Eight Bright Lights
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Synopsis
The witty and hilarious debut novel from Sara Gibbs, the talented comedy writer whose credits include The Mash Report and Have I Got News for You, EIGHT BRIGHT LIGHTS is set over the eight nights of Hanukkah.
The clock is ticking, and getting their happily ever after might just take a miracle . . .
EIGHT DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
Hannah is stuck - in South Devon and her dead-end job. But when her estranged father dies, she suddenly finds herself in Tel Aviv. With only her insufferable - yet irritatingly sexy - host for company, can she pick up the pieces of her father's life and make it home in time for her cousin's wedding?
FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
More preoccupied with securing her dream job writing for an iconic fashion magazine, Rachel is already a distracted bride. But when an article unlocks a long-held family secret, will her simple Christmas wedding become much more complicated?
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING
Spontaneously quitting her job was not wedding planner Ella's idea - neither was burning bridges with her terrifying boss. Left with only one client - and no money - how will she pull this wedding together, when everything else is falling apart?
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PRAISE FOR SARA GIBBS:
'Fast and hilarious . . . and so very touching' - Lizzy Dent, author of The Summer Job
'Very funny and uplifting' - Isy Suttie, author of Jane is Trying
'Sparklingly hilarious' - Desiree Burch
'Incredibly intelligent and ridiculously funny . . . I cried laughing' - Shappi Khorsandi
(P) 2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
Release date: September 14, 2023
Publisher: Headline
Print pages: 464
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Eight Bright Lights
Sara Gibbs
Hannah
I’m late. Fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds late, to be exact. Usually I wouldn’t bother counting but I’d bet this entire shift’s wages that my boss will be. She’ll have her stopwatch app out, recording my tardiness to the millisecond like a world record is at stake. To be fair to me, this isn’t my fault. What kind of psychopath rosters someone to work at 10 a.m. on a Sunday? Everyone knows a 10 a.m. start is more of a suggestion than a direct order. Everyone apart from my boss.
I check my phone for the thousandth time since I woke up three minutes ago. I can’t help feeling like I’ve forgotten something – but that could just be because I’ve forgotten most of last night. I wince and turn down the brightness on my screen. My head feels like it’s been taken hostage by a three-year-old given a drum kit by someone who really hates their parents. I blame whoever invented the mojito. Mr Mojito? It had to be a man to cause this kind of pain.
There’s no time to worry about looking like I didn’t spend last night in a skip. I scan my floordrobe for respectable clothes and settle for the first T-shirt that almost passes the sniff test and the pair of blue boyfriend jeans I drunkenly tripped out of last night. I nearly bash my head on the ceiling as I hop into them. I swear this room is getting smaller by the day.
On my way down the stairs, I catch a glimpse of myself in the landing hallway mirror, the one I’m sure is there for the sole purpose of shaming me. It’s working. Ye gods. The only thing distracting from my hair, which wouldn’t look out of place on Springwatch being monitored for the first signs of life, is last night’s mascara. It’s caked under my eyes in a way that says, I’m in a zoo about to give birth to the only hope for the continuation of my species.
Ah well, I’m already late; another minute won’t make a difference. I sprint back upstairs and desperately look around for a miracle product that will fix both my hair and my face. Maybe turn back time to before I decided to go out last night. The closest thing I can find is a moisturizer (not mine) that promises to reverse the effects of ageing. Presumably not by time travel. I spit on a balled-up tissue by my bed and wipe it frantically under my eyes, cursing myself for wearing fancy waterproof mascara – also not mine, of course. I’d never buy anything that inconvenient. Or expensive. I grab a hair tie from my nightstand and force my tangled mane into what I’m hoping I can pass off as a deliberately messy ponytail. And that’s when the room decides to start wobbling as the toddler drummer in my head goes full Phil Collins.
By the time I head back downstairs I’m nineteen minutes and twenty-two point seven seconds late. Just perfect.
I’ve never stressed about being late. I’m the kind of person who runs on their own time – Hannah Standard Time, as my boss from hell puts it. But that was before I started working for her. I already know exactly what she’s going to say: ‘Hannah, you’re so habitually late; it’s one of the only reliable things about you.’ Or: ‘Hannah, you’re late so often, your tombstone will say “Hannah Weiss – was late”. In fact, if you ever do die, and people refer to you as the late Hannah Weiss, nobody will know anything happened to you.’ Then she’ll do that passive-aggressive little laugh, which serves the double purpose of demonstrating that she’s totally chill while covering up the sound of steam slowly escaping her ears.
Once she’s finished her tight-five stand-up routine, she’ll launch into her classic lecture. I don’t know why she bothers. I know it off by heart. I could win a lip-sync battle mouthing along to it. ‘Hannah, it’s been over a year since you left university and you can’t even decide on a hair colour, let alone what you want to do with the rest of your life. When I was your age, I was juggling a five-year-old daughter and a full-time job by myself. When are you going to grow up and sort your life out?’
If that sounds like a weird thing for my boss to say, it’s because my boss is also my mum. And my landlord. And my self-appointed life coach. Home is once again the little flat above the pub my mum runs. Our flat didn’t always feel this little. When I was growing up, there was plenty of room for the two of us. But after three years of university it seems to have shrunk around me, Alice-in-Wonderland style.
‘You’re not Alice,’ says the version of Mum who lives rent-free in my head (only fair, as I live rent-free in her flat). ‘You’re that bloody rabbit who’s always late for everything.’
Three years. That sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? A long time away from this little estuary town of Topsham, Devon, to work out what I want to be when I grow up. I studied English to stall that decision for three years. But nobody warned me it would go by in five minutes and I would find myself aged twenty-two, graduated for a year and a half and pulling pints for the same five weirdos every day. Don’t get me wrong – we love the weirdos; they’re our weirdos, and our only customers. But it’s not exactly the dream, is it? Not that I have any idea what the dream is. I briefly raised Mum’s hopes when I joined the human rights society at uni. She got overexcited and started needling me about internships at the UN before being bitterly disappointed to discover I’d only signed up to impress some guy whose name I now don’t remember. Worse still, instead of coming home with big ambitions, I returned with lots of opinions that make my aunt Lauren turn purple with rage at family dinners. I can’t say that isn’t fun, but again – not the dream.
My cousin Rachel doesn’t have this problem. She’s known what the dream was since we were old enough to play pretend magazines; she’d make me copy-edit her crayon scribbles. Not only that but she’s getting married next week. She’s got it all figured out. But, as Mum frequently likes to remind me, I’m not Rachel.
