Annie might work in fashion, but her most treasured handbag is navy, not neon. Annie learned early that fashion PRs are like successful drug dealers. They pedal the stuff, but they can’t touch it. Realistically, on 24 grand a year, she can’t. When she got her first assistant job (after three years of art history, a year of Style and Communication studies and 18 months of interning) she vowed that in five years she’d be an Account Director with a 2.55. But her thirties are looming, and unless Scary Cheryl leaves, or dies, she’s not getting the promotion or pay rise she needs any time soon. Scary Cheryl isn’t going to leave, because no major agency will tolerate an AD who buggers off for a ‘thinking nap’ every day at 4PM, or brings in her untrained Bichon Frise. So Annie bought a blue nylon Longchamp Derby, and duels daily with smokers who push her on the pavement and into the path of their corrosive ash trails.Annie is a bit sick of compromising, actually. Which is why she needs to dump Jamie, even though talk of such a decision makes her friends splutter and spill their pinot grigio. “But you guys have been together for five years! You should be thinking about getting married!” The lack of romance in Annie’s life makes her long for a wedding – and sometimes, in unguarded moments, she catches herself making lists (“J. Crew. Diptyque Ciel tealights. NO BUNTING”). Then she thinks about pledging her troth to someone who leaves single, sweaty pieces of cycle gear on each individual stair and says ‘haitch’, and bursts into tears
