Rachel Ryan's Resolutions

by Laura Starkey

  In light of what had happened last week, it now seemed at least possible – perhaps even likely – that Laurence had been here looking for her that afternoon. The idea made Rachel feel a bit queasy, not to mention mad with indignation. Laurence had no right to stalk around North London trying to hunt her down. She was a woman who’d decided to stop seeing him, not a lost briefcase he needed to locate.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jack asked. ‘You keep craning to look at the door. It’s like you’re waiting for the police to burst in and arrest you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Rachel insisted. ‘I’m good.’ She sat a little further back in her chair, willing herself to relax. There was no way she was explaining the Laurence disaster to Jack, and after the wine bar incident it seemed unlikely she’d hear from him again in any case.

  ‘Where are we, by the way?’ Jack said quietly, so that only Rachel could hear. ‘It’s like a museum in here … A tribute to late-twentieth-century greasy spoons. Or did we step through a time portal I didn’t notice and travel back to 1982?’

  Rachel glowered at him as she shuffled through the pile of documents she’d brought with her, then slid several of them across the table in his direction.

  Jack’s face had lit up, animated by his thorough enjoyment of teasing her. He hassled his hair with his right hand, then leaned his unshaven chin on his palm in a simper. ‘You always did bring me to the nicest places.’

  ‘And you always were a horrible snob,’ Rachel said, crossing her arms and averting her eyes from his face. ‘For your information, the food here is amazing – mainly because Cyril cooks everything in proper butter and doesn’t believe in cholesterol. And if you still aren’t convinced about this place after your sausage sandwich, just think of it as payback: it’s the equal and opposite to Friday, and our horrible Old Harrovians’ reunion.’

  Jack laughed, and Rachel caught herself feeling warmed by the sound of it – satisfied that she’d bested him. Stop, she instructed herself.

  At that moment Cyril appeared with a tray. He put down two large mugs of tea and a pair of plates, then grinned and winked at Rachel as he shuffled away, his bulbous stomach swaying as he went, swelling over the waistband of his joggers.

  The bacon in Rachel’s sandwich was fried to perfection – so well done she could have snapped it in two. Ketchup oozed from between the two thick slices of white bread. Cyril knew her well.

  Jack looked at his food quizzically, clearly astonished at the sight of a cafe breakfast that didn’t involve avocado, perfectly poached eggs or organic sourdough. Nevertheless, within five minutes he’d wolfed it.

  ‘I have to admit it,’ he said as Rachel crunched the last of her bacon. ‘That was delicious. I can already feel my arteries clogging, but it was worth it.’

  ‘Told you so.’ Rachel nodded, picking up her tea and rolling the still-hot mug between her palms. ‘But we should talk about the project now we’ve eaten.’ She was keen to keep this ‘date’ as professional as possible.

  ‘Sure,’ Jack said with a shrug. He spent a few minutes looking through the documents she’d given him, then tipped his head sideways and looked at her from beneath knitted brows.

  ‘Go on,’ Rachel said. ‘Don’t spare me.’

  ‘Okay. What you have here is definitely better than what any of the other agencies put together. But it’s still a bit …’

  ‘Dull. Boring. I know.’ Rachel groaned and put her mug back on the table.

  ‘I wasn’t going to say boring,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe more … teacher-y. There’s interesting stuff in there, but it feels too educational. Too worthy.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Rachel said, chewing the end of the biro she was holding. ‘That’s it. I agree with you. I mean, I know we need to make the facts and the history feel relevant … Not present them as something people “should” find fascinating on principle. But clearly I need to do better. Looking at them again, there are still bits of these mock-ups that read like a GCSE textbook.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Rachel murmured again. ‘I wonder … Ironically, I reckon I might need to think more like a teacher here.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well. Anna spends half her life trying to convince kids that works of great literature – even if they’re hundreds of years old – still have something to say to us, here and now. I’ve seen her plan enough lessons to know the trick is putting the right twist on whatever text they have to study.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Jack said, and he was. Rachel had his full attention; it was nerve-wracking, exhilarating, like being trapped in the beam of a searchlight.

