The Break by Marian Keyes

Hatch, the tiny agency that I’m one-third of, does all kinds of PR, including Image Management. We rehabilitate politicians, sports-people, actors – public figures of one sort or another who’ve been publicly shamed. It used to be all about sex scandals but, these days, the opportunities to disgrace yourself have expanded – accusations of racism, that’s a big one – which will, quite rightly, lose you your job. Sexism, ageism and size-ism are all dicey, as is bullying, stealing small objects, such as Putin’s pen, or parking in a disabled spot when you’re not disabled.

Of course, the methods of public shaming have also changed: back in the day, badzers lived in terror of the front page of a Sunday tabloid. But because in today’s world everything is caught on phones, the fear is of going viral.

‘Any freebies?’ Maura asks, as Thamy and I hustle her through the main office and towards the exit.

‘Give her some incontinence pants,’ I tell Thamy. EverDry is one of our biggest clients and, grim as it sounds, incontinence is a huge growth area.

‘Ah, here!’ Maura says. ‘I’m far from incontinent. Is there no chocolate? Oh, hi, Alastair …’

Alastair has just got in from London, so he’s looking particularly impressive in his high-end suit and crisp white shirt. He fixes Maura with his silvery eyes, then slowly unleashes The Smile. He is pathetic. ‘Hi, Maura,’ he says, his voice low and intimate.

‘Hi,’ she squeaks, a flush roaring up from her neck.

‘Chocolate?’ Alastair says. ‘Hold on …’

Hatch represent an artisanal chocolate-maker, which is a torment because samples are sent to the office and sometimes it’s just too exhausting to resist them.

Alastair grabs a box of chocolates from the cupboard, then a couple of body scrubs made from turf (I know). As a small gesture of defiance, I add a pack of incontinence pants to the pile.

Thamy shepherds my sister towards the stairs so she won’t bump into Mrs EverDry coming up in the lift. Thamy is a godsend – originally from Brazil, she’s our Reception, Invoicing and Goods Inward departments, all in one charming package. She can persuade the most reluctant of debtors to cough up, is never huffy about making coffee and, unlike all of her predecessors, isn’t a half-wit. Far from it. (I’m worried now about having used the word ‘half-wit’ – people have been Twitter-shamed for less. Rehabilitating disgraced people makes you very cognizant of these things.)

Alastair and I make our way to the small conference room, the room in which Maura has just extracted my sad secret from me. (The Hatch premises are tiny because tiny is all we can afford. Mind you, I work from London two days a week, where we can’t afford any office space.)

There’s no time to brush my hair so I ask Alastair, ‘Do I look okay?’

When people hear I work in public relations, they can barely hide their surprise. Women PRs are usually tall, bone-thin, blonde and aloof; they wear tight white skirt suits that hug their cellulite-free flanks; their smiles are icy and their auras are positively glacial. Hamstrung as I am with shortness and a tendency to roundness, which I need to watch like a hawk, I certainly don’t look the part. It’s just as well I’m good at my job.

‘Dishevelled can be charming.’ Alastair says. ‘Makes you seem likeable. But …’ he begins to straighten my collar ‘… maybe today a little too messy?’

I move his hand away. He’s far too free and easy when it comes to touching women. Nevertheless my dress is crumpled and my internal unravelling can’t start manifesting in my appearance. My mind races through possible ways to upgrade my look. Ironing my work clothes: that would be a good, solid start.

With a stab of wild hope, I wonder about doing something magical with my hair. Maybe cut six inches off it? But that would be tantamount to self-harm – my hair is nothing but good to me. A little needy, perhaps, and, according to magazine articles, far too long for a woman in her forties, but it’s the most glamorous thing I possess.

How about the colour? Is it finally time to move on from dark brown and embrace a more age-appropriate lighter hue?

My hairdresser had given me the well-worn lecture about how skin tones fade as a woman ages. ‘Keep dyeing your hair this dark,’ he’d said, ‘and you’ll look like you’ve been embalmed.’

