Imperial

photo from www.glamourgoddessjewelry.com 

This is the second week that that I'm without my "Schatzis", i.e. M.C. and the Empress. While the former is away on a long, but temporary (fingers crossed) project in London, the latter is giving us a taste of what will be a much longer separation: from January onwards, she will work at the Firm's French HQ in Paris.

When she confirmed our suspicions about her pending move (not all that hard to guess what with a French fiancé...) one Friday evening after work when the Scholar asked her directly, I was sincerely happy for and proud of her and wanted to know all the details. Only to start crying once I got home.

If you had told me three and a half years ago that I would be sad about her imminent leaving, I would have raised an eybrow and said "I don't think so." It definitely wasn't a case of love at first sight.

In fact, when I first met her I found her downright scary despite her angelic smile. I was convinced that this pretty little petite person 8 years my junior was actually a precocious robot who had no interests outside the company. As our intern used to say: "She's so business!" The first time we went on a client meeting by train (to Munich) I was concerned it would be quite awkward and I wouldn't know what to talk to her on the long train-journey.

It took me a while to realise that very much unlike me, the Empress has a split personality: a highly professional teflon-coated business persona and a hilarious and spontaneous private one you can laugh with until your belly hurts. At the beginning, I only got to see the business part of her and therefore suspected she was the sales world's equivalent of a Stepford wife.

In the course of 3.5 years, I discovered that we swim on the same wavelength in oh so many ways:

- we both love to discuss the same shallow subjects for hours on end, such as...nail polish, or handbags or crappy TV shows. Mind you, M.C. definitely is the third partner in crime here on all counts!

- we firmly believe that someone has to keep the economy from going bust and like the true martyrs we are, we volunteer to do the job by power-shopping.

- we are not adverse to bitching about people who are less...um...perfect, beautiful and intelligent than ourselves.

- we both look quite innocent but know swearwords that would make your ears turn red (and like to use them on occasion).

- we start to hyperventilate when the words "macaron" or "Zaunerstollen" are mentioned.

- we are a foosball dream-team (well, most days anyway).

Some serious conference-bonding, a near-death-experience, the funniest bus-journey of my life and the privilege of having been the first person who was told about her engagement later I find it hard to imagine that there ever was a time when I eyed her with suspicion and felt like secretely poking a pin into her to check she was made of flesh and blood rather than metal.

I hope she won't forget us. And if she ever does, I'll send her some cartons of milk past its use-by date and force her to drink it. (It's a long story).