I skid to a stop behind the bar.
‘Late again.’ Mum pounces immediately. ‘What was it? Bad commute? Traffic on the stairs? Ha ha ha.’
I nearly burst a blood vessel trying to suppress an eye roll.
‘Sorry.’ I wince when I hear how sulky I sound. ‘You’re clearly rushed off your feet without me.’
I know. I’m being a dick. But the way she goes on you’d think it was New Year’s Eve at Fabric, not Sad Hour at the Hive. The Hive, despite its name, hasn’t been busy since 1988, when a group of ramblers ran in during a storm and had no choice but to buy stuff. There’s even a framed photo of them behind the bar. In a tourist town full of gastro pubs, we are very much the locals’ drinking hole. And they’ve kept us in business, just about. But speaking of ‘not exactly the dream’, I know running a dingy pub that barely stays afloat isn’t Mum’s.
Mum has big plans for this place. She’s dying to replace the ancient, puke-coloured carpet (great for hiding puke stains), the hole-ridden armchairs and seventies wallpaper. To get rid of the dark-wood tables with countless rings from years of nobody using a coaster despite them being, as Mum frequently points out, right bloody there. I’ve seen the Pinterest boards she thinks she’s set to private of pretty, painted furniture, potted plants and white, clean walls. I’ve seen the sample menus she’s jotted down on her notepad in quieter moments. There’ve been a lot of quieter moments lately – and a lot of menu options. It’s not a lack of vision stopping Mum from turning this place into her fantasy business. We just don’t have the money. What makes it particularly painful is that Mum managed to save up a modest refurbishments fund, only to have it wiped out by the cost-of-living crisis. It’s now earmarked for our winter energy bills. God knows how we’ll manage beyond that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Obviously you were late because you were so busy picking the perfect outfit.’ She eyes my T-shirt pointedly. It’s inside out. And back to front. With no choice but to take it off to fix it, I duck under the bar. ‘As much as I’m sure our customers are enjoying the show, it’s really not that kind of establishment,’ Mum chides.
I resurface from my Coyote Ugly moment to find that Mum has plonked a glass of Coke, a packet of Jacob’s Cream Crackers and two paracetamol pills on the bar in front of me.
‘Take these,’ she orders. ‘You’re no good to me doing your Courtney Love tribute act.’
I open my mouth, ready to dive into what’s likely to be an argument in seething whispers, but I’m interrupted by a booming voice.
‘HANNAH MONTANA!’ Derek laughs at his own decades-out-of-date-yet-still-somehow-a-creepy-cultural-reference-for-a-man-his-age joke. I feel my muscles tense. I quickly knock back the Coke and painkillers.
I’m too hungover to deal with Derek, a portly local in his fifties who describes himself as ‘a bit of a character’. Usually other people label you as ‘a bit of a character’ when they either mean you’re an oddball or an arsehole. I’m not sure what a self-styled ‘character’ wants people to take from that.
Derek, as he often likes to tell us, is rich – so rich he could fund Mum’s pub redesign a thousand times over (but not rich enough to drink somewhere decent). ‘Carolyn,’ he often says. ‘I’d take such good care of you.’ Why doesn’t he? Well, then he ‘wouldn’t have “his girls” all to himself, would he?’ is his go-to response, delivered with a lascivious wink and a laugh you could hear from Australia. Derek laughs that loudly because it compensates for the fact nobody is laughing with him. Sometimes Derek plays a super fun game where he gets out his chequebook, writes Mum a cheque for an obscene amount of money and then holds it just out of her reach, trying to get her to grab it, before playfully ripping it up, saying, ‘I’m only joshing you’.
When he’s not here, making little ‘jokes’ about how if he were thirty years younger, I’d be ‘in trouble’, Derek claims to be off at some holiday home or another, coming back after a few weeks with a leathery tan and an ostentatious flash of the cash to buy everyone’s drinks for a day. I should add that nobody has any idea how Derek makes his money. If asked, he says something evasive like ‘bit of this, bit of that’ or ‘wheeling and dealing’, like a bargain-bin Alan Sugar. Our working theory is drugs.
‘HANNAH MONTANA!’ Derek repeats. At least it’s a step up from ‘Ginger Spice’, which is what he called me for a month after I dyed my hair from bleach blonde to its current auburn red. I dread to think how annoying he’d be if he knew exactly how ginger my natural colour was before I started changing it up. ‘You should listen to your mother,’ he scolds, switching to creepy would-be-stepdad mode and wagging a gold-ring-embellished finger at me. ‘You’ll never turn this place around otherwise. Time is money, Hannah.’
Mum grimaces. I can tell she’s torn between enjoying the backup and not wanting, under any circumstances, to agree with Derek.
I smile through gritted teeth. In my head I count down ‘Three, two, one . . .’ before I duck under the bar to grab a pint glass and mouth along the predictable words: ‘Don’t give me too much head, love.’ Behind me, my mum makes a quiet retching noise and I stifle a giggle. My annoyance towards her softens. For once, we’re on the same page. And at least she has no interest in making Derek my new dad.
For a split second, things feel like they used to. Before this nightmare year in the post-uni wilderness, Mum and I had a great relationship. She raised me by herself after getting pregnant at eighteen, but, despite being so close in age, we’re not one of those mother–daughter duos who are more like sisters. Mum has always been distinctly mum-like. She’s one of the most responsible people I know. While she’d never admit it to me, I can’t help but wonder if making such a colossal mistake so early on in her life made her feel that she needed to do everything else perfectly. Or maybe, if she grew up before her time and raised me right, she could tell herself I wasn’t a mistake at all.
My parents met when my mum was on a gap year in Israel with her Jewish youth group. My dad was an up-and-coming fashion photographer, well known on the Israeli scene but not yet internationally, and she was a beautiful but naive eighteen-year-old flattered by his insistence he ‘had to photograph her immediately’. It was classic romantic-comedy material – in that it was problematic, unrealistic and over the second they got together.
My parents tried to make it work for a while; at least, Mum did. She stayed in Israel, where I was born, and for a few months they played house. But Dad, despite being seven years older, wasn’t ready for the responsibility. So, off he fucked and Mum brought me here to Devon after a disastrous spell living with Grandma Rose in London. My usually progressive grandma had gone unexpectedly 1950s on her, constantly hand-wringing about Mum finding a husband to raise me ‘properly’. It’s an anomaly in Grandma’s character I’ve never understood; Mum didn’t understand either. After Grandma’s zillionth transparent attempt at Fiddler on the Roof levels of matchmaking, Mum fled to Topsham, a place that reminded her of happy childhood holidays.
