I was a couple of minutes late, thanks to my inept navigation through the crowds, and Heather was already in the queue when I arrived, her tuna sandwich and Diet Coke in her hands. I grabbed a ham and cheese baguette and an orange juice and hesitated for a few seconds while I considered joining her near the counter. But faced with the prospect of being tutted at yet again – and possibly even passively-aggressively reminded that there was a queue here, you know – I humbly waited my turn at the back.
Soon, Heather and I emerged into sunshine so bright it was sending reflections like camera flashes bouncing off the glass towers surrounding us, and heating the pavement so we could feel its warmth through the soles of our shoes. We walked to our usual bench in the square, grateful for the shade of the chestnut tree.
‘So,’ she said, crossing her legs and tearing open her sandwich, ‘you appear to have taken leave of your senses.’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, I guess I have. Every morning I wake up and I realise I don’t have to get up and stand on the train for twenty minutes with my face in someone’s armpit and then spend eleven hours behind a desk worrying I’m going to fuck something up, then repeat the process with the train and get home at nine o’clock too knackered to eat dinner or have sex with my boyfriend, and I’m like, “What the hell have I done?”’
‘Fair point. But tell me – this pub malarkey. Is it a permanent career move, or what?’
‘Oh, God, no. To be quite honest, it’s a bit of a dump. But the woman who runs it is lovely and she’s not coping, and she’s planning to retire in a few months. So I’m just helping out, earning a bit of cash while I make up my mind what to do. By the time Shirley goes the owner will have brought in a new manager and they won’t need me any more, and hopefully by then I’ll have figured out what to do with myself.’
‘So, basically, you’ve thrown yourself right out of the frying pan and into the fire, and you’re not giving yourself the chance to think about whether you’ve actually made a really stupid decision. Or why.’
‘I… Yeah, I suppose you could say that. But I mean, it’s not irreversible. I can still qualify, Samantha says. I can look for a job somewhere else, any time I like.’
Heather looked at me. Her gaze was penetrating and intense, and I felt a bit like I was on the witness stand, about to be exposed for telling a massive porky whilst under oath.
‘I don’t think you will, though,’ she said. ‘I mean, come on, Alice. We’ve known each other a long time. I saw how you got less and less enthusiastic about working at Billings. I totally understand that – you know I do. And you seem totally fired up about this new idea.’
‘It’s kind of fun, actually. The people are all really nice. It feels like being part of a community, you know, like HR said Billings would be. And then I found out it was only a community in the sense that a tank of sharks is.’
Once again, Heather gave me that look. ‘I’ll have to come and check it out. See you doing your Tracey the barmaid from EastEnders thing.’
‘I’m amazed you have time to watch EastEnders.’
‘Oh my God, I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I watch it on my phone on the Tube in the mornings. So what does Joe make of this career change of yours?’
‘It’s not a career change,’ I protested. ‘More of a career break.’
‘Break, schmeak. What does he think?’
‘He’s…’ I hesitated. ‘The thing is, we’ve both been so busy. Before, when I was at Billings, we didn’t get that much time together, obviously. But we kind of had the same timetable, if you see what I mean? We got the same train to the office sometimes, and we had a couple of hours together in the evenings. But now I’m usually still asleep when he leaves for work, and by the time I get in from the pub he’s already crashed out. So we haven’t had that much time to talk about it – or about anything much, really.’
Or about Zoë, more importantly.
‘And there’s another thing, Heath. Joe suggested – right on the same day I left Billings – that we could maybe get a flatmate to help pay the rent while I’m not earning much.’
‘Sounds sensible.’ Heather ate the end of her baguette, wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and glanced at her phone.
‘Yeah, but it’s not just any flatmate. It’s only his bloody ex-girlfriend from years ago. Who he was in love with. Who’s properly knock-out gorgeous.’
