‘What can I get you? Go and grab a seat, settle in.’
‘I dunno. I’m rubbish with beer … What do you recommend?’
‘Hmm. Something pale? Or a fruit beer?’
Rachel nodded again. ‘Either sounds good. I’ll leave it to you. Choose me something nice.’
She found a vacant table, small and round, with leather banquettes on either side and a bud vase of snowdrops in the centre. A couple of metres away stood a fireplace with an ornate carved-wood mirror above it. There were lighted candles at either end of the mantelpiece.
‘I like this place,’ Rachel said to Tom as he returned from the bar. She took a sip from what could only be described as a goblet of deep-pink beer. ‘And that’ – she slurped from her glass again – ‘is delicious.’
‘Oh, good, I was hoping you’d say that. About the drink, and the bar.’
It was odd, being here just the two of them. Rachel couldn’t remember if she’d been in a pub with Tom by herself before – whether they’d been for a drink like this together, without Anna and Will flanking them.
Just as she was thinking it was comfortable – nice, even – Tom said, ‘Dev should be here in a minute.’
His voice was strangely tight, almost nervous. He looked spooked too. Perhaps he was afraid people might mistake them for a couple.
‘I told him it was a lady writer I’d found, so he’s probably preening,’ Tom went on.
Rachel laughed. ‘A lady?! I’m pretty sure ladies can walk in heels, take pride in their quiet self-confidence and don’t say “fuck”. Surely my mannish shoe collection, rampant insecurity and potty mouth rule me out.’
Tom was laughing now too.
‘Ah, here we go. Dev!’ he shouted, gesturing to someone on the other side of the room.
A thirty-something man with fine, symmetrical features and raven-black hair floated over to them. He was clutching a glass of mineral water with a twist of lime and had a silver document wallet tucked under his arm.
Maybe Tom had been right about the preening: Rachel had never seen a man so carefully manicured in her life. Everything about Dev was just so, from his sky-blue lambswool cardigan to his box-fresh Veja sneakers. His warm, dark skin was flawless, and his facial hair so precisely trimmed that Rachel wondered if he’d used a stencil.
‘Dev, this is Rachel,’ Tom said. ‘She’s going to help me out with the captions and copy for the show.’
‘Darling! Nice to meet you,’ Dev replied, shaking her hand. His accent was crisp and cut-glass; he could have played a rake in Downton Abbey. ‘How much do you know about the exhibition so far?’ he asked her.
‘Not a lot,’ Rachel said. ‘Just the central theme and the name. And I understand you represent some of the people who are going to feature?’
‘Quite so, I’m with Esteem PR. We’re still finalising our list of participants for the show, but we’ve already confirmed some big names: Sophie French, Alyssia Ahmadi, Joey Nixon, Zack Lanson …’
Rachel smiled and did her best to look impressed. She tried to remember what Zack Lanson was well known for, apart from spelling his name with a K.
‘A number of our clients are keen to start breaking out,’ Dev continued. ‘Most of the people we look after are known for their social media presences but a select few are ready to open up – connect with fans at a deeper level. And of course this coincides with other, more worldly ambitions they might have, hahaha.’
‘Oh, really?’ Rachel said. ‘Like what?’
‘Oh, the usual things … Sophie French is keen on acting. Wants to do Shakespeare, apparently! Zack wants to share his, ahem, songwriting with a wider audience.’
‘Right.’ She caught Tom’s eye and grinned.
‘If it sounds calculated,’ Dev said, theatrically leaning in, ‘it is, a little. But we can’t justify mounting the show and coughing up for it if there’s no business case. That said, we’d like for it to do some good: contribute to the conversation about online fakery. We don’t want it to be a totally hollow exercise – hence getting the body positivity types in.’
‘I think I understand.’ Rachel nodded, fascinated by Dev’s ability to sound cynical one minute and politically correct the next.
Tom said, ‘I’ve explained to Rachel that her role will mainly be taking the celebrities’ words – either from emails, or from face-to-face interviews – and shaping them a little. Making everyone sound sincere and thoughtful. Basically, Rach, it’s about making sure we have some editorial consistency and keeping the theme alive across the whole exhibition.’
