‘What does he do?’
‘Works miracles, obviously.’ Felicity laughed and sipped some more slime. ‘I’ve gone for the Elite Ripped package. Three personal training sessions a week with Fidel, all my meals and shakes delivered and motivational calls to keep me going whenever I need them. But there are lower-tier deals, too. Like, you can download a personalised training schedule and upload pics of your food before you eat it and he tells you if it’s okay.’
‘It sounds hardcore,’ I said.
‘Well, it gets results. Especially the programme I’m doing. It’s called the Ten-Week Accelerator. If my body fat isn’t down below twenty per cent by the end, I get my money back.’
Intrigued in spite of myself, I asked, ‘How much does it cost? And what do you get to eat?’
‘Fidel doesn’t come cheap,’ Felicity admitted. ‘But obviously everything’s included in the seven hundred pounds a week.’
‘Seven hundred…?’ Well. Even if I hadn’t known what a terrible idea it would be for me, I knew now that Felicity’s regime was as far beyond my reach as bench-pressing my own body weight. Even what my body weight would be after completing Fidel Blake’s Elite Ripped Ten-Week Accelerator programme.
‘So for the first four days I don’t eat anything,’ Felicity carried on, glancing at her phone even though I suspected she’d committed the entire ordeal that lay ahead of her to memory already. ‘Just the shakes. But they’re totally nutritionally balanced, with optimal amounts of protein, fat and micronutrients, tailored to my unique body composition. I’m on day three now. So on Wednesday I get some eggs, a superfood salad and another shake. Thursday’s a high-carb day. Breakfast is chia seed and carob power porridge, and apparently it’s orgasmic. Friday’s a high-fat day, with salmon for lunch, and then on Saturday I’m allowed booze again – any white spirit, with a zero-calorie mixer. Reckon I’ll need it. And Renzo’s back from Singapore this weekend, so we can celebrate.’
A vodka and soda didn’t sound like much of a celebration to me, even if it was with Renzo. Although, if it were possible to swap places with Felicity, I’d happily have taken the agonising workouts and green slime if he came as part of the deal. For the millionth time, I had to subdue my resentment of her – after all, I’d basically given their relationship my blessing.
But that wasn’t the only thing troubling me. Felicity’s lush curves, the way she ate without self-consciousness or fear of being judged, her effortless sensuousness, all seemed such a fundamental part of her. If I was like that, there’s no way I’d want to change it by embarking on a ten-week marathon of slime and squats. It was like Nigella Lawson saying she’d gone vegan.
But I knew all too well how I would leap to my own defence if someone asked – as they had done so often when I was enduring one of my own ‘I like the gym, and anyway, steamed butternut squash is a carb, don’t you know anything?’ phases – if I was okay.
So I asked gently, ‘Is there something in particular that’s made you decide this is right for you?’
Felicity shrugged and smiled. There was a bit of green stuff caught between her perfectly straight, pearl-white teeth. ‘Summer’s just around the corner. Pru’s friend Jonty was talking about a week on his yacht in Cannes in May and he asked if I’d like to come. I thought I might invite Renzo. So, you know, I want to look my best.’
I imagined Felicity wafting round the deck of a yacht in a bikini, with a sarong draped around her hips, sipping a glass of whatever people sipped on yachts. In my head, Renzo appeared behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and swept her off to their stateroom, or whatever the hell the places where beds are on yachts are called. In my head, she looked amazing. And she was – there was no way a skinny, ripped version of her would have looked better.
But I just said, ‘Blimey. Well, good luck with it.’
‘I’ll need it,’ she replied grimly. ‘How was your weekend, anyway? How’s your new housemate?’
I took a deep breath. Now was the moment I’d rehearsed over and over, unable to decide what, if anything, I was going to say. My choices were clear: I could tell the truth about Josh – that he was just a housemate – or I could elaborate on the fiction I’d talked to Adam about, in the hope that what I told Felicity would get back to Renzo and prompt him to do… something.
