Page 74 of Leaning In

Chapter 31

Claire

I’m still feeling great the next morning. I keep waiting for the spiral to arrive, but it hasn’t hit yet. Instead my brain keeps replaying stupid, specific things; like Tom grating parmesan, Croissant’s outraged face when we shut the bedroom door, and the goodbye kiss this morning, which was meant to be quick but wasn’t.

I love how completely invested in this he is. There are no games, no push and pull powerplay. It’s making me feel so steady, and I hadn’t realised how much I valued feeling secure with a partner until this moment. In fact, I’m so happy that I’m cheerfully humming as I sit down, despite the fact that I know we have a two-hour meeting starting mid-morning.

“You look suspiciously happy for a day which has an all-hands meeting,” Alicia says as she passes me, heading to her desk. “Luckily for you, I’ve already stocked up on emergency snacks for later, and emotionally prepared myself for at least one four-slide detour on font psychology.”

She waves a paper bag at me that I know contains two pain aux raisins from the coffee shop around the corner.

“Yay snacks!”

Alicia narrows her eyes at me. “Why are you so energetic?”

I busy myself opening my laptop. “I just had a very pleasant evening yesterday. That’s allowed, right?”

“Hmm. I have to work on a report. But I will be interrogating you later.”

For the next few hours I manage to bury myself in emails and editing, making sure all the sample photos I took from the trip look perfect prior to showing them to the rest of the team later.

By the time the first meeting ticks round I’m fully caffeinated, courtesy of Alicia, and armed with pastries for the inevitable moment when the meeting overruns and I start getting hangry.

When we get to the conference room Jack’s chatting with one of the account directors. He loudly talks about football and then golf. As I take my seat I wonder whether I should get Tom to feed me football facts that I can deploy at regular intervals in meetings. People might actually listen to me that way.

It’s all a game. I grew up watching my parents play the dinner-party version; Jack plays the five-a-side version; and Alicia and I sit here being demonstrably good at our jobs, which turns out to be a niche hobby rather than a strategy.

The briefing kicks off in the usual way: slowly, with the kind of rambling intro from Jack that makes you wonder if time is a construct and we’ve all been trapped here since 2001. Alicia rolls her eyes at me, but then bends her head back over the notebook, carefully jotting points down even though someone else is technically doing the minutes.

But then, mercifully, before I nod off too, Jack starts talking about the creative plan. There are some formal posed shots before, in his words, “a vendor hiccup” and then he turns to me. I plug in my laptop and start walking them through the sample shots from the camping trip. Slowly the room starts to become more awake again. People actually look up from their phones, a few nod.

“These are great,” Damien, the creative director, says from across the table. “They feel natural, like they’re part of a story. I love how you’ve put them into mock-ups, Claire.”

I bite my lip. Six years of ideas in a desktop folder nobody’s ever opened, and it turns out all it took was one opportunity to prove myself for people to actually realise I can do creative things.

“That was the idea.” I straighten, channelling my inner Jack, a man built off confidence and coffee. “I wanted it to feel like a snapshot into the experience. Like a student looking back at their own memories.”

Damien leans forward. “Wait, how did you get these? I thought we’d lost the photographer for that trip?”

“We did,” Jack pipes up. “Claire stepped in last minute. She used to help with photo shoots in a previous role.”

“Well these photos are excellent,” Damien says. “You’ve clearly got an eye for this. Maybe you should do some more, Claire. These are better than the ones the official photographer took on the first day at the school. My recommendation would be that you continue doing these for the rest of the campaign.”

My cheeks heat at the compliment.

“I’d love to,” I say. “I’ve actually got some ideas for their social media presence based on these. And a possible banner for the new website that I worked on.”

“Claire’s great at this stuff,” Alicia chimes in. “She showed me an early draft of the website banner, and I thought it looked great.”

I shoot her a grateful smile, and watch as Damien nods thoughtfully.

“They have a museum trip next week.” Jack looks down at his notes. “For the Year 7s. Maybe you could go and take more pictures?”

“Sounds good.” I try to hide my grin by taking a sip of my coffee.

Alicia shoots me a strange look and I pull a face at her, mouthing “What?” She doesn’t look convinced.

When I leave the meeting I text Sophia about the fact the team liked my pictures. There’s a missed message from my mum waiting at the top of the notifications.