I picked up a piece of smoked salmon nigiri with my chopsticks and dipped it carefully in soy sauce. ‘So the hotness comes at a price?’
‘It does. I mean, he lives on whey shakes and hard-boiled eggs. So we can never go out anywhere nice, not even the pub, because he doesn’t drink. And the protein thing – let’s say he’s not exactly regular.’
‘You mean you know…?’
‘When he shits. I do. And it gets worse than that. I know because he tells me.’
‘Oh my God! After six weeks?’
‘I know, right? Sorry, I know you’re eating. But last Friday, he spent the night at mine, and the next morning he went to the bathroom and shut himself in there for about three-quarters of an hour. I was bursting for a wee and I had to wait for him to finish. And then he came out, with a copy of Men’s Health that he’d been reading in there, and he said, “Morning, babe. Jeez, talk about constipation.”’
I burst out laughing. ‘I presume you weren’t in the mood for a deep-and-meaningful about constipation?’
‘I was not. But that didn’t stop him. He told me he hadn’t had a poo since Tuesday, and he was going to have to add some soluble fibre to his next protein shake, and he was planning an eight-mile run the next day because, he said, that was the best way to “get things moving”.’
‘Romance is not dead.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘And the sex we’d had the night before was off the scale, but I just knew that next time, I wouldn’t be able to look at him without thinking about his impacted bowels. Or go to the bathroom until I’d fumigated the place.’
‘Ewww. You mean there’s going to be a next time?’
‘Not yet. Not for want of trying on his part, though. He said, “I always feel horny after a good clear-out,” and then he started groping my tits.’
‘Noooo!’
‘Exactly. So I said I needed to catch up on some work, and he headed off. To the gym, obviously.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Well, I mean, most of me is totally grossed out. But then I think, it’s just a normal bodily function, after all. Does Joe tell you when he does a poo?’
‘God, no. I mean, there was a thing when we first moved in together when he… but he’s learned to use a loo brush now, so that’s all sorted.’
‘Do you know how much he deadlifts in the gym?’
‘No idea. I don’t even know what he does there. I mean, he goes a couple of times a week – to the gym, I mean, not to the toilet – but for all I know he just sits in the sauna watching YouTube videos. That’s what I’d do, if I’m honest. But I just let him crack on.’
‘You see. You two are compatible. Kieren and I aren’t. It’s my own fault really, but when I go on Tinder and I look at all these blokes, I just can’t help swiping right on the hot ones. It’s like a reflex action – I see a six-pack and whoosh, there goes my finger.’
‘Joe’s hot,’ I said defensively.
‘Course he is. But he’s other things, too. He’s bright, and ambitious, and just a nice bloke into the bargain, and the two of you get on together.’
‘And he never talks about his bowels.’
We sat in silence for a few seconds while I finished my sushi, thinking how lucky I was to have a handsome, clever, kind, non-poo-discussing boyfriend.
‘It’s just not going to work, is it?’ Decisively, Heather crumpled up her sandwich wrapper. ‘Damn, I wish I’d got a brownie as well. I’m going to have to dump him.’
‘It’s only been six weeks,’ I said. ‘Don’t people just ghost each other now, if it’s not working out? I haven’t dated for so long I’ve forgotten the rules.’
‘Some do, I suppose, but I reckon it’s moral cowardice. I’m going to do the right thing and tell him it’s over.’
‘What? You’re going to do it now?’ I asked in awe.
I looked at her admiringly. Her mouth, the red lipstick unsmeared by her tuna sandwich, was set in a determined line. She reached into her bag for her phone. I remembered the last time I’d dumped someone – ages ago, almost a year before Joe and I got together. Even though it had been clear for ages that Mark was as far as possible from being The One – even though he said ‘Ex-squeeze me’ when he burped and thought Ice Road Truckers was the best thing that had ever been on telly and I’d suspected for a while that he’d been seeing other girls – it had taken me weeks of dithering to end it. And even then I’d delivered the message so tentatively he thought at first I was suggesting we move in together.
