by Nora Valters
He steps towards me and opens his arms in compromise.
I hug him back. “I love you, too. We’ll work this out. Together.”
But there’s a lingering tension in his muscles, and I know there’s a part of him that still doubts me.
6
The next morning, Akshay is already up and out of bed when my eyes open.
It was a strained, restless night. He’d got into bed before me, and by the time I’d taken off my make-up, washed my face and brushed my teeth, he was lying with his back to me. I’d attempted to snuggle up to him, in the hopes that he’d roll over so I could rest my head in the perfect crook between his chin and shoulder, but he didn’t budge. I was pretty sure he was pretending to be asleep, and the snub annoyed me.
The rest of the night was spent positioning our bodies as far away from each other as the king-size bed allowed. It was obvious that Akshay was still suspicious of me even though he’d said otherwise.
“Morning,” I say cheerily as I enter the kitchen and see Akshay making himself a coffee.
“Morning,” he replies. “Want a coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
He gets another cup out of the cupboard and spoons in the coffee. Instant for us on weekday mornings. Akshay likes to spend longer over his coffee on the weekends, grinding the beans first. He’s dressed in his navy work suit, and my insides squirm. He always looks so handsome in business attire – he has a knack for finding well-tailored suits – with his hair gelled and face freshly shaved.
I move to give him a kiss and morning hug, but he moves at the same time to get the milk out of the fridge, and we awkwardly bump into each other’s shoulders.
“Excuse me,” he says formally, and the moment is broken.
I decide to address the elephant in the room. “This morning, I’m going to find out who is behind those texts and the delivery. And they’ll get a piece of my mind. A joke gone way too far. Totally inappropriate.”
“Hmm.” Akshay pulls out his portable coffee cup, pours his drink from his mug into it, and screws on the lid. “I’m heading off, got a lot to do today.”
He gives me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, and then he’s gone.
I stand for a few moments, irritated that he’s clearly still questioning my honesty, then grab a banana and eat it while checking my phone.
No more texts from the sick joker, but a reply from Kemi on WhatsApp with a gorgeous picture of Sindy on her tiny tricycle in Kemi’s lounge. I gaze at the cuteness overload for a few moments, then tap out a quick appreciative reply.
I reread the dirty texts, deleting the dick pic before I have to look at it for too long. Who sent these messages? Why? The easiest way to find out is the most direct route… by asking. Screw it. I call the number that sent the texts.
The dead tone blares back at me, as if the number doesn’t exist anymore. I hang up and type a message, ‘Who is this?’ and press send on the text, but I get an error message that it wasn’t delivered. Is the number now out of service? Scenes from movies and TV shows when this kind of thing happens play out in my head. Was it a burner phone? Used once and then binned? Why would anyone do that?
I ponder this as I drive to work distractedly, park in my allocated space as if on autopilot and head to the back door of the office. As usual, I’m the first person there and find my work keys to open up. I walk through the empty open-plan office to the PR department’s area, which is round a corner and slightly tucked away.
I set up my laptop. I only turned it off this morning to bring it to work, not daring to touch it after Rob had powered it up on Sunday. Just in case. But it seems fine, loads up in much the same way as before and whirs to life. “Thank you, Rob,” I mutter out loud. The last thing I need today is my laptop dying spectacularly again. I need to catch up on all the work I missed yesterday and on Friday when I had my head in pitch mode.
I open my emails first, switch off my out-of-office autoresponder and set about going through all the emails from yesterday, when movement catches my eye. I look up, expecting to see Finn, who also likes to get in early to get a head start on work for the day.
But it’s not Finn, it’s Imani.
I glance at the time on my laptop: 8.17 a.m. I don’t think Imani has ever been in the office this early. She gives me a thin smile and sits. Her desk is perpendicular to mine, so I see her profile. As usual, the make-up on her perfect heart-shaped face with enviable cheekbones and full lips is flawless, with fluttery fake lashes and glowy skin. Her hair is completely different to last week. She has a collection of very expensive wigs and also has weaves and blow-outs, so every week is something different. She proudly tells everyone that she spends most Saturdays at a fancy hair salon in Alderley Edge.
