Page 1 of Fix Them Up
Chapter One
Kat’s To-Do List
Milk
Bread
Cheese
Lunch?NO MORE PRET
Stopthinking about funeral
Stopthinking about Dad’s stupid house
Client rebrand prep
Therapist???
‘Kat!’ Willa’s melodic shout bounced off the stark white office walls, giving my co-workers Clara and Kieran – a.k.a. the twins fromThe Shining– a rare opportunity to look up from their laptops.
As graphic designers, staring at screens was what we did best but Clara and Kieran were robots. They hadn’t looked up from their screens since nine this morning. Meanwhile, I’d got up three times to make myself a coffee. Twice, I was distracted by a notification on my phone and then I wound up reorganising the stationery cupboard. I’d finally made the coffee, for it to go cold beside me anyway.
Willa, my boss and best friend, came hurtling around the corner to where I hid in my little booth. Willa was wearing a nude structured dress, blonde hair styled in immaculate waves. Willa stepped into my booth I’d picked four years ago. I figured if I was having a bad ADHD day, I could hide my hyperfixation in my little booth. Last month, it was the Russian royal family and the conspiracy theory that one of them survived their downfall. My cubbyhole meant the office could be spared from my Wikipedia rabbit holes.
I was praying Willa hadn’t cottoned onto my most recent hyperfixation.
Willa threatened to freeze me with her icy-blue eyes. The two of us met at university when we were studying graphic design. Willa had always planned to start her own agency. She’d even told me that first semester that it was the plan, making me feel sufficiently inadequate, given I didn’t know what I was having for dinner. But that was Willa – a force of nature. We were the same age, but I always looked up to her like she was my big sister, something that an only child like me could only dream of having.
‘Willa, I can explain –’ But I stopped myself.
Last week, I forgot to send a client brief. The week before that, I’d called in sick because I’d felt so heavy and tearful that I couldn’t get out of bed without bursting into tears. Then, of course, there was a general state of tardiness that followed me around like a bad fart.
I am such a fuck up.
Since the funeral, I had been a liability across every single aspect of my life, and I wanted to fix it. I desperately wanted to fix it but couldn’t pull myself out of the ditch.
‘Did you hand our biggest client a business card with your used gum on it?’
Clara and Kieran exchanged looks.
I winced, ‘Ah – yes.’ A strangled noise came from Willa. ‘But Alan seemed to find it pretty funny.’
Alan had been perplexed when I’d wiped off the piece of gum and handed the card back to him. I would have handed him a new one, but I’d forgotten to order more. What else was I supposed to do? Dinosaurs like Alan didn’t know how to AirDrop. I wasn’t even sure if Alan had a phone.
‘They just called me.’
‘Oh.’
‘They want you off the account.’
My mouth fell open. ‘No. Alan was fine! He laughed. I’m sure he laughed.’
Willa groaned. ‘Kat, that was your last chance to impress them. They have itchy feet! They’re one foot out of the door. Especially after you went on that call with a penis straw!’
‘They were left over from Sam’s hen do!’ I exclaimed. Sam was our mutual friend from University. ‘What was I supposed to do? Throw them away?’
‘That would have been better than using them on a call with a load of strait-laced white blokes, Kat, yes.’