‘Sounds great,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I can do that.’
‘What’s your background?’ Dev asked.
‘I’m a copywriter with a digital marketing agency,’ Rachel replied. ‘We’re small, but we’ve just been taken over by a big firm you’ve probably heard of: Mountaintop Media.’
‘Ah yes, I know of them,’ Dev said. ‘Well, it sounds like you’re well qualified and I get the impression you two will work well together. Tom, I’ll leave this with you to look through – it’s information on the clients who are a definite yes so far, plus some standard PR snaps so you can see what you’re going to be working with – the layers of gloss you’ll need to find your way beneath, hahaha.’
He threw back what remained of his water as if it were a shot of some strong spirit, then handed his silver folder to Tom and stood up to go.
‘Enjoy the rest of the weekend, both,’ he said. ‘Divine to meet you, Rachel. Let’s touch base again in a couple of weeks when the first shoots are booked in. By then I should have more of an idea of how many non-clients we’ve got on board. I’ll work on booking an exhibition space for July too, and let you know the details when I’ve got them.’
Dev shook Tom’s hand and kissed Rachel on both cheeks before sweeping out of the bar.
‘Blimey,’ Rachel said, staring after him.
Tom shrug-smiled awkwardly. ‘I know. Stupidly handsome, isn’t he?’ He gestured at his grey marl sweatshirt and soft blue jeans. ‘I feel like a hobo now.’
‘Oh, rubbish,’ Rachel said. ‘To be honest, he reminds me a bit of a Ken doll: pristine, but best left in his box. You’d mess him up if you played with him too much.’
Tom sniggered at this, and brightened. He opened the file Dev had placed on the table, which Rachel now saw was embossed with the Esteem PR logo. Snazzy.
Inside was the paperwork Dev had promised, and Rachel marvelled at the photographs of his clients as she and Tom began to leaf through them. It appeared that, for most of these people, taking part in a photo shoot without styling, make-up or the promise of retouching would be a new and different experience.
They finished their drinks as they discussed Dev’s brief notes on the celebrities.
‘Zack Lanson …’ Tom muttered. ‘Fashion and lifestyle vlogger. Famous for virtual tours of his wardrobe. Made a video called How to Wear a White T-Shirt that went viral. I mean, what? It says here his heroes are the folk artists and singer-songwriters he listened to growing up. Dear God, he has venues booked for his own musical performances in the spring and summer …’
‘Oh, fair play to him,’ Rachel said easily. ‘He could be amazing for all we know.’
Tom shook his head and chuckled. ‘Call me a doubting Thomas, but I can’t see it … He’ll take a good photo all stripped back, though, and that’s what counts. This whole thing is a great opportunity to get my work out there. And the more gigs like this I get, the less time I’ll have to spend graphic designing. We had a client this week who wanted his whole website redone in various shades of red. It made me want to cry.’
Rachel laughed and winced in sympathy. ‘I’m pleased for you. And now I’m past the point of being able to chicken out, I can see that helping with the copy is going to be fun.’
‘Excellent,’ Tom said, beaming.
‘Another?’ Rachel asked, pointing to his empty glass. ‘My round. Or is it home time?’
‘No more beer for
me, I’m afraid.’ Tom shook his head and looked at his watch, then the floor. ‘I’m meeting someone in Camden at half one, so I’d better think about heading up there soon. I guess I’ll see you sometime next week?’
‘Ah. Sure.’
At a loss for anything else to do, Rachel retrieved her coat from the corner she’d stuffed it into, put it on and hung her handbag on her shoulder.
‘Mind if I take the list of celebs who’ve said they’re in? I’ll leave you with the photos and notes – just thought I’d do some extra research of my own.’
‘No problem,’ Tom said, handing it to her.
‘Great. Well. I’ll see you soon, then.’
She considered kissing him on the cheek but decided against it, instead raising her right hand in a feeble goodbye wave. Why wouldn’t he look her in the eye? And what was that clean, pleasant, lemony smell? Was he wearing aftershave?
