What are we doing wrong?

Among old statues, with the view of gorgeous sight-lines, moving between cafés and restaurants, I have been experiencing something I have not for some time – running into old friends.

It’s been happening in the strangest of places. Sometimes, and eerily on brand, it happens when I’m browsing in my local bookshop and I hear my name called with surprise and delight. Sometimes it’s when I’m getting off the Tube or walking through a restaurant — the two of us reaching out for hugs with cries of joy because our calendars haven’t aligned but the fates in that moment, surely have. But mainly, it’s at a summer party, where I spot that person across a room and amid an array of greetings, and unexpected glee, grab that five minutes of their company that planning can’t seem to bring, but serendipity can.

The best part, is that I’ve been running into old old friends – the ones I started out with; the ones with whom I used to beg for an invite to these parties. Now and then we would go anyway, pretending to be our bosses, hoping the people handing out the name tags didn’t confuse our couture from New Look and 25-year-old faces with the designer labels and mid-life of our employers. Once we blagged our way in we would marvel at the canapés, the flutes of champagne. We would see people we had heard of and admired and try to summon the courage to speak to them, but would be thwarted by too much champagne and canapés. We would go on to each other’s homes for after-parties or because we couldn’t afford a cab home and the trains weren’t running at 1 a.m., and emerge the next day in the office with telling coffees and doses of paracetamol in the toilets.

I remember all of these moments as I run into my peers who are now no longer blaggers but veritable names embossed on all the attendee lists. The c.e.o.s and m.d.s now know our names independently, and we can afford a cab home, and stick to sensible hours so we can fulfil the obligations of our adult lives. But even though we had less money and less recognition back then, we were no less the people we are now. We would console each other over our mistakes, vent over cocktails at 7 p.m. when everything was cheaper. We would laugh and fight and get hauled up by our bosses for petty arguments (I am sorry for what I said about your cardigan – I was being a bitch. You know who you are) and oh my God was there drama but then again, in retrospect, not really. We did all of this stuff and somehow, we are still here – in better clothes, with fancier skincare, and a lot of shared memories.

My generation isn’t stronger; we aren’t better or hardier. We aren’t more intelligent or more educated. But clearly we had an advantage that is not being handed down to the people coming up because if it was, the ladder would not look so painfully bare

I realise now how lucky I was. Because that tribe of people – that collective of talent — made it through. I have had at least three work wives in my time. At one point I actually dreamed one of them was my actual wife and when she asked me the next day why I couldn’t make eye contact with her, I told her honestly and asked her to give me an hour before I could be normal again.

These work spouses were my support, my emotional defibrillators when things felt really, really bad. When I just didn’t think I could continue. They saw me when I was writing my resignation letters and talked me out of it or talked me through it. They took me for a walk when I thought I was going to use some very less-than-professional language to a colleague. They read over my emails and edited them when I had something hard to say and didn’t know how to say it. And they did so many many other things for which I will always owe them.

I see them now, my previous work spouses – gone off to support and be supported in their new roles and I am so happy for them. But more than anything, I am so relieved they are still here. Because among the gossip and glee of these mini-reunions, I am seeing more and more the absences. The people who are leaving in droves.

Make no mistake – we are experiencing an alarming dwindling pool of incredible people, as a whole generation of talent type up their resignation letters and this time, hand them in. There are those who are leaving for opportunities better than those we can give them but more worryingly, there are far too many who are leaving because they don’t want this life anymore.

I can look back on those climber years with a wince and a laugh. I can wince at the hours and the demands and the times I would crawl into work even when I had a fever and had been throwing up the night before. But I can also laugh at the time I was sent home for having a 72-hour hangover for my hen do as my boss thought I was going to projectile vomit on her desk and half the culprits were in the literary meeting that day, because they’d all been on it with me. I can laugh at how we got through those insane times with humour and tears and wine from the fridge that was left over from parties in the office.

But what I cannot laugh at is that this seems to have stopped with my contemporaries.

What are we doing wrong, because it must be us? I want to take all these people leaving and their work spouses and peers and beg them – what are we missing? Why are we losing you? Because this incredible pool of talent is falling due to us.

My generation isn’t stronger; we aren’t better or hardier. We aren’t more intelligent or more educated. But clearly we had an advantage that is not being handed down to the people coming up because if it was, the ladder would not look so painfully bare.

I wonder if next year, these absences will grow more and more acute. And with them the ghosts of the incredible books, the new voices of authors who could be instruments of change – all those experiences cut off at the start.

I realise now that a lot of things allowed me to thrive, but one of those key components were my peers. Yet how to keep each other swimming, when you yourself are drowning? How to support with energy that is already so depleted?Managers and seniors, please look at those around you and ask them the question. Do you want to stay? Do you think you will still be here a year from now? Six months on? Six weeks? And then ask the more important question – not what do you need to stay, but what are we not doing enough of to keep you?

In the meantime, I want to thank you, my previous and current work spouses. Thank you for everything. Thank you for helping me stay. Thank you for calling me up on my shit. Thank you for helping me sort through it. Thank you. I may not have said it before, but I am saying it now.

And truly, I am so happy to look up across a crowded room and see you are still there.