A Girl Like You (31 page)

Chapter Forty Five

Monday morning, and the first day of my new job – no, my new
life
.

The winning I’m-not-from-an-investment-bank-I’m-a-totally-cool-media-person-like-you outfit: my favourite J Brand jeans, layered long-sleeved white T-shirts, a big loopy scarf and a sharp navy jacket. Hair in a very high messy bun. I tie the laces of my new leather Converses with a sigh of happiness (goodbye achey work heels!), and survey the results in the mirror. I don’t need Pretty With A Punch anymore. I wear what I want, and I just feel like me.

Robert’s already left of course. JimmyJames has bombed the living room with shoes, clothes, coins, scrunched up bits of paper . . . At least it’ll be annoying Robert too, I think grimly.

I’ve stayed out of their way since the takeaway incident last week. It hasn’t been hard, thanks to all Sophie’s wedding admin. I never thought I’d hate something as innocuous as a wedding programme, but once you’ve folded 120 of the little fuckers and laced ribbon through the corner, you’re ready to punch a vicar. The wedding is in three weeks. Just three weeks till we’re all at the same bridal party table. Dave. Bella. Robert. And me.

The office is in an old building on Dean Street, and at exactly 9.58 am, after two calming coffees and a deeply enjoyable Soho-people-watch, I walk in. I’m not nervous, bizarrely. I feel calm and excited, but not nervous. Now that I think about it, I haven’t been nervous about anything since Hong Kong. I’ve literally been cured of nerves, my long-time nemesis . . . Perhaps it was the shock of seeing Dave and Bella. Or the shock of waking up next to Robert.

Thinking this, I walk into the building laughing out loud, and a security guard watching TV at a desk gives me a funny look.

I prepare my first ‘enthusiastic new employee’ face. What I’m not prepared for is Katherine, who runs down the stairs two at a time, and leans in to give me a double cheek-kiss hello and a warm hug.

‘Wonderful to see you!’ she exclaims. ‘How are you?’

‘Fantastic!’ I say. ‘How are you?’

‘Frantic. I’m so glad you’re here. Right. Let’s go.’

Intuition Films is on the top floor, and I note with another thrill that there’s no irritating security tag needed to get in to the office. Huge windows line one side of the room, real windows that can actually open over the Mary Poppins rooftops of Soho. The office is a warm, creative mess, with eight people stationed at computers, several couches stacked here and there, film posters all over the walls, and Roxy Music – ah! Roxy Music! – playing softly. I can see a tiny galley kitchen where a young guy in skinny jeans and a hoodie is buttering some toast.

‘This is your desk,’ says Katherine, depositing me next to a large desk in the far corner, next to the window. A new-looking laptop is sitting there waiting for me. ‘Most days we start at 10ish, and finish at 6 pm or so. Everything should be set up. If you need anything, call me or ask Robyn, the office manager,’ she turns and points back to a blonde woman at the other end of the office. I nod. ‘We’ve got a Luxury Project production meeting at 11 am. I’ll come and get you.’

I can’t describe how interesting my day is without sounding like, frankly, a total geek, but it’s incredible how my interest in the luxury market and finance is fired up, simply by looking at it from another angle. We need to make the main finance stories of the past decade both interesting and digestible, and I have loads of ideas. At first, I’m a bit timid, but by 1 pm, when we wind up the production meeting, I’m talking quite volubly and happily to Katherine and Jeremy, the junior researcher and toast-butterer. We have a rough outline of how we’re going to progress the research, and the production assistants have a list of immedi ate to-dos.

‘By the way,’ says Jeremy to Katherine, as we’re leaving the office. ‘Ronan rang earlier. Asked me to fast track that research on the France project. Is that OK?’

‘Yes, we’ve had some interest from HBO,’ replies Katherine. ‘We need to get everything together for a meeting in LA next month.’

‘What’s the France project?’ I ask.

‘It’s our first non-documentary feature . . . we’ve got an amazing script, it’s a four-part historical drama on Blanche of Castile. She was the wife of—’

‘King Louis the eighth,’ I say. ‘Um, I wrote my university thesis on her. I have a degree in medieval French.’

Katherine stares at me for a second and starts laughing hysterically. ‘Of course you do. Christ! I’m so glad we met you.’

Jeremy grins. ‘So am I. I’ve been completely fucking lost.’