I know Grandma sorely regrets her reaction to Mum’s pregnancy. She’s apologized enough times and has begged us to move back to London, but she’s never really explained why she acted the way she did. The best she’s come up with is that Mum is her baby and she feels extra protective of her. Grandma had secondary infertility after having my aunt Lauren, which is why there’s eight years between Lauren and my horrible uncle Aaron and another eight years between Aaron and Mum.
Whatever the reason for Grandma’s overreaction, Mum, being her stubborn, independent self, has refused to even entertain the idea of moving, which is a shame because it would have been nice to have grown up near Grandma and Rachel. My other cousins, Abby and Ben, I could take or leave.
Mum took a job at the Hive, the cheapest place she could find to stay when she arrived with nothing but a duffel bag and an overtired toddler. She took the job to pay the bills, but Fred, the owner at that time – a widower with no kids who became like a second grandfather to me – saw Mum’s potential and became her mentor. When Fred died five years ago, he left the business to her, and the rest is history.
Topsham is a weird place to be Jewish. We’re often the first Jews that people here have met. When I first met my best friend Emily, she asked if she could rub my horns for luck. In her defence, she was six, but it’s always left a question mark over her parents. There’s a small synagogue down the road in Exeter, with a tiny community: a mixed bag of hippies and retirees, who can’t agree on whether they’re Reform or Orthodox. As the old saying goes – two Jews, three opinions. They alternate services on a fortnightly basis, with the Reform crowd grumbling through the Orthodox services and the Orthodox lot complaining throughout the Reform ones. Still, despite the superficial differences, it’s like being part of a big extended family. Mum is on the committee, organizing local events like tonight’s Hanukkah party. I’ve always quietly enjoyed planning the events, although I would never admit that to Mum. She’d kill my enthusiasm with her encouragement.
Dad used to visit me here twice a year – once in the summer for my birthday and once over Hanukkah. I would look forward to his visits like most kids looked forward to Disneyland. Dad would show up and whisk me away for a week for adventures like camping and long hikes on Dartmoor, where he would photograph me making friends with the wild ponies. Sometimes he had a woman with him. It was never the same woman twice.
As the years passed, Dad went from being a big fish in a small pond to a global icon. It started with a modest big break when I was about seven – a fortuitously timed shoot with a little-known Israeli actress, Inbar Golan. A couple of years later, Inbar was cast in a huge Hollywood blockbuster and suddenly she was a Hollywood A-lister. When she was asked to be on the cover of Vogue, she insisted on using an obscure Israeli photographer, and that’s how my dad stopped being my dad and became the legendary Oren Weiss.
When Dad became the go-to photographer for every high-end magazine, fashion house and A-lister on the planet, he reduced his visits to once a year at Hanukkah. Flush with cash, he’d spend a few glorious days showering me with all the things we couldn’t afford: cinema trips, bowling, theme parks and shopping. Returning to my shabby life was always a harsh comedown and I’d spend weeks feeling livid with Mum for barely being able to provide the basics.
Then, when I was fourteen, the visits stopped altogether. The first Hanukkah when he didn’t come, there were excuses and apologies and promises to make it up to me. Then, gradually, the phone calls stopped. The emails stopped. And eventually I stopped asking Mum when Dad was coming back.
Behind the bar, my phone buzzes. Mum shoots me a look that contains a whole lecture in and of itself. Emily’s name flashes up on the screen. My stomach lurches. That’s what I’d forgotten last night. Emily. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I never made it to meet her at Capsule at nine like I promised. I didn’t mean to stand her up again. It’s just that I bumped into Hot Josh, whom I’d fancied like mad in sixth form. Josh convinced me to go with him for a quick cocktail at Claws. A cocktail turned into shots, which turned into a game of Never Have I Ever, which turned into making out and, well, I can be forgiven for forgetting about Emily.
With a sense of looming dread, I open the message: Everyone told me not to bother making plans with you and I stood up for you. I came all the way home just to see you. I shouldn’t have bothered. We’re done.
My stomach sloshes unpleasantly. Emily and I have been best friends since the first day of school. Sure, we’ve grown apart a bit in recent years; I like going out and having fun, while Emily likes being prematurely geriatric, sitting in her pyjamas with her boyfriend, Pete, in their flat, eating dinner off a nana tray and getting promoted at her boring academic publishing job. She’s barely ever back home anymore, not since she moved to London and smugly ‘got her life together’. Still, I never meant to upset her. Surely she can’t mean that we’re actually done? No, I decide. She’s just being dramatic. I’ll give her a few hours to cool off, then I’ll—
‘Hannah!’ Mum hisses, pointing to a sign above the bar – created entirely for my benefit, because we’re the only two people who work here – that states: ‘If You’re On Your Phone, Our Customers Are Alone.’
‘I know, I know – I’ll turn it off,’ I lie, shoving it into my pocket.
‘Was that Matt?’ Mum asks, her voice artificially light.
‘Nope.’
‘Oh?’ She can’t help herself. ‘No more Matt?’
‘No more Matt,’ I confirm. To be honest, Matt was three guys ago; it took me a second to work out who she was even talking about.
‘So who were you out with half the night then?’
‘Nunya.’
‘Nunya who?’ Mum looks confused.
‘Nunya Business,’ I answer, dying inside as I hear how I sound when I say it.
Mum sighs.
OK, I can hear how I sound. But the alternative is telling Mum, who’s already on my case, that I’m not exactly sure who I was out with until the early hours. I’m pretty certain it was Josh, but really it could have been anyone. I don’t know who I was with, I don’t know how I got home – and these gaps in my memory are getting more and more frequent.
That’s all fairly normal, though, isn’t it? I’m twenty-two – I’m supposed to be having fun. It’s natural for there to be a few wild nights out, a couple of broken commitments, a long line of Matts and Joshes and whoever elses without Mum slut-shaming me into oblivion. It doesn’t take a psychologist to work out that Mum is terrified of me getting pregnant by some shithead guy and ruining my life. But, unlike Mum, I know how to use protection and, also unlike Mum, I would take care of it, like she clearly wishes she had.
‘Very mature, Hannah,’ Mum says, colour rising in her cheeks. ‘And very original.’
Mum has naturally ginger hair too, so when she gets angry, she looks a bit like she’s on fire. Luckily, before she can work herself up too much, we’re interrupted by customers. Wait, what? Not regulars but actual customers. Real human beings I’ve never seen before.
‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘It’s a Hanukkah miracle.’
Standing in the doorway is a cohort of tourists. My best guess, judging from their ironically mismatched clothes, is that they’re east London types who have wandered in here because they think our pub is, like them, ironically shit. Mum looks momentarily elated. Then her smile turns to a grimace as the group heads towards Derek, who’s eyeing the women creepily.
Mum lunges towards the customers in slow motion, like a bodyguard leaping in front of a bullet in a movie, yelling ‘Noooooooo!’ She gets to them with milliseconds to spare, trying to cover up her bizarre dive by maniacally reeling off our list of local ales.
While she’s distracted, I pull my phone out of my pocket and type a frantic apology to Emily. It doesn’t go through. She’s blocked my number.
I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach. Emily’s been a bit of a drag lately, but I had no idea our friendship was on its last legs. I check Facebook: blocked. Twitter: blocked. Insta: blocked. Fuck. Maybe she really is serious. I’m going to have to pull something major out of the bag to make this up to her, but what? Call her from a landline? Send flowers? Show up at her retirement home and grovel?
All I know is that there’s nothing I can do about it right now, and I’ll feel even worse if I get caught on my phone for a second time by Mum. But then it buzzes. Maybe Emily’s got over her strop and decided to talk to me. My heart lifts momentarily – then everything stops as I read the notification on the screen.
A strange sensation comes over me – like I’m no longer properly in my body. Everything feels distant and tingly, like I’m living the moment in a memory. But I’m here. I’m here right now. Why doesn’t it feel like I am? I try to find a shred of normality to latch on to, but it’s like looking for an earring on a patterned carpet.
There’s a white ring on the mahogany bar. A permanent ring made up of hundreds of smaller impressions – decades of pint glasses being put down in one place. Like rings of a tree created by generations of alcoholics. It feels familiar, as if I’ve seen it hundreds of times, but this is the first time I’ve properly noticed it. It blurs in and out of focus as I hear Mum’s voice somewhere in the distance: ‘Hannah? We have customers.’
I’m sitting down now. I don’t remember sitting down. Where am I? The floor? Yes, that seems right; there are rows of clean glasses lined up on the shelf in front of me.
‘Hannah,’ Mum’s voice is closer now. Clearer. ‘What’s got into you? I thought I told you to put away . . .’
Her voice trails off as I hand her my phone and she reads the words that catapulted me into this strange dream: ‘Fashion Photographer Oren Weiss Dead at 48’.
Ella
I’m early. On any other day, this wouldn’t be a problem. I’m so routinely early that I consider being on time to be lateness. My life could be summed up in a montage of me sitting in cafés, waiting rooms, airports, either reading a book or knitting. I always leave a half-hour buffer when I plan a journey. You never know what might go wrong on the way and I would die of mortification if I was ever late. My dad is a retired navy man and his motto is ‘there’s no excuse for lateness’, which might be why I see it as a personal failure. You can say so much by being early. I’m early means ‘I’m prepared’. I’m early means ‘I value your time’. I’m early means ‘I can be counted on’.
Today, however, is a Sunday in Golders Green on the first day of Hanukkah, which means there’s no quiet corner of Shakshuka to hide in while I wait for Corrine. The shops are packed with people panic-buying last-second gifts, yelling at the poor Israeli supermarket staff for having the audacity to run out of Hanukkah candles at the last minute on the first night of Hanukkah – and, it seems, everyone’s having breakfast at Shakshuka.
Shakshuka is one of my favourite cafés, but today it’s a waking stress dream. It’s heaving. I can’t hear myself think through all the noise and it will be a Hanukkah miracle if I manage to get a server’s attention. I’m no good at that at the best of times. Eye contact has never been my jam and, no matter how intently I stare, I always seem to blink or look away just as they glance over at me. There’s no way to wave a waiter over without looking like an entitled dick.
Through sheer luck, I’ve managed to get a table, but I’ve had to guard Corrine’s empty chair with my life. Some people are polite enough to half-heartedly ask if they can take it, while simultaneously placing a tentative hand on the back, but others have gone straight for a grab. I had to wrench it out of one woman’s death grip, which is no mean feat for someone as conflict-averse as I am. Only I could be moments from wrestling someone to the ground while still apologizing profusely. The woman is now sitting at the breakfast bar, eyeing my still-empty second chair resentfully. She clearly thinks I’m saving it to spite her. I avoid her gaze, not just because the eye contact would be incredibly painful for me but because I’d be liable to give up, apologize for existing and hand over my boss’s chair, my own chair and my firstborn child, should I ever have one.
This would never happen to my little sister, Martha. If Martha were here, she’d flash a smile so charming that if anyone minded her blatantly hogging the chairs (and an extra one for her handbag – you don’t put Prada on the floor) they wouldn’t even notice. Not me, though. The brassy Scouser gene I was supposed to inherit must have skipped me.
Today of all days, I can’t show any weakness. I wouldn’t put it past Corrine to have chosen this ridiculous time and place for an appraisal meeting as a test. Classic Corrine. The sole reason my job, which I otherwise love, is so stressful. Compared to my boss, Darth Vader is Employer of the Year. At least he had the decency to put his employees out of their misery by strangling them to death with his mind.
There are so many reasons Corrine is a nightmare on speed; it’s hard to know where to start. You’d think I’d be an expert by now. I rant about her so often that my girlfriend, Georgie, has installed a Corrine jar. Given what she pays me, even venting about her is bankrupting me. That’s a decent place to start: my pitiful salary. I’m paid a basic London living wage to do Corrine’s job for her while she gets the lion’s share of the clients’ fees and the huge commissions she commands from our suppliers. One of the benefits of being the most sought-after Jewish event-planning racket in town is that Corrine can take a heftier cut than she deserves, because nobody wants to be dropped from her preferred supplier list. If you’re not on The List, you’re dead this side of the North Circular.
Maybe I’d feel less resentful if Corrine were a great manager, but it’s hard to watch her raking it in while being an active impediment to a job well done. Corrine constantly makes rash, illogical decisions and it becomes my job to manage the consequences. This is going to sound very up myself but it’s more of a commentary on Corrine’s abilities than mine: I have no idea how she managed to pull off such high-scale events before she hired me. I guess she must have relied on whichever poor ‘me’ was working for her to keep her reputation as the UK’s top Jewish event-planner intact.
