Chapter 3
‘They’re ready for you now, Lucy.’ Marion’s PA gave me a tight smile and whisked away from my desk.
Knees trembling, I tucked my laptop under my arm and made my way to the boardroom. Marion was seated on one side of the shiny wooden table, flanked by a balding, sandy-haired man who she introduced as Greg, Editor-in-Chief of Max!, and a woman in a suit who was apparently in charge of advertising sales.
The air smelled of furniture polish, coffee, and the deodorant I’d frantically applied in the ladies’ loo a few minutes earlier, hoping it would mask the smell of fear. My fingers fumbled as I plugged my laptop into the jack that worked the big screen at the head of the table. When I took a sip of water, my arm jerked and sent a load of it dribbling down my chin.
‘Thank you for joining us, Lucy,’ Greg said, in a tone I guessed was meant to be reassuring. ‘Marion tells us you have a proposal. We’re looking forward to walking through it with you.’
Personally, I felt more keen on the idea of running away, as fast and as far as I could.
But I said, ‘I appreciate you all taking the time to be here. I’m Lucy Masters, and I hope you’ll find the presentation I’ve put together of interest.’
Be keen,Amelie had advised. Poised, but keen. And remember, you’ve done nothing wrong. They’re going to love it. I wished I felt anything like as confident as she’d sounded – in that moment, I felt small, scared and vulnerable, and the ideas we’d come up with seemed flimsy and stupid.
My finger slippery on the trackpad of my laptop, I fired up the slide deck my sister and I had worked on and I’d completed late the previous evening, fuelled by coffee, culminating in a panic attack when Astro had walked over my keyboard and almost deleted the whole thing.
The thought of my cat made me smile, and almost magically my nerves receded a bit. I looked at the opening slide on the screen, took a breath and began, barely hearing my voice over the rush of blood in my ears.
‘There’s very little out there in the way of relationship advice for men,’ I explained earnestly, beginning to get into my stride as I reached the third slide. ‘There are Reddit subs, of course, and TikTok, but that only appeals to a very niche demographic. Max!’s readers are all ages, and at all stages of life. ‘Ask Adam’ will offer advice on everything from first dates through to sharing parenting responsibilities to caring for elderly parents – a burden which falls predominantly on women, but which affects their partners and sons nonetheless.’
Even to my own hyper-critical ears, it sounded pretty good, and I could see my audience going from sceptical to interested to impressed.
Then Greg said, ‘Hold on. You’ll be answering all this yourself? You? Posing as this Adam guy? What about the legal ramifications if something goes wrong?’
Fortunately, Amelie had anticipated that question. ‘We’ll include a disclaimer, obviously. That Ask Adam is first and foremost entertainment. It’s intended to provoke thought and discussion. And if I find myself stumped by a question’ – or rather, if Amelie, my secret weapon, found herself stumped – ‘I’ll reach out to experts. Psychotherapists, sexologists, even financial planners. People like that are always delighted to help if it means getting their name in the media.’
Marion nodded. The advertising woman scribbled some notes on her pad. Greg flipped through the print-out I’d given them all, then asked a few more questions that I was able to field easily.
‘Of course, we’ll have to discuss this some more amongst ourselves,’ he said, when I’d reached the final slide.
‘And run some numbers on potential sales,’ said the advertising woman.
‘Of course, if this all goes through, you know how unhappy we will be to be losing you here at Fab!, Lucy,’ Marion said.
‘You were going to lose me anyway,’ I pointed out, emboldened by the success of our discussion so far.
A few days later, I had a follow-up meeting with Greg, who seemed delighted by the idea. The day after that, I signed a contract for my new role as Sex and Relationships Editor, Max! Online. And the day after that, I packed up my desk, got in the lift and ascended two floors up to take my place in my new team, my photo of Astro under my arm, my venus fly trap in its pot balanced carefully on one palm and my special coffee mug hooked over my pinky finger.
I don’t know what I’d expected to see when the lift doors opened and I walked out onto the Max! Magazine floor. I’d been there before, of course, for meetings and to drop off a phone someone had left on our floor – just occasional forays into the world of our brother publication. Except now it was my publication, and Fab! wasn’t mine any longer.
The floor was a mirror of the one below it. There was a reception desk by the lift and meeting rooms to the left. To my right, rows of desks arranged across a bright, window-lined space, with private offices for management and team leaders along one side. If the layout was the same, the client services and sales teams would be nearest the entrance, then art, then editorial at the far end. Which meant I’d have to cross the entire space before reaching my own desk.
