Chapter Twelve #2
‘Darling Nina!’ she trills, all luminous skin and perfectly blow-dried bob, before instantly descending into a coughing fit.
Kat used to be a hardcore partier with a devotion to cigarettes until she discovered wellness in her thirties.
Her hacking cough is now the only giveaway that she once had vices.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask.
‘I was about to ask you the same thing. You didn’t reply to my email this morning which is most unlike you. I thought you might need a chat before you bump into Cal.’
‘Too late,’ I say darkly. ‘He’s here.’
‘Ah. Listen, you’re going to be fine, darling. I know you two don’t get along but I really think this trip together will be good for you. Use the time to thrash out your differences, capiche?’
I try to make it look like this is brand-new information.
‘Look, I realize that you and Cal haven’t seen eye to eye since he started at Kat Moretti. I don’t pretend to understand why things soured further after the Christmas party, but I do think it’s time to bury the hatchet.’
‘Bury the hatchet?’ I blurt out. ‘Honestly, I’ve no idea why you aren’t more pissed off about that whole incident.’
‘Why would I be pissed off?’ Kat asks.
‘I know he’s your nephew, Kat, which does make things awkward, but Callum left the Christmas party with one of the most junior, not to mention most drunk, members of the team. That’s pretty off in my book, don’t you reckon?’
Kat looks deeply baffled by this.
‘Darling, whatever are you talking about?’
Today, I am not in the mood for having big issues swept under the carpet. It’s time to rip that carpet up and polish some of the manky old floorboards underneath.
‘I’m talking about Ellie!’ I say, exasperated. ‘You know, your PA?’
‘Of course I know who Ellie is, Nina, there’s no need to be facetious. She’s here with me now, helping me set up for the day.’ Kat moves her screen so that I can see Ellie waving in the background of Kat’s office.
‘Hey, Nina!’ Ellie calls over. She’s wearing a neon-pink vest and some extremely shiny black trousers, her hair in plaits.
‘What’s up?’ she asks as she strides closer to the screen, treating me to a close-up of her perfectly applied neon-pink eyeliner.
Ellie’s never not dressed like a highlighter pen.
‘Kat has sent Callum, our arch rival, on this trip to Australia,’ I explain, remembering my seize-the-day mantra. If this convo goes tits up, at least I’ll get to try it again tomorrow and no one else will remember, which is some consolation.
‘Our arch rival?’ Ellie taps her bright green fingernails against her chin, looking confused.
‘Ellie, you don’t need to pretend that he’s a good guy in front of Kat,’ I say, looking round to make sure I’m out of earshot for Callum. Looks like he’s found a sweet old lady to talk to.
‘In fact,’ I say, ‘I think it’s time Kat learned some home truths, don’t you? What happened at the Christmas party was not okay, Ellie. Look, I know you don’t want to talk about it. I’ve tried to have this conversation with you so many times since.’
‘Is that what you’ve been doing every time you come to me looking all serious, like somebody died?’ Ellie asks.
‘Yes!’ I reply. Hasn’t she figured that out already? ‘You kept telling me you were busy until I stopped coming over. I just assumed that you needed the space to digest it all.’
‘Babes, OMG,’ Ellie laughs. ‘I cannot handle serious convos, you know that! That’s why I kept shooing you away.’
‘And that’s okay,’ I say. ‘I just want you to know that I’m here for you.’
Ellie scrunches up her face.
‘Sorry, babes, but what are you going on about?’
‘Yes, I’d like to get to the bottom of this too,’ chips in Kat.
‘You didn’t really warm to Cal from the moment he joined our team at the end of last year, but it was the Christmas party that really seemed to seal your dislike of him.
I remember you coming in the next day positively enraged.
After that, it was like he was your sworn enemy. ’
‘He is my sworn enemy! Ellie, he should never have taken you home at the end of the night.’
Ellie’s hot pink eyes widen. Kat looks similarly surprised.
‘Babes,’ Ellie says slowly. ‘Are you suggesting I banged Bang?’
‘I’m suggesting he took advantage of you.’
‘Hang on …’ Kat waves a finger at me. ‘Hadn’t you left by that point, Nina? I’m sure you’d gone long before Cal and Ellie went home.’
‘Well, yes, but I saw them both arrive at the office together the next day, and I heard they’d left together, and—’
‘Oh babes.’ Ellie looks very disappointed. ‘You jumped to all the wrong conclusions.’
‘Did I?’ I blink.