  ‘So what if …’ Rachel was thinking on the spot now, but she felt like she was chasing an idea worth pursuing. ‘What if instead of focusing on the houses and the stuff inside them, we thought about who owned them or worked in them? Humanised it all a bit?’

  Jack nodded at her, his green eyes bright with interest.

  ‘Most of these places are hundreds of years old,’ she continued, fizzing with excitement. ‘Each one has to have had at least one resident with a story worth telling. Right?’

  ‘Sure. You’d certainly think so.’

  ‘So, we find those stories. And we use them as a hook – we create content about the love affairs people had, the gambling debts they ran up, the insane art collections they amassed … We bring historical facts into focus through the drama.’

  ‘That sounds like a strategy to me.’ Jack grinned.

  ‘You think?’ Rachel grinned back. Her smile was broad, sincere and unguarded; delight at having hit upon the right approach made her forget, for a moment, who she was bestowing it upon.

  ‘There’s actually loads we could do with this,’ Jack said, suddenly energised, dragging a hand through his hair again. Rachel wondered if it was unconscious, or an affectation designed to make other people think about tangling their own fingers in it. Either way, she wished it didn’t work. ‘We could encourage social sharing,’ he went on. ‘Get people using hashtags to mark which stories resonate with them. If we can convince Humphrey to spend the money, we could do some amazing interactive stuff through a BHGH app: maybe even augmented-reality content where you could put your own face in a portrait, an important item of clothing or whatever.’

  ‘That could be cool.’ Rachel nodded. ‘I think there’s something here. I’ll pick a couple of the bigger properties and see how the approach might work – check it has legs. Maybe we could catch up again tomorrow when I’ve mocked up some new materials?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Jack placed his hands flat on the tabletop, then pushed himself up out of his chair, still smiling. ‘Guess we should get on, now we know what we’re doing.’ They both bundled coats, scarves and gloves back on before waving their thanks to Cyril and heading out into the cold.

  As they walked the short distance back to the office, Rachel felt elation and unease fighting for supremacy inside her. The thrill of beginning what she knew would be good work was muddled with disquiet at how well she and Jack had pulled together: how easily they’d come up with a plan worth pitching.

  She’d never wanted to be paired with him – everything in her had resisted the idea that they could be a team. Yet this had been natural. Effortless.

  Even worse, it had felt good.

  ‘I’m really not sure about this, Greg,’ Rachel said as she stepped across the threshold of Viva Vinyasa yoga studio on Thursday night. ‘I have no coordination, no flexibility and no balance. I’m going to topple over and kill someone.’

  Greg, lurking behind her in the doorway, gave her a gentle shove and said, ‘Don’t be idiotic. The mats are well spaced and you’d never kill anyone even if you did land on them. Maybe just cause extensive bruising.’ He pushed her again, harder this time. ‘I promised you katsu curry and cocktails after this, but my side of the deal only stands if yours does. Go.’

  Reluctant but resigned, Rachel trudged forward and found a mat in the furthest corner of the room. Ther
e were only two others nearby, which she reasoned reduced the chances of her accidentally battering a fellow yogi. Greg took the mat to her left, adopting a serene cross-legged pose that Rachel thought she should probably try to imitate. She let the studio’s plinky-plunky music wash over her as she shut her eyes, instructing herself to relax.

  Moments later the yoga teacher appeared as if from nowhere. ‘Namaste,’ she said, in precisely the kind of breathy, ethereal voice Rachel had expected. ‘Welcome to our friends and to our newcomers tonight. I’m Jasmine. I’ll be with you this evening as we breathe through a flow of poses to stretch, unwind and strengthen your muscles and minds. My wish,’ she continued in her airy sing-song, ‘is that we’ll leave here tonight a little sweaty, perhaps, but … serene. Settled in our very deepest selves.’

  Sweaty but serene? Rachel tried not to laugh.

  ‘This woman talks like a cult leader,’ she hissed at Greg. ‘I bet she’s actually from Barnsley or somewhere, and her real name is Sharon. Beneath her accent lies a northern lass desperate for escape.’

