My Single friend by Jane Costello

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

            ‘How do you think it went?’ I am buzzing with adrenalin after one of my most important presentations ever.

            ‘I can’t believe you have to ask,’ replies Dominique, perching on my desk. ‘The panel couldn’t have been more convinced if we’d bent down and given each of them a blow job.’

            I suppress a smile and scan the notes I scribbled during the meeting. I’ve worked for weeks on this pitch but if we win the client – a massive property firm – it’ll be worth it.

            ‘You weren’t thrown by the question about contacts in the north-east?’ I fret.

            ‘What’s with the lack of self-belief, Lucy?’ says Dominique, stuffing her dark-blonde hair into a clip. ‘You’re not Peaman-Brown’s star performer for nothing.’

            ‘Oh, give over,’ I wince, though I can’t help feeling a little pleased.

            ‘Don’t deny it,’ she grins. ‘I keep saying you’ll be running this place in three years – and today confirmed it. The presentation was slick, our answers were textbook and, crucially, the MD had the hots for you.’

            ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I say, hoping she might be right.

            ‘Believe me,’ she winks. ‘It’s in the bag.’

            Dominique and I hit it off the minute we met. She’s sassy, down to earth and a natural at this job – so much so, you’d never guess it wasn’t her first career choice. Dominique had wanted to be an actress until she realized that, in her own words, she had the stage presence of a plank of MDF. She persevered for several years and won the odd bit-part, but nothing more. The crunch came on the day she was turned down for an audition to play a dead body in a British Gas training video. ‘If that isn’t a signal to get a proper job, I don’t know what is,’ she says.

            Yet when you meet Dom it’s impossible to believe she’s experienced a single setback in life. I still remember her striding in here two years ago with her proud and plentiful curves, endless legs and admirable aura of confidence.

            Dominique is one of the many reasons I love working for Peaman-Brown Public Relations. I’ve been with the company since university, yet what I do for a living still baffles most of my family. They can get their head around my brother being a salesman, but if anyone mentions that ‘Lucy works in PR’, they scrunch up their noses with a deep sense of bewilderment – and injustice that they’re not paid to sit in a fancy office doing such a namby-pamby excuse for work.

            What Peaman-Brown PR does for organizations is actually easy to understand, if not to do: we manage their image. On the one hand, this means unearthing positive stories and making sure the media knows about them. On the other, it means spotting negative news stories and making sure the media knows nothing about them. That’s the theory anyway. The practice can be different, I’ll admit.

            ‘Remind me how much this contract is worth,’ asks Dom.

            I lift open the back page of my proposal and slide it over to her discreetly.

            ‘Good God.’ She shakes her head. ‘We deserve the bonus to end all bonuses if we get this, Lucy. Seriously, I expect to retire to a yacht in the Caribbean. Just a small one, nothing fancy.’

            ‘You’d be bored stiff.’

            ‘I’d bring you to entertain me,’ she grins. ‘You and I would be good on the high seas.’