Read Online Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes - Free Book Online Page A

were already there. As well as Katherine’s assistants, Breda, Charmaine and Henry, there was a clutch of ‘creatives’, who considered themselves to be the
real
staff, not like that crowd of awkward bureaucrats who withheld expenses for no good reason. The creatives – a bunch of elaborately trendy New Lads who looked like they’d bought up the entire stock of Duffer of St George – were putting the final touches to a presentation they were giving on Monday to a tampon company. Lots of images of beaming girls landing on the moon and on a yellow landscape that was supposed to be the planet Venus, overlaid with George Michael’s ‘Freedom’. The hook lines they were proposing to use were ‘I bet she drinks Carling Black Label,’ and ‘Possibly the best feminine hygiene product in the known universe.’
    Two hard and fast rules existed for tampon ads: the product is only ever referred to euphemistically; and the colour red must
never
appear.
    Everyone automatically looked up at Katherine. Then looked away again when they saw who it was. Katherine wasn’t terribly popular with her colleagues. She wasn’t
un
popular either. But because she didn’t go on the piss several nights a week or sleep with all her male co-workers, she didn’t really exist.
    Sex was very high on the list of activities at Breen Helmsford. As the staff regularly found themselves in the position of having slept with all their colleagues of the opposite sex, the arrival of a new temp caused more excitement than the landing of a new account. Luckily, the creatives were sacked and replaced at dizzying speed, so there was always new blood being brought into the company, fresh bodies to sleep with.
    Katherine was called the Ice Queen. She knew about this,and her only objection was that she thought an advertising agency might have had a bit more imagination.
    The tampon-account director, Joe Roth, was in the thick of the five lads, who were passionately saying things like ‘Everyone
knows
you can do a bungee jump while you’re wearing a tampon,’ and ‘Yeah, bungee jumps are yesterday’s news,’ and ‘Space-landings are so now!’ He watched Katherine as she walked over to her desk and switched on her PC. ‘Nice piece of work, boys,’ he praised his team. ‘Personally speaking, I’d buy these tampons. Hell, I nearly wish I got periods.
    ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me,’ he said, his sights on Katherine, ‘it’s time for my daily knock-back.’
    Joe Roth was intrigued by Katherine. He’d only been at Breen Helmsford three weeks – in other jobs this would mean he had barely started, but advertising years were like dog years. Three weeks was usually long enough to win a major account, be promoted twice, written up in
Campaign
, caught in bed with the MD’s wife, lose a major account and get fired. Certainly Joe thought that three weeks was long enough to have made some progress with Katherine, but he wasn’t sure if he was getting anywhere.
    On Joe’s first day, Fred Franklin, the overweight, fortyish, heavy-drinking Lancastrian who was to be his boss, had taken him aside. First he’d established what football team Joe supported – Arsenal – then gave him some words of avuncular wisdom on his new post. Where the coffee machine was, how to fiddle his expenses and, most importantly, the best women to pursue. ‘Martini, there,’ Fred told Joe, indicating a tall, toothy redhead. ‘Goes like the clappers.’
    ‘I thought her name was Samantha,’ Joe said.
    ‘Aye, technically speaking it is,’ Fred admitted, ‘but we callher Martini, because anytime, anyplace, anywhere, she’s up for it.
    ‘She’s great,’ Fred said, with a fond smile. ‘She’ll do anything.
Anything
. And she never wants those daft things women always want.’
    ‘You mean flowers and chocolates?’ Joe asked.
    ‘I mean phone calls, remembering her name, that kind of thing. She’s just in it for the sex. She’ll even let you watch the footie while