‘He’s nice,’ I said. ‘A musician. He’s looking for freelance session work, playing guitar with bands, and he’s talking about finding a studio to do some production work.’
Felicity raised a perfectly microbladed eyebrow. ‘When you say nice…?’
‘That kind of nice,’ I said. It was perfectly true – by any reasonable person’s standards, Josh was attractive. ‘He’s hot. Tall, blond, amazing green eyes. Like I said, I knew him when I was a teenager in Cornwall, before he moved to Australia with his mum. It’s kind of weird seeing him all grown up.’
‘A surfer dude. Nice indeed. I can just imagine it – a thwarted teenage crush, years pass, you think of each other occasionally, wondering what if…? Then suddenly, you come back into each other’s lives and – bam. It’s like he never left. All the old passion is reignited, only now the sweet boy has grown into a man.’
I laughed. ‘You should be writing for Take a Break.’
‘No, no. If it was Take a Break he’d have run off with your sister, leaving you broken-hearted. Desperate for a baby, you’d have turned to a sperm bank and then, when he returned from his long, lonely years in Australia, regretting the terrible mistake he’d made, and met your son for the first time, you noticed their identical green eyes and you realised… God, I love that magazine. It’s my guilty pleasure. I always buy a copy to take with me to the hairdresser because they only have bloody Vogue and Harper’s. Anyway, so you and this – what’s his name?’
‘Josh. Josh Valentine.’
‘Valentine! That’s just perfect, you couldn’t make it up. “Me and My Valentine”, the story would be called. So you’re taking things up where you left off?’
Of course, that’s when I should have told her. I should have laughed off her funny little made-up romance and fessed up that there had never been anything between me and Josh – outside of my own wistful teenage imagination – and there wasn’t going to be now. In the interests of absolutely full disclosure, I could even have told her that I wasn’t in the market for a new boyfriend because I still wasn’t over the old one.
But I didn’t. I said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see. I’m not rushing into anything.’
‘Well then, I’ll hold off buying a new hat for your wedding until you tell me different. That’s so exciting, though! When do I get to meet him? We must make a plan to go out next week when I’m back on the booze. I can’t wait to tell Renzo.’
Job done, I thought. There didn’t need to be anything between me and Josh – Felicity’s enthusiastic embellishment of the story she’d made up with almost no prompting from me would be all I’d wanted. By tonight – or whenever Felicity next WhatsApped him – Renzo would believe that I was newly and blissfully loved- up with an old flame from my past. And I hadn’t even had to fib. I felt bad about misleading Felicity – or rather allowing her to mislead herself – but I pushed my guilt aside. And as for Josh – well, if he ended up being a pawn in my game, that was too bad. It wasn’t like he’d never played by those rules himself.
It was almost nine thirty; I had a call with a supplier in Shaoxing at ten and our departmental meeting was about to start. Hopefully, Barri wouldn’t decide to gatecrash this time. I turned to my email and, as if summoned like Lord Voldemort, there was his name right at the top of my inbox with a red ‘urgent’ flag alongside it. My heart sank as I clicked on it, wondering what I’d done wrong this time, but to my relief the message was to the whole of the buying team, not just me.
Guys, I need your sales figures for year to date updated and your budget forecasts completed with detailed cost and scenario analyses by close of play today. No excuses.
It was typical of my b
oss’s communication style that there was no salutation on the email and no sign-off. Barri liked to appear far too busy for such fripperies and, to be fair, he probably was. But then how long did it actually take to type ‘Hi’ and ‘Thanks’?
‘Shit,’ I muttered to Kris as we all gathered our things and headed for the meeting room. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting my mentee this afternoon. Guess I’ll have to blow her out and do that stupid forecast instead. It was only meant to be due on Friday.’
‘Good morning, everyone,’ Lisa said as we all took our places around the meeting room table. ‘Just a quick one today, as I’m sure you’ll all have seen Barri’s email and know we’ve got a busy day ahead of us. There are no announcements from the management team meeting, so I just wanted to make sure you were all okay to deliver the work he’s asked for.’
