Nudge 15 The Paper Note
The Paper Note
‘You’re late.’ Aiden is waiting for me by the door.
‘You try taking two trains, a Tube and a poorly timed bus during rush hour, first thing in the morning. Especially after you’ve deleted all your transport timing apps to stop being such a planner!’ I say, panting.
There is no way that this is just the way ‘normal non-planners’ live. It is far more stress-inducing this far on the edge. People may call me ‘uptight’ and ‘predictable’ and ‘too organised’, but I’m now convinced that they’re masochistic.
‘I don’t get why you didn’t just drive here. Evie would have expensed your mileage,’ he says, grabbing a trolley as we start to stroll.
‘Because public transport is cheaper than parking.’
Also, because driving requires a licence – a fairly vital piece of kit that I’m yet to obtain.
‘She would have paid your parking too,’ he says. ‘I’ll certainly be expensing mine. And I’ll be dropping you home.’
‘What? No.’
He shrugs plainly. ‘That taxi home from the Lounge showed you don’t live that far from me, and after the hour I’ll have to drive, another ten minutes out of my way is nothing. Speaking of, why did I have to drive fifty minutes out of London and pay extortionate parking to come to a napkin store?’
He grimaces as he glances around the aisle, eyes tracing over the rainbow of napkins on the shelves, in every shade and hue imaginable.
‘It’s not a napkin store, it’s a general-supply warehouse. This is just the napkin aisle. And it’s the best one in the country, with the highest quality and incredibly glowing reviews. We want nothing but the best for the Summer Splash.’
I pick a set of soft yellow ones off the shelf, bringing them to my phone so I can compare them with the accent colour swatches I saved down. It’s close, but not close enough, and I’m not quite sure if yellow’s the vibe. I make a note to strike yellow from the napkin-and-linen-colour shortlist.
‘Anyway, are you not impressed?’ I ask, bringing the conversation back a notch. ‘I expect my lack of apps to be recorded as evidence for my new job.’
He shrugs as he pushes the trolley. ‘Small potatoes.’
Small potatoes? Small potatoes! Tell that to my ballet pumps – soaking wet from my walk through Crystal Palace after I missed the bus.
With the weather app gone, I had to trust my eyes, and the sky was misleadingly clear this morning.
When this is over, I will never take it for granted again.
And I will be writing countless notes reminding me to put my umbrella back in my handbag.
‘What, were you expecting me to quit my job, jump on a plane and start backpacking round the world?’ I ask.
‘A guy can dream,’ he says jokingly, barely swaying as I give him a playful shove. ‘I just feel like losing a couple of apps is not that deep.’
Not that deep to him, perhaps, but I’ve been walking around feeling like I’ve lost a whole part of me. I don’t believe for one second that he is able to go about every single day without checking anything in advance. ‘So, what would be deep?’
‘There’s no specific thing – you’re just supposed to be winging life. I can see your head spinning.’
He can’t – he’s not even looking at me, just glancing at napkins as we continue to stroll down the aisle.
But why wouldn’t it be spinning? ‘Winging life’ is not a quantifiable thing to comprehend.
There’s nothing to measure or track, and, honestly, at this stage, I don’t know if I’d even be allowed to track it if I could.
How am I supposed to know what actions are small or large potatoes if I’m not supposed to even be looking into things that hard?
‘My head’s not spinning,’ I say, lying.
He actually turns to me this time, eyes casting over my face as he raises an incredibly sceptical eyebrow.
‘OK, not spinning per se – more of a light little baby turn,’ I say.
‘A baby turn?’
‘A pirouette, if you will.’
‘That’s a spin, not a turn.’
‘Says who?’
‘My sister did ballet for fifteen years. I had to supervise a lot of classes.’
Mental image of Aiden helping teens in tutus aside, we are both losing sight of the problem at hand.
How on earth am I supposed to be wild and spontaneous if I don’t know what wild and spontaneous constitutes?
I live in south London; I can’t exactly start jumping off cliffs and paragliding above treacherous oceans.