Today, her hair is a sleek black bob with fringe – a bit Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction – the complete opposite of the long braids she had last week. But she always wears the same diamond stud earrings, diamond ring, and spangly diamond Patek Philippe watch. Her nails are acrylic and ridiculously long, so long I wonder how she does the most basic stuff. They are a different colour to last week, so she must’ve found time over the weekend to go to a nail salon after she didn’t make her in-the-middle-of-the-workday Friday appointment. She wears a silky lilac shirt, dark-blue skinny jeans that emphasise her incredible curvy figure, and patent black high-heeled boots. Money oozes off her, and the word that always pops into my mind when I see her, no matter what she’s wearing or what hair she has, is ‘glossy’.
She puts her phone on the desk. It almost exclusively resides in her palm, and she goes everywhere with it, including to the water dispenser in the kitchen or to the bathroom. She pulls her laptop from her Balenciaga neon-green handbag, and I debate whether to say something about our conversation yesterday morning. Perhaps she’s turned a corner, and this is her making an effort to show me she does care about her job. She knows I’m always in early. I decide to give her another chance. And see how she performs this week.
I open my mouth to say a conciliatory good morning to Imani, but the front door opens, and I hear the receptionist’s voice cheerily talking to another member of staff about the postman she fancies.
Finn arrives, wrapped up warm, as he walks the twenty minutes from his apartment into work. As usual, he doesn’t even look flushed from the exercise and is impeccably dressed with an English gentlemen vibe, including black round glasses, a bow tie, a flat cap, and a lot of tweed. I imagine his bow tie collection is on a par with Imani’s wig collection. His immaculate attire matches his entirely unflappable personality and straight-backed slim build. Our affectionate team in-joke is ‘Nothing Flusters Finn’.
A second later, Cleo arrives. After a round of ‘mornings’ and removing coats and turning on laptops, Cleo approaches me.
“Can I have a word?” she says quietly and discreetly nods her head in the direction of the meeting room nearest to us.
“Sure,” I reply.
Cleo wanders towards the meeting room, and I stand to follow. If Imani is glossy, then Cleo is ‘hard’. When I first interviewed her for the account manager job almost two years ago, I had an image in my head of what she’d look like. With a name like Clementine Flickinger, I was expecting posh, Cheshire-set, slightly entitled – especially when she told me on email to call her by her slightly pretentious nickname Cleo.
But when she arrived at the interview, she was none of those things.
She had sharply defined features, with a slightly hooked nose and tattooed eyebrows that were just a little too dark and a little too angular. She was obviously fake-tanned, with simple but heavy make-up, winged eyeliner, and a vivid magenta lipstick. Her poker-straight waist-length hair was dyed a dark-red mahogany, her figure slim with razor-sharp collarbones peeking out the top of her round-neck blouse. Her background wasn’t obvious from her looks, and if she’d grown up with money, she didn’t ooze it like Imani. It also wasn’t obvious when she spoke. She was charming, had an infectious laugh and an impressive C
V. I hired her and – for the most part – she didn’t disappoint.
But, as I look at her now, I see that she’s not looking quite as pulled together as usual. Her trademark winged eyeliner is uneven, and her magenta lippy, which she wears no matter what, is slightly smudged. She has big bags under her brown eyes as if she hasn’t slept in days. And as I look, really look, she’s perhaps thinner than before. For the first time, I worry she has an eating disorder.
She closes the door to the meeting room once we’re both in and faces me. Inwardly I brace myself. What’s coming? She’s leaving in a few days, so she can’t be resigning. Maybe she wants some time off for an interview.
“I’m really sorry to say this…” she starts and then pauses, looking at me apologetically.
Oh crap, has she screwed up with a client? Am I needed to step in and pick up the pieces? But I’ve taken her off most clients now, phased her out before she leaves. So it can’t be that.