Before any antisemites out there start rubbing their hands with glee, it’s worth noting that Corrine isn’t Jewish. Corrine grew up in New York and calls herself ‘Jew-adjacent’. She moved here after marrying a Jewish man, whom she’s since divorced, but not before managing to insinuate herself into Jewish circles. Not that you’d know it from her supplier list. Aside from the rabbi and one kosher caterer, none of our preferred suppliers are Jewish. That isn’t inherently a problem – it’s just a weird choice on her part for someone who ‘adores Jews’. She’s happy to exploit the market but less happy to work with the community.
Georgie insists she’s a philosemite – someone who fetishizes Jewish culture but will flip to antisemitism the second she feels slighted by ‘one of us’. I’ve brushed off Georgie’s concerns because that’s a moral red line for me and I can’t afford to believe it – but lately Corinne’s off-colour ‘jokes’, usually involving money, have started to make me feel squirmy. For example, when I commented on the weather holding out for an
I’m late. Fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds late, to be exact. Usually I wouldn’t bother counting but I’d bet this entire shift’s wages that my boss will be. She’ll have her stopwatch app out, recording my tardiness to the millisecond like a world record is at stake. To be fair to me, this isn’t my fault. What kind of psychopath rosters someone to work at 10 a.m. on a Sunday? Everyone knows a 10 a.m. start is more of a suggestion than a direct order. Everyone apart from my boss.
I check my phone for the thousandth time since I woke up three minutes ago. I can’t help feeling like I’ve forgotten something – but that could just be because I’ve forgotten most of last night. I wince and turn down the brightness on my screen. My head feels like it’s been taken hostage by a three-year-old given a drum kit by someone who really hates their parents. I blame whoever invented the mojito. Mr Mojito? It had to be a man to cause this kind of pain.
There’s no time to worry about looking like I didn’t spend last night in a skip. I scan my floordrobe for respectable clothes and settle for the first T-shirt that almost passes the sniff test and the pair of blue boyfriend jeans I drunkenly tripped out of last night. I nearly bash my head on the ceiling as I hop into them. I swear this room is getting smaller by the day.
On my way down the stairs, I catch a glimpse of myself in the landing hallway mirror, the one I’m sure is there for the sole purpose of shaming me. It’s working. Ye gods. The only thing distracting from my hair, which wouldn’t look out of place on Springwatch being monitored for the first signs of life, is last night’s mascara. It’s caked under my eyes in a way that says, I’m in a zoo about to give birth to the only hope for the continuation of my species.
Ah well, I’m already late; another minute won’t make a difference. I sprint back upstairs and desperately look around for a miracle product that will fix both my hair and my face. Maybe turn back time to before I decided to go out last night. The closest thing I can find is a moisturizer (not mine) that promises to reverse the effects of ageing. Presumably not by time travel. I spit on a balled-up tissue by my bed and wipe it frantically under my eyes, cursing myself for wearing fancy waterproof mascara – also not mine, of course. I’d never buy anything that inconvenient. Or expensive. I grab a hair tie from my nightstand and force my tangled mane into what I’m hoping I can pass off as a deliberately messy ponytail. And that’s when the room decides to start wobbling as the toddler drummer in my head goes full Phil Collins.
By the time I head back downstairs I’m nineteen minutes and twenty-two point seven seconds late. Just perfect.
I’ve never stressed about being late. I’m the kind of person who runs on their own time – Hannah Standard Time, as my boss from hell puts it. But that was before I started working for her. I already know exactly what she’s going to say: ‘Hannah, you’re so habitually late; it’s one of the only reliable things about you.’ Or: ‘Hannah, you’re late so often, your tombstone will say “Hannah Weiss – was late”. In fact, if you ever do die, and people refer to you as the late Hannah Weiss, nobody will know anything happened to you.’ Then she’ll do that passive-aggressive little laugh, which serves the double purpose of demonstrating that she’s totally chill while covering up the sound of steam slowly escaping her ears.
Once she’s finished her tight-five stand-up routine, she’ll launch into her classic lecture. I don’t know why she bothers. I know it off by heart. I could win a lip-sync battle mouthing along to it. ‘Hannah, it’s been over a year since you left university and you can’t even decide on a hair colour, let alone what you want to do with the rest of your life. When I was your age, I was juggling a five-year-old daughter and a full-time job by myself. When are you going to grow up and sort your life out?’
If that sounds like a weird thing for my boss to say, it’s because my boss is also my mum. And my landlord. And my self-appointed life coach. Home is once again the little flat above the pub my mum runs. Our flat didn’t always feel this little. When I was growing up, there was plenty of room for the two of us. But after three years of university it seems to have shrunk around me, Alice-in-Wonderland style.
‘You’re not Alice,’ says the version of Mum who lives rent-free in my head (only fair, as I live rent-free in her flat). ‘You’re that bloody rabbit who’s always late for everything.’
Three years. That sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? A long time away from this little estuary town of Topsham, Devon, to work out what I want to be when I grow up. I studied English to stall that decision for three years. But nobody warned me it would go by in five minutes and I would find myself aged twenty-two, graduated for a year and a half and pulling pints for the same five weirdos every day. Don’t get me wrong – we love the weirdos; they’re our weirdos, and our only customers. But it’s not exactly the dream, is it? Not that I have any idea what the dream is. I briefly raised Mum’s hopes when I joined the human rights society at uni. She got overexcited and started needling me about internships at the UN before being bitterly disappointed to discover I’d only signed up to impress some guy whose name I now don’t remember. Worse still, instead of coming home with big ambitions, I returned with lots of opinions that make my aunt Lauren turn purple with rage at family dinners. I can’t say that isn’t fun, but again – not the dream.
My cousin Rachel doesn’t have this problem. She’s known what the dream was since we were old enough to play pretend magazines; she’d make me copy-edit her crayon scribbles. Not only that but she’s getting married next week. She’s got it all figured out. But, as Mum frequently likes to remind me, I’m not Rachel.
I skid to a stop behind the bar.
‘Late again.’ Mum pounces immediately. ‘What was it? Bad commute? Traffic on the stairs? Ha ha ha.’
I nearly burst a blood vessel trying to suppress an eye roll.
‘Sorry.’ I wince when I hear how sulky I sound. ‘You’re clearly rushed off your feet without me.’
I know. I’m being a dick. But the way she goes on you’d think it was New Year’s Eve at Fabric, not Sad Hour at the Hive. The Hive, despite its name, hasn’t been busy since 1988, when a group of ramblers ran in during a storm and had no choice but to buy stuff. There’s even a framed photo of them behind the bar. In a tourist town full of gastro pubs, we are very much the locals’ drinking hole. And they’ve kept us in business, just about. But speaking of ‘not exactly the dream’, I know running a dingy pub that barely stays afloat isn’t Mum’s.
