Now we seemed to have randomly run into each other, however, my decision not to reply to her texts was looking less like a polite way to let her off the hook, and more just plain rude.
‘Hi.’ I attempted a broad smile to try to show her I wasn’t actually a terrible person, but the last few days had really enlightened me about just how much of the face was involved in every expression, and I stopped as I felt my bruised skin tighten painfully.
‘My god, what happened?’ Vanessa, almost brutally stylish in a tight crimson wraparound dress, dropped onto the bench beside me and gave my disfigured face a quick once-over with eyes full of concern.
‘I fell onto a doorframe,’ I said, trying to make it sound like a whacky misadventure, but presumably failing, as her look of consternation only deepened. It was the same reaction my colleagues had given me on Monday and, as with them, I hurried to reassure her that that was really what had happened, not a clichéd cover up of something sinister.
I didn’t mention Theo by name as I explained my bump, instead casting him as some vague, first-aid-knowing neighbour and obviously skipping the part where I decided he had a dead fiancée. I couldn’t claim to know a great deal about AHC’s Stone Cold Killer, but the way he’d been avoiding everyone at the Allsopp party suggested he wouldn’t be keen for his colleagues to know too much about his life outside work.
‘You poor thing,’ Vanessa said when I was done. ‘I guess that explains why I never heard back from you – you’ve been licking your wounds.’ She spoke lightly, no trace of reprobation, but I still felt my guilt sneak up a notch. Her eyes strayed to the sculpture before us for a second or so longer than seemed necessary, before returning to my face. ‘So what are you doing here?’
I, too, looked over at The Brother, trying to see what had caught her attention, and then shrugged. ‘Lunch break,’ I replied, holding up the remains of my chicken, pesto and sundried tomato sandwich as proof. ‘How about yourself?’
‘I’m on my way to a meeting,’ she said, ‘but I’m so pleased I ran into you.’
As I had when she’d tucked her arm through mine at the High-Rise and led me away from Dec and his ‘friends’, I wondered what on earth had inspired such keenness for my company and asked, ‘Really?’ in a tone of genuine surprise.
‘Of course.’ She swept her reddish-blonde hair out of her face in one graceful swish. ‘I enjoyed our chat on Friday and, I mean, now you’re practically a celebrity!’
Distracted by her excellent hair flick, it took a moment for what she’d said to register. When it did, I blinked, startled. ‘I am?’
She nodded. ‘You’re all anyone’s been talking about at AHC this week.’ She leant forward as she spoke to rub at an invisible smear on her nude high heels and so didn’t see my mouth drop open.
‘Why?’
She straightened and waved her hands vaguely. ‘Because, despite appearances, the whole company is essentially staffed by gossip-hungry children.’
I waited for her to elaborate and when she didn’t, prompted, ‘And I stirred them up by . . .?’
She cocked her head and then said slowly, as if it was obvious, ‘Coming to the biggest party of the year on O’Connor’s arm, and leaving on Killer’s.’
I blanched, barely noticing as a sundried tomato slipped out of my sandwich and landed in my lap with a plop. ‘That wasn’t–’ I started to protest, but she blithely talked over me.
‘Which, as it’s been less than two weeks since Killer kicked O’Connor off his team, has had everyone practically salivating with–’
‘Since what?’
Vanessa seemed to finally realise I had significantly less knowledge of what she was talking about than she thought I did and paused.
‘You didn’t know?’ she asked after a moment. ‘I thought you and Declan were friends?’
Well, wasn’t that a loaded question?
‘Yeah.’ I licked my lips, mortified to discover a smear of pesto at the corner of my mouth that must have been there for the duration of our conversation. ‘We are, but–’ I stopped abruptly. I’d been about to say that Dec had never been a big sharer when it came to his failures, but he’d hardly thank me for putting that about. I mean, it’s not like any of us like to harp on about things that don’t work out our way, but Dec took that to the extreme. Zoë and I had learnt very early on that, if Dec went silent on something, it meant he’d come out of it badly and didn’t want to talk about it.