And the space was full of men.
I should have anticipated that, of course, but I hadn’t – not really. I’d been too busy focusing on clinging on, rather than being let go. If I had, maybe I’d have reconsidered the wisdom of my sister’s idea – that joining this team would mean not only being the recipient of men’s romantic dilemmas, but being surrounded by them at work every single day.
I could feel sweat springing out under my armpits as I walked across the floor, and the finger holding my mug seemed to be working very hard to stop it from falling. With an effort, I kept my face impassive, and made my way to the end of the room, looking desperately around for Greg, or any other familiar, friendly face. But I recognised no one – well, I kind of recognised lots of them, but only in an amorphous, collective sort of way. The man blob. At last, I reached the far end of the room, the last pod of eight desks.
Seven were occupied, four by men and three by men’s possessions – jackets over chairs, Costa take-out packets next to keyboards, chunky, expensive headphones. There was a dark-haired man with designer stubble and the air of cockiness men have when they’re more handsome than anyone deserves to be, and know it. There was a thin, fair-haired guy with glasses wearing a button-down shirt. There was a bloke in cycling gear, clearly just arrived for the day, hitching his backpack off his shoulders and letting his helmet fall heavily to the floor. And the fourth was just ordinary, middling-tall and middling-built with middling-brown hair that flopped down over steady, middling-blue eyes.
They all looked at me as I approached, with not-unfriendly curiosity. The dark-haired one cracked a dazzling smile, which I was willing to bet was a reflex action on seeing a woman, any woman, in the split second before he categorised her as fuckable or non-fuckable.
The thin guy pushed his glasses up his nose and returned to his keyboard, hammering furiously away as if the deadline from hell was at his heels. Cycling boy picked up his bag again and headed past me with a nod, presumably heading for the gents to change into something less budgie-smuggly.
And the middling-everything man pushed back his chair, saying, ‘Hi. You must be?—’
He sort of half-stood, but then seemed to change his mind. Maybe he thought standing up to greet a woman was unacceptable in a modern workplace. Maybe he decided he couldn’t be bothered after all. Maybe he suddenly realised his fly was open. I had no idea.
But whatever the reason, it worked out badly for him. By the time he sat back down again, his wheeled chair had scooted further back than he’d realised. His descending bum just clipped the edge of the seat. The chair went one way and he went the other and ended up on the floor with a jolt that must have felt like his spine was going to shoot through the top of his head.
There was a moment of silence, then the handsome bloke let out a guffaw that practically took the roof off. The skinny dude joined in, and Mr Middling stayed down on the floor. I felt a rush of sympathy for him – what if he was hurt? What if he felt awful because everyone was laughing at him? What if he was going to actually cry or something? Then I realised that he, too, was doubled over with mirth.
‘Smooth move, bro,’ said Handsome.
‘Give us some warning next time,’ complained Skinny. ‘We could’ve videoed that and made a fortune.’
‘What did I miss?’ Budgie, hearing the commotion, hurried back to the group, a clean T-shirt sticking damply to his chest.
‘Ross arse-planted in front of the new girl,’ said Skinny.
‘Most spectacular pratfall, like, ever,’ said Handsome.
‘Uh… are you okay?’ I asked.
Middling – who I gathered was Ross, usurper of the job that should have been mine – picked himself up off the floor. ‘Only my pride’s hurt,’ he said. ‘But that won’t recover any time soon. Show’s over, guys, pretend it never happened. As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, you must be Lucy. I’m Ross.’
‘Easy to remember,’ quipped Handsome. ‘Ross took a toss – gettit? I’m Marco.’
I realised after a second that he had extended his hand for me to shake, and I took it. But I wasn’t really looking at him – I was looking at Ross. There was an amiable grin on his face. He seemed totally unfazed by his embarrassing mishap, by being a figure of fun in front of his colleagues and in front of me.
Was it a man thing? Or had he just decided, after his first glance at me, that my opinion wasn’t worth bothering about?
‘Chiraag,’ said Budgie.
‘Neil,’ muttered Skinny, glancing up from his screen then glancing straight back, as if the sight of me was too awful to endure.
‘I look after News,’ Marco went on, ‘Chiraag’s Sport, Neil’s Money and Ross is Tech. At least he is when he’s not crashing his hard drive. Simon and Barney are Fashion and Lifestyle, but they’re out on a shoot today. The subs and production guys are over on the next pod and Art’s beyond that. Greg said to show you round but I guess you’ve seen it all now, right?’