Mum has big plans for this place. She’s dying to replace the ancient, puke-coloured carpet (great for hiding puke stains), the hole-ridden armchairs and seventies wallpaper. To get rid of the dark-wood tables with countless rings from years of nobody using a coaster despite them being, as Mum frequently points out, right bloody there. I’ve seen the Pinterest boards she thinks she’s set to private of pretty, painted furniture, potted plants and white, clean walls. I’ve seen the sample menus she’s jotted down on her notepad in quieter moments. There’ve been a lot of quieter moments lately – and a lot of menu options. It’s not a lack of vision stopping Mum from turning this place into her fantasy business. We just don’t have the money. What makes it particularly painful is that Mum managed to save up a modest refurbishments fund, only to have it wiped out by the cost-of-living crisis. It’s now earmarked for our winter energy bills. God knows how we’ll manage beyond that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Obviously you were late because you were so busy picking the perfect outfit.’ She eyes my T-shirt pointedly. It’s inside out. And back to front. With no choice but to take it off to fix it, I duck under the bar. ‘As much as I’m sure our customers are enjoying the show, it’s really not that kind of establishment,’ Mum chides.
I resurface from my Coyote Ugly moment to find that Mum has plonked a glass of Coke, a packet of Jacob’s Cream Crackers and two paracetamol pills on the bar in front of me.
‘Take these,’ she orders. ‘You’re no good to me doing your Courtney Love tribute act.’
I open my mouth, ready to dive into what’s likely to be an argument in seething whispers, but I’m interrupted by a booming voice.
‘HANNAH MONTANA!’ Derek laughs at his own decades-out-of-date-yet-still-somehow-a-creepy-cultural-reference-for-a-man-his-age joke. I feel my muscles tense. I quickly knock back the Coke and painkillers.
I’m too hungover to deal with Derek, a portly local in his fifties who describes himself as ‘a bit of a character’. Usually other people label you as ‘a bit of a character’ when they either mean you’re an oddball or an arsehole. I’m not sure what a self-styled ‘character’ wants people to take from that.
Derek, as he often likes to tell us, is rich – so rich he could fund Mum’s pub redesign a thousand times over (but not rich enough to drink somewhere decent). ‘Carolyn,’ he often says. ‘I’d take such good care of you.’ Why doesn’t he? Well, then he ‘wouldn’t have “his girls” all to himself, would he?’ is his go-to response, delivered with a lascivious wink and a laugh you could hear from Australia. Derek laughs that loudly because it compensates for the fact nobody is laughing with him. Sometimes Derek plays a super fun game where he gets out his chequebook, writes Mum a cheque for an obscene amount of money and then holds it just out of her reach, trying to get her to grab it, before playfully ripping it up, saying, ‘I’m only joshing you’.
When he’s not here, making little ‘jokes’ about how if he were thirty years younger, I’d be ‘in trouble’, Derek claims to be off at some holiday home or another, coming back after a few weeks with a leathery tan and an ostentatious flash of the cash to buy everyone’s drinks for a day. I should add that nobody has any idea how Derek makes his money. If asked, he says something evasive like ‘bit of this, bit of that’ or ‘wheeling and dealing’, like a bargain-bin Alan Sugar. Our working theory is drugs.
‘HANNAH MONTANA!’ Derek repeats. At least it’s a step up from ‘Ginger Spice’, which is what he called me for a month after I dyed my hair from bleach blonde to its current auburn red. I dread to think how annoying he’d be if he knew exactly how ginger my natural colour was before I started changing it up. ‘You should listen to your mother,’ he scolds, switching to creepy would-be-stepdad mode and wagging a gold-ring-embellished finger at me. ‘You’ll never turn this place around otherwise. Time is money, Hannah.’
Mum grimaces. I can tell she’s torn between enjoying the backup and not wanting, under any circumstances, to agree with Derek.
I smile through gritted teeth. In my head I count down ‘Three, two, one . . .’ before I duck under the bar to grab a pint glass and mouth along the predictable words: ‘Don’t give me too much head, love.’ Behind me, my mum makes a quiet retching noise and I stifle a giggle. My annoyance towards her softens. For once, we’re on the same page. And at least she has no interest in making Derek my new dad.
For a split second, things feel like they used to. Before this nightmare year in the post-uni wilderness, Mum and I had a great relationship. She raised me by herself after getting pregnant at eighteen, but, despite being so close in age, we’re not one of those mother–daughter duos who are more like sisters. Mum has always been distinctly mum-like. She’s one of the most responsible people I know. While she’d never admit it to me, I can’t help but wonder if making such a colossal mistake so early on in her life made her feel that she needed to do everything else perfectly. Or maybe, if she grew up before her time and raised me right, she could tell herself I wasn’t a mistake at all.
My parents met when my mum was on a gap year in Israel with her Jewish youth group. My dad was an up-and-coming fashion photographer, well known on the Israeli scene but not yet internationally, and she was a beautiful but naive eighteen-year-old flattered by his insistence he ‘had to photograph her immediately’. It was classic romantic-comedy material – in that it was problematic, unrealistic and over the second they got together.
My parents tried to make it work for a while; at least, Mum did. She stayed in Israel, where I was born, and for a few months they played house. But Dad, despite being seven years older, wasn’t ready for the responsibility. So, off he fucked and Mum brought me here to Devon after a disastrous spell living with Grandma Rose in London. My usually progressive grandma had gone unexpectedly 1950s on her, constantly hand-wringing about Mum finding a husband to raise me ‘properly’. It’s an anomaly in Grandma’s character I’ve never understood; Mum didn’t understand either. After Grandma’s zillionth transparent attempt at Fiddler on the Roof levels of matchmaking, Mum fled to Topsham, a place that reminded her of happy childhood holidays.
I know Grandma sorely regrets her reaction to Mum’s pregnancy. She’s apologized enough times and has begged us to move back to London, but she’s never really explained why she acted the way she did. The best she’s come up with is that Mum is her baby and she feels extra protective of her. Grandma had secondary infertility after having my aunt Lauren, which is why there’s eight years between Lauren and my horrible uncle Aaron and another eight years between Aaron and Mum.
Whatever the reason for Grandma’s overreaction, Mum, being her stubborn, independent self, has refused to even entertain the idea of moving, which is a shame because it would have been nice to have grown up near Grandma and Rachel. My other cousins, Abby and Ben, I could take or leave.
