There’s not much in my life that would score in the top ten of any global survey. I don’t have a top-ten job or wardrobe or flat. But I live in a top-ten city. Living in London is something that people all over the world would love to do, and now I’m here. And that’s why I don’t care if my commute is the journey from hell and I don’t care if my bedroom is about three foot square. I’m here.
I couldn’t get here straightaway. The only offer I had after uni was in a tiny marketing firm in Birmingham. So I moved up there and immediately started creating a new personality. I had bangs cut. I started straightening my hair every day and putting it in a smart knot. I bought myself a pair of black glasses with clear lenses. I looked different. I felt different. I even started doing my makeup differently, with super-defined lip liner every day and black liquid eyeliner in flicky curves.
(It took me a whole weekend to learn how to do that flicky eyeliner. It’s an actual skill, like trigonometry—so what I wonder is, why don’t they teach that at school? If I ran the country there’d be courses in things that you’d actually use your whole life. Like: How To Do Eyeliner. How To Fill In A Tax Return. What To Do When Your Loo Blocks And Your Dad Isn’t Answering The Phone And You’re About To Have A Party.)
It was in Birmingham that I decided to lose my West Country accent. I was in the loo, minding my own business, when I heard a couple of girls taking the piss out of me. Farrrmer Katie, they were calling me. And, yes, I was shocked, and, yes, it stung. I could have burst out of my cubicle and exclaimed, Well, I don’t think your Brummie accent’s any better!
But I didn’t. I just sat there and thought hard. It was a reality check. By the time I got my second internship—the one in east London—I was a different person. I’d wised up. I didn’t look or sound like Katie Brenner from Ansters Farm.
And now I’m totally Cat Brenner from London. Cat Brenner who works in a cool office with distressed-brick walls and white shiny desks and funky chairs and a coat stand in the shape of a naked man. (It gives everyone a real shock, the first time they come to visit.)
I mean, I am Cat. I will be. I just have to nail the not-signing-the-wrong-name thing.
“People,” Demeter says for a third time, and the office becomes quiet. There are ten of us in here, all with different titles and job descriptions. On the next floor up, there’s an events team, and a digital team, and the planning lot. There’s also some other group of creatives called the “vision team,” who work directly with Adrian, the CEO. Plus other offices for talent management and finance or whatever. But this floor is my world, and I’m at the bottom of the pile. I earn by far the least and my desk is the smallest, but you have to start somewhere. This is my first-ever paid job, and I thank my lucky stars for it every day. And, you know, my work is interesting. In a way.
Kind of.
I mean, I suppose it depends how you define “interesting.” I’m currently working on this really exciting project to launch a new self-foaming “cappuccino-style” creamer from Coffeewite. I’m on the research side. And what that actually comes down to, in terms of my day-to-day work, is…
Well. Here’s the thing. You have to be realistic. You can’t go straight in at the fun, glam stuff. Dad just doesn’t get that. He’s always asking: Do I come up with all the ideas? Or: Have I met lots of important people? Or: Do I go for swanky business lunches every day? Which is ridiculous.
And, yes, I’m probably defensive, but he doesn’t understand, and it really doesn’t help when he starts wincing and shaking his head and saying, “And you’re really happy in the Big Smoke, Katie my love?” I am happy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard. Dad doesn’t know anything about jobs, or London, or the economy, or, I don’t know, the price of a glass of wine in a London bar. I haven’t even told him exactly how much my rent is, because I know what he’d say; he’d say—
Oh God. Deep breath. Sorry. I didn’t mean to launch into some off-topic rant about my dad. Things haven’t been great between us, ever since I moved away after uni. He doesn’t understand why I moved here, and he never will. And I can try to explain it all I like, but if you can’t feel London, all you see are traffic and fumes and expense and your daughter choosing to move more than a hundred miles away.
I had a choice: Follow my heart or don’t break his. I think in the end I broke a bit of both our hearts. Which the rest of the world doesn’t understand, because they think it’s normal to move out and away from home. But they aren’t my dad and me, who lived together, just us, for all those years.
Anyway. Back to my work. People at my level don’t meet the clients—Demeter does that. And Rosa. They go out for the lunches and come back with pink cheeks and free samples and excitement. Then they put together a pitch, which usually involves Mark and Liz too, and someone from the digital team, and sometimes Adrian. He’s not just CEO but also the co-founder of Cooper Clemmow, and he has an office downstairs. (There was another co-founder, called Max, but he retired early to the south of France.)
Adrian’s quite amazing, actually. He’s about fifty and has a shock of iron-gray wavy hair and wears a lot of denim shirts and looks like he comes from the seventies. Which I suppose, in a way, he does. He’s also properly famous. Like, there’s a display of alumni outside King’s College, London, on the Strand, and Adrian’s picture is up there.
Anyway, so that’s all the main players. But I’m not at that level, nothing like. As I said, I’m involved in the research side, which means what I’m actually doing this week is…
And, listen, before I say it, it doesn’t sound glamorous, OK? But it’s not as bad as it sounds, really.
I’m inputting data. To be specific, the results of this big customer survey we did for Coffeewite about coffee, creamers, cappuccinos, and, well, everything. Two thousand handwritten surveys, each eight pages long. I know, right? Paper? No one does paper surveys anymore. But Demeter wanted to go “old school” because she read some research that said people are 25 percent more honest when they’re writing with a pen than they are online. Or something.
So here we are. Or, rather, here I am, with five boxfuls of questionnaires still to go.
It can get a bit tiring, because it’s the same old questions and the participants all scribbled their answers in Biro and they aren’t always clear. But on the plus side, this research will shape the whole project! Flora was all “My God, poor you, Cat, what a bloody nightmare!”—but actually it’s fascinating.
Well. I mean, you have to make it fascinating. I’ve taken to guessing people’s income brackets based on what they said in the question about foam density. And you know what? I’m usually right. It’s like mind reading. The more I’m inputting these answers, the more I’m learning about consumers; at least I hope so—
“People. What the fuck is up with Trekbix?”
Demeter’s voice breaks into my thoughts again. She’s standing in her spiky heels, thrusting a hand through her hair, with that impatient, frustrated, what-is-wrong-with-the-world expression she gets.
“I wrote myself a set of notes about this.” She’s scrolling through her phone, ignoring us all again. “I know I did.”