I smile happily. I don’t think I’ve ever had a work day like this in my life.

The next few days fly past, a blur of meetings and research and ideas that all cement my feeling that this really is the career I was meant for. I tend to stay at work later than everyone else, never leaving before about 8 pm. I can’t help it: I feel so lucky to have this job. I don’t want to let them down.

I fill up my evenings catching up with the girls, and even arrange to meet up with a few old friends from the university crowd. Anything not to be at home.

Apparently Peter has moved in with the girl he went travelling with – yep, the one he had an affair with. The news doesn’t affect me at all. It’s like hearing gossip about someone who I’ve never even met, isn’t that odd?

On Thursday, I have a few after work drinks with my new colleagues but feel too shy when they all suggest going for dinner. I will, one day. But not yet. Instead, I head home. I’m positive the boys will be out tonight, so I’ll have the place to myself.

Having JimmyJames here has made the no-man’s-land territory of my friendship with Robert easier to bear, I reflect, as I walk into the bombsite slash living room. In other ways, it has made it much harder. I wonder if we would have talked about things by now if we’d found ourselves alone.

Then again, there’s nothing to really discuss, is there? No.

I think I have to move out. I mean, I know I do. I’ve been putting off thinking about it (how unusual for me). But this cold awkwardness can’t go on . . . or rather, it will probably go on forever. So I should just get out, right?

I put some washing on and head upstairs to take a long, hot bath. I try to read
ELLE
, but I can’t concentrate, so I just lie back, watching the steam evaporate off the top of the water. Eventually I shave my legs, since I may as well, and apply a facemask. After about half an hour, the water starts to cool, and my periodic refills aren’t hot anymore either. I dry myself, dress in my warmest pyjamas, and do something I’ve been looking forward to since, well, forever.

I throw out my old work uniform – I mean, clothes.

All those awful old Pink shirts I kept for emergencies, when nothing else was clean. The black trousers that I really hate, but kept because I couldn’t be arsed to buy a new pair I’d hate just as much. The brown trousers that were good for bloaty days. That cardigan that I always took with me in summer, because the air conditioning was so brutal. The black top that I never, ever liked, but that came in handy for when I just didn’t have anything else.

I take particular pleasure in throwing out a pair of mid-winter boots that I only wore because they straddled the tenuous ground between stylish, warm, and work-appropriate.

Now I can wear what suits me. Do what I want. Stop faking it.

Once all my clothes are safely in rubbish bags, ready to give to the charity shop; and my leftover clothes are hanging happily in the wardrobe, I light a candle, lie back on the bed and pick up my book.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a big cardboard box in the corner: my personal things from work. Including the waterproof wet-weather moped gear that Robert bought me, that I only wore that one time. That was so kind of him, wasn’t it? So very typically quietly thoughtful and generous, the way he always is – was – to me.

I wonder where Robert is right now.

He’s probably out with JimmyJames. And he’s getting on with his life. I’m here, getting on with my life. We’re just not friends any more, simple as that.

It shocks me how much this thought hurts, like seeing a bruise on your shin the morning after a party and giving it a good poke to see just how bad it is.

Robert isn’t my friend anymore.

The thought is so painful that I gasp.

In an effort to distract myself, I open my laptop and check my emails. There’s just one email: from an account called . . . Travel By Proxy.

I smile in delight and open it and there, in my inbox, is a friendly little email from Bree with a link to their blog entry for New Year’s Eve.

It’s titled:
Robert and Abigail
, and is followed by a photo of Robert and me from New Year’s Eve. We’re sitting at that cosy table in The Only Running Footman, his arm is around me, he’s grinning at me and I’m laughing into the camera. I’ve never seen a photo of us together before. We look stupidly happy.

I start reading their intro.

We met Robert and Abigail at a quaint little pub in Mayfair. London-dwellers, City-workers, these two were the most relaxed and friendly of everyone we met in the UK’s capital. They could
hardly talk without looking at each other, smiling at each other, and even touching each other. True love. All together now: awww . . .

Corny. And they completely misinterpreted the relationship between us, too.

Fucking hell, I miss him.

