Carefully opening the glass door of the meeting room, I creep to the only free seat left, right at the front. The only thing Suki hates more than lateness is “freegans who shun consumer society.” I’m only two minutes late, but Suki stops talking and everyone turns to look at me. My friend and flatmate, Vanya, shoots me a sympathetic look from the end of the row.
“Nice of you to join us, Laura,” Suki says, one eyebrow darting up her forehead. “Since you’re already standing, perhaps you can help me today?”
Oh great—I’m in the hot seat. Suki likes to punctuate her monthly roundups with a Q&A full of impossible rhetorical questions. It’s like being on a game show that you can never win.
“What are we doing here, Laura?” Suki’s lips pout in my direction, like a cannon preparing to fire.
“Having a meeting?”
Everyone laughs, which makes me even more nervous. I wasn’t trying to be funny; Suki does not like funny.
“No, what are we doing here?” Suki glares at me, lifting her hand up to indicate I should stay standing while I’m in the hot seat.
Though Suki is short, she refuses to raise her eye level to look at people taller than her. I once heard her tell a male client that she didn’t see why she should give herself a neck ache—if people want to look her in the eye, they can come down to her level. As a result, when you speak to her, you find yourself hovering in a crouch position. Vanya swears that she once saw Suki have a meeting with a particularly tall IT guy on his knees.
“Do we all show up at this office for fun?” Suki asks. “Are we here designing blueprints for atomic submarines? What are we doing, Laura?”
“Um, working for one of the top lifestyle platforms in the UK?” Yes! I remembered to call it a lifestyle platform. Suki doesn’t like it being referred to as a website; she thinks it’s reductive. Love Life started out as purely interiors but now covers everything from real life stories to beauty products and travel.
“We are selling a dream—that is what we are doing,” says Suki, clapping her hands together. “We are showing people the life they want—the enviable love stories, the perfectly designed breakfast bar, the expensive mini break to Paris that might save their relationship. We suck people in with a dream, and we send them away with . . . Laura?”
“Hope?” I try. Suki stares at my chin unblinking. “Style tips? Um, a smile?” I crouch down a little lower. My glute muscles have gotten so much stronger in the four years I’ve been working here. “Hope?” Damn it, I think I said hope already.
Straight out of university, I worked for a music magazine. I’d have to wait backstage after gigs to try and bag interviews with bands. I learned how to thrust myself forward, find just the right question for musicians who had little time for me. I only lasted nine months before my editor tired of my “retro taste in music” and replaced me with a nineteen-year-old synth metal fan, but it was long enough to learn how to think on my feet and to swallow my nerves. Yet here, regardless of competence, something about Suki renders most of us incapable of forming intelligent sentences.
“We send them away with stuff, Laura. Suck them in with dreams, grab them with targeted ads, and send them away with stuff! Our followers might not have perfect lives, but they can have a new luxury mattress, a stylish holiday, the exact bronze light fitting that Kylie Minogue has in her Melbourne kitchen-cum-diner. With our help, they can buy a fragment of perfection.”
I nod, holding my chin between thumb and forefinger, attempting to look as though I’m studiously digesting Suki’s wisdom. Personally, I feel the world could do with a little less stuff, but no one’s going to pay me to peddle my “reuse, recycle” philosophy in this room. I have a staff job here, which, as a journalist, is almost impossible to come by. So, I count myself lucky and try to keep my head and my eyeline down.
“And so, we find ourselves with a problem.” Suki turns her attention back to the room and resumes pacing slowly as she talks. “In the current climate, no one wants to buy stuff. People are learning they can live with less. They can work less, earn less, buy less, do less, travel less—talk more, read more, enjoy the little things, the free things. Do they need another handbag, another outfit, another upgrade to their phone? Do they need sushi delivered at eleven p.m., Jazzercise classes, and BB cream for the cellulite no one ever sees? Do they, Laura?”
“Quite,” I say, nodding solemnly. Ha! I can’t be wrong if I say quite.