‘Wait, what? His ex? That’s, uh, different. I presume you explained that you’d rather eat your own shoes, starting with those Jimmy Choo mules you bought in the Outnet sale?’
‘Well, no. I didn’t. I said I’d think about it. But obviously what I meant was that it was the most terrible idea ever and we should never speak of it again.’
‘So that’s okay then. Right?’
‘Wrong. You see, I got my credit-card bill this morning, from July. I went a bit crazy that month. It wasn’t just the Jimmy Choos – I bought a few new things for work, because I thought I’d be in my shiny new job with a shiny new salary. And I took Joe for dinner at Café Murano and – you know. I went a bit cray.’
‘Understandably cray.’
‘Yeah, but – well, I got the bill this morning and I kind of panicked. It made me realise that my finances have gone from totally fine to totally not fine. And I had to ask Joe to lend me five hundred quid to pay the bloody thing.’
‘Ouch. Was he okay with that?’
‘Of course. He was lovely about it. But I felt so guilty, and I was so grateful, I ended up telling him that it does make sense for us to have a bit of extra cash coming in, and I was totally okay about the Zoë thing.’
‘Oh no, Alice.’
‘Oh yes. Of course as soon as I’d said it I was like, “Nooo, I take that back!” But I couldn’t.’
‘Maybe she’ll change her mind.’
‘Maybe she’ll meet someone else and move in with him.’
‘Maybe she’ll realise her life’s dream is to move to Outer Mongolia and live in a yurt.’
‘Maybe she’ll—’ But before I could finish, Heather’s phone beeped and she glanced anxiously at the screen.
‘Shit. The meeting I had at two thirty’s been brought forward. The client turned up early and they don’t want to keep her waiting. I’m going to have to dash.’
She crumpled up her sandwich wrapper, chugged the last of her Diet Coke and gave me a brief hug.
‘WhatsApp me, okay? And we’ll do lunch next week as usual?’
‘I might have to miss next week.’ I stood up and followed her out of the square, hurrying to keep up with her long strides. ‘Shirl’s got an appointment with her podiatrist.’
‘Week after, then. Take care. And don’t worry about this Zoë. Joe loves you and I’ve got your back.’
Watching her swish away, ponytail swinging, her back straight and her shoulders square under her pale blue shift dress, I wasn’t sure what to feel. I imagined Heather sitting in her meeting, sipping water, making notes and asking intelligent questions. I imagined her afterwards, at her desk, catching up on her emails, drafting a report for a client, updating her billable hours. And then, later in the evening, maybe managing to steal some time away from her desk to pop to the gym and have something to eat before heading home, much later, to her tidy, serene flat.
Until a couple of weeks before, that had been my life. Minus the tidy and solitary bit. Joe and I did our best but, considering how little time we actually spent there, between us we managed to create a tide of clutter that could only just be contained. But still.
I’d had a career. I’d had clear goals, actionable targets, ambitions. And now I had beer mats to replace, crisp crumbs to hoover up off the carpet, paper towel dispensers to fill in the toilets, and a portrait of the Princess of Wales to dust. Sometimes, as I worked, I imagined those inscrutable blue eyes (slightly wonky; the artist had clearly had more enthusiasm than skill) were following me around the room like the Mona Lisa’s are supposed to do, and the late princess was thinking, Who’s this one then?
She’ll never last.
Lost in thought, I found myself making my way along the street to the Billings office. Somewhere up there, twelve storeys above my head, Joe would be at his desk, or sitting in a meeting room, or standing by the printer paginating a bundle for court. Just weeks before, that had been my life – now it felt like an alien world in a distant galaxy.
The restaurant next door – not one of the super-swanky ones where the senior partners sometimes entertained clients, but an averagely swanky one where we got to go for our end-of-year lunches or celebrated someone’s promotion – was full. The tables were crowded with men in suits eating steak and chips and the occasional woman in a tailored dress eating salad.
