I typed Eye, Eye, Captain, then had absolutely nothing further to say. God, I really needed to get it together. It wasn’t as if I was in the lowly position of junior account assistant (that was Brooke now). I was assistant senior account manager and I had responsibilities.

How I got promoted

The summer I joined Candy Grrrl, our Lip-plumping Iced Sorbet Übergloss sold out across the world and there were fights at makeup counters. Well, there weren’t really. What actually happened was that at Nordstrom in Seattle there was a little tussle between two sisters over the last Candy Grrrl gloss in the Pacific Northwest. However, it was settled quite amicably—I believe the terms were that the one who got the gloss would babysit the other one’s kids that night. But some smart girl (me) managed to spin the incident into an (almost) news story. I issued a press release with a big, bold header, CANDY GRRRL BITCH FIGHT, and the gods must have been smiling on me because the New York Post and Daily News picked it up. Then the regionals, then there was a small segment on CNN. See, it was August, nothing else was happening. But by then enough buzz had been generated so that there really were scuffles at Candy Grrrl counters. At the Manhattan Bloomingdale’s concession one woman shoulder-shoved another and the shoved woman said, “Hey! Watch it! It’s not even your color!”

Then Jay Leno made a joke (not very funny, but who cares) about people pulling guns on one another at Candy Grrrl counters, and the net effect of all the publicity was that I got promoted. Wendell, the person I replaced at Candy Grrrl, got moved sideways to Visage, our po-faced French brand, and she happily surrendered her pink trilbies and novelty shoes for pencil skirts and fiercely waisted jackets.

I typed Eye, Eye, Captain one more time. I was actually scared. This was my third day back at work and I still hadn’t produced so much as a decent press release. I realized I had hoped that the short, sharp shock of returning to work would snap me back into normality, but it hadn’t happened. I felt like I was in a dream, trying to run, with legs of lead. My head wouldn’t think, my body was in pain, everything felt like the world had tilted off its axis.

Forty minutes later, my screen said:

TAKE IT ON BOARD, ME HEARTIES!

You can sail the high seas but Eye Eye Captain is the most effective,

most advanced one-stop eye treatment you’ll find.

Dark circles?—All washed up!

Morning puffiness?—Throw it overboard!

Fine lines and wrinkles?—Make ’em walk the plank!

The parrot on your shoulder?—Sorry, that’s your problem.

Teenie looked over my shoulder at my screen. “Yo ho ho,” she said, with sympathy.

“You’d want to see my other attempts.”

“It’s your first week back, you’re out of practice.”

“And on heavy medication.”

“It’ll get easier. Want me to have a go?”

Teenie did her best to help me, but Teenie had her own troubles: she was responsible for the diffusion ranges, Candy for a Baby and Candy Man. Mind you, with only twelve products in the children’s line and ten in the men’s, she had nothing like the same responsibility as me. (Fifty-eight products, in innumerable colorways, and counting. We seemed to launch something new every other week.)

Lauryn ran in and shrieked, “Is that press release ready?”

“Just coming,” I said while Teenie muttered in my ear, “First the fat gets metabolized. Then the lean tissue; eventually the muscle goes, and finally the organs. At this point the body is actually digesting itself. Would that dumb woman ever eat something?” Teenie was studying medicine in night school and liked sharing her knowledge.

I printed out my crappy press release and went to Lauryn’s desk, ready to play the humiliation game.

The responsibility for Candy Grrrl’s publicity was shared out between me and Lauryn like this: I did all the work and came up with all the ideas. While she made my life a misery, was paid 50 percent more than me, and got all the credit.

I had a second-tier duty: badgering beauty editors, taking them out to lunch, telling them how lovely Candy Grrrl products were, and persuading them to give us a four-line sound bite and a photo on their Beauty News page. This was a massively important part of my job, so much so that my performance was targeted; the inches of magazine coverage I generated were measured, then compared with how much would have had to be spent in advertising to get the same space.

My target this year was 12 percent higher than the previous year’s, but I’d lost two months’ worth of badgering while I’d been in Ireland. It was going to be hard to make it up. Would Ariella or Candace and George Biggly make allowances? Probably not. Looked at objectively, why should they?

I gave Lauryn my Eye Eye Captain press release. A one-second glance was all it took.

“This is shit.” She threw it back at me.

That was fine. I always had to present her with at least two attempts; she would trash my first offering, then trash the second, then she usually accepted the first.

Unpleasant perhaps, but it was nice to know where I stood.

I didn’t leave work until about seven-thirty, and when I got home there was an e-mail from my mother—something which had never happened before.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: The woman and her dog

Dear Anna,

I hope you are keeping well. Just remember you can come home whenever you want and we will mind you. I am writing in connection with the woman and the dog who was “doing his business” at our front gate.

Oh, cripes, what can of worms had I opened?

I will admit that we all thought you were imagining things, as a result of the tablets you are on. But I am not afraid to “step up” to the “plate” (what does that mean? Is it a barbecuing term?) and say I was wrong. Myself and Helen have watched her over the last few mornings and it has become clear to us that she is indeed urging her dog to “pee” at our front gate and I just wanted to keep you “in the loop” as they say. As yet we haven’t identified her. As you know she is an old woman and all old women look the same to me. As you also know your sister Helen has high-powered binoculars, which your father paid for. But she will not give me a “go” of them, she says I have to pay her the going rate for her time. I do not think this is one bit fair. If you are talking to her, will you tell her I said that. Also if she tells you any “scoop” on the woman’s identity be sure to let me know.