A short while later, squeezed against the doors of a packed Piccadilly line train, Rachel wondered who Tom was meeting. It must be a woman, she reasoned. Had he met someone new? Someone he was reluctant to introduce to his friends?
That thought bothered her. It wasn’t like Tom to be cagey – but he clearly hadn’t wanted to discuss this date, whoever it was with.
After five more minutes of poking at her bruised feelings, Rachel concluded that she was hurt. She considered Tom a close friend; she trusted him implicitly. He knew things about her that she’d barely shared with anyone, and it was galling to think that, by contrast, he felt the need to hide things from her.
Stop thinking about it, she instructed herself. You have far bigger problems right now.
The only trouble was, she didn’t want to think about those either.
8
Anna was gone by the time Rachel got back to the flat. She was off for a movie and dinner with Will and would be back sometime tomorrow, so Rachel had the place to herself.
While she never resented Anna’s spending time alone with her boyfriend, Rachel could have done with some company this evening. If she dwelled too much on the events of the past few days, she knew she’d start spiralling. She needed something to do.
Rachel thought about what usually calmed her when she was hovering near a nervo: housework, gardening, attempting something creative in the kitchen. She needed simple activities she could do methodically – the sort that yielded pleasing results and required just enough attention to distract her.
Rachel turned up the volume on a Carole King playlist, plodded to her bedroom and inspected the contents of her laundry hamper. She shoved a dark load in the washer-dryer, then ran warm water and Woolite into the kitchen sink so she could hand-wash the delicates she’d been ignoring since Christmas.
Once she’d hung a selection of damp lingerie and knitwear on Anna’s heated airer, she raided the kitchen cupboards. Sugar, eggs, flour … chocolate chips and bicarb. A bottle of vanilla extract that was only slightly out of date. There was also proper butter in the fridge, which meant she was going to make cookies.
An hour or so later, the soothing scent of sweet dough and melting chocolate permeated every room in the flat. Once they’d cooled, Rachel filled one of Anna’s floral cake tins with biscuits that, though she said it herself, looked mouth-watering.
She kept two aside, then fastened the lid and made a cup of tea. After digging for Dev’s client list in her handbag, she sat down with her laptop and mobile.
Zack Lanson, she soon learned, was the most famous of the group who’d signed up to be part of #NoFilter. Rachel felt her eyes widen as she scrolled through his social feeds and YouTube channel. The white T-shirt video Tom had mentioned earlier had well over a million views.
Alyssia Ahmadi, Rachel discovered, was some kind of wellness warrior. Her Instagram was all cooking with quinoa, daily yoga practice, mindful mantras and designer sportswear. Meanwhile, Joey Nixon was a gaming guru whose reviews of the latest releases could apparently make or break them.
Sophie French seemed to occupy the same cyber space as Jessica Williams: she vlogged and posted about her life and style, partnering with fashion and beauty brands to promote their products. A trawl through Sophie’s Insta history revealed she’d even been an Angeljuice ambassador at one stage.
Rachel’s thoughts drifted back to the bus ads, and she felt the good mood she’d cultivated start leaking out of her like air from a punctured tyre. Without asking herself what she was doing or why, she typed Jessica’s name into Instagram’s search bar and opened her profile.
Every beautifully composed, thoughtfully styled photo was like a punch to Rachel’s gut. She told herself that flipping through Jessica’s summer bikini shots probably qualified as an act of self-harm – but somehow she couldn’t resist the urge to look at them.
The emotions Jessica evoked were similar to those Rachel remembered having in adolescence, standing next to her older, more beautiful (and, crucially, non-ginger) sister in family photographs. Rachel’s discomfort had usually showed in the developed images; she’d be scowling, looking away from the camera or grinning through gritted teeth. She’d ruined every picture she was in, or at least that was how it had felt. By contrast, Lizzy had always looked relaxed and happy – unconcerned that the click of a camera button might see her weighed, measured and found wanting.
Grown-up Rachel had spent years trying not to compare her appearance or achievements to anyone else’s, and she knew that Tom was right: she didn’t need to. Rachel was her own person, and broadly happy with herself. Yet Jessica retained a unique power to make her feel dumpy, dull and deficient.
