The Park Bench Test

“And Rebecca,” he calls after me. “Do let me know when your leaving do will be, won’t you. I should very much like to help give you a good send off.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#u1d9f1cbe-faa7-5737-bbf0-df3cb6fdfa4f)

Today is my last day at Penand Inc. Yay!

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when it actually came to leave. Delirious, obviously, but I have been here a long time, so I thought a touch of sadness wasn’t completely beyond the realms of possibility.

It’s been okay.

For starters, I’ve done no work whatsoever. All day. I’ve pretended to do some – I’ve sat at my desk from time to time and shuffled papers, clicking on my mouse intermittently for added effect (I was playing FreeCell, but no-one needs to know that). But for the rest of the day I have been wandering around the building saying my goodbyes. Which turns out to have been a complete waste of time as at 4pm, everyone who has ever known me at the company – and several, I suspect, who have never even met me (some people will do anything for half an hour away from their desks) all cram into our office to see me off the premises.

They’ve put “Sorry You’re Leaving” banners up on the walls and tied balloons to my chair and thrown sparkly bits all over my desk.

I’m touched.

And they’ve bought champagne for a toast.

First Malcolm makes a little speech, during which he completely embarrasses me by telling everyone how in my interview he asked me why I wanted the job and I told him it was because I owed the bank £5,000 for all the university partying they had subsidised. He says he gave me the job for my honesty and slaps me on the back. Just as I’m taking a sip of champagne.

Then Fliss says a few words – about how she may be nearly forty years older than me but thinks of me as one of her dearest friends – despite trying to get rid of me for the last year. Which makes me cry. I blame it on the champagne that went up my nose.

And then I get a card – filled with a mixture of both heartfelt and crude sentiments that I’m sure I’ll have great fun reading later – and a present. I knew I was getting one. Everyone who leaves Penand Inc gets a present. But even if they didn’t, Erin ‘sneaking’ around the building clutching an A3 envelope with ‘Becky’s leaving, cough up your cash!’ scribbled on it in big black letters, was a dead giveaway. And I know what I’m getting too – or part of it, at least. Everyone who leaves Penand Inc gets a desk tidy filled with goodies. One of those tubular pen pot things that you loved as a child, but can’t see the point of as an adult when you have to tip the whole thing upside down just to locate the last paperclip that you are sure is in there somewhere, leaving a heap of pens, pencils, useless clusters of two or three staples and a selection of chewed pen lids scattered all over your desk in the process. Which kind of makes a mockery of the name ‘desk tidy’, if you ask me. And when I say filled with ‘goodies’, I do mean that in the loosest possible sense of the word. When you work for a stationery supplier, ‘goodies’ can really only mean pens and pencils and, well,…pretty much just pens and pencils.

It started years ago when some guy was given one as a leaving present because he had always had the messiest desk in the entire building (before my time, clearly) and could never find a pen when he needed one. And it went down so well (he was so touched he cried – imagine his elation if he’d stuck it out for the carriage clock) that it became tradition.

You do get something else. Unless you’re Billy-no-mates, that is, and no-one is really all that bothered to see you go. Or worse still, didn’t know you had arrived in the first place – and even then you’d probably get a couple of extra pens or something.

I’m not a Billy-no-mates, it seems, judging by the two gifts in Malcolm’s hands – and the number of people fighting for space in our office. My desk has been so untidy for so long I had no idea it could accommodate so many butt cheeks.

I open the desk tidy first. It’s pink – my favourite colour. And I’m honoured – as well as the standard blue and black biros and HB pencils, it has a retractable eraser, a miniature stapler and a small cellophane packet of treasury tags.

“Thanks,” I say, putting it down on top of the illegal fridge – the only surface free of bums – and looking at the other gift waiting to be opened.

“Let me guess, it’s a fountain pen,” I joke, relieving Malcolm of the large box-shaped gift. My dad does that every birthday – feels a present that’s obviously a new tie or a pair of socks and says ‘let me guess – it’s a new golf club’.

Blimey, it’s heavy, whatever it is. Definitely not a fountain pen.

I rip off the floral wrapping paper (Fliss’ choice, I suspect).

Bloody hell. It’s a laptop.