In the old world, I’d have been looking forward to a celebration lunch there with my fellow trainees in a couple of weeks, to mark the fact that we weren’t trainees any more. We’d abandon the no-drinking-at-lunchtime rule and really give it some, knowing that the firm would pick up the bill. Someone would suggest going on to a club afterwards; someone would end up in bed with someone else; everyone would be too hungover to think straight the next day.
But that lunch would be happening without me.
I paused for a second, looking in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, imagining the roar of conversation and the clink of cutlery, waiting to feel regret or a sense of being shut out. But I didn’t. I felt only relief – like it was them who were in prison, behind those windows, with their smart clothes and their classes of carbonated filtered water – and me who was free.
And then I noticed Joe. He was at a table in the middle of the room – a small table, one for two. He hadn’t mentioned that he had a lunch booked. He never normally went out in the middle of the day – he was too busy. And the woman sitting opposite him wasn’t a colleague or a client – she wasn’t wearing a formal white blouse or a tailored dress. She was wearing a baggy checked shirt, and I could see her legs in ripped jeans under the table. They were leaning across it, towards each other, talking animatedly. As I watched, the woman said something, and Joe burst out laughing.
It was Zoë.
Nine
When I’d been at Billings Pitt Furzedown for about six weeks, an email had pinged into my inbox from Gordon. This was nothing new – he emailed me and his other trainee several times a day, inviting us to sit in on meetings, copying us on notes between him and more senior members of the department, forwarding us links to articles from the Law Gazette that he thought we’d find interesting (I found most of them utterly incomprehensible).
But this email was different. It came at almost seven thirty in the evening, just when I was thinking that I might at last be able to leave the office.
And the subject line was just one word:
Drink?
The body of the email was equally brief.
Any chance you’re free, Alice? I like to have the chance to catch up with my trainees outside the office. G.
Well, I was free. My only pressing engagements were with a microwave ready meal in the kitchen of the flat I shared with Heather, a hot bath and Orange Is the New Black on Netflix. So I replied agreeing and thanking him, then dashed to the ladies’ loo to freshen up my make-up. Gordon might be old enough to be my father, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to create a good impression.
But after that, I wasn’t sure what to do. What was the etiquette here? Did I go and stick my head round his office door and say I was ready whenever he was? That was unthinkable – I was far too shy and new to dare. So I sat on at my desk, staring blankly at the screen, waiting for him to send me another email saying he was ready, or asking me to meet him somewhere.
When he appeared next to me, briefcase in hand, I jumped like I’d been caught playing Candy Crush on my phone.
‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘That bottle of champers won’t drink itself.’
So I hastily shut down my computer, leaving my timesheet for the day incomplete – a cardinal sin, I’d been warned by HR – quickly tucked my things in my handbag and followed him to the lift. The evening exodus was in full flood, and there were about eight other people making their way down, so Gordon didn’t speak to me until we emerged into the street.
And then it was only to say, ‘This way.’
I followed him. To my surprise, he didn’t turn into any of the packed pubs and wine bars we passed; he kept on walking, and at such a furious pace that I struggled to keep up with him in my close-fitting pencil skirt and high heels, and couldn’t even attempt to make conversation. We passed the M&S where I’d bought my lunch, passed the entrance to the Tube station, and turned down a narrow alleyway between two tall glass towers.
To my surprise, at the end of the narrow passage was what looked like a private house: a narrow, five-storey red-brick building with black metal railings across its front and a shiny black door with a brass knocker. But it couldn’t be someone’s home, could it? As we approached, the door was silently opened by a handsome young guy in a tailcoat. Surely only someone like the Queen would have a literal butler – or a footman, or whatever he was – opening the door to her house.
‘Good evening, Georgios,’ Gordon said.
‘Good evening, Mr Poulton. Would you care to leave your bags in the cloakroom?’