Rachel licked a finger, swept up the cookie crumbs from her plate and devoured them. If this was stress-eating, she decided it wasn’t entirely unjustified after the week she’d had. Maybe just one more …
As she’d once said to Anna, it wasn’t merely the fact that Jack had cheated on her that hurt. It was also the way he’d done it – and who with.
During his pursuit of Rachel, he’d made much of her romantic, singular look: the idea that she was beautiful – handsome, even – rather than conventionally pretty. The strong features Rachel had been teased about in childhood sat differently in her adult face. Without realising it, she’d grown into them in her late teens, and her deep-brown eyes, creamy skin and generous lips – the top one slightly larger than its partner – now combined with her copper waves to give her a dreamy, soulful bearing.
Nevertheless, Rachel had never quite shaken off the idea that she was inelegant and odd-looking. She’d been surprised to discover she appealed to males of the species – particularly the unkempt, poetic types she’d met on her English degree course. But for all Jack’s effusive praise of her ‘difference’, he’d gone and slept with someone lithe, mahogany-haired and tanned: a woman nine out of ten cads would have voted better-looking. It was so depressingly obvious, at the same time as feeling like a stunning volte-face.
Rachel’s memory wound back to her first meeting with Jack, during Freshers’ Week. He’d stood in line next to her at an onboarding event, making wild predictions about which student societies she’d join. ‘Women’s rugby team? Lego Club? The Princess Diana Society! Hang on … Jane Austen Is My Spirit Animal Soc?’ She’d finally laughed at that and said, ‘Bang to rights.’
They’d become friends, but Rachel had worked hard to keep her wits about her when he turned on the charm. Even then she’d been expert at checking her own emotions – consigning inconvenient feelings to hidden corners of her heart, from which they’d struggle to resurface.
Ultimately, though, refusing to fall for Jack had become exhausting. It took effort not to let him hold her gaze when he focused his green eyes on her; it was tough to resist the repositioning of a friendly hand slung around her shoulder when it migrated to the small of her back.
Two years on he’d worn her down, drawn her in. It was only once Rachel was completely suckered that he’d decided to burn everything down. It was this, above all, that she had never forgiven him, or herself, fo
r.
And now Jack was back: a changed man, or so he claimed. A married man, perhaps …
Rachel’s hand hovered over her computer keyboard. She’d resisted looking for Jack on the internet for so long that even the thought of searching for his Facebook profile felt illicit. She wondered if this was what a recovering alcoholic might feel like, trying to face down a tumbler of twenty-five-year-old single malt.
Her fingertips shook slightly as she tapped out his name. Writing it felt like admitting he was real again: like bringing him back to life.
He was here, and they had six mutual friends – presumably people they’d been at university with. His page was private, but some of his photos were visible. In his profile picture he wore a navy suit with a crisp white shirt, a cornflower-blue tie and a yellow crocus in the buttonhole. There was a flute of something sparkling in his right hand, and his left arm was wrapped around the slender waist of a woman in a white 1950s-style dress. A wedding dress.
Anna had been right, then. Jack had a wife.
As she stared at the image, transfixed by the sincerity of his smile, Rachel found she wasn’t bitter or devastated. To her surprise, it seemed she wasn’t anything, really.
She felt oddly numb, as though this were information she couldn’t quite compute. It was like being convinced you understood a person, only to find out they had a secret identity – that they weren’t who you thought they were at all.
At least one thing made sense: Jack’s wife was predictably pretty. She had Nordic-blonde hair cut in a sleek, shining bob. Her eyes were big and blue – almost doll-like – made up with flawless, flicky black liner. Her red-lipsticked mouth was spread wide in a warm, happy smile that matched her new husband’s.
This was fine, Rachel told herself. More than fine. Perhaps it was even ideal. Jack being married drew a very neat line under their history. Rachel felt relieved, as if she’d just been given a booster vaccination: a shot that would supercharge her immunity to him.
Satisfied, she shut her laptop. Maybe she’d run a bath and start a new book, then order in a pizza for dinner. She padded to the bathroom, poured a capful of her favourite foam into the tub and turned on the taps.
Rachel Ryan's Resolutions Page 7
