Conditional Love by Cathy Bramley Page B

old grey shift dress and thick black tights. I needed a new attitude, more drive, a sprinkling of ambition and possibly a new suit. The Herald wasn’t a bad place to work I thought, looking round me. I simply needed to rekindle the passion I’d once felt for the job.
    It had to be worth a try.
    Donna wouldn’t know what had hit her. Once I had injected a little ‘va-va-voom’ into my professional life I could show Mum I did have some ambition after all. She would brim with pride if I got a promotion and, naturally, forgive me. Then when all the fuss had died down I might even feel brave enough to tell her about meeting Terry. Jess and Emma would apologise for not supporting me when I was going through a difficult patch and Marc would…
    Marc’s name snaking its way into my daydream snapped me back into the moment.
    I’d been dying to tell him about my inheritance. I knew it was weak and pathetic to still want him back, but he was fun and gorgeous and made me feel all small and girlie. A really cynical part of me suspected that if I waved my new found wealth under his nose it wouldn’t take much to get him interested again.
    But I wasn’t prepared to stoop that low.
    Far better to use my new, career-focussed, eye on the prize, go-get-’em persona to dazzle him. I might even go back to the gym and exercise for real. I shuddered. Baby steps, Sophie.
    A strangled scream from Donna’s office interrupted my flow. She appeared to be yanking all the cables out of her laptop. I had visions of it flying through the plate glass window and someone calling for security.
    Maureen opened her eyes wide in fear and Jason curled his top lip and shook his head. Which left me.
    Walk tall. This is the ‘new you’. Show her that you mean business.
    I knocked on Donna’s door and poked my head in.
    ‘Everything OK?’
    The boss had her head on the desk, still not a platinum hair out of place though, I noticed. A laptop was hanging by a solitary cable, suspended over the waste paper basket.
    She lifted her head up and glared at me sulkily.
    ‘Can you do Facebook?’ she demanded.
    I nodded. I was of the Facebook generation, addicted to updating my status on an hourly basis. If I ever suffered amnesia, I would be able to reacquaint myself instantly with my entire life by checking my Facebook page.
    ‘Twitter?’
    Once again I nodded. This second nod wasn’t strictly true, but in the spirit of my new ‘can-do’ attitude, I decided to wing it. How hard could it be? Donna let out a long whistling breath through her nose. It could have been one of relief, or maybe she was still mad. Impossible to tell, although her face was looking less screwed-up.
    She pointed at a chair. ‘Sit.’
    I sat, apprehension starting to build in my stomach.
    ‘I need you in the boardroom with me at noon.’
    Wow. I hadn’t expected that. Me. In the boardroom. At noon.
    ‘Er, great!’ I grappled for the right words, wanting to sound keen and calm even though I was anything but.
    Seek and ye shall find . Or Ask and ye shall receive . Whichever the correct proverb was, I had been looking for a leg up the ladder and appeared to have stumbled over one.
    ‘The board has asked me,’ Donna sat back, folded her arms and cleared her throat, ‘I mean us, to give a presentation on social media to help them decide what The Herald’ s stance should be. Should we be Twittering and Facebooking, that sort of thing.’ She waved her hand around vaguely.
    I had lots of questions but all I could think was, ‘Presentation, me, boardroom, noon.’
    ‘But… but… why us in advertising, not editorial?’
    ‘They don’t want it to be news-led. They want promotions, vouchers, competitions, that sort of thing.’ Donna leaned forward, raised her chin and looked at me shrewdly.
    The digital clock on her wall changed to 11 a.m.
    I gasped. ‘We’ve only got one hour. They can’t possibly expect us to produce a report in that time!’
    My heart was beating double time