Nipping across traffic lights and weaving between cyclists at the junction where nine babies were born last night in the hospital on the corner, Maya skips over towards Marylebone Road and wonders what today will bring her. She can’t wait to tell her eight-hour friends that she only went and bloody did it. Maya finally gave Train Man the note.
But first, there is another announcement to be made. At 9.30 a.m., the new site editor will be revealed to the marketing team and all the heads of department. It’s a big deal at FASH, the clothing giant where Maya works. For a moment, Maya forgets her heart and remembers that, a fortnight ago, she stood nervously in front of five members of the board, including her boss, content director Lucy, who had advised Maya to go for the job of site editor – and was definitely the most encouraging pair of eyes in that room. Maya delivered a presentation on how she sees the future of the FASH website, how FASH can keep engaging with style-savvy girls around the world who want fast fashion in just three swipes and a tap of their phone, and how Maya would play her part in keeping the content compelling. Maya was dreading it. Her voice wobbles a bit when she talks to groups of more than four people and she didn’t really want to go for the job, she likes being chief copy editor at FASH. It’s fun. It’s frivolous. And she gets to look at clothes all day and write sparkling descriptions of them. As if a metallic silver midi skirt in camo jacquard isn’t enough, Maya gets to give it a name (that was the Lupita). Then Maya hands Lupita over to the writers on the team, Alex and Liz, who fashion a story around selling the skirt (in the Lupita’s case it was ‘Dazzle On Date Night’), which Maya then edits and – boom – FASH’s millions of customers around the world are inspired to buy it. You know when you buy a dress or a skirt or a top and see it’s called something like Hepburn or Elissia and wonder who came up with that name? Well, at FASH that’s Maya’s job. Clothing names. Campaign names. What to call the trends. What to say about them on the site. ‘Ten ways to rock Baroque’ and ‘Nineties normal’ were two of FASH’s most clicked looks in the past year and Maya was the star wordsmith behind them. But editing the site? That’s a proper grown-up job dealing with finance and staff appraisals and negotiating with brand managers and heads of department vying to have their clothes placed most prominently on site. Maya likes to be the confidante on the team, not the commander. Although the money would be handy. Just last December Maya bought her first home, a Victorian first-floor maisonette, with high ceilings and mouldy window frames, and it needs a bit of investment, and love. Maya is happy living on her own for the first time ever, and she doused the whole flat in shades of white and grey so she could get to know it before she goes full-on lime green and gunmetal, but yes, it’s a home that needs money and love.
And Maya didn’t want to look unambitious and ungrateful. Lucy was behind her, egging her on, and that’s a big deal. Lucy is one of FASH founder Rich Robinson’s chief advisors, and she is always championing Maya because Maya is smart, she works hard, she’s never a diva and she just gets on with it. Plus Lucy thinks Maya’s little crush on the stranger on the train is just adorable.
Lucy first heard about Maya Flowers when Maya worked for FASH’s biggest rival, Walk In Wardrobe. Maya joined Walk In Wardrobe straight from university. Maya had already bitten the travelling bug when she was eighteen and wanted to get on the career ladder. She didn’t plan to work in fashion but did want to work with words, so when she landed her first proper job at Walk In Wardrobe she was over the moon. At Walk In Wardrobe Maya was diligent and friendly, which was rare among the Sloane Rangers, but she quietly worked her way up from junior copywriter to chief copy editor in less than four years before Lucy poached her for the role at FASH at twenty-five. Two years later Maya thinks perhaps she does deserve a promotion.
Gosh, my fate will be revealed on many levels today. Good job I wore nice shoes.
Maya marvels at the queues of people at the Planetarium and crosses the busy road to avoid the packs on the backs of continental schoolkids, while also noting that their pastel drainpipes would fit nicely in a ‘fondant fancies’ collection she’s putting together. Maya skips left onto Baker Street and two thirds of the way down is FASH HQ. An art deco Egyptian Revival building with an ornate colonnade of twelve decorative columns proudly lining the front. Two glass ramps jut out between four of the columns in opposing directions, converging at the same point on the pavement. Maya often wonders which arm to choose as both lead to the same set of glass doors and through to a modern atrium, so today she chooses the nearside catwalk, her hair waving a little as she darts through the doors past three bald and bored security guards. Maya swipes her pass, goes through a second set of glass doors and heads up the metallic silver staircase.