So, no, it didn’t surprise me that Dec hadn’t mentioned that he’d been, in Vanessa’s words, kicked off Killer’s team; what surprised me was that he had been. He was smart, he was driven, he was focused and, with a few notable exceptions, he seemed to have done a stand-up job of schmoozing all he’d come across at the company party. He was, in short, the sort of up-and-comer every team would wish for, so what was Theo playing at? Still, it did at least explain the prickliness between Dec and Theo both at the party and the morning after.
‘What happened?’ I asked, moving quickly past my lack of answer re Dec’s and my friendship status.
‘Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?’ Vanessa said archly. ‘No-one outside the team seems to know, and those in it are keeping their mouths shut, which is obviously the most sure-fire way to keep everyone’s interest piqued. O’Connor and Killer were assigned to the team at the same time, Killer as the Sub-Manager, O’Connor as a Junior Project Officer, and they’ve been the highest performing team ever since. Their accounts are a thing of beauty, even my grandfather says so, and he’s not one to give compliments lightly.’
I hung on her every word, ignoring the stares we were continuing to receive, although they were now directed more towards the glorious beauty beside me, my mottled forehead fading into the shadow of her glow.
‘Then, out of nowhere, O’Connor was suddenly shifted to another team. The Senior Manager ostensibly ordered the transfer, but everyone knows it was at Killer’s request. So you can imagine when everyone saw you arrive with O’Connor and then a photo of you getting in the lift with Killer was sent round . . .’ She trailed off and raised her perfectly manicured eyebrows significantly.
God, there was a photo being sent around? What was this, high school?
‘It’s not like Theo and I went home together,’ I said quickly before realising that that was technically a lie and amending, ‘Well, okay, we did go home together, but not for . . .’ I cast around for an appropriate euphemism, but all my brain supplied was: ‘. . . saucy reasons.’
A flicker of something crossed Vanessa’s delicate features. ‘No?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Dec and I are friends, and Theo was just walking me home because we live opposite each other in the same building.’
Her expression sharpened as she put two and two together. ‘So was Theo the neighbour whose door you hit your head on? He was the one who gave you an icepack and asked you to stay with him until he was sure you were all right?’ She let out an almost frustrated little laugh. ‘Of course he was,’ she said before I could reply. ‘Theodore “do right” McKillop, who else?’
Theo’s name sounded easy on her lips, intimate even through her obvious exasperation; I’d certainly never said a co-worker’s name like that before.
‘Do you know Theo well?’ I asked hesitantly and, honestly, I think I already knew the answer even before she had a chance to let out another tinkling sound of amusement.
‘I should hope so, we were engaged.’
It fit. The startlingly beautiful woman beside me and Theo, who seemed to glow from within, would make an incredible couple, they’d be like a pair of thoroughbred horses trotting among donkeys. And I felt like the biggest ass of them all as I thought about Vanessa being the writer of the loving note at the start of Theo’s book. The tone had been so warm and familiar it was obvious that they’d been it, a proper couple with all the inside jokes and affection that came with the title.
‘Oh,’ I said after a moment, unsure what I was supposed to say in respo
nse to her reveal, especially since my brain was in the midst of exclaiming: They’re perfect for each other! Except they broke up! But they’re perfect for each other! Except they broke up!
I desperately wanted to know the details, but it was so unbelievably not my business I kept my mouth shut, waiting for Vanessa to take the lead.
It was a decision I instantly regretted as she looked at me in that piercing way of hers and said, ‘It doesn’t bother me if you’re a little bit in love with Theodore, everyone is.’
‘Er . . .’ was my highly intellectual response.
‘But I hope you don’t mind if I suggest that you stick with O’Connor,’ she continued, bulldozing past my discomfort with the blithe air of someone used to doing so. ‘McKillop is the sort of person who tries so hard not to let you down that he does without realising it, you know?’
No, I had no idea.
‘Theo and I aren’t . . . I mean, Friday night was literally the first time I talked to him,’ I tried to explain. ‘It’s not like he, Dec and I make up some kind of–’
‘Love triangle?’ Vanessa suggested knowingly, and I flushed, the lump on my head throbbing with the sudden influx of blood. She was Theo’s ex-fiancée! This was a ridiculously awkward conversation to be having with her.