‘No time like the present.’
Heather pressed a few buttons on her phone and held it up to her ear.
‘Voicemail. He’ll be wanking around with barbells or something. Hi, Kieren, it’s Heather. Listen, I’ve been thinking. I don’t reckon you and I are right for each other, so I’m going to call it a day. You’re a nice guy and we’ve had fun, but it’s just not going anywhere for me. I hope you have a good life.’
She paused, glanced at her phone, and then continued, ‘And I hate to say this, but the poo thing? It’s a massive passion-killer. Word of advice: when you’re seeing someone else, keep that shit – literally – to yourself.’
Four
By seven that evening, dusk was beginning to fall over the City. The setting sun glinted off the prism-shaped glass tower opposite, turning it scarlet and gold like a giant candle flame, and the tall buildings were casting their long shadows over the streets below, so that for the commuters making their way home, it would feel far closer to night time than it did up on the twelfth floor.
But, in the Mergers and Acquisitions department of Billings Pitt Furzedown, no one was going anywhere just yet – perhaps not for a long time. In the glass-walled meeting room, I could see a group of my colleagues hunched forward, heads on one side, leaning in to focus on the speakerphone in the centre of the table. At the desk next to mine, Niamh was typing intently, composing an email to a client for a senior associate to check. Across from me, Rupert had his feet up on his desk, his chair tilted so far back that at any moment I hoped gravity might intervene and send his arrogant, elongated body tumbling to the floor and interrupt his chat with a friend about an upcoming stag party in Prague.
And I was paginating a bundle. Of all the tasks we trainees were lumbered with, making sure that each of the six hundred pages that had been meticulously prepared for a court hearing were laboriously numbered, divided, indexed, separated with appropriately coloured pieces of cardboard, punched and filed was the most thankless, for sure. And that was against stiff competition from other aspects of my job that were pretty downright shitty. Having to look at Rupert’s smug, chinless face every morning when I walked into the office, for one. Having to look at it and smile.
But paginating bundles wasn’t just a rite of passage, it was serious stuff, too. It wasn’t just one of those joke things you read about trainees in some other businesses being told to do, like go to the builders’ merchant and ask for a can of striped paint or a jar of elbow grease or a long weight. In the first meeting I’d ever had with Gordon, my soon-to-be boss, in my second day at the firm, he’d told me so in no uncertain terms.
‘Now, Alice,’ he said. ‘If you want to succeed in this department – in this firm – in your entire legal career, there are two things you need to remember.’
I’d clutched my notebook so tightly my knuckles turned white, my pen poised over the page, waiting for him to impart his wisdom. He was a figure of awe to me still, sitting there behind his vast, polished desk, in his immaculate charcoal suit, with his heavy cufflinks, his carefully brushed grey hair.
‘What are those?’ I asked.
‘One, pagination might seem like a drag. It is a drag. But it’s vitally important. If, in court, a judge can’t find the document he – or she – is looking for, it pisses him off. Or her.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘And if the judge is pissed off, the partner is pissed off, the client is pissed off, everyone in the firm is p
issed off – except the trainee. They get pissed on.’
I managed a nervous laugh.
‘And not only that. A properly paginated bundle is a thing of beauty. It represents order, professionalism, methodical thinking and correctness. So don’t ever let me hear you complain. Okay?’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘And what’s the second thing?’
‘The second what?’
‘You said there were two things I needed to know, and remember, if I wanted to succeed.’
‘Aha! You were paying attention. Good girl. The second thing is, in the mornings I like to have a double espresso, black, no sugar. At eleven, a cappuccino with one sugar. And in the afternoon, builder’s tea with milk, no sugar, at two, four and six o’clock.’
This I hastily noted down on my pad. ‘Got that.’
‘So…’
I glanced at my watch. ‘It’s three fifty now. Too soon?’
Gordon laughed. ‘Definitely not too soon. Thank you, Alice.’