Gordon shrugged off the trench coat he was wearing over his suit and handed it over together with his briefcase. I thought longingly of my phone in my handbag, but I didn’t know how to say I’d rather keep it with me, so I surrendered it, muttering a thank you.
‘Are you dining with us tonight, sir?’
‘Possibly, later on, if there’s a table free. But we’ll have a drink in the bar first.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
With a final, longing glance back at my handbag – what if I needed to brush my hair, or my period started or something? – I followed Gordon across the lobby, my heels sinking deep into a gold and blue patterned carpet. A flight of marble stairs led up into the distance, partly carpeted in the same design. Gold-framed paintings hung on the walls, mostly views of London – or London as it would have looked long before I was born, flatter and more spread out, somehow, with loads of different kinds of vessels crowded on the river – and some portraits of self-important-looking men in suits.
But before I could do more than glance around, we’d turned through a doorway into a smaller room, with a bar at one end and a selection of small tables around the outside. I followed Gordon to one of these, and he gestured for me to sit facing the window, then sat down opposite me. The chairs were upholstered in mustard-coloured suede, and the tabletop was highly polished wood with a complex, wavy grain running through it.
I looked down at it for a second, then made myself look up at Gordon and smile.
‘What a lovely place.’
‘My club,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a bolthole, a home from home. I stay here overnight, sometimes, if I’ve worked late and have an early start. The food’s excellent, and so – more importantly – are the drinks. I usually have a gin gimlet.’
I glanced at the leather-bound menu, standing half-open on the table. It looked like it ran to pages and pages.
‘I’ll try one of those too, please.’
‘Good girl.’ He gestured over my shoulder towards the bar, and a few seconds later a waiter appeared carrying two slender-stemmed cocktail glasses on a silver tray. He placed them reverentially in front of us on folded white napkins, then added a tiny bowl of pistachio nuts.
‘Now…’ Gordon raised his glass and I copied him, but he didn’t clink it against mine. ‘Cheers. And a very warm welcome to Billings.’
‘Thank you. I’m so excited to be working here. I just hope I won’t let anyone down.’
I tasted my drink, which was delicious and also, I suspected, way stronger than it tasted. It was kind of like the extra-sour lime sweets I’d been obsessed with as a teenager, only with a fierce kick of alcohol that warmed my throat as I sipped.
‘You won’t let anyone down,’ Gordon said.
‘I’ve seen a lot of trainees come and go over the years, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the people who begin their careers without that worry are the ones most likely to flounder. You’ve got ambition without arrogance; charisma without cockiness. It’s a winning combination.’
I felt a glow of warmth inside me that wasn’t from the gin. No one had ever called me charismatic before.
‘Now, tell me about yourself,’ he went on. ‘Not all the guff that’s on your CV – I’ve seen that. Alice the person. Where are you living right now? What do you get up to in your spare time?’
I watch Netflix and Snapchat my mates, mostly. Sometimes I go on Tinder. And I look at designer handbags on the Outnet and put them on Pinterest, so hopefully by the time I can afford one I’ll have decided which to buy. But I wasn’t going to tell him all that.
‘I share a flat with my friend Heather, who I met during my law conversion course. We’re in Wembley, one of the grotty bits, but it’s convenient for work and it’s cheap.’
‘Of course. I remember those days – living on beans on toast and splashing out on a steak and a decent bottle of red on payday. The partners used to get directors’ lunches cooked for them, back when I started out, and we all used to hang around the boardroom like hungry squirrels waiting for them to finish so we could descend on the leftovers.’
I laughed and took another gulp of my drink. It was finished and so was Gordon’s; I saw him do that almost invisible gesture to the barman again. His talk of food had made me realise I was hungry, but the little dish of pistachio nuts had no corresponding little dish for their shells, and I was fairly sure that discarding them on the polished tabletop would be a big no-no. Briefly, I considered trying to swallow the shells along with the nuts, but ruled that out, too – choking to death in front of your boss wasn’t the best look.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 7