I have work and the city and the number three bus to work with; there’s only so exciting my life can get.
‘Don’t overthink it.’ He reaches for some teal napkins and motions for me to hold my phone screen up to them.
‘But how will I . . .’ I don’t even know what to ask.
‘If it doesn’t feel like you, then it’s probably right,’ he says in jest.
Thinly veiled attack aside, it’s not the worst logic to go by . . . Although not the easiest thing to put into practice. If it doesn’t feel like me, how am I even supposed to think of it in the first place? The napkins still aren’t right. He puts them back and we turn into the crockery aisle.
He gives me a once-over. ‘We should probably lay out some further ground rules, though – stop you showing up like this every day. You need to check the weather and know when your bus is coming.’
I purse my lips, trying to hide my excitement at the thought of redownloading my apps.
‘A normal degree of planning is fine,’ he continues, grabbing a seashell bowl from one of the shelves. ‘Pose with this.’
He holds the bowl out to me as I stare back, flummoxed by the sudden interruption.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Pose with this. I need a picture for Evie,’ he says, straight-faced, as I still stare back in confusion.
I take it from him in silence, holding it up to the side with the kind of pride reserved for championship trophies. His lip curls at my bravado, smile conveniently hidden by his phone as he snaps a photo.
‘Beautiful. Now, as I was saying, you can schedule things in as far as a week ahead, but you have to say yes to plans on the day if you don’t already have something in.’
‘Within reason,’ I say to remind him.
‘Of course, within reason. Let’s test it. You doing anything Saturday?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’ I ask dubiously.
He stops the trolley in its tracks so he can reach into his bag and pull out a fresh leather notebook. He catches the surprise in my eyes as he opens it up, smiling at my evident bewilderment.
‘I’m keeping true to my end of the bargain too,’ he says, gesturing proudly at it. ‘Even brought my own pen – in a pencil case, no less.’
He wiggles it lightly in his hand before resting it against the handlebars, scrawling something down and handing the ripped page over to me. It’s an address, written messily but clearly enough for me to know that it’s nowhere I would recognise.
‘Grab some friends – you have those right? I can get you on the list for Saturday evening.’
‘A list for . . .?’
‘Don’t worry about that. Just be there at nine-thirty.’
A sentence that would be harrowing enough without the knowing glint in his eye. Notebook packed away again, he moves on. We’re nearing drink receptacles now, stretching all the way from plastic to fine china. He powers on quickly, forcing me to walk in double time just to match his pace.
‘This isn’t like, a sex club or drug thing?’ I ask.
‘It’s actually both. It’s a sex club and drug thing,’ he replies mockingly.
I squeal. ‘It’s a valid question! I don’t know what you’re into.’
‘I told you not to overthink.’
And it was bold of him to assume I was capable of that in the first place. He slows down ever so slightly, glancing behind to clock my deeply furrowed brow and pouting lips. It’s enough to trigger a long, deep and pained sigh.
‘It’s not a sex club. There are no drugs involved,’ he says dryly. ‘You will not be kidnapped or taken advantage of.’
‘Thank you.’ I nod back at him.
I rub the piece of paper between my thumb and my finger, carefully tracing over each letter of the address with my eyes. East London. That’s all I can really deduce without rushing to type it into Google Maps.
‘One more thing . . .’ I look up at him, pausing only to leave room for another of his exasperated sighs. ‘Dress code?’
He huffs impatiently. ‘Clothes. You’ve dressed yourself before, right?’
‘What kind of clothes?’ I grit my teeth.
‘I’ve already done too much. You’ve got to be able to do something yourself, Maddy.’
And he’s right, I suppose – for a moment I forgot that he too has stakes in this game that we’re playing.
If the roles were reversed, I probably would have let him flounder for the six months and easily claimed that job for myself.
But for some reason – perhaps pity or utter boredom – he’s decided to throw me a somewhat terrifying bone.
So, I whip out my phone, take a picture of the paper and send one vaguely threatening text to the FGA.
Saturday. 9.30. If I’m going, so are you.