Relieved, I hurried out to the kitchen. As first impressions went, I reckoned I hadn’t done too badly and, a year or so later, he’d told me I could have a job there once I finished my training. And now that was about to happen. Soon, I’d be a newly qualified solicitor, a junior in the Intellectual Property team, dealing with everything from protecting the tiniest detail of a massive corporation’s branding to whether a theme park had nicked another theme park’s rollercoaster design.
And although I knew how incredibly lucky I was, how privileged to have had the opportunity to make this happen – the good school, the supportive parents, not needing to get a job as soon as I turned sixteen – sometimes the thought of my future terrified me. Sometimes, I imagined coming to this building, or another one so similar it might as well be this one, every day for the next forty years, and felt almost sick with dread. Often, I remembered the day Gordon had told me I had a job in his department once I qualified, and I felt ashamed instead of proud. I felt like I hadn’t earned this, not really. It was as if it was an unwanted gift I’d been given that was going to cause me a whole load of hassle and grief, like a tank of tropical fish or a cross-stitching kit or one of those jigsaw puzzles that have a thousand pieces and all of them are plain white.
Wearily, I got up from my desk and crossed the office to the printer. The machine hummed and churned, spitting out page after page after page, until a pile of paper as thick as an old-fashioned telephone directory lay on its tray. I hefted it up and carried it back to my desk, hoping that the paper cut I’d sustained earlier wasn’t going to start bleeding again all over the crisp white pages, and wishing I’d had time to run out and buy some plasters.
Wishing, even though it was ridiculous, that the paper cut had been like Sleeping Beauty’s spindle in the fairy tale and I could just conk out for a hundred years.
‘All right, mate,’ Rupert was saying. ‘So we’ll meet at Gatwick at ten on Friday, yah? Time for a couple of swift ones in the VIP lounge before we board? And you’ve booked Goldfingers for Saturday night, right? Should be an action-packed night, given what I’ve heard the girls there let you get away with. Don’t worry, I won’t breathe a word to Helena. What happens in Prague stays in Prague, haha.’
He stood up, his phone still pressed against his ear, and started shrugging on his jacket. A year ahead of me, already qualified, Rupert was above such menial tasks as preparing bundles, and he never let me forget it. I couldn’t be sure, but I had my suspicions that he too had hoped for a place on Gordon’s team. I’d got it and he hadn’t and – even though he was now happily ensconced in Mergers and Acquisitions, where he specialised in orchestrating hostile takeovers – he was still bitter about it.
But I didn’t have the time or the energy to worry about posh, swaggering Rupert, with his designer shirts and his Montblanc pen, which had cost more than Joe’s and my monthly rent – not that that seemed to stop him misplacing it all the time and making the entire office hunt for it, leading the other trainees and me to refer to it, mockingly, as ‘My precioussss’ when Rupert was out of earshot.
I turned back to my print-outs, carefully sorting through the pages, inserting dividers and slotting each section into its place in the row of files. The words on the pages represented months and months of work, the painstaking negotiation of a takeover of one giant construction firm by another, and since I’d been in the department I’d worked on almost nothing else.
I’d be pretty pleased to move on. I’d be absolutely ecstatic when this task was done and I could finally go home.
At last, the final page was filed, the index checked for the last time. I tapped out a one-word text to Joe.
Pub?
Thought you’d never ask. I’m done here too. Meet me in the lobby?
Give me ten.
I resisted the urge to check the files one more time, knowing that if I did, ten minutes could easily turn into two hours. I switched off my computer, put on my jacket and stuffed my things into my bag, joining the small crowd of weary workers heading for the lift. When the doors opened, there was Joe, his tie askew, looking every bit as exhausted as I felt.
Although people knew we were a couple, and we weren’t the only people who’d got together during their traineeship, I still felt shy about acknowledging him at work, so we just exchanged small, secret smiles and didn’t speak until we’d passed through the security turnstiles and out of the glass door into the street.
Free of our colleagues’ watching eyes – not that they’d care – Joe pulled me close and kissed me.
‘Good day?’