‘Nothing like that is going on,’ I said with as much finality as I could muster.
Vanessa mulled this over for a moment, apparently indifferent to my impassioned response. ‘I believe you,’ she said in the end, ‘but I’m afraid I’m going to be in the minority at AHC. No-one’s going to want to pass up a dramatic story of love and betrayal for one of simple misunderstanding, especially not after the way Killer and O’Connor have been prowling around each other for the past fortnight. My advice? Just watch what you put on social media for a while, people are going to be desperate to learn more about you.’
‘Seriously? They’d really care that much?’ She was exaggerating, she must be – the whole thing sounded ludicrous. And yet her pitying look suggested I was missing something.
‘There’s a lot of money at stake with all of this, Gio,’ she said gently. ‘Who’s on what team doing what affects bonuses worth thousands. Knowing the lie of the land and where people sit on the totem pole does actually matter.’
‘But you said they were just gossip-hungry children.’ I sounded feeble even to my own ears and I busied myself cleaning up the remains of my lunch, picking all the dropped fillings off myself and collecting them in the wrapper.
‘Not just,’ she corrected me. ‘The most gossip-hungry cohort often correlates with the one scoring the big promotions.’
‘I can’t imagine Theo being gossip hungry,’ I said doubtfully.
She inclined her head on her slender neck, acknowledging my point. ‘Yes, he’s definitely an exception.’
I sat back against the hard wooden bench and tried to mull it all over, but it just didn’t make much sense to me. Of course there’d been gossip and drama at the various places I’d worked over the years, but nothing like this.
‘But it’ll blow over soon, right?’ I said hopefully and, perhaps finally seeing how unnerved I was by the whole thing, Vanessa smiled reassuringly.
‘Of course it will. People will discover that the intern who takes the lunch orders is sleeping with a team leader, or similar, and this’ll be nothing more than old chatter that people drunkenly bring up at the Christmas party.’
This didn’t exactly seem like a best-case scenario to me, so I made one more effort to try to clear things up.
‘He – Theo, I mean – was just doing a nice thing by walking me home. If you could tell people that–’
‘Oh, no.’ She burst out laughing again, her teeth bright white against her red lips. ‘That would be the worst thing I could do. Trust me, it’s better for him if I stay out of this one.’
And I supposed I could see her point, although the emphatic way she’d said ‘worst’ did make me wonder what had caused her and Theo’s break-up.
Before I could make any more of a fool of myself than I already had, Vanessa glanced at her watch and got to her feet, smoothing down her skirt in a fastidious move that reminded me of Zoë.
‘Look, I really have to go,’ she said briskly, ‘but are you free for lunch on Friday?’
‘Um,’ I said, but my clear lack of enthusiasm didn’t seem to go any distance in dampening hers.
‘Meet here at one?’ she chirped. ‘I’ll take you somewhere good, my treat. Honestly, Gio, I’m so glad I ran into you.’
Yes, I thought, so you’ve said, but I’m still not quite sure why. Was this her outing herself as one of the people scoring the big promotions by being across the gossip?
That wasn’t the kind of thing I could ask without sounding incredibly rude, however, so I just smiled and nodded, as if the cocktail of guilt and foreboding she’d brought to me was just as welcome as her cosmo had been the other evening.
She leant down and pressed her cool, smooth cheeks to mine in a rapid-fire double air-kiss and then she was striding away.
Along with everyone else in the vicinity, I watched her go, stunned into inertia by her forthright personality.
I was torn. My loyalty to Dec, that deep-rooted, ingrained loyalty that had been in place since I was a child, was raging at his removal from his high-performing team. What could Theo have been thinking?
Then again, it was hardly as if I wasn’t aware of Dec’s less positive attributes – I was still reeling from a sample of them. Had Dec let his insecurities get the better of him and done something that meant Theo had had to remove him for the good of the team?