The entrance to FASH sums up all it is about. Excitement! Colour! Fun! Pride! On the left of reception, giddy interns sit on the low-backed curve of two colour-clashing sofas, nervously awaiting the start of a brilliant career in fashion. To the right, glass-fronted meeting rooms showcase the early risers, coffees in hand, as they look over samples and swatches of what you will be wearing next year. Models saunter past in dressing gowns, waiting to be shot wearing the thousands of new pieces that landed that day from factories in far-off lands. In the middle of the space, a receptionist sits at a silver desk with blonde ambition, her headpiece in place ready to answer the phone while she scrolls through pages and pages of clothes, deciding what to buy with her forty per cent staff discount. A huge video screen sits behind the reception desk, leading from the floor all the way up to the top of the staircase showcasing FASH’s key looks of the season: the happy redhead in the yellow and white shift dress with the peplum skirt and two-tone strappy sandals. The brunette in the black dressy dungarees over a simple black bandeau top and skate shoes.
Maya hops up the stairs in her bow heels to the open-plan canteen at the top. This ceiling is lower than the atrium of the reception and achingly cool, deliberately exposed metal pipes sit above a collection of multicoloured chairs and distressed wooden tables. Maya looks ahead. A cooked breakfast station to her left. Porridge in front. Croissants to her right. Which to choose from this confection of free food? FASH is the most fun place to work in fashion retail. The food is free, the clothes come at forty per cent off and its epic summer and Christmas parties are the stuff of legend. Everyone who works there has a feeling of pride, of being looked after, of being at the forefront of a digital fashion revolution.
After what Maya just did on the 8.21, she can’t really face food, plus you can’t exactly take a fry-up to a heads of department meeting for a big announcement. So she bypasses the cooked food and heads for the pastries.
‘Hey Maya!’ says Sam, grabbing a pain au chocolat from over her shoulder. Tall limbs knock into small shoulders and Sam blushes. ‘Sorry mate, bit of crumb on your top.’ Sam goes to brush it off Maya’s blouse but stops himself.
‘Don’t worry, it’s flaky pastry,’ Maya says with a soft flick, hoping the butter doesn’t leave a grease mark on her silk blouse. Maya is wearing a green and white silk blouse tucked into grey ‘awkward-length’ culottes (Maya came up with that term too) and green shoe boots with a bow on each ankle. She is dressed smartly this morning for two reasons: 1) to wow Train Man, and 2) in case she has to stand up in front of all the heads of department in the next half hour and humbly smile when she’s appointed site editor.
‘Psyched about the big announcement?’ asks Sam.
Maya gives a fake smile.
‘Grinning not winning,’ she says.
Sam is a developer – head of the tech team in fact, and has been rooting for Maya to get this promotion since she confided in him that Lucy had asked her to go for it.
‘You’ll be great!’ he says.
A few weeks ago, just before Maya gave her presentation, Sam left a mixtape on her desk of clichéd go-get-’em songs to help her get in the zone.
‘I can’t play it! I don’t have a tape recorder!’ laughed Maya.
‘Yeah but it’s the thought that counts,’ said Sam, who emailed Maya the track list so she could listen to it through her computer headphones as she worked on the finishing touches of the presentation.
Maya wraps her pain au chocolat in a white tissue and looks up at Sam.
‘The site needs a figurehead to lead it forward, and there’s no one better than you Maya, you’ll be perfect. People respect your opinion, you’re authoritative – but crucially – you’re not a dick.’ Eloquent as ever. Like most developers at FASH, Sam isn’t interested in fashion. He works there because it is one of the world’s most visited websites, and with that comes some techie kudos. He wears old rock T-shirts with holes in, faded jeans ripped at the bottom and flip-flops even in winter. He is tall with Tintin hair and has a round face with crinkly eyes that look like he’s laughing even when he’s stopped.
‘Never mind that announcement,’ says Maya. ‘I have one of my own.’
Sam looks at her, narrow eyes as expectant as they can be.
‘I gave Train Man the note!’ she squeaks, waiting for a fanfare.
Sam’s round face turns pink. ‘You did? Wow! Well done! What did he say?’
Sam knows how Maya feels about Train Man, his desk sits back-to-back with Maya’s and he is the only guy on the two islands of desks they occupy. He has listened to Maya talk about Train Man for the past ten months. What he wears. What he reads. Whether he looked up that day.
Maya knows what Sam thinks about her crush and rudimentary stalking. At Christmas, when Maya asked Sam how he would feel if a girl he didn’t know, gave him a home-made mince pie and a Christmas card with her number written in it on his commute from Brighton, he said, ‘I’d chuck it in the bin and think she was a nutjob.’ Which was enough to quash that idea.
‘Well he didn’t say anything this morning, he was a bit flustered, and I didn’t give him a chance to, I walked away, but I haven’t checked my email yet, there might be something there…’ Maya says with a hopeful heart, as she pulls her phone out of her pocket. It is 9.28 a.m. ‘Shit, we’d better go downstairs.’