‘Okay. I got a paper cut.’
I showed him my finger and he winced, pulled my hand to his face and kissed that, too.
‘Better?’
‘Much.’
‘So where shall we go?’
We looked around. Although it was gone eight o’clock, the warm evening meant that the City pubs were still heaving with after-work drinkers. We had to dodge crowds spilling out onto the pavements, pint glasses in hand, the volume of conversation and laughter suggesting that they were well into a lengthy session.
‘Everywhere round here will be rammed. Let’s go home and try the Star and Garter.’
‘Wasn’t it closed last time we went there?’
‘Yeah, but that was like a month ago. They probably just had a gas leak or something.’
‘Or something. You’re probably right.’
Half an hour later, we emerged from our local station and made our way down the street. Here, the bustle of the City had given way to a more leisurely pace. Groups of teenagers were hanging around outside the fried chicken shop. Couples were seated at pavement tables outside the Italian restaurant. Runners and dog-walkers were still out, enjoying the balmy night.
But something was wrong. There was no light spilling from the windows of the Star and Garter. The windows were covered with metal sheets and there was a sign on the door that said ‘Site entrance’ with a whole load of stuff underneath about protective headgear and footwear needing to be worn at all times.
‘Looks like it’s shut,’ Joe said unnecessarily. ‘See – it’s all boarded up.’
‘It’s a building site. It’s not just being renovated, it’s being completely converted.’
‘It must have been closed since the last time we tried coming here, and we just didn’t notice. That’s so weird.’
‘And annoying. I was dying for a burger – I’m starving.’
‘Me too. And thirsty.’
‘We could just go home and order a takeaway.’
‘But I really fancy a pint,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve got… Anyway, let’s try the Nag’s Head.’
‘What? That’s crazy talk.’
We paused and looked across the road. It might seem like two pubs situated just yards from each other, on opposite corners in a prime location just steps from the station, would be deathly rivals. But it wasn’t so.
The Star and Garter, with its family-friendly ethos, good food and to
tal absence of any bar fights ever, was a different beast altogether from its neighbour. We’d only been into the Nag’s Head once, shortly after we moved into our flat. And when I say ‘been in’, what I mean is we opened the door, stepped inside and immediately regretted it.
On that occasion, the pub, with its deeply ingrained smell of stale beer and an even deeper smell of stale urine, had given off a vibe that was anything but welcoming. In a corner, I remembered, there’d been a bloke with tattoos on his face sitting alone with two fearsome-looking bull mastiffs. Four elderly men were hunched over a game of dominoes in another corner. A group of guys in football shirts were bellowing at the action on a large-screen television.
‘We can’t go in there,’ Joe said, shooting into reverse.
‘What? Why not? I mean, I know it’s not great, but…’
‘They’re Millwall fans, and Queens Park Rangers thrashed Millwall three–nil last Saturday.’
‘So? They won’t know you support QPR.’
‘They will. They’ll look deep into my soul and just know. Or I’ll let it slip somehow and get myself glassed in the face. Come on.’
And he’d practically dragged me across the road to the safety of the Star and Garter.
‘I know it looked a bit dodgy before,’ Joe said now. ‘But you never know. It might have cleaned up its act, and there’s no footie on tonight. Let’s have a look, anyway, and if it’s no good we’ll go for a pizza. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I agreed, and we crossed the road and pushed open the glass door.
The Nag’s Head didn’t look like it had cleaned up its act. That smell was still there. The ceilings were stained yellow from decades-old smoke, and clearly hadn’t been painted since long before the smoking ban over a decade before. The carpet under our feet was worn and grimy. A battered upright piano against one wall bore countless drink rings like Venn diagrams on its faded lid. The only colour in the place was provided by an enormous portrait hanging over the fireplace of Diana, Princess of Wales, gazing mournfully into the distance beneath her tiara. There were no dogs this time, and no football supporters. I was fairly sure, though, that I recognised the four dominoes players – in fact, it was almost like they hadn’t moved from their corner table in months.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 3