She takes a deep breath and continues, “It looks like your car has been keyed.”
I’m momentarily speechless. This isn’t what I was expecting to come out of her mouth. “What?” I eventually manage.
“I parked in my space, which is a few down from yours, and noticed it on your passenger side. I didn’t know if you’d seen it or not, so thought I’d better tell you.”
“How annoying. No, I didn’t notice it this morning.” My car is parked on the street, our house doesn’t have off-road parking, and the driver-side door was nearest the pavement. “Some car must’ve driven too close and scraped it. I’ll have to get it resprayed or something. Thanks for letting me know.”
I make a move to leave the room, feeling as if Cleo’s gone a bit OTT with asking me to come into the meeting room to tell me. But Cleo doesn’t move.
“Um, well, it’s not that,” she says and taps the pin code into her phone, then opens the photo app.
She hands me her phone. I look at the photo and gasp.
“I’m sorry…” she adds.
In big letters on my passenger-side door is scratched ‘BITCH’.
That is no mistake. That damage is not from a car driving too close or cyclist losing their balance and falling on it. Whoever etched that did it deliberately, knowing full well what they were doing.
“Did you notice what other cars were in the car park?” I ask, handing back the phone.
“Only yours and Imani’s.”
Imani’s custom metallic-pink Range Rover, a gift from her ludicrously wealthy ex-footballer daddy for her twentieth birthday, is hard to miss. And Cleo knows my car from numerous trips together to client meetings and events. It’s a Mini three-door hatchback. Not as bling as the Range Rover or as boy-racery as Cleo’s VW Golf, but a nice car that’ll cost me to fix.
Cleo continues, “Who do you think did it?”
I consider this for a moment. Immediately the group of boys on bikes who cruise our area come to mind. They’ve been known to vandalise a few fences, heckle people, litter, and cause low-level trouble. “It’s probably some stupid kids who hang around where I live.”
“Little shits,” Cleo says, almost spontaneously, and the way she says it makes me laugh, as if she’s had plenty of first-hand experience dealing with little shits.
I notice that the tension between us since she handed her notice in seems to have completely lifted.
“Yep, right little shits,” I reply and roll my eyes. “I’ll message the neighbourhood WhatsApp group and see if anyone saw anything. Probably someone knows who their mothers are, and they’ll be in for it.”
Cleo smiles. “I know a good garage if you want the details.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. We take our cars to Akshay’s relative’s place.”
She nods, and I say, “Shall we?” and gesture towards the door.
Back at my desk, I check my phone. No messages. Mentally I add ‘get car fixed’ to my life admin to-do list, right under ‘find out who sent the dirty texts, lingerie and sex toy’. I wanted to give whoever it was a chance to message me first and say ‘ha ha, joke!’ or whatever before I laid into them. But I’ve not heard from anyone. So phase two is to reach out first. But I’m completely stumped as to who would do it. Which means phase two is stalling.
I sigh and go back to checking my emails. My full team is in now, and I see my senior account executive, Mikey, and my senior account manager, Deb, briefing our intern, Tara, on a task. I take out my notebook and jot a note to remind me to book a quick catch-up with Tara to see how she’s getting on. We have a conveyor belt of interns at MBW, Madeline negotiating some kind of deal with the local college, but I like to take the time to talk to each one of them and give them the opportunity to ask me questions about PR.
I never had that as a student – my college career advisor told everyone, including me, who liked English that they should be an English teacher. It was as if no other jobs existed. But I love my job. Yes, it’s high stress, but I get to work with some fun clients with big budgets to do cool things. And, after all these years, I have an established, enviable contact book full of celebrities, DJs, journalists, influencers, and artists – which makes my job that much easier.
I open WhatsApp on my desktop. It’s distracting and means I can’t help but read personal messages at work, but some clients and media contacts insist on using it to contact us rather than by phone or email. So it’s a necessity.