‘Uh, yeah.’ I put down my bag and sat down at the vacant desk, which was the one opposite Ross, placing my mug and the photo of Astro next to my keyboard. Then I opened a drawer and slid in my venus fly trap. I’d it home this evening, I decided.
Five minutes in these guys’ company had taught me one important lesson. They hadn’t been unfriendly or hostile or even overtly sexist – nothing like that. But I’d realised that if I did anything foolish – anything at all – they’d laugh at me.
As the only woman in the team, I was going to stand out enough as it was. I wasn’t going to show weakness and I was categorically not going to be laughed at. I switched on my computer, got it set up the way I liked, and logged into my email.
Over the next few days, I learned a few more things about my new colleagues. I learned that when there was a collection for someone’s birthday, Neil took round the card to sign and the envelope for everyone to chip in a couple of quid, or even a fiver if they were feeling flush, but added nothing himself. I learned that Chiraag spent a good five minutes each morning painstakingly shaking a protein drink at his desk – the rattle of ice cubes and scrape of the metal blendy thing against the plastic container got very old, very quickly. I learned that when Marco sat down each morning, he’d spend a few moments artfully rearranging his hair, using his blank computer screen as a mirror before switching it on.
And I learned that Ross was the social one in the group. He suggested heading out to have a few pints and play darts, or go to a Crossfit session at lunchtime, or go to the corner shop for mint Magnums when it was hot and the afternoon was dragging. And, because he was the one sat opposite me, he was the one I noticed the most. He ran his fingers through his hair when he was thinking, messing it up and pulling locks down over his forehead. He seemed to go from clean-shaven to designer stubble to not-so-designer stubble on roughly a four-day cycle, so clearly he didn’t take his appearance particularly seriously. He had nice eyes, a clear, bright hazel colour. Like all the rest of us, he wore jeans, hoodies and trainers. When I’d brushed past him in the kitchen, I’d caught a waft of a clean smell coming off him, a mixture of laundry detergent and soap.
Although maybe that was just the free toiletries provided in the showers down at the Crossfit box – I had no idea.
I supposed that if I’d been in the market for meeting a man, I’d probably have stuck Ross on the shortlist and started inviting myself along to the pub and the gym. Okay, maybe not the gym – even the mythical in-the-market-for-a-man Lucy would have thought that was a bridge too far. But I could see the appeal of Ross, objectively speaking. But I wasn’t in the market for a man – especially not a man I worked with - so Ross was just another guy, another member of the male sex in which I had zero interest. And even if I was interested, there was no way I going to allow even a flicker of that interest to show – I’d learned the hard way that that was a surefire route to humiliation and heartbreak.
And sadly, it appeared at first that men had no interest in Adam, my alter ego, either. Adam’s debut was announced with great fanfare in the final print edition of Max!. A stock photo of a friendly, innocuous-looking bloke in his mid-thirties looking serious and chewing a pencil, together with the ‘Ask Adam’ logo, went out on Max!’s social media channels shortly afterwards, but the following week, no problems arrived in the designated inbox.
By Friday, I was beginning to worry that my new job was dead in the water before it had even begun.
But that wasn’t my only concern. The regular Friday afternoon exodus had begun, and I was determined to get out of joining my new colleagues in the pub. I didn’t want to go – but at the same time I did. I didn’t want to be exposed to their chat, their questions, their banter. I wanted to go home to my silent, solitary flat and cuddle my cat. But then – maybe I did. Maybe it would be fun. There’d been nothing so far to make me think it would be anything other than fun.
I could feel tension ratcheting up in my body with every sound: the click of Neil’s mouse as he shut down his computer; the rustle of Barney’s rainproof jacket as he eased it over his shoulders; the squeak of Ross’s chair wheels on the wooden floor; the crack of Marco’s knuckles as he stretched luxuriantly overhead.
Then Ross’s voice broke into my reverie, making me jump. ‘Earth to Lucy?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Did you ask me something?’
‘Just what you’re up to this weekend.’ His eyes met mine over the top of our monitors and he smiled. Nice teeth. Middling-straight. ‘Wondered if I might bump into you. You live off Dalston Lane, right?’
How the hell did he know that? I must have mentioned it in passing, perhaps when Chiraag was talking about his forty-five minute cycle commute to work.
‘Holly Street,’ I confirmed.
‘Wow! We’re practically neighbours. Maybe I’ll see you in A Bar With Shapes on Saturday night.’