‘Yes. Oh my God, LOL that you came up with that little story.’ She snorts. ‘Firstly because Cal is way, way too vanilla for my liking. I was steaming drunk that night and even then, he would not be my type. Nina! You know I heart sigmas with tattoos, trust funds and a penchant for ketamine.’
Why is she talking about the Greek alphabet while discussing her paramours?
‘I need rizz,’ Ellie continues, clutching her chest. ‘I need kiss curls at the back, you understand?’
‘Right.’ I say, not understanding at all.
Ellie snorts again. ‘Can’t believe you thought me and Cal hooked up.
You know what, though? He was a total hero that night.
I was supposed to be meeting my boyfriend at a rave after the office Christmas party, so naturally I spent the entire work do pre-loading.
Those cocktails were lethal and also free!
The party had almost wrapped when I got a call from Meteor. ’
‘From who?’ I ask.
‘Meteor, my boyfriend. Keep up! I should say my ex-boyfriend. He legit dumped me that night, right there and then on the phone, just as I was about to go and meet him. I was in absolute bits because we’d been dating for a full three months which was my personal best and I really liked him and we had loads in common and anyway, I was a state.
You remember, right?’ She glances at Kat.
‘I do,’ confirms Kat, turning her attention to me.
‘Poor Ellie. I’ve seen a lot of heartbreak in my time but this was something else.
Usually people go through a sort of grief, first, but this one propelled straight to pure rage.
You were coming up with ways to get your revenge, weren’t you, darling? ’
‘That’s right! I was going to pour paint on his car, and then I was going to run his toothbrush around the toilet … the list went on.’
‘It was just me, Cal, Ellie and Jan from accounts left by that point, wasn’t it?’ Kat says.
‘Yeah,’ agrees Ellie. ‘Cal suggested I stay somewhere else that night, because Meteor was planning on moving out the next day. He thought it might be best if I didn’t see him.’
‘Mm,’ agrees Kat. ‘Some of the revenge ideas were getting quite dark by that point and Cal didn’t want to see you end up in jail.’
‘Ha ha, that’s right!’ Ellie says cheerfully. ‘Jan said I could go back to hers but I’ve a cat allergy and she always seems to have the neighbours’ cats staying over.’
‘And I offered you a place at mine,’ adds Kat.
Ellie grimaces at me on screen. ‘Kat lives in Hampstead,’ she says, pulling an about-to-be-sick face. ‘You know I can’t go further north than Camden.’
‘You made that abundantly clear on the night,’ Kat rolls her eyes. ‘Said you’d combust if you had to hang out with the “yummy mummy set”.’
‘It’s okay, boss,’ Ellie says, patting Kat affectionately on the hand. ‘You totally used to be cool.’
‘You said that as well!’
Ellie shrugs. ‘So basically, it was Cal’s or bust. And he was so kind about it all.
He listened as I plotted Meteor’s unfortunate demise, he gave me a box of tissues to wipe my snotty face on.
He insisted I drink some water and made me a vegan cheese toastie as a midnight snack because he was worried I’d consumed only alcohol all day, which actually wasn’t true because I’d also had three flat whites, even though Cal said that didn’t count.
He gave me paracetamol and tried to offer me an old T-shirt to sleep in but I was like, ew, no way, because it was some tragic music band from, like, 2010 or something. I wasn’t in that bad a state!’
My eyes flick back over to Callum, who is now helping the old lady with her luggage, and my heart squeezes painfully.
‘Cal insisted on giving me his bed for the night,’ Ellie says. ‘He slept on the sofa in his living room. I’ll never forget how thoughtful he was, actually. So, sorry to say, babes, but you got that all wrong. Like, drastically so.’
My jaw’s on the floor. I stare and stare at Ellie, as if the longer I look at her, the more clues I’ll get that she’s fibbing. But it’s so clear that she’s not.
She’s right, I have got it drastically wrong.
All this time I thought Callum was pretty low and it turns out, once again, I’ve misjudged him.
My gaze tracks back to him now, moving over to greet Clio and Brody as they pull up at the gate.
‘Oh. Shit,’ I say.
‘Indeed,’ says Kat. ‘Sounds like you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Just a bit.’ I wince.
‘Well, it’s a good job you’ve got a nice long flight to make it up to him then, isn’t it. Remember, Nina, I want you two sympatico by the time you get back to London. Okay?’
I grimace.
‘Yass, go off, Nina,’ chips in Ellie.
‘Ciao for now,’ says Kat, hanging up.