  Greg stuck his tongue out at her. ‘Shut up, you cynic. Jasmine’s an excellent teacher. And as far as I know, she’s from Henley-on-Thames.’

  ‘We’ll begin with some deep breathing, as always,’ Jasmine crooned. ‘Then we will gliiiiiide into mountain pose.’

  Everyone in the room began arranging their bodies into elegant shapes. Greg seemed to know what he was doing, so Rachel parked her sarcasm in favour of trying to copy him. The last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself and her cluelessness.

  As Rachel tried to keep up, the effort required to do the right things at the right times drove all other thoughts from her mind. It was a little like when she was running: holding her body in positions that challenged it rendered her unable to ruminate on anything else. For this she was grateful.

  Over the past few days Rachel and Jack had continued working on the new strategy for British House and Garden Heritage, in preparation for next week’s presentation. Rachel knew their stuff was good, but the pleasure she’d taken in creating it unnerved her. Some part of her knew their old closeness had helped rather than hindered them.

  When they were brainstorming, their chemistry was undeniable – ideas sparked like tiny electric shocks between them, occasionally flashing bright enough that Rachel worried other people might notice.

  Outside those conversations, though, Rachel remained angry with Jack – and afraid of what might happen if she let her resentment go. Years of dismissing him as all style and no substance had ended abruptly, with the uncomfortable realisation that, while he obviously lacked humility, Jack didn’t want for intelligence. Working with him so closely over the past few weeks had reminded Rachel that he was creative and clever, as well as stupidly charming.

  Lying on her back on her yoga mat, her limbs dewy with perspiration, Rachel heard Jasmine say, ‘And now come back to yourselves, back into this room. Let your consciousness drift up, lift into the here and the now. Allow any worries still lingering in your mind to dissipate, fade away, like ripples on a pond. Be well,’ she concluded, impressively.

  A chime sounded, signalling the end of the session. People began to sit up, gathering their things and nodding to Jasmine as they departed. Rachel looked at Greg, who wore a smooth, vacant expression that made her want to laugh.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy that,’ he said under his breath. ‘I could see you got into it. You were pretty good too, for a first-timer.’

  Rachel pulled her socks on, then hauled herself to her feet. There was no changing room at Viva Vinyasa, which was a small, independent space run by Jasmine and her partner. Rachel and Greg had agreed to go for dinner in their yoga gear, so she shrugged on an oversized slogan sweatshirt, retied her ponytail and put on her boots and coat.

  ‘Ready?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Greg said, buttoning up his coat and winding a long crimson scarf around his neck. ‘Admit it: you had fun.’

  ‘I’ve exercised muscles I’d forgotten I even had, and had to hold in about a hundred snarky comments. I feel like it’s done me some good, though.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ Greg said. ‘Shall we eat?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Greg led her on a short walk into Clerkenwell, stopping when they arrived at a restaurant with a green neon sign that promised noodles, sushi and bento.

  Inside, they ordered cherry blossom spritzers and – on Greg’s strong recommendation – two katsu curries (tofu for him, chicken for her), plus a portion of gyoza dumplings. Once their waitress had delivered their drinks, along with a small dish of salted edamame, Rachel said, ‘So, how have you been? How is it being Mr Important? I miss you. It’s weird not working with you every day.’

  Greg arched an eyebrow. ‘From where I’ve been standing, it seems like you’re coping pretty well without me. Maybe even enjoying the change.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rachel asked, pausing with a bean halfway between the bowl and her mouth.

  ‘It means that when you first told me what had happened between you and Jack, I’d have put money on you quitting your job or killing him within a couple of weeks … At the very least, I expected you to look miserable all day, every day. And you don’t.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Obviously no one else in the office knows you used to be together, but I’ll be honest: I don’t think reports of a romantic connection between you would exactly be front-page news. It’s pretty clear there’s something there. My question is: what?’

  ‘We’re teammates,’ Rachel said, shifting in her seat and staring hard at the melting ice in her cocktail. ‘That’s it. I’m just trying to make the best of it.’

