Chapter 7
I can’t remember how I got home. Someone – Amelie, most likely, or maybe Nush – must have put me in an Uber then, after a whispered conversation, decided I couldn’t be left on my own, come back to the flat with me, fed Astro and put me to bed.
Which was just as well, really, because when my cat finally coaxed me awake on Sunday morning by purring thunderously and licking my earlobe with a scratchy tongue, as soon as I opened a pouch of food to put into his bowl I had to run to the bathroom and be sick.
It was only after that the full force of my hangover hit me. Doubly unfair, if you think about it, because a good spew is meant to make you feel better, not worse. I crouched on the mercifully cool bathroom tiles, hugging the toilet bowl and wanting to die, for a good twenty minutes before thirst forced me to my feet. Whoever had escorted me home had taken off my shoes and my glasses but not my make-up or the silver dress. Glancing in the mirror, I froze with horror.
I looked like I’d been to a Halloween party, not a hen night. My face was chalky white with smears of dull, greyish foundation clinging to my skin. My eyes were bloodshot and ringed with black mascara. My hair was a greasy tangle. The silver dress was rucked up around my hips and there was dirt on my knees and hands.
Seeing that brought back the last few moments of the evening. I remembered standing up and navigating to the loo in the club, and Nush escorting me out. I remembered the smell of Eve’s grape soda vape. And I remembered Ross – Ross and Bryony, snogging the life out of each other.
I wondered if they’d gone home together.
I could see no reason why they wouldn’t have – it would have been a totally normal thing to do, a mutually desired and enjoyable hook-up after a night out. Ross was single – the brief moments of connection I’d felt might have meant something to me, but why would it have to him? He had no feelings for me. He could snog whoever he wanted – more than snog, if he wanted that too.
We were colleagues, that was all – and there was no way I could allow myself to develop feelings for him, even if there was a chance they’d be reciprocated.
It had been a long time – months, maybe even a year – since I’d opened the white envelope I still kept in my bedside drawer. It had been there for four years; when I’d moved into my current flat I’d considered throwing it away, but decided against it. I needed it there – needed to remember the mistake I’d made, and remind myself not to make it again.
I didn’t open it now. I just looked at it, and looking was enough to bring the memories of four-years-ago me rushing back.
I was twenty-five and I’d just got my first job that had ‘editor’ in the title and moved out of a flatshare and into a place of my own. I suppose it was inevitable that, alongside those firsts, I’d fall for a man for the first time, too.
The job offer had felt like my big break – Junior Lifestyle Editor on a national newspaper (although the way it felt they might as well have put Head of the Known Universe on my business cards). I could see my career path ahead of me as clearly as if it was illuminated by spotlights – the indefatigable thoroughness, the awards, the promotion, and the rest would be history.
Oh, and at some point along the way I’d meet a man. An intelligent, thoughtful, serious man, possibly with deep emotional scars that only I could heal. He’d be worth waiting for, because God only knew I’d waited long enough. Throughout my teenage and university years and beyond, I’d watched in disappointed bewilderment as the guys I liked took one look at me and put me firmly in the friend zone, before asking for one of my mates’ numbers or (worse) whether my sister was single.
It was with hope and confidence in my heart that I arrived for my first day at the Sentinel. Even the fact that the first thing that happened was I was shown where the coffee machine was, and the second was a lesson in how to work the printer, didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.
And then I saw Kieren.
I didn’t know his name at that stage – he worked on the news desk, way over on the other side of the office. But it so happened that he was in the kitchen making himself a cup of tea at the same time as I was making a round of coffees, and I literally stopped in my tracks and stared at him, mesmerised.
He was thin and not very tall – maybe five foot eight or nine, and a few years older than me. He had dark hair, almost black as far as I could see, but it was shorn too close to his head to tell. He had a spade-shaped dark beard and piercing blue eyes and cheekbones you could open a letter with. He was wearing jeans and an olive-green sweatshirt and he smelled like he’d just finished a cigarette.
He wasn’t conventionally handsome, apart from those eyes, as blue as spilled ink. But I felt powerfully, magnetically drawn to him – here, I was sure, was the troubled soul my own soul had been seeking.
‘Can I help you?’ his voice jolted me out of my daydream, making me blush and realise I’d been staring vacantly in his general direction.
‘I was just…’ I was just imagining our married life, ten years from now. ‘I was just wondering if you’d like me to wash that mug for you?’
He looked at me hard, his blue eyes narrow and a faint smile on his lips. ‘No one, but no one, washes my mug. Ever.’
He had an Irish accent. I felt my stomach turn a slow somersault.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I’m Lucy. I’m new, and I was told to make myself useful, so I thought…’
‘Lucy.’ He nodded, like I’d confirmed a long-held suspicion. ‘I’m Kieren. Northern Ireland Editor, over on the news desk.’
‘I’m on Lifestyle,’ I said. ‘I started yesterday.’
‘Welcome to the Sentinel.’ He said it ironically, as if it was some kind of poisoned chalice, but then he smiled and it was like the sun coming out. ‘If you get a free moment, come on over – I’m sure we can find a way for you to make yourself useful in News.’
So, after that, whenever I had half an hour free, I’d check with my team leader and scurry across the bullpen to the newsdesk, where I’d be put to work correcting the spelling of obscure politicians’ names, the dates when by-elections had taken place, or the boundaries between local parish councils.
Eventually, as I proved myself to be not totally incompetent, I was given more challenging tasks.