Mum took a job at the Hive, the cheapest place she could find to stay when she arrived with nothing but a duffel bag and an overtired toddler. She took the job to pay the bills, but Fred, the owner at that time – a widower with no kids who became like a second grandfather to me – saw Mum’s potential and became her mentor. When Fred died five years ago, he left the business to her, and the rest is history.
Topsham is a weird place to be Jewish. We’re often the first Jews that people here have met. When I first met my best friend Emily, she asked if she could rub my horns for luck. In her defence, she was six, but it’s always left a question mark over her parents. There’s a small synagogue down the road in Exeter, with a tiny community: a mixed bag of hippies and retirees, who can’t agree on whether they’re Reform or Orthodox. As the old saying goes – two Jews, three opinions. They alternate services on a fortnightly basis, with the Reform crowd grumbling through the Orthodox services and the Orthodox lot complaining throughout the Reform ones. Still, despite the superficial differences, it’s like being part of a big extended family. Mum is on the committee, organizing local events like tonight’s Hanukkah party. I’ve always quietly enjoyed planning the events, although I would never admit that to Mum. She’d kill my enthusiasm with her encouragement.
Dad used to visit me here twice a year – once in the summer for my birthday and once over Hanukkah. I would look forward to his visits like most kids looked forward to Disneyland. Dad would show up and whisk me away for a week for adventures like camping and long hikes on Dartmoor, where he would photograph me making friends with the wild ponies. Sometimes he had a woman with him. It was never the same woman twice.
As the years passed, Dad went from being a big fish in a small pond to a global icon. It started with a modest big break when I was about seven – a fortuitously timed shoot with a little-known Israeli actress, Inbar Golan. A couple of years later, Inbar was cast in a huge Hollywood blockbuster and suddenly she was a Hollywood A-lister. When she was asked to be on the cover of Vogue, she insisted on using an obscure Israeli photographer, and that’s how my dad stopped being my dad and became the legendary Oren Weiss.
When Dad became the go-to photographer for every high-end magazine, fashion house and A-lister on the planet, he reduced his visits to once a year at Hanukkah. Flush with cash, he’d spend a few glorious days showering me with all the things we couldn’t afford: cinema trips, bowling, theme parks and shopping. Returning to my shabby life was always a harsh comedown and I’d spend weeks feeling livid with Mum for barely being able to provide the basics.
Then, when I was fourteen, the visits stopped altogether. The first Hanukkah when he didn’t come, there were excuses and apologies and promises to make it up to me. Then, gradually, the phone calls stopped. The emails stopped. And eventually I stopped asking Mum when Dad was coming back.
Behind the bar, my phone buzzes. Mum shoots me a look that contains a whole lecture in and of itself. Emily’s name flashes up on the screen. My stomach lurches. That’s what I’d forgotten last night. Emily. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I never made it to meet her at Capsule at nine like I promised. I didn’t mean to stand her up again. It’s just that I bumped into Hot Josh, whom I’d fancied like mad in sixth form. Josh convinced me to go with him for a quick cocktail at Claws. A cocktail turned into shots, which turned into a game of Never Have I Ever, which turned into making out and, well, I can be forgiven for forgetting about Emily.
With a sense of looming dread, I open the message: Everyone told me not to bother making plans with you and I stood up for you. I came all the way home just to see you. I shouldn’t have bothered. We’re done.
My stomach sloshes unpleasantly. Emily and I have been best friends since the first day of school. Sure, we’ve grown apart a bit in recent years; I like going out and having fun, while Emily likes being prematurely geriatric, sitting in her pyjamas with her boyfriend, Pete, in their flat, eating dinner off a nana tray and getting promoted at her boring academic publishing job. She’s barely ever back home anymore, not since she moved to London and smugly ‘got her life together’. Still, I never meant to upset her. Surely she can’t mean that we’re actually done? No, I decide. She’s just being dramatic. I’ll give her a few hours to cool off, then I’ll—
‘Hannah!’ Mum hisses, pointing to a sign above the bar – created entirely for my benefit, because we’re the only two people who work here – that states: ‘If You’re On Your Phone, Our Customers Are Alone.’
‘I know, I know – I’ll turn it off,’ I lie, shoving it into my pocket.
‘Was that Matt?’ Mum asks, her voice artificially light.
‘Nope.’
‘Oh?’ She can’t help herself. ‘No more Matt?’
‘No more Matt,’ I confirm. To be honest, Matt was three guys ago; it took me a second to work out who she was even talking about.
‘So who were you out with half the night then?’
‘Nunya.’
‘Nunya who?’ Mum looks confused.
‘Nunya Business,’ I answer, dying inside as I hear how I sound when I say it.
Mum sighs.
OK, I can hear how I sound. But the alternative is telling Mum, who’s already on my case, that I’m not exactly sure who I was out with until the early hours. I’m pretty certain it was Josh, but really it could have been anyone. I don’t know who I was with, I don’t know how I got home – and these gaps in my memory are getting more and more frequent.
That’s all fairly normal, though, isn’t it? I’m twenty-two – I’m supposed to be having fun. It’s natural for there to be a few wild nights out, a couple of broken commitments, a long line of Matts and Joshes and whoever elses without Mum slut-shaming me into oblivion. It doesn’t take a psychologist to work out that Mum is terrified of me getting pregnant by some shithead guy and ruining my life. But, unlike Mum, I know how to use protection and, also unlike Mum, I would take care of it, like she clearly wishes she had.
‘Very mature, Hannah,’ Mum says, colour rising in her cheeks. ‘And very original.’
Mum has naturally ginger hair too, so when she gets angry, she looks a bit like she’s on fire. Luckily, before she can work herself up too much, we’re interrupted by customers. Wait, what? Not regulars but actual customers. Real human beings I’ve never seen before.
‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘It’s a Hanukkah miracle.’
Standing in the doorway is a cohort of tourists. My best guess, judging from their ironically mismatched clothes, is that they’re east London types who have wandered in here because they think our pub is, like them, ironically shit. Mum looks momentarily elated. Then her smile turns to a grimace as the group heads towards Derek, who’s eyeing the women creepily.
Mum lunges towards the customers in slow motion, like a bodyguard leaping in front of a bullet in a movie, yelling ‘Noooooooo!’ She gets to them with milliseconds to spare, trying to cover up her bizarre dive by maniacally reeling off our list of local ales.
While she’s distracted, I pull my phone out of my pocket and type a frantic apology to Emily. It doesn’t go through. She’s blocked my number.