“It’s a laptop,” I say, or rather, shriek, at the top of my voice, staring at the box in my hands. And then I go into a major panic. What if it’s just a laptop box with something very definitely not a laptop inside – like a very heavy fountain pen, for instance, or a picture frame, or a box of bath bombs from Lush! Because everyone knows I love bath bombs from Lush!

But no, it really is a laptop.

I know we sell hundreds of them, but even at cost price they aren’t cheap and there’s no way Malcolm would just give one away. And I really need one too – I let Alex keep the one we bought together.

“You’ve worked for Penand Inc for a long time and made a lot of friends who all wanted you to have something to help you in your next adventure, Rebecca,” he says, reading my mind as the last bit of wrapping paper floats to the floor.

“If you are going to be a writer, then you’ll need something decent to write on.”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m stunned,” I say. “Thank you so much everyone.”

“Good luck Rebecca,” Malcolm shouts, raising his paper cup of champagne in the air.

“Good luck Becky,” everyone echoes.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#u1d9f1cbe-faa7-5737-bbf0-df3cb6fdfa4f)

I stare at the pieces of plate on the floor and smile nervously at my new boss.

“Oops,” I say.

Which is quite fortunate really. I very nearly said “bollocks” instead, remembering just in the nick of time that I am in the company of ten eight-year-old girls in pink sparkly cowgirl hats.

I have a new part-time job. At a coffee shop.

In hindsight, when Katie said that the sister of one of her colleagues was looking for some help at her coffee shop, it might have been an idea to clarify exactly which kind of coffee shop we were talking about.

This is not a quiet little coffee shop where little old ladies come to enjoy a pot of tea with a fruit scone, or where nine-to-fivers take refuge for a few minutes before returning to their offices with tuna baguettes to eat al desko. No, this is a coffee shop where children – and occasionally adults – sit and drink orange squash with malted milk biscuits whilst they ruin perfectly good white plates with pictures of trees and farmyard animals and call it art.

The name Potty Wotty Doodah should have been a bit of a clue.

But, in all honesty, I couldn’t afford to be fussy. I wanted something part time and with as little responsibility as possible to maximise the time I have available for composing begging letters to editors of glossy magazines. Which kind of ruled out half the ‘situations vacant’ pages in the local newspaper. My newly acquired aversion to paperclips and staples ruled out a further twenty per cent – office clerks, administrators, personal assistants, general dogsbodies… And a traumatic experience as a waitress at the tender age of seventeen, when I mistook a vegetable spring roll for a raspberry pancake and served it up with two dollops of vanilla ice cream and a generous helping of raspberry sauce, ruled out the remaining thirty per cent.

I don’t think even I could go wrong with a cappuccino machine. But a cappuccino machine and a slice of art on the side…?

Let me make this clear…

I cannot draw.

I cannot draw to save my life.

No, really, if my life actually depended upon my ability to draw, I would, in fact, be dead.

To illustrate (no pun intended), until the age of ten (okay, fourteen) I drew people with square heads, because I couldn’t draw circles, and with arms that protruded horizontally out of their bodies, because shoulders and elbows were beyond even comprehension to me.

But I haven’t even got to the stage yet where I’m being asked by a five-year-old to draw a giraffe on the side of an eggcup and I’m already a disaster.

Caroline – my new boss – opened Potty Wotty Doodah three years ago, after six years as an art teacher and two years studying business at night school. In other words – she can draw.

It’s adorable. The walls are covered with rows and rows of shelves filled with every kind of plain white pottery you can imagine – bowls, plates, cups and saucers, salt and pepper pots, cookie jars, money boxes. There are even light switch surrounds, doorknobs and toothbrush holders.

The far wall is half-decorated with a mosaic of tiles painted by customers since the café opened, while the other half is waiting for the next three years’ worth.

To the left as you walk in there is a counter where Caroline greets everyone and serves coffee and juice. And in the centre is an island unit – it’s the kind you find in big kitchens, but instead of pots and pans and recipe books it’s filled with picture books, stencils, rubber stamps and tracing paper, and hundreds of bottles of paint. Inspiration Island – that’s what Caroline calls it.

The rest of the room is filled with pine tables and chairs, a different coloured plastic cloth draped over each table, a miniature pinny hanging from the back of every chair.