‘Cut this to fit, will you?’ Kieren said one day, and I spent an hour engaged in a sort of word jigsaw, making an article about corrupt police officers in Belfast go from a thousand words to eight column inches without losing any of the facts.
At last, when I told him I was done, I watched breathlessly as he scanned the copy on his screen, changing a word here and there, before smiling and saying, ‘You did a great job. Quick, too. Thanks, Lucy.’
He might as well have told me I was the reigning queen of his heart, that’s how happy his words made me. When he allocated me another, longer piece to work on, I agreed instantly.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, the day before the paper was put to bed, so when five thirty came, and no one left their desks. At six o’clock, a few of the early starters began to pack up their things and go, but half an hour later the bullpen was still more than half full.
I still had a good two hours’ work left, I reckoned. My eyes were tired, my shoulders hunched and aching, but I kept going, the words on my screen like thousands of ants, crawling their way slowly upwards in an endless progression.
‘Tea?’ asked Kieren’s voice at my elbow. ‘You look like you need one.’
‘Thanks.’ I didn’t like tea much – he brewed it so strong it was the colour of burnt umber paint, bitter and sharp with tannin. But I drank it anyway, because he’d made it.
An hour later, I looked up from my screen. The contact lenses I wore then were drying out, threatening to ping out of my eyes, so I blinked furiously to try and lubricate them and clear the cloudiness that had settled on them. The office had emptied dramatically, I realised – there were only a couple of guys left at the Sports desk, two women on the subs station, Kieren and me. As I watched, the two subs nodded to each other, shut down their computers and left.
‘How’re you getting on?’ Kieren asked.
‘Getting there, I think,’ I said. ‘Almost done.’
Five minutes later, I stood up, stretching my fingertips high over my head, interlacing my fingers and pulling my elbows back as far as they’d go.
‘Taking a yoga break?’ Kieren asked.
I never quite knew whether he was joking or not.
‘I reckon I’ve finished,’ I said humbly. ‘Unless there’s anything else…?’
I looked around. The office was empty now, pools of shadow over the other pods of desks, only the News section illuminated.
‘Time to call it a night, then.’
He stood and shrugged his battered leather jacket (it smelled of smoke, I’d noticed, and the same juniper scent I”d noticed on his skin) over his shoulders.
Then he hitched a hip on the corner of my desk and perched there, looking half at me and half at the words on my screen. His closeness made it difficult to breathe, like the strap of my bra had suddenly been pulled to a tighter hook.
‘Lucy?’ he said.
I half-turned, shy of meeting his eyes but at the same time longing to gaze into his face. ‘Kieren?’
‘You know – people here might not tell you this. But I’m going to,’ he said.
I felt my heart hammering in my chest. Either he was about to tell me I was going to be sacked, or I had a terrible body odour problem – or it was something good.
The look on his face – his lips turned up at the edges – told me it was something good.
‘You’ve got talent,’ he went on. ‘Real potential. A woman like you – smart, hard-working, driven, beautiful – you’ll go far in this industry. I don’t think you know it yet, but you will.’
No one except my mum and my sister had ever told me I was beautiful before. And that he thought I had a future in journalism was like rich, velvety buttercream on top of a particularly decadent cake.
‘Thank you,’ I stammered. ‘That means a lot. It really does.’
‘Now, that doesn’t mean you should pull an all-nighter here on your own,’ he chided gently. ‘Come on – home time. Get some rest.’
I logged off hastily, got up and fetched my coat from my own desk on the other side of the room, then followed him to the lift and waited while he set the alarm.
Maybe he would ask me out for a drink. Or just thank me for my help and the late night I’d put in. Or something else.
As it turned out, it was something else. He pressed the button for the lift and then, while we waited for it to inch its way up from the ground floor to the ninth, he turned to me, put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me.
I couldn’t have been more taken by surprise if he’d slapped me. For a second I stood still, frozen in the circle of his arms, and then I responded. I couldn’t help it. It was like weeks – even years – of pent-up desire was exploding inside me. His mouth on mine was the best thing I’d ever felt; the smell of his skin was intoxicating. I wanted to press my body hard against his, feel every bone of him pressing against me, never let him go.
But I had to, when the low ping of the lift ordered me to.
He looked at me, that crooked half-smile on his face, and asked, ‘You liked that?’
I nodded dumbly and stepped ahead of him into the lift. On the way down, he kissed me again and I responded just as eagerly. Then we stepped out on the ground floor and I followed him out into the street.
‘So did I,’ he said. ‘Talented, beautiful and as sexy as hell. Wow.’
He smiled at me again, his face transformed like a Christmas tree when the lights switch on, then he turned and walked away. I must have walked away too, but it felt more like I was floating, born away towards the Tube station on a cloud of happiness and excitement.
‘Stupid, Lucy,’ I said aloud now, throwing the envelope back into the drawer and slamming it shut. ‘Stupid, stupid. No crushes on work colleagues again, ever. Remember that.’
It was almost eleven o’clock before I’d managed to shower, pull on tracksuit bottoms and a jumper and make my way back to the kitchen with my phone. Amelie’s Instagram story from the previous day was almost fifteen minutes long, and I watched it all – a mixture of group selfies, videos, close-ups of cocktails and, towards the end, blurry shots of the dance floor and the street outside the club.
I carried on scrolling. As yesterday segued into today, the messages because less coherent and the photos less carefully staged. But there were a couple of candid shots of that kiss – Bryony’s back and Ross’s front, a streetlamp illuminating them like something off CCTV, or a crime scene photo.
‘Now you can’t say pics or it didn’t happen!’ Eve had posted, with a load of laughing emojis