‘I know what “they” say,’ I’d said, ‘I do, Lovatt. But in this instance “they” are wrong. I’m an exception. Or a freak, if you prefer.’

He didn’t prefer. His mouth tightened mutinously and he dried my roots matron-bouffy as punishment.

‘Doing anything nice for the weekend?’ Alastair asks.

I think about Hugh’s plans to run away. About the need to tell the girls. About this being the end of my life as I know it. I shrug. ‘Nothing much. You?’

‘A course.’ He looks a little abashed.

‘Another of your Learn the Secret to Happiness in Forty-eight Hours things? Alastair,’ I say helplessly, ‘you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist.’

He seems to devote a weekend a month to Healing the Wounds of Childhood, or Emptiness in the Age of Plenty, or similar, but so far none of them has worked.

‘Here’s the secret to happiness,’ I say. ‘Drink as heavily as you can get away with. Buy stuff. And, if all else fails, spend three days in bed eating doughnuts. How do you think the rest of us manage?’

Before Alastair can defend himself, Tim, the third partner in Hatch, comes in.

All three of us – Tim, Alastair and I – used to work together in a big Irish PR agency, but about five years ago we got laid off. As part of his relentless quest, Alastair went to an ashram in India, which he was asked to leave because he wouldn’t stop shagging yoga-bunny acolytes. I spent a few grim years in the freelancing wilderness, and Tim went back to college and qualified as an accountant. This tells you all you need to know about the three different energies that Alastair, Tim and I bring to the table.

We set up our little agency about two and a half years ago and we lurch from month to month, wondering if we’ll still be operational in thirty days’ time. It’s an anxious way to live. So anxious that I have chronic gastritis and one of my main food groups is Zantac. My (twelve-year-old) GP told me to excise all stress and I’d nodded obediently but in my head I was saying, all sarcastic-like, ‘You think?’ Then she told me to lose a couple of pounds and I wanted to weep: that weight was a by-product of giving up cigarettes. It made me consider just doing all the bad stuff and dying an early death but at least I’d have enjoyed my life.

And here comes Mrs EverDry, stout and scary in her tailored dress, and we’re all on our feet, warmly welcoming her. Maura had it wrong when she deduced that a Friday-afternoon meeting indicated a crisis: it’s when Mrs EverDry likes to receive her monthly progress report. She lives in some rural opposite-of-idyll and it suits her to come to Dublin on a weekend ‘for the shops’.

‘You.’ She points at me.

Shite. What have I done? Or not done?

‘I hear you’re Neeve Aldin’s mother,’ she says. ‘Neeve Aldin of Bitch, Please fame?’

‘Oh? Ah. Yes!’

‘I watch her make-up vlogs with my fourteen-year-old. She’s gas craic, makes us both laugh.’

‘Well … ah … great.’

‘Mind you, I’m nearly in the poorhouse from having to buy the stuff she pushes. You wouldn’t ask her to showcase some cheaper brands?’

‘I can try!’ There’s not an earthly that Neeve would listen to me.

‘How come she has a different surname to you?’

‘She’s from my first marriage. Goes by her dad’s name.’

‘That’s that mystery cleared up. Let’s get started.’

Off we go and Mrs EverDry is pleased with some of our progress – we got a mention on Coronation Street. ‘But I’ve decided that we need an ambassador,’ she says.

Her words fall into stunned silence. ‘The public face of the brand.’

We know what an ambassador is, we just don’t know how to tell her she’s totally delusional.

‘Interesting …’ I’m playing for time.

‘Don’t you “interesting” me,’ she says.

Alastair’s got to be the one to neutralize this – she loves him. ‘Mrs Mullen,’ he says gently. ‘It won’t be easy to find someone willing to publicly admit to incontinence.’

‘We just need one person,’ she says. ‘Then everyone will be at it.’

And she’s right. It’s not so long since having cancer was a secret, or when no one would own up to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

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