9. Nell
9
NELL
‘Stupid Nepo Baby Douchebag Arsing Dick!’
Chloe winces at the volume of my voice. ‘Nell, please. We’ve got neighbours on all sides here.’
I very much want to continue swearing as loudly as I physically can. But I also don’t want to get booted out of my new home less than forty-eight hours after moving in. So I settle for an angry grunt instead. I flop down on the sofa next to Mica, who nestles up close to me and rubs my shoulder.
‘Sorry, mate,’ she says. ‘It’s shit.’
This is something of an understatement. After my very brief interaction with Talia this morning, I didn’t even see any of the writing team for the rest of the day. All morning, I was marooned at my stupid cramped new desk in the IT department, tinkering with Bishi’s ticket-sales spreadsheet while trying to ignore the tinny sound of death metal that seems to seep constantly through Jarrod’s headphones.
And then after lunch, when I’d finally finished the boring Excel task, Bishi emailed me to ask if I could do some work on the Punching Up socials, which basically meant uploading a ton of photos from last week’s show, then liking any posts that mentioned them in a positive light, while blocking the depressingly large number of accounts that posted racist, sexist or homophobic crap in response. Which essentially meant I spent four hours sitting on my own, wading through the internet’s darkest, most rancid corners, while Charlie Francombe was . . . Well, to be fair, I don’t know what Charlie Francombe was doing.
But I do know he was there, in the writers’ nook, in my chair, at my desk, sitting next to my heroes, and probably charming them all with his stupid dimples.
I slump further down into the sofa cushions and Mica gives my shoulder another squeeze. The flat’s lounge and kitchen are part of the same room; on one side, Chloe’s at the hob, making pasta for our dinner, and on the other side, Mica is watching Love Island with the sound off while I huff and puff next to her.
‘Can’t you complain, or something?’ she asks, as Chloe empties two packs of spinach and ricotta tortellini into the big pan of bubbling water. ‘Talk to HR?’
‘The HR department answers to Charlie Francombe’s dad,’ I wail. ‘The whole company answers to Charlie Francombe’s dad!’
‘Mm, yeah, right.’ Mica nods. She clicks her tongue against her teeth. ‘These nepo babies. They’re always one step ahead.’
‘Come on, guys!’ Chloe chirps from over by the cooker. ‘Let’s stop being so defeatist here, yeah?’
‘I’ve literally been defeated!’ I shout. ‘Surely I can be defeatist if I’ve been defeated?!’
‘Neighbours on all sides!’ Chloe hisses, stirring the pasta.
‘Sorry!’ I hiss back.
‘And no one’s been defeated,’ she adds firmly. ‘You’re two days into this internship. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know that Charlie will keep getting preferential treatment.’
‘To be fair, Chlo, he probably will,’ Mica sighs. ‘They’re hardly going to make the boss’s son deal with the spreadsheets and internet trolls, are they?’
‘Mica! You’re not helping!’ Chloe snaps.
Despite everything, it makes me laugh. I laid out the whole saga as soon as I got back from the office two hours ago, and thus far each of my best friends’ responses has been extremely on-brand. Mica, the world-weary cynic, encouraging me to give up and accept defeat, and Chloe, Planet Earth’s bubbliest optimist, demanding that I keep my chin up and look on the bright side.
‘Plus,’ Chloe says, removing a hunk of Parmesan from the fridge, ‘you’re going to meet an actual, real-life famous person tomorrow – that’s exciting, isn’t it?’
I give a non-committal grunt. Lina is due to come into the office tomorrow morning to be briefed ahead of Thursday’s show. I’m not particularly into her music, and for me, the show has always been more about the comedy than the celebrity hosts, but still – until about ten hours ago, the idea of meeting such a big star in person had seemed pretty exciting. But now, I’m beginning to realise, there’s no certainty that I actually will meet her. Clearly, Lina will be spending all her time either in the writers’ nook or the studio downstairs. It’s not like Bishi is going to drag her over to the IT department to say hi to me and Jarrod, is it?
Mica drains her wine glass and fills us both up again. ‘My little cousin is obsessed with Lina,’ she says. ‘That one song of hers is all right, actually. Quite catchy.’
‘Oh, you mean “Down There”?’ Chloe says. ‘I love that one!’
She starts belting out Lina’s biggest hit to date while stirring the pasta. Until I cut her off with a disgruntled shush. ‘Erm, Chlo? Neighbours on all sides?’
