stomach go into freefall as Jack got to his feet.

His eyes locked on to hers. She had never been in a fight, but she guessed this was how it must feel.

Ellie found herself backing towards the door, trying to break eye contact with Jack as he started to move. She
wanted to turn round but had a feeling that if she did, he would bring her down in an instant. She felt the wood of the door at her back and reached down for the door handle, clumsily managing to get the door open.

‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘That was too personal. I forgot where I was.’

‘Too fucking right,’ Jack said. He was close to her now. She could feel the heat coming off him and a flush of red was spreading across his cheeks. She took an awkward step backwards and felt the metal divider between Jack and Mrs MacEndry’s office under her foot.

‘Get out of my office,’ he hissed at her, and she actually jumped backwards seconds before he slammed the door shut in her face.

Ellie stood staring at the door, unsure if her legs were going to support her. She knew Mrs MacEndry must be looking at her, so she tried to laugh, to pass it off as nothing. It sounded feeble, dead.

‘I suppose you get used to him doing that?’ she said with a wonky smile.

‘No,’ Mrs MacEndry said, shaking her head very definitely. ‘I’ve rarely seen him that bad.’

Inside his office, Jack was leaning against the door, battling to control himself, his heart hammering in his chest. He was scared how much Ellie had annoyed him. He’d nearly caught hold of her and given her a good shake.

He breathed out slowly. What she’d said had hurt. Really hurt.

For if there was one thing Jack did understand completely it was loss.

‘Here you go, our Lord and Master wants you to do this.’ Gavin plonked a brochure into Ellie’s hand and she felt her life force drain away.

She turned the brochure round for Lesley to see and a few seconds later she too was making a ‘Kill me now’ face.

‘Hurrah,’ Ellie said bleakly, ‘the yearly update to the Jubbitt & Jubbitt brochure, the poisoned chalice of the Creative Department.’

Gavin gave a large, false smile. ‘And don’t forget, they may be small but they have important friends on the board. So …’

‘How come we’re getting it again?’ Lesley said so aggressively that Gavin took a little step backwards. ‘I thought we had an agreement that each team took it in turns. We did it last year. I remember Ellie almost had a nervous breakdown.’

Ellie nodded. First there had been the usual battle with Jubbitt & Jubbitt to try to get them to produce something
more attention-grabbing. Then there had been the copy. Jubbitt & Jubbitt did not believe that less was more. They liked lots of words in long, tortuous sentences.

Ellie suspected that they priced out every paragraph to ensure they got the right number of words for their money.

Gavin smirked. ‘Not my decision, girls. Anyway, plenty to get your teeth into there, Ellie. Lots of lovely meetings with Jubbitt Junior and his wandering hands.’

Lesley gave Ellie a sympathetic smile and went to the mini-fridge and retrieved a bottle of lager. Wordlessly she handed it to Ellie, who held it to her forehead.

After a little pause Lesley winked at Ellie and asked Gavin very innocently, ‘So how are things with you?’

Immediately Gavin’s face clouded. It was common knowledge that ‘things’ were not good with Gavin, not good at all. He was now set on a collision course with Jack, who wanted him out of the Creative Department and out of the agency. Gavin might as well have had a line round his neck saying, ‘Cut here.’

‘Don’t pretend you haven’t heard,’ he said as though he had something sour in his mouth. ‘You know what happened at the suntan lotion screening.’

Lesley did. Everyone did. The screening of the Sunny Sol Mio advert had replaced the ill-fated knickers idea as the number-one topic of agency tittle-tattle.

Jack had been looking for one final excuse to show Gavin the door and unbelievably Gavin had served it to him on
a plate. Ellie had not actually been in the screening room when Gavin proudly showed off the ad, but it had been a classic Wolfe moment.

Jack had gone into the screening with the knowledge that the sixty-second ad was massively over budget, and as soon as the lights dimmed and the ad started to play, things got very nasty indeed.

The ad had Gavin’s hallmark self-indulgence stamped all over it. Palm trees threw shadows on the sand; little waves ran up the beach and back out to sea; sunlight glinted off the water. There was no music, only random clapping. The overall effect was not of a sensuous, sundrenched holiday but of something sinister. It seemed that at any moment the happy sun-worshippers could be carried off by something unspeakable rising from the depths of the ocean.

And that was another problem. There was a distinct lack of sun-worshippers, despite the fact that Gavin had interviewed over fifteen bikini models and selected the three most expensive ones. They were on the screen for less than ten seconds and shot in such soft focus that they appeared as if they were melting.

But the final, final straw for Jack had been the almost non-appearance of the product in any size, shape or form apart from one hazy shot of the bottle lying half covered in sand. Unfortunately for Gavin, it was the wrong bottle; the client’s packaging was being revamped at the same
time as its TV advertising and Gavin had not bothered to keep up with the latest design.

After spending thousands of pounds of the client’s money shooting the ad in the South Pacific, the agency now had to hire a studio in Slough, fill it with sand and reshoot part of the ad to feature the new bottle. The client was incandescent with rage and was refusing to pay a large percentage of the bill, and the agency was the butt of a load of nasty jokes within the industry. For Gavin, it was walk-the-plank time.

Those who had been in the screening session reported back that ‘Jack had verbally grabbed Gavin by the testicles and swung him round the room.’ He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to do it.

After the monthly board meeting the agency would be Gavin-less.

Gavin perched himself delicately on Lesley’s desk, checking first that there was nothing on it that would besmirch his jeans.

‘That’s the trouble with advertising now, overrun by money men,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘It’s full of men who wouldn’t recognise a creative idea if it bit them.’ He perused his nails and rearranged a cuticle. ‘What happened to the free spirits in us? What about poetry? What about art? What about ground-breaking design?’

‘What about your ruddy expenses?’ Lesley said under her breath.

Gavin ignored her. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I can work with Jack.’ He was talking as if he still had a choice. ‘I’m thinking of going to Tuttlebacks.’

Lesley and Ellie tried to dredge up amazed and sad faces, but it wasn’t news to them. Rachel had already told the entire agency.

‘Much more
simpatico
set-up there. People who know what a creative idea looks like and are willing to spend the money on it. It’s getting a good name for itself. And here … well, with the Yorkshire Axeman calling the shots, it’s only a matter of time before we have fluorescent flashes saying, “Great product, cheap price,” on every piece of work.’ Gavin flicked something invisible from his jeans. ‘I mean, this kind of set-up is fine for workmanlike creatives like you and Lesley, but I—’ Gavin stopped abruptly.