I do, I really miss him. I stare at the ceiling for a few minutes, thinking about the past six months. About all our nights out together, and cosy breakfasts in the warm kitchen when it was still dark outside, and silly texts and emails. All the lazy Sundays reading the papers together and having peanut butter on crumpets, and impromptu drinking sessions in The Engineer, and the Christmas decorations night, and New Year’s Eve, and Hong Kong . . .

I’d love to tell him all about my new job. He’d get a kick out of it, I know he would.

Tears well up in my eyes. I feel indescribably sad. There’s a lump in my throat the size of a goddamn golf ball and I feel . . . what is this feeling?

I know what it is.

I feel homesick.

I lie back on my pillow, gazing at the ceiling. This isn’t the same feeling I had about Dave at all. I don’t feel that sharp nauseating shock, or that hope-crushing rejection. That was different.

This is pure, unadulterated sadness.

The friendship between Robert and me is over.

After staring at the ceiling for a few more minutes, I pick up my phone and call Sophie.

‘Ahoyhoy,’ she says, instead of hello.

‘I miss him, I miss Robert, and we’ll never be friends again,’ I say, and just saying the words aloud makes me so sad that I almost start crying. I control myself, however, and take a deep shaky breath. ‘Sophie? Are you there? I said I miss Robert.’

There’s a pause. I hear some scuffled sounds, and then the sound of a door closing.

‘Right I’m alone now. Continue.’

‘I just . . . I miss him, I don’t know how else to say it. I’ve never felt like this. I’m . . . homesick for him.’

‘Homesick?’

‘I feel an ache in my throat and my tummy. Just like that feeling at school. I’ve never felt like this about anything else. I miss him.’

‘You miss him . . .’ says Sophie slowly. ‘Maybe you should tell him?’

‘I can’t do that,’ I say, aghast. ‘It would be weird. I just have to accept it and move on.’ Silence. ‘I was kind of hoping you’d agree with me on that one. Maybe give me some tips on how to do it.’

Sophie takes a deep breath. ‘Don’t you think that maybe – maybe – it’s odd to be more upset about Robert than you are about Dave?’

‘No. Anyway, I was more upset about Dave before he dumped me . . . I have a new theory that I worried about it so much beforehand that when it happened, it hardly hurt at all.’

‘Huh,’ says Sophie. We talked about Dave quite a lot when I got home, obviously, but she still doesn’t believe me when I say I’m fine. ‘That explains why you didn’t seem quite yourself at Christmas.’

‘What?’

‘You were a bit, uh, tense . . . Mum and Dad kept cornering me to ask what was wrong with you.’

‘I was temporarily insane, that’s all. Dave was a drug.’

‘Well, he’s an asshole drug,’ says Sophie, adding loyally: ‘And if he knew how amazing and wonderful you are, he would never have . . .’

‘Honestly, Soph, you don’t have to say that,’ I interrupt. Funny how even thinking about Dave seems like a waste of time. ‘Anyway, maybe he and Bella belong together.’ I still haven’t told Sophie about Dave’s dad and Luke’s mum, of course. It would just put her in an awkward position, to know something like that about her future mother-in-law, something not even her fiancé knows. And besides, it’s really not my secret to tell.

‘I’m playing nice for the wedding because you can’t de-bridesmaid your treacherous bitch of a sister-in-law without causing a huge family ruckus. But the minute it’s over, I intend to unleash hell on her.’ This is such an uncharacteristic thing for Sophie to say that I almost want to laugh, but the lump in my throat is aching too much.

‘Huh,’ I say instead. If I start to laugh, I think I’ll cry at the same time.

‘So . . . Robert? What are you going to do?’

‘Mmm,’ I say, trying to control the tears welling up in my eyes. ‘Well . . . what do you think I should do?’ I say eventually.

Sophie pauses for quite a long time. ‘Darling, if you can’t see how you really feel about Robert, then I don’t – I don’t know what to say.’

‘What do you mean, can’t
see
how I
really
feel?’

There’s another pause.

‘Luke and I, um, we kind of thought that you guys would, I don’t know . . .’

‘What?’

‘Get together.’

‘No!’

‘But you get along so well, there was all that sexual tension—’

‘What? There was not! When was there sexual tension?’

Silence. Fucking hell,
why
is Sophie so good at holding her tongue?

‘We get along – sorry, we
got
along, past tense – so well because there was no sex involved. Robert is a playboy, remember? We were only ever friends. I loved his company . . .’ I pause, thinking.