No one said anything. There was no point asking if someone else could meet Chelsea that afternoon – she was my responsibility. If I didn’t get my forecast done I’d have to cancel – that was all there was to it.
Then Sally said, ‘Do you know why he’s asked us to do this? I mean, it’s a normal part of our jobs, but why’s it so flipping urgent all of a sudden?’
Sally had happened to mention to me that, thanks to a cancellation, she’d managed to get an appointment to have platinum highlights at a nearby salon with a stylist who’d done Emilia Clarke’s hair and normally had a three-month waiting list. So I could understand her frustration at having to sack off having her hair transformed in favour of tearing it out over a spreadsheet all afternoon.
‘I…’ Lisa paused. ‘Well, it’s not official but it’s not confidential either, so I suppose you may as well know. Barri’s been approached by a venture capitalist who’s interested in buying into the business. As you know, he received a round of funding four years ago, which allowed us to move into this office and expand into menswear, footwear and lingerie. This latest injection of cash would take the business up to a level where we’d really be able to start to compete with the major players in the market. The investor is doing his due diligence before making a decision, and so has requested all this information.’
‘Does that mean Barri’s selling Luxeforless?’ Kris asked.
‘Certainly not,’ Lisa said. ‘I know he’d want me to reassure you all – and I’m sure he will do so himself once things are a bit more certain – that this should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. Investment at this kind of level brings the potential for real growth, not just for the business, but for all of us. The VC investor in question – I definitely can’t name any names at this stage – has worked with some major players in the industry and transformed them from promising mid-level businesses to household names.’
Which she couldn’t name either, I thought, because otherwise we’d all have been on Google the second we left the meeting, figuring out who Luxeforless’s new shareholder was going to be.
‘What about Barri?’ I asked. ‘Will he still… I mean, will he be as hands-on as he’s always been?’
Will he still bully us all mercilessly and taunt us with his platters of pastries in meetings, was what I meant.
‘Barri is widely respected as the founder of Luxeforless and the vision behind the business,’ Lisa said, as if she was reciting from a PowerPoint presentation, which, for all I knew, she might have been. ‘In every meaningful sense, he is Luxeforless. The vision behind the company is his, it remains driven by his boldness, creativity and integrity. I’m sure that any cash injection the enterprise received would be conditional upon his remaining at the helm of the management team.’
Definitely a PowerPoint presentation, I thought. Probably one written by Barri himself.
‘Any more questions?’ Lisa asked, looking relieved that she’d got that spiel off her chest, word-perfect. She glanced around the table and we all shook our heads. ‘Good. Then shall we all crack on? If we end up needing to pull a late one, Daria’s promised to order in some sushi.’
We all filed out and headed back to our desks. It was only when I was sitting down, checking my phone, that I noticed a text from Chelsea saying that she wouldn’t be able to meet me that afternoon because something urgent had come up (actually, her message said, Can’t make today, soz, problems). It was then that I realised something strange. Felicity hadn’t said a word the whole time we were in there. Not a question, not a smile, not a widening of her eyes. She’d sat there silently through it all, staring down at her hands like she’d never seen a manicure before – except when she’d been tapping, almost stealthily, at her phone under the table. No one else had seen, but because I’d been sitting right next to her, I had.
Sixteen
The next day, Josh got an easyJet flight to Belfast, where he’d landed a short-notice gig working on an album for a singer called Ruby Wells, whose regular producer had pulled out at the last minute. Actually, Josh told me, her regular producer, who was also Ruby’s boyfriend, hadn’t pulled out at all when he was shagging the bass player, who was now pregnant. So the whole thing had blown up into an almighty mess a week before Ruby’s contract stipulated that she was due to deliver her album to her record label, and reinforcements were being called in from all over to replace the musicians who’d been sacked and the people who’d taken sides that weren’t Ruby’s.
And, at the same time, Adam was packed off to a cybersecurity conference in Berlin for three days by Colton Capital.
