Page 8 of Fling

‘And you set up two perfect strangers for the perfect affair?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So you’re like an evil Cupid, in a way,’ Joe said, joking.

‘That’s one way of putting it. But evil spelled backwards is live. Most people these days are content with just surviving. Fling is for the people who want to feel alive.’

Tara felt her heart rate start to increase. Richard Mulligan certainly knew how to strike a chord.

‘I’m just going to read out some of the texts we’re getting in here, Richard. Paul from Donegal says, “I’m #TeamJim. If someone is unhappy, they will cheat, don’t blame the app” . Maureen from Meath says, “The government should take action and ban this app, it makes cheating too easy! #TeamMary”. And Cathy from Cork says, “Someone needs to give that Richard Mulligan fella the punch in the face he deserves”. Any response, Richard?’

‘I can see why people would want to blame me for their unhappy marriages. But blaming the app for an affair is a bit like blaming a balaclava for a bank robbery,’ Richard said smugly.

‘And are you worried at all about the backlash over the app?’ Joe asked.

‘Absolutely not. All publicity is good publicity. I haven’t even spent a cent on marketing yet. But I guarantee the people condemning this app are the ones who are using it the most. Hypocrisy is the backbone of society,’ Richard said.

‘And Richard, would you feel any guilt at all if your app led to a rise in divorces?’ Joe asked.

‘There’s only one single cause of divorce, Joe.’

‘And that is?’

‘Marriage.’

‘Richard, thank you so much for your time,’ Joe said politely.

‘My pleasure,’ Richard said before hanging up.

‘So what do you, our listeners, think about this Fling app? Would you have a discreet, anonymous affair if you could get away with it? Is it wrong or is monogamy a thing of the past? Let us know your opinion by using either #TeamMary or #TeamJim on social media,’ Joe said, wrapping up.

Tara was intrigued by what she had just heard. Poor Mary had certainly been made a fool of, but she did sound like an awful old prude. She felt bad for Jim being publicly humiliated on the radio, but he did try and cheat. Then again, Richard Mulligan had said a lot of things about marriage that really resonated with her. And with a quarter of a million downloads, he had obviously tapped into something deep within people. Not necessarily the desire to do the wrong thing, but rather the desire to get away with breaking the rules.

Tara poked her head out her window to see miles of backed-up traffic still ahead of her. In that moment, something came over Tara, or rather, she overcame something. She looked in her left wing-mirror to see that no buses were coming. She indicated and edged into the bus lane. She put her foot down on the accelerator and headed towards the city centre.

Chapter 3

Tara arrived to work on time for the first time in years.

Her palms were sweating, her heart was racing and, when she finally parked her car in the building’s underground car park, she felt an overwhelming rush. She had got away with it. She locked her car and stepped into the lift with a cheeky smile, ready for the week ahead.

She worked as a senior marketing consultant at a firm called Insight on Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock. It was one of those ultra-modern marketing agencies that were obsessed with phrases like ‘disruption’ and ‘growth-hacking’ and had job titles such as ‘data ninja’ and ‘brand rock star’. Tara found the jargon silly at times but the firm did have a good reputation for being innovative and creating campaigns that tended to go viral.

For all its innovation, however, Tara still found Insight to be a boys’ club. She had fought hard for her seat at the table and although her male colleagues never overtly disrespected her, she knew she wasn’t truly one of them, no matter how hard she tried. There was a subtle, trickle-down sexism that stemmed from the all-male board of directors. The kind of sexism that was invisible to the naked eye, hidden in plain sight.

Tara only ever got to work with clients looking to market female products. If the product was in any way feminine, it was considered ‘Tara’s territory’. It all came down to the same silly old adage. Blue is for boys and pink is for girls. She wished she could market more masculine products, just to prove she could. She made the same base salary as her male colleagues but they always snagged the big sports and alcohol accounts where the biggest commissions were.

She had made a conscious effort to defeminize herself in the office to overcome this hurdle. The dresses, pencil skirts and blouses she used to love wearing were gradually replaced with trousers and blazers. Even now, the grey pantsuit she was wearing made her look frumpy. It did absolutely nothing for her, but she hoped appearing androgynous would mean she wouldn’t be assigned clients and products solely based on her gender. But thus far, her strategy hadn’t been very effective.

She had been something of a rising star at the firm after her work for True U Cosmetics went viral. The campaign for their new make-up pallet centred around the idea of enhancing your natural beauty rather than changing how you looked. The creative featured women of all shapes and skin tones trying the pallet for the first time and capturing their genuine first impressions on camera. This led to a user-generated viral campaign with regular women sharing their initial impressions on social media. She had neatly tied the whole campaign together with a simple yet effective slogan and hashtag: #BecomeYourself.

Although the campaign was widely praised for being an intersectional feminist achievement, it made Tara feel like a fraud. She had championed the idea of female expression while suppressing her own. She had quite literally helped thousands of women become themselves but she lacked the confidence to practice what she preached. She was so jealous of the women that she herself had helped empower. She told herself it was a man’s world and she was merely playing the game to win. But after all these years, why did it feel like she was constantly losing?

Tara got out of the lift and strolled through the hustle and bustle of Monday morning at Insight. Admittedly, the office space was rather nicely decorated, but Tara never really bought into the whole quirky idea of having bean bags, video games and ping pong tables in the workplace. She was the oldest of the senior marketing consultants. Marketing was a young person’s game and staying alive at Insight meant having your finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist at all times. Although she was only thirty-seven, Tara often felt much older. On paper, she was a Millennial, but she was embarrassingly behind the times when it came to technology and pop culture. She had developed terrible imposter syndrome as a result, terrified someone was going to call her out for being a dinosaur.

She didn’t have a ‘boss’ in the traditional sense of the word, but when she reported to the board every quarter, they made it abundantly clear that she was long overdue to reel in another big fish. She was itching for an opportunity to prove she hadn’t lost her edge.

When she arrived at her office, Tara noticed her intern Emily had yet to arrive. Because Tara was always late, this was the first time Emily wasn’t there to greet her with her second morning coffee. Tara sat down at her desk and started up her computer. Her office was ultra-modern, perhaps theatrically so. She could never understand how it was somehow minimalist and flamboyant at the same time. It was like the glass and chrome design was screaming ‘LOOK HOW UNDERSTATED I AM!’, a bizarre oxymoron.

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