Mica smirks next to me and Chloe flicks some pasta water our way. And suddenly everything feels a bit better again.
I’ve been waiting months for this – sharing a flat in London with my two best mates. I don’t want to ruin it by sulking like a child. Plus, Chloe is right – I don’t know what the next few weeks will bring. I can’t exactly write the whole thing off after one crappy day. ‘I’m sorry for being such a downer, guys,’ I tell them. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
‘OK then.’ Mica nudges me in the ribs with her big toe. ‘Any action on the apps?’
‘I haven’t actually looked at them since this morning,’ I say. When I had the perfect ‘meet-cute’ with a guy – only for it to be ruined half an hour later by the discovery that the guy in question was all set to shatter my lifelong dream.
I take out my phone and open Tinder. One of the boys I swiped right on yesterday – Zach – has messaged me. He’s just sent a waving emoji, adding: I see you work near me in Limehouse – fancy a drink this week?
I show Mica and she hoots. ‘He’s hot! Do it.’
‘Bit forward to ask for a drink straight away though, isn’t it?’ I ask.
‘No!’ Mica fires back. ‘That’s just how it works, Nell. You’ve never had to do this before, so you need to start getting used to it.’
‘Have you even been on a date since Sean?’ Chloe chips in, draining the pasta.
‘Sean never took her on any dates anyway,’ Mica scoffs.
‘True,’ I sigh. To be perfectly honest, I really can’t remember the last time I went on a date. By the end of my second year at uni, my neighbour in halls, Sean, had gradually morphed from ‘Friend’ to ‘Friend with Occasional (And Not the Best) Benefits’ to ‘Boyfriend’. We stayed that way for the next year, until he broke things off about a fortnight before graduation. He was all set to go travelling around Europe and told me he wanted to be ‘free to experiment’ while he was out there. I know I should have been hurt – it was my first relationship that had lasted more than about three weeks – but truthfully, I was sort of relieved. I’d been looking for an out for a while. We were never the most passionate couple even right at the start, but by the end we were literally just spending every evening on the sofa, bickering over what to watch on Netflix like some old married couple. I don’t think we even had sex during those last few months. I spent most of our time together trying to wean him off Mrs Brown’s Boys and onto proper comedy.
Since then, there’s been a couple of drunk snogs in Tealby – mainly with boys I’ve known since I was about six. But as everyone my age up there is still living with their parents, the chances of things going any further are pretty slim. Unless you’re happy to get freaky under the slide in the local park. Which I’m really not.
‘OK, fine,’ I say. ‘I’ll do it.’ Mica whoops again as I type a message back to Zach to ask when and where.
Chloe hands us each a plate of pasta, topped with a mountain of Parmesan, and she snuggles in between us on the couch.
The credits roll on Love Island, and Mica switches off the TV. And then, just when I think we’ve moved on, she turns to me. ‘OK, so what’s his full name again, old SNBD?’
I’ve been referring to Charlie as Stupid Nepo Baby Douchebag so frequently over the past couple of hours that he has now been reduced to just an acronym.
‘Charlie Fucking Francombe,’ I say.
She whips out her phone as she stuffs a forkful of pasta into her mouth. ‘Unfortunate middle name, I’ll leave that out.’ She types and then squints at the screen. ‘He’s not on LinkedIn.’
‘Well, he doesn’t need to be, does he?’ I huff. ‘His dad gets him all his jobs!’
‘OK, found him on Insta, I think.’ Mica holds her phone up to me. ‘Is this him?’
I look at the Instagram page, full of photos of Charlie Fucking Francombe. Charlie Fucking Francombe in the pub. Charlie Fucking Francombe on holiday. A younger Charlie Fucking Francombe, tagged into a ‘#Throwback’ picture with a load of other chino-wearing, annoyingly good-looking probable nepo babies at some posh-looking school dinner. A whole page of Charlie Fucking Francombe.
‘Yep, that’s him,’ I sigh.
‘Let’s see?’ Chloe leans across me and peers at the phone. ‘Oh, he’s actually quite cute.’
I snort and chomp a forkful of tortellini.
‘Yeah, no, sorry, mate,’ Mica says, looking at me guiltily. ‘It’s official – he’s hot.’
‘Trust me,’ I say, as the two of them continue to scan his Instagram. ‘He is not hot once you get to know him.’