I thought of the weekend stretching ahead of me, calm and featureless, the way I’d learned to like it. Sleeping in on Saturday, tinkering with the mod I’d been working on for Elden Ring, cleaning my flat, chilling out with Astro. A pretty solid weekend, all told. I was looking forward to it.
But, for some reason I couldn’t quite identify, I didn’t want Ross to be able to picture me like that, alone, when he was hanging out in cool places I walked past every day but had never been to, no doubt surrounded by his cool friends.
I heard my voice say, ‘Got a date on Saturday night.’
‘Really?’ He raised his eyebrows.‘First date?’
‘Um… yeah.’
‘On a Saturday night. Punchy. He must be keen.’
Shit. Of course no one would give up a Saturday night for a date with some random you didn’t even know you’d like. Except me, apparently. If the date had existed, which it didn’t.
‘I guess he is. We met…’ Where the hell did we meet? ‘Online.’
Damn. That just made it a million times worse. Giving up a Saturday night for a date with some random off Hinge? That had gone beyond punchy and straight into desperate territory. Just as well it wasn’t true, or I’d have needed to take a long, hard look at myself. Although, given I was fabricating a date with someone who didn’t exist just so my work colleague would think I was more interesting than I really was, I probably needed to do that anyway.
‘Going anywhere nice?’ Ross asked.
Stop asking me questions! You’re stretching my creative powers to their not-very-long limit,I thought. I wracked my brains frantically for a second. Where did people go on first dates? I hadn’t been on one since forever. Not even with Kieren. Where had Amelie gone on her first date with Zack? That I could remember clearly – after all, my sister had snuck off to the loo to send me WhatsApp updates so frequently that Zack had assumed she had an upset stomach or was having the period from hell and had asked if she was okay or needed to go home. Cue total radio silence from her and panic from me because I thought he must have murdered her.
‘Cocktails,’ I said. ‘At the Savoy.’
‘Wow.’ Ross did the eyebrow thing again. ‘Really keen. I guess there’s no point asking you if you fancied joining us at the Prince Regent tonight for a couple of pints, then. Wouldn’t want you to slum it down the local.’
Shit. It was an invitation. A backhanded one, but an invitation nonetheless. And it coming from Ross made it much harder to refuse, for some reason I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
But I thought ahead to what would happen if I said yes. Once we were installed with our drinks, Ross would say, ‘Lucy’s got a hot date tomorrow night. Cocktails at the Savoy,’ and everyone would press me for details about the fictitious man I’d met online, who was taking me to a fancy hotel bar on our first date. I’d have to lie – lie to Ross, and risk getting caught out in my lie if he questioned me about it on Monday and remembered the made-up details better than I could.
That alone would have been enough to make my decision for me. But it didn’t need making, because I couldn’t go anyway.
With a pang of something that felt almost like disappointment although, given the excruciatingly awkward consequences of saying yes that I’d rapidly formulated in my head, it couldn’t possibly have been, I said, ‘Sorry, I can’t. I’m seeing my family tonight.’
‘Fair do’s,’ Ross replied amicably. ‘Blood’s thicker than water, right?’
‘My sister’s getting married,’ I volunteered, as if that somehow made a difference. ‘In a few weeks. I’m her chief bridesmaid, and we’re going round to Mum and Dad’s place for dinner. I expect she wants me to try on my dress for the millionth time to make sure it still fits, or something like that.’
Ross grinned. ‘Tell me your sister’s a bridezilla without telling me your sister’s a bridezilla.’
I felt a flare of defensive annoyance. ‘She’s not. At least, not more than anyone else who’s getting married. It’s stressful.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he agreed. ‘I was best man for my mate Duncan a few months back and it was carnage. His missus got so worked up in the lead-up to the day they almost called the whole thing off. It was fine in the end, though. You’ll talk her down.’
‘Hope so.’ I allowed myself a tight smile and turned back to my screen, trying not to imagine what Ross would look like in a suit.
Then, right on schedule, the exodus began. All around me, heads and shoulders rose up like a man forest as they all stood, put on coats, carried empty coffee mugs to the kitchen, powered down computers. Little knots of people crossed the office towards the lift, first a trickle, then a flood, then a final few stragglers.
‘Have a good one, Lucy,’ Ross said. ‘Good luck with the date.’
I paused a beat, as if engrossed in my work, then said, ‘Thanks. Enjoy the pub,’ without looking away from my screen.
I waited until I was sure everyone had gone, then switched off my PC, picked up my coat and bag and left, turning out the lights and activating the alarm on my way out. Then I got the Tube to meet my family – the single daughter, cheerfully joining in the planning for her little sister’s wedding.