‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I couldn’t reach any of the advertising team after ten, so we thought we’d call it a day.’
Truth be told, for the sake of my team’s sanity, I hadn’t tried to ring out again after our last in-house meeting of the evening.
‘And you’re sure you don’t want me to step in?’
‘Absolutely not.’
Of course, I didn’t want him to step in. How ridiculous would that make me look? He was quiet for a second and I held my breath. For an awful moment I thought he was going to say he was going to anyway.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ he eventually said.
I slowly breathed out and closed my eyes. Now I was the quiet one.
‘You still there, Tess?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, clearing my throat, ‘yes, I’m still here.’
It was me who had broached the subject of sorting through Mum’s things. It was me who had insisted we had to make time in our packed schedules to start properly going through everything. I had read somewhere that the process could be cathartic, offer some level of closure and I could definitely do with a dose of that, even just a small one.
Initially, Dad had kept saying that it wasn’t a good time, but I had quickly countered his argument by pointing out that it never would be and he had reluctantly agreed to setting the date for this weekend. It was ironic that after all my reading up on the subject, I was now the one who wasn’t ready.
It was now heading towards two years since Mum had died of a heart attack that no one had seen coming, but she was still everywhere. Her clothes still hung in the wardrobes, her jewellery was all laid out and sometimes, in her bathroom, I could still smell Chanel. It was utterly impossible to believe that she was gone for ever when her possessions appeared poised to welcome her back. It was impossible to believe that she was gone for ever when I hadn’t spent anywhere near enough time with her in recent years. Had I known the sand in her hourglass had all but run out I would have ensured things had been different.
In my heart, she would always be the woman from my childhood. The smiling mum on the beach in her yellow sundress with her hair in a ponytail and a book in her hand, but in my head, I knew she hadn’t been that woman for years. As the business had grown, she, like Dad, had turned into a completely different person. A person it was too late for me to get to know now.
‘You’d better come early,’ said Dad, ‘there’s a hell of a lot to do.’
*
I didn’t stop to pick up a paper the next morning and I didn’t turn my phone back on again either. If there was more bad news to come about my failing footballer, then I wanted to delay hearing about it for as long as possible.
I pulled off the road, onto the gravelled drive and buzzed the intercom. The iron gates swung slowly inwards and I drove through. The impressive house, set among towering oaks, hadn’t been our original family home. Up until my late teens, we lived in a three-bed detached, but my parents then felt this prestigious corner of Essex was more befitting the stylish new Tyler image when the business began to thrive.
It was beautiful, but far too big. Dad had no need for the five en suite bedrooms but Joan (the housekeeper) and her husband, Jim (the gardener and handyman) were happily ensconced in the staff flat and I knew Dad would never leave. As far as he was concerned, the house was the icing that crowned his success, even if he could only occupy a fraction of it at a time.
‘Tess,’ he said, striding out to meet me as I cut the engine, ‘here you are at last.’
It was barely eight, hardly the latest of starts for a weekend which followed an extremely stressful week.
‘Any more news?’ I stole myself to ask.
‘Nothing in the papers this morning,’ he said.
‘Thank god,’ I exhaled, my shoulders dropping a good three inches.
‘Breakfast!’ Joan called from the kitchen.
‘Have you eaten?’ Dad asked, guiding me towards the house.
‘Not since yesterday morning.’
He nodded but didn’t say anything. He had never understood how stressful work situations curbed my appetite, because they fuelled his. The smell of bacon wafting through the house made my very empty stomach grumble and the knot of pain tightened in response. It was a vicious circle – my anxiety stopped me eating and the resulting cramps made it too painful to eat.
‘To be honest, Dad,’ I blurted out, before I had a chance to check myself, ‘it might be longer than that. I’m really not sure I can carry on working like this.’
Given how quickly he had sent me to have my heart checked after we lost Mum, surely he would get the gist of what I was trying to say. It had been an intense few months – long working days and almost impossible deadlines – and I feared that if I didn’t slacken the pace soon, I would end up doing myself some irreparable harm. After this current campaign was in the bag, I really was going to have to take a break. Surely, he would understand that?
‘Of course you can,’ he said stoically, drawing himself up to his full height as we stepped into the palatial kitchen. ‘You’re a Tyler, Tess. We don’t give up, remember? We thrive on stress. Our ability to power through is what keeps us one step ahead of the competition.’
I wanted to point out that I used to thrive on stress. Channelling my grief into my work was the very thing that had given me the strength to put in the increased hours, but now my mental as well as my physical energy was spent. I’d had enough and if I was being honest (to myself at least), it wasn’t just my grief that I was struggling with.
More and more often I was having to justify, cover up and even lie about certain so-called celebrities’ lifestyles and behaviours in order to make them an attractive enough proposition to match with our clients, and I didn’t like doing it. The pay cheque my position in the firm afforded me might have given me a fabulous car and an admirable apartment, but what did any of that matter if I couldn’t sleep at night?
‘Look,’ he said, when I didn’t defer to his tough Tyler ethos, ‘maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You dropped the ball this time, but—’
‘Dropped the ball?’ I interrupted.
I knew I sounded indignant but, surely, he wasn’t going to try and pin the footballer’s fall from grace on me?
‘It was his agent who gave him leave to go out and celebrate those goals,’ I said defensively. ‘I had no idea—’
‘But you should have,’ Dad interrupted, ‘and you know it. You should have known his schedule better than your own.’
I bit my lip to stop myself announcing that I was sick of babysitting adults who should know how to behave. This was clearly not the time to try and get my point across. The day was going to be tough enough and I didn’t need to fall out with ‘the boss’ on top of everything else.
‘Well, he’s on a tight leash now,’ I said instead, swallowing down my annoyance. ‘He won’t be straying again.’
‘But you can’t use him for the campaign, Tess,’ Dad countered. ‘The public won’t have an ounce of faith in him now.’
I thought of the elaborate damage limitation plan my team had been working on late the night before.
‘But—’