  ‘Psshhhhh. You’re clearly still attracted to him.’

  Rachel looked up sharply, contemplated denial and then dismissed the idea, sagging back against her chair.

  ‘Fine. Maybe I am. But that’s irrelevant. I can recognise he’s nice to look at without doing anything about it. Without even liking him, necessarily. And he doesn’t need to know.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Greg said. ‘Maybe not. But I think he’d be interested in the information.’

  ‘No way. Definitely not.’ Rachel shook her head emphatically.

  Greg chuckled. ‘Ray, for a highly intelligent woman you’re incredibly bad at reading people. Bordering on dim-witted.’

  ‘Honestly, you’re the one who’s reading this situation wrong. I’m certain of it. I have good reason to be.’

  Greg shook his head, untroubled by her defence. ‘Whatever you think you know, put it to one side and look at the situation with your own eyes. You’re ignoring what everyone else can see, plain as day.’

  ‘What do you mean, “everyone”?’

  ‘I mean me, obviously. And possibly Donna – she seems to be taking an interest.’

  Rachel groaned. ‘This is ridiculous. I don’t even know what we’re talking about, and yet I feel like I’m going to have the scarlet letter pinned to my jumper when I come into work tomorrow.’

  ‘Let me break it down for you, darl. Nobody apart from me knows about your history with Jack, but your colleagues are not blind. People are starting to notice he’s into you.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Rachel said, with a short laugh that she hoped would signal contempt for the idea. Her heart seemed to be beating too hard and too far up her torso. Her pulse was throbbing in her throat.

  ‘Ray,’ Greg sighed. ‘He’s desperate to get your attention. Maybe it’s just to see if he can catch you a second time, or maybe he’s genuinely smitten. But he looks at you like he can’t decide whether to ruffle your hair or eat you.’

  Rachel shivered as her stomach performed a somersault.

  ‘As for you,’ Greg went on, pointing at her with a forkful of vegan gyoza, ‘you look at him like you can’t decide whether to run for the hills or serve yourself up in a snack box.’

  ‘GREG,’ Rachel moaned, burying her face in her
hands. ‘Stop.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say is, I get it: you’re confused. Your formerly frosty feelings towards Jack have melted somewhat in the face of his hotness. Just be careful. I’ve always thought dipping your pen in the office ink is a bad move – and that’s in situations where someone hasn’t already revealed themselves to be a cheating bastard.’

  ‘Nobody is going to be dipping anything anywhere,’ Rachel said, embarrassed and off balance. ‘And honestly, I think you should be giving me props for my professionalism here. It’s been quite an effort just being civil to Jack most of the time. Now can we please change the subject?’

  As if in answer to her plea, the waitress reappeared with the rest of their food and set it down in front of them. ‘Another round of drinks?’ she asked.

  ‘As soon as you can possibly bring them,’ Rachel said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘More booze on a school night?’ Greg grinned, raising an eyebrow at her.

  ‘It has green stuff in it,’ Rachel scowled. ‘And fruit. You’re always telling me I should enjoy more plant-based foods.’

  He smiled at her again, then suddenly burst out: ‘Oh my GOD, I almost forgot to tell you about Valentine’s Day!’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, apparently Mountaintop Media make a big thing of it every year. And now we’re part of the fold, R/C will be doing the same.’

  ‘Gross,’ Rachel said. ‘What’s going to be happening? If there are plans for a kissing booth or a man auction, I’m going to have to call in sick.’

  ‘No, no,’ Greg said, ‘nothing like that. It’s all about balloons, apparently.’

  ‘Balloons?’

  ‘Yes. Colleagues are encouraged to order balloons for one another anonymously – in theory, for the sake of expressing professional admiration, rather than a latent desire to hump each other. You pay two pounds for each balloon you want to send, write the card that goes with it, and all the money raised goes to charity on behalf of the agency. Then, on V-Day morning, volunteers come in early to decorate the office. All the balloons are tied to their recipients’ chairs – each one with its own little note from the sender – so that when people get to work they have a fun surprise.’