Table for Five

by Izzy Bromley

She holds my gaze for a split second longer than she needs to and at once I get the subtext here. I haven’t done anything wrong and she knows it. Frobisher just wants yes-men at his beck and call and I definitely don’t fit the bill.

I must look like a woman possessed, but, honestly, how dare he? How can he think he’ll just sack me simply because I was already at the company when he arrived and I didn’t fit his cookie-cutter mould of an account exec? That’s not how it’s supposed to work and it’s no way to run a business.

There seems to be an emerging pattern in my life of not having anyone to talk to at crucial moments. Could it be that I only share the fun bits of my life, the parts that match my Insta feed?

The last week or so has made me confront things about myself that I hadn’t been aware of – and it’s hard.

‘This is something you can use. Your emotional response to the injustice can be harnessed to create great work in the future,’ she says.

How come I was happy to go and talk to Ethel, sitting there elegantly in her chiffon, and yet not to Bob in his scruffy parka?

‘Don’t you think, though, that when you sign up to be a celebrity with all the privileges and benefits that come with that, you then have a responsibility to live as blameless a life as you can, and you can’t really complain about the press interest if you don’

It dawns on me that my friends and former close colleagues all very much fit one mould, so it’s interesting to be learning things about people whose lives are so different to mine.

And who cares if a bunch of strangers do see me cry? We must be entitled to feel upset sometimes, and if that happens when we’re away from the privacy of our homes then surely we can just lean into it.

I still need to regroup, think about what I want and how I want to live going forward. When I’ve done that, and I have a better idea of what my future looks like, then I can get in touch with people.

‘Just because other people have it tougher doesn’t make your problems any less valid.’

I can see how it only takes one tiny problem for someone’s life to change. Something that starts out small, trivial even, can grow into a problem we can no longer find solutions for, and faster than we might believe.

envisaging

Contemplating or creating the idea of a future event.

If you’d said to me six weeks ago that I’d have lost my dream job and yet still be happy, I’d have laughed at you. And yet here we are. If anything, I’m happier than I was before. Yes, there’s the tiny issue of not actually earning anything, but what I’m doing with Time for Beds feels important in a way that selling chocolate truffles never did. I know it sounds corny, but making a difference to something that matters is just more fulfilling than selling things to people who don’t know they want them.

This isn’t how it was meant to be. In the plan I had for myself I was supposed to be busy scaling the career tree with an eligible man at my side, a man just waiting for the perfect moment to ask me to marry him at a ceremony packed with all our fabulous (and very good-looking) friends.

umbrage

Offense or annoyance.

inimitable

So good or unusual it’s impossible to copy.

Maybe I’ve also been holding myself back because I thought I needed to get my old life on track before I tackled this, but now I’m wondering whether I actually want my old life back at all.

Maybe a lifetime of sharing everything online has had an impact on us millennials, made us retreat into ourselves somehow. We curate this life for ourselves on social media but then are wary of sharing what’s really going on in case it doesn’t match up.

It’s important that they are on board with this new version of me, and also, I realise, that they forgive me for the old one.