‘Hello?’ A croaky man’s voice answers the phone.
‘Er … hi …? I’m looking for Mrs Farnham,’ I say.
‘Oh – nah she’s not in, sorry love. The shop’s not doing collections for a few months while Mrs Farnham is on maternity leave.’
‘Oh, I see! Is there no one else there that might be able to help?’ I ask, politely.
‘No, love, I just told ya. Shop’s shut while she’s off. Shouldn’t say “off”, should I? Sounds like a holiday.’ He laughs.
‘Right,’ I say.
‘Ring back in a few months, I reckon.’
I groan, and hang up.
The following day, I pick up a takeaway coffee in my favourite little café, Kava in Soho, next to the .dot offices. It’s my usual morning routine before work. I quickly check my emails at the end of the bar. The press releases I receive get more and more bizarre by the day:
• Amal Clooney Gets Bunions, So Now Everyone Wants Them
• Four Steps to Having Skin Like Paul Rudd
• The Best Bacon-Scented Sex Products (Including Lube!)
• Home Remedies to Grow Back Those ‘Barely There’ Nineties Eyebrows
Delete, delete delete.
I have a quick scroll through Facebook while my latte gets frothed. Who are all these people? I don’t recognize any names. A girl who I remember being really fun at school is now married to a boring basic banker. Another friend from university who I vaguely remember as sleeping with the entire football team has now become a nun and has written a painfully long caption to explain her ‘difficult’ exit from the online world. Everything is changing. I scroll past photos of five different toddlers, their faces covered in yoghurt, chocolate mousse and baked beans.
I have a quick cigarette outside on the pavement with my coffee in my hand and lean back to relax for a moment, my old faux-fur turquoise coat touching the brick wall behind me. I take big puffs of my cigarette and inhale loudly through my teeth – going against orders from my dentist who has recently told me off for smoking. An anti-fur fashion campaigner suddenly strides up to me with stickers and a placard. He waggles his finger at me and says I shouldn’t be wearing fur.
‘It’s faux fur actually – from a charity shop in Copenhagen.’ I exhale some smoke and tuck my long black hair behind my ear.
He wafts the smoke away and opens his mouth to begin his unnecessarily worthy spiel. ‘Well, actually—’
‘You’ll find I am quite ethical, as a person,’ I interrupt, tapping my ash on the floor. I know I’m being spiky and defensive, but this is not what I need this morning. I’m going through a break-up for god’s sake. People have no manners.
‘I’m afraid it’s not good enough. Faux fur is made up of synthetic microfibres that never really break down or decompose. Worse than real fur, in some ways. And don’t get me started on sequins.’
‘Well, are you perfect? I bet you wear leather.’
‘I don’t wear leather, I’m a vegan.’
‘I bet you secretly eat bacon sandwiches when you’re hungover.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
Jesus, what is happening? I’m just trying to drink my coffee and have a cig before I go to work. Life’s hard enough without a vegan campaigner banging on and on.
He continues: ‘Please take this leaflet and read more about it and please consider your life choices.’ He wanders off, to go and find someone else who’s doing life totally wrong.
‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t!’ I call after him, ripping up the leaflet.
This is living in London. No rest for the wicked. No physical boundaries. Constant interruptions. Everyone is so on, on, on. Everything is up for debate and you are always in someone’s way. Having said that, I might moan about London, but I also couldn’t live anywhere else, ever. Growing up in the countryside in Somerset was idyllic in many ways, especially as I met Bea, Cec and Isla at school, but I also found it incredibly boring. Zeta, Mum and I would cook every night together, eating dinner in our small conservatory overlooking the garden, and knew all of our next-door neighbours and their business maybe too well. The air was fresh, and the days were quiet. But, for me, the countryside seems like somewhere you go to disappear and die. Fast-paced city life is in my blood.
A young girl with a long green tartan coat and reddish curly hair walks slowly past me, then turns on her heel, pauses and then comes up close.
‘So sorry to bother you, but are you Olive Stone?’ she asks, half whispering.
‘Yep, that’s me.’ I take a slurp of my warm coffee, trying not to act totally surprised that I’ve been recognized. This never happens.
‘Sorry, I just wanted to say, your recent piece in the .dot, was … amazing. Really fascinating.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ It feels sad to admit, maybe, but this has really puffed me up. I had written a cover story for .dot magazine called ‘Are Men OK?’, which had just yesterday been further dissected by a journalist at the New York Times. It was a proud moment for me to have my work discussed by other journalists. I had written about the trend of men faking going to work, based on true stories of people’s husbands who had pretended to go to work for a whole year (putting on a suit and everything). They would go and sit in the park or sit in a café all day, while running up huge debts on credit cards to cover up their desperation and deception. Some of their partners hadn’t known until it was too late and it had totally ruined their lives. It was genuinely worrying. I found thirty-five different case studies – even one that was linked to a friend of a friend.
‘Would I be able to email you and send you my CV? If there is ever any work experience?’ Curly Hair Girl asks.
‘Yeah OK,’ I say, with my cigarette hanging out of my mouth, writing down my email address on a scrap of paper, balancing it on my knee.
‘Thank you so much. Meeting you has made my day.’ She pauses and tilts her head to look at me. ‘You know, some people, like my friends who read your writing, often say you are quite unlikeable. But I like you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, I think it’s really inspiring. That you put yourself out there. And that you don’t care about the reaction.’
‘Right. Thanks … I think!’ I say. I didn’t know I was unlikeable. Back-handed compliments really mess with my head.
.dot magazine launched just under two years ago; a new feminist-focused online magazine for younger women that was the brainchild of the founder of a big tech giant in America to try and fill the gaping void left by so many mainstream glossy magazines suddenly going bust. Every viral story that puts .dot more firmly on the map gets more mentions and click-throughs. And for every big story I write I seem to get another promotion, which sort of feels addictive.
I can get away with murder these days – but only because I’ve worked really hard to climb the ladder at .dot over the years. I’ve lost count of the number of days I’ve walked in with unwashed hair, latte in hand, forty-five minutes late. Gill, the editor-in-chief, is normally out of the office and as I am the second most senior to Gill, no one would ever say anything to me about my lateness. I almost wish someone would, to be honest. I’m doing well at work, getting to the point where I’ll soon be more than happy with my pay cheque, and it often seems like the only part of my life that I’m sailing through with some element of ease. I think I am in that rare and temporary point in life where I am an ‘old young person’ and a ‘young old person’. I’m bang in the middle: young enough to be cool, old enough to have some experience of how shit life can be. I know I won’t be this age for ever, but right now it’s working out for me – career-wise, anyway. Now all I have to do is figure out how to freeze time.