Almost immediately a notification pops up to say I have a message from Toby. It’s early for him to be online. After the funeral he was heading to a shift at his gin bar, which doesn’t finish until the early hours. He’s never usually awake before midday.
A thought springs into my mind. Did Toby send the texts and lingerie? Hell no. I scratch that idea out instantly. Why would he? That’s a creepy thing for a brother to send a sister, and he’s definitely not the practical joke type.
I read his message:
- Sis. Big news. Know you’re at work, so messaging. Been up all night thinking this through and just going to say it. I think I’m gay.
I type back a reply in rapid time to try to catch him before he puts his phone down:
- OMG! Tell me more! Immediately!
I see Toby’s still online, and the ticks turn blue. Then I see he’s typing a reply.
- Things with Jenna were awful at the end. I just stopped fancying her. And I thought it was because we’d fallen out of love, you know, but actually I think I just don’t fancy women. Not really. And last night a customer at the bar – a man – asked me out, and I said yes! Because I really, really, REALLY fancied him. And everything kinda clicked.
- Wow, that’s cool. If you’re happy, then I’m happy, lil bro.
- Ha, yeah, I’m happy.
I could tell he and Jenna were just not right towards the end. So this makes sense. And feels right. Toby sends another message:
- But I’m a bit confused. Maybe I’m bi? I don’t know.
- When’s the date? That might help you to make sense of it all.
- Next week. Am ridiculously excited about it.
- It is VERY exciting. Look, I’d better go. But let’s chat later.
- Sure thing. Sis – you’re the only person I’ve told. Don’t tell anyone, ok? Especially not Dad. I’ll tell the parents in my own way, in my own time.
- Of course. I have zero plans to steal your thunder.
- Lol. Love ya x
- Love you more xxx
I click out of WhatsApp with a big grin on my face. But it drops when someone taps my shoulder. I spin my chair around and find Imani stood behind me, phone in one hand, notebook in the other, with a seriously unimpressed pout on her lips.
7
“We’ve got that meeting in the boardroom with CozMoz Paints in five minutes. It’s just you and me, remember, because Deb’s got that fashion-event thing,” Imani says.
As if on cue, Deb flies past us, shouting, “Byeeeee!”
“Gosh, is that the time already?” My morning has flown
by, and it’s now ten to ten, and I’ve done pretty much bollocks all. “We’d best get set up, then.”
I unplug my laptop and follow Imani towards the boardroom. It’s an unspoken rule that we use my laptop for presentations, as it’s more powerful than her older model. The more senior people at the agency get the better machines, and not even the MD’s favourite could get round that.
As we near the door, I say, “You added those final coverage figures to the presentation, right?”
“Huh?”
“Deb asked you last week to add the final figures to the coverage slide.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So?”
“So what?”
I try to keep my voice impassive in the face of Imani’s total lack of interest in actually doing anything anyone asks her. “Have you added them?”
She shrugs. “Oh, no. Forgot.”
She really is infuriating. Does anyone enjoy working with people who unashamedly do as little work as possible? But I keep my cool. I give her my laptop. “Here, open the presentation up and add them in now. Then link it to the big screen. I’ll go and wait in reception for the client and stall them a bit. Okay?”
“Okay. Is it unlocked?” She indicates the laptop.
“Yes, I was just using it.”
She sits herself down at the big boardroom table and begins fiddling on my laptop, tapping keys with her ridiculously long fingernails. I head towards the reception area and check my watch. Almost ten. This client is usually always on time.
I pass the time with the receptionist for a few minutes, asking about her favourite subject: the postman. The front door opens. But it’s not the CozMoz Paints team, it’s Madeline.
“Hi, Lauren. How did it go yesterday? Well, I hope?” she asks, with just the right amount of concern in her tone that says: I care, but not that much.
“As well as can be expected,” I reply and ignore the now-familiar urge to bawl at the thought of my mum no longer being here. I regroup and quickly change the subject. “CozMoz are coming in for their annual review any time now. Should hear whether they’ll renew at this meeting. I’m feeling positive.”