The house, which I’d worried would feel crowded with the two of them there, felt empty and almost unnaturally quiet without them. Each evening when I got home from work, Freezer’s little white face appeared at the window looking for his friends, but when he saw that it was only me there, he turned around and flounced off back home in a way that was quite frankly insulting.
I guess I should have enjoyed having the place to myself – being able to wander around in my pants and hog the bathroom for hours and watch Say Yes to the Dress on the sofa downstairs without someone asking what the fuck this shit was and being able to eat kale salads without Adam saying he was going to order a curry and did I want some.
But I found I missed them.
I missed the glimmer of light through Adam’s open bedroom door and the sound of his chair wheeling around on the wooden floor. I missed seeing him in the kitchen in the mornings, eating toast over the sink so he didn’t have to put a plate in the dishwasher and asking, ‘Coffee, Tans?’
And, although Josh had only been living there for a few weeks, I’d got used to the smell of his shampoo in the shower, the twang of the strings as he tuned his guitar and even his muddy trainers on the shoe rack in the hallway. I could have gone out, since my Prada bag had sold at last and I was relatively flush, but I wasn’t feeling the vibe. I tried going out for a run in the park, but it wasn’t so much fun without Josh, and I gave up and headed home after ten minutes.
I even missed the regular, tense stand-offs I’d witnessed the boys having in the kitchen in the mornings when Freezer dropped in for a fuss and wound himself around four legs instead of just Adam’s two, purring and miaowing. The two of them practically had a tug-of-war over who’d get to give him the three cat treats that were all Hannah had said he was allowed, because the vet had noticed him getting a bit podgy.
I found myself turning off all the downstairs lights and going up to bed early, so that the house would be in darkness. But then, with only the faint glow of my bedside lamp lighting the top floor, strange shadows seemed to crowd in on me. The normal noises of the house – the creak of a floor joist as the evening cooled, the tick of a radiator pipe, the swish of car tyres on the road outside – all jerked me from sleep even though they were the same sounds I heard every night. And when at last the house was silent, I could hear the click, click, click of Dad’s computer mouse in my head, even though he was hundreds of miles away.
I pressed my eyes shut and began counting slowly backwards from one hundred, trying to focus on the ‘now’ like a mindfulness app I once downloaded said to
do. I forced my awareness back to my breathing, to the familiar sounds of the house.
Then my phone buzzed, jerking me into alertness again. I hoped it would be Chelsea – my last three texts to her had gone unanswered, and I was getting concerned. But it was a WhatsApp from Felicity:
Meeting Pru and Phil at Home House tomorrow at 10. R might join us. Fancy coming? Bring your new chap?
I tapped out a quick reply saying I’d love to, but I didn’t know whether Josh was free – which was true, I wasn’t even sure whether he’d be back from Northern Ireland – and then I watched random YouTube make-up tutorials until eventually, long after midnight, I fell asleep and had horrible, disconcerting dreams all night. Most of them I don’t remember, but in the one I do, Adam and Josh were at Chelsea’s market stall having a proper bitch fight over a beaded red dress. What that meant about what was going on in my subconscious mind I don’t even want to know.
The crash of the front door woke me just after nine o’clock, and I heard the familiar tread of Josh’s feet on the stairs. Honestly, what was it about the man that he couldn’t move around the house without sounding like a herd of stampeding elephants? I huddled down under the duvet and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no good; I could hear him doing what was presumably his version of tiptoeing as he went to the bathroom, then to his bedroom and started unpacking his stuff.
I got up and went to the bathroom myself, showered, dressed and followed the smell of toast and coffee downstairs.
‘Morning,’ I said. ‘How did the job go?’
‘It was good,’ Josh said, pouring coffee and yawning hugely. ‘I’m knackered, though. We had to pull an all-nighter last night to get the last track recorded. I came straight from the studio to the airport. Talk about full-on. But Ruby’s a pro. You’d never know from her vocals that she was going through a messy break-up, except on the song she wrote at the last minute.’
It's Not You It's Him: An absolutely hilarious and feel-good romantic comedy Page 18
