Coming Through

Abstract

Jane is 55 and works in advertising. Jane is great fun, really bright, really pretty, with a gamin bob, ski jump nose and peek-a-boo eyes. She is one of those unusual people in the industry who haven’t lost their job by the age of 40, an industry where you are only useful when you’re young. But brains and experience are sometimes of value in advertising’s zero calorie, turbo granola, biodegradable, corporate world, and Jane has survived all the culls and all the mergers to run a business with a thousand employees. She works enormously hard, drives an eco-friendly Ferrari and is divorced. She says about her marriage,

“You know, I used to stay at work until about 10 or 11 o’clock. It was so interesting, such fun. I’d come home. My husband would be there. So was dinner. He’d been home since 6:30 or 7:00. Then one day I came home and there was no Tom. There was a cold dinner. He’d left me. He’d left me because he thought that I felt that my work was more important than he was.”