I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach. Emily’s been a bit of a drag lately, but I had no idea our friendship was on its last legs. I check Facebook: blocked. Twitter: blocked. Insta: blocked. Fuck. Maybe she really is serious. I’m going to have to pull something major out of the bag to make this up to her, but what? Call her from a landline? Send flowers? Show up at her retirement home and grovel?
All I know is that there’s nothing I can do about it right now, and I’ll feel even worse if I get caught on my phone for a second time by Mum. But then it buzzes. Maybe Emily’s got over her strop and decided to talk to me. My heart lifts momentarily – then everything stops as I read the notification on the screen.
A strange sensation comes over me – like I’m no longer properly in my body. Everything feels distant and tingly, like I’m living the moment in a memory. But I’m here. I’m here right now. Why doesn’t it feel like I am? I try to find a shred of normality to latch on to, but it’s like looking for an earring on a patterned carpet.
There’s a white ring on the mahogany bar. A permanent ring made up of hundreds of smaller impressions – decades of pint glasses being put down in one place. Like rings of a tree created by generations of alcoholics. It feels familiar, as if I’ve seen it hundreds of times, but this is the first time I’ve properly noticed it. It blurs in and out of focus as I hear Mum’s voice somewhere in the distance: ‘Hannah? We have customers.’
I’m sitting down now. I don’t remember sitting down. Where am I? The floor? Yes, that seems right; there are rows of clean glasses lined up on the shelf in front of me.
‘Hannah,’ Mum’s voice is closer now. Clearer. ‘What’s got into you? I thought I told you to put away . . .’
Her voice trails off as I hand her my phone and she reads the words that catapulted me into this strange dream: ‘Fashion Photographer Oren Weiss Dead at 48’.
Ella
I’m early. On any other day, this wouldn’t be a problem. I’m so routinely early that I consider being on time to be lateness. My life could be summed up in a montage of me sitting in cafés, waiting rooms, airports, either reading a book or knitting. I always leave a half-hour buffer when I plan a journey. You never know what might go wrong on the way and I would die of mortification if I was ever late. My dad is a retired navy man and his motto is ‘there’s no excuse for lateness’, which might be why I see it as a personal failure. You can say so much by being early. I’m early means ‘I’m prepared’. I’m early means ‘I value your time’. I’m early means ‘I can be counted on’.
Today, however, is a Sunday in Golders Green on the first day of Hanukkah, which means there’s no quiet corner of Shakshuka to hide in while I wait for Corrine. The shops are packed with people panic-buying last-second gifts, yelling at the poor Israeli supermarket staff for having the audacity to run out of Hanukkah candles at the last minute on the first night of Hanukkah – and, it seems, everyone’s having breakfast at Shakshuka.
Shakshuka is one of my favourite cafés, but today it’s a waking stress dream. It’s heaving. I can’t hear myself think through all the noise and it will be a Hanukkah miracle if I manage to get a server’s attention. I’m no good at that at the best of times. Eye contact has never been my jam and, no matter how intently I stare, I always seem to blink or look away just as they glance over at me. There’s no way to wave a waiter over without looking like an entitled dick.
Through sheer luck, I’ve managed to get a table, but I’ve had to guard Corrine’s empty chair with my life. Some people are polite enough to half-heartedly ask if they can take it, while simultaneously placing a tentative hand on the back, but others have gone straight for a grab. I had to wrench it out of one woman’s death grip, which is no mean feat for someone as conflict-averse as I am. Only I could be moments from wrestling someone to the ground while still apologizing profusely. The woman is now sitting at the breakfast bar, eyeing my still-empty second chair resentfully. She clearly thinks I’m saving it to spite her. I avoid her gaze, not just because the eye contact would be incredibly painful for me but because I’d be liable to give up, apologize for existing and hand over my boss’s chair, my own chair and my firstborn child, should I ever have one.
This would never happen to my little sister, Martha. If Martha were here, she’d flash a smile so charming that if anyone minded her blatantly hogging the chairs (and an extra one for her handbag – you don’t put Prada on the floor) they wouldn’t even notice. Not me, though. The brassy Scouser gene I was supposed to inherit must have skipped me.
Today of all days, I can’t show any weakness. I wouldn’t put it past Corrine to have chosen this ridiculous time and place for an appraisal meeting as a test. Classic Corrine. The sole reason my job, which I otherwise love, is so stressful. Compared to my boss, Darth Vader is Employer of the Year. At least he had the decency to put his employees out of their misery by strangling them to death with his mind.
There are so many reasons Corrine is a nightmare on speed; it’s hard to know where to start. You’d think I’d be an expert by now. I rant about her so often that my girlfriend, Georgie, has installed a Corrine jar. Given what she pays me, even venting about her is bankrupting me. That’s a decent place to start: my pitiful salary. I’m paid a basic London living wage to do Corrine’s job for her while she gets the lion’s share of the clients’ fees and the huge commissions she commands from our suppliers. One of the benefits of being the most sought-after Jewish event-planning racket in town is that Corrine can take a heftier cut than she deserves, because nobody wants to be dropped from her preferred supplier list. If you’re not on The List, you’re dead this side of the North Circular.
Maybe I’d feel less resentful if Corrine were a great manager, but it’s hard to watch her raking it in while being an active impediment to a job well done. Corrine constantly makes rash, illogical decisions and it becomes my job to manage the consequences. This is going to sound very up myself but it’s more of a commentary on Corrine’s abilities than mine: I have no idea how she managed to pull off such high-scale events before she hired me. I guess she must have relied on whichever poor ‘me’ was working for her to keep her reputation as the UK’s top Jewish event-planner intact.
Before any antisemites out there start rubbing their hands with glee, it’s worth noting that Corrine isn’t Jewish. Corrine grew up in New York and calls herself ‘Jew-adjacent’. She moved here after marrying a Jewish man, whom she’s since divorced, but not before managing to insinuate herself into Jewish circles. Not that you’d know it from her supplier list. Aside from the rabbi and one kosher caterer, none of our preferred suppliers are Jewish. That isn’t inherently a problem – it’s just a weird choice on her part for someone who ‘adores Jews’. She’s happy to exploit the market but less happy to work with the community.
Georgie insists she’s a philosemite – someone who fetishizes Jewish culture but will flip to antisemitism the second she feels slighted by ‘one of us’. I’ve brushed off Georgie’s concerns because that’s a moral red line for me and I can’t afford to believe it – but lately Corinne’s off-colour ‘jokes’, usually involving money, have started to make me feel squirmy. For example, when I commented on the weather holding out for an
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