Whatever had happened, I felt a little throb in my chest at the idea of Dec being demoralised by it, and my hand literally closed around my phone to call him before I realised that that would undo all the good the last few days without him had done. I couldn’t just go running to him every time I felt insecure – or worried that he was. Or, at least, that’s what Zoë’s constant texts had been telling me.
So, instead, my thoughts crossed to Theo. I barely knew the guy and yet, apparently, I’d caused him all this trouble at work. I could just imagine how much he was rueing his decision to break habit and actually speak to me, considering the nonsense it’d brought down on his head.
If I couldn’t do anything to make Dec feel better, there was at least no such ban on my interactions with Theo and, as I stood to return to work, I already knew what I was going to do.
*
You’d perhaps think that, working at a bakery, the last thing I’d want to do upon returning home from a gruelling, every-last-swirl-of-ganache-critiqued, constantly-on-my-feet, nine-hour day, was more baking. You’d be wrong.
It was like the difference between reading for school and reading for pleasure. I’d certainly always found during my years of education that the chance to chuck aside a textbook and pick up a recipe book had been a welcome one. That was what home baking was like for me.
Not to mention, the majority of the grunt work of baking at PP&P was taken care of by machines and, after my conversation with Vanessa, it’d been one of those days where a good, old-fashioned, furious whisk was in order. I really had no idea how people who didn’t bake dealt with stress. Swirling a finger through the silky grittiness of caster sugar and watching the unctuous cake batter ripple into a pan was tantamount to meditation in my book.
My mood had been noticeable. A tricky job at the best of times, Céleste had removed me from the task of applying gold leaf to the tops of dainty eclairs after two of the pastries had ended up topped with crumpled gold nuggets rather than a delicate speckle of expensive shimmer. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my workmates had kept just as much of an eagle eye on me. Maya, my fellow apprentice, had been particularly interested in what had me so out of sorts and, when Céleste’s back was turned, had sidled up to me to murmur, ‘Where’s lover-boy this week?’
Maya was pretty and petite, a miraculous being who could make it through an entire day in the
kitchen and emerge on the other side as fresh as she’d entered it. She presented an unhelpful counterweight to my messy appearance and workbench and I often saw Céleste eye the two of us up, before clearly finding me wanting.
But I liked Maya, even though she was the sort of person you instinctively knew to be careful around. You only told Maya things you’d be happy with everyone knowing . . . which is why I so regretted having told her about my crush on Dec. He usually visited Pickle, Peach and Plum a few times every week, meeting me at lunch or popping in to get a madeleine, his favourite, and each time, Maya, thick as thieves with the front counter crew, would be the first to know he’d arrived. It’d become part of my weekly routine to feel a little thrill at knowing Dec was nearby after Maya had nudged me in the ribs.
For it to have got to Wednesday afternoon without him showing was unheard of and Maya had clearly been keen for the gossip.
I’d muttered something lame about him being busy at work and then been glad of the incredibly tight ship Céleste ran as I’d been called away before Maya had had a chance to ask the question so clearly already forming on her lips: Trouble in paradise?
So, yes, it was because of rather than in spite of the day I’d had that I’d come home and decided to make the messiest, fudgiest, most chocolatey cake of all time and give it to Theo. I prided myself on being able to guess a person’s favourite flavour of cake and I felt particularly confident in my choice of dark chocolate and rum for the Nod Next-Door; he just screamed dark, grown-up flavours.
Baking was the primary way I said thanks and sorry and, as those two words seemed to form the entire basis of my relationship with him, it seemed fitting. I understood that, if he’d been subjected to the amount of gossipy nonsense that Vanessa had suggested he was, a cake may not be much compensation, but it couldn’t hurt, right?
Once the cake had cooled and I’d slathered it in rich, velvety icing, I whipped up a small amount of plain white icing and wrote ‘Thanks and sorry’ across the top in my best, fanciest cursive.
It was gone ten by the time I stood back to admire my work and, for the first time since Friday night, I felt a little bit pleased with myself. It was the kind of cake you wanted to smoosh your fists and face into, something about its squidginess evoking the same instinct for squeezing as a pair of particularly chubby cheeks on a baby did. I could only hope Theo would be similarly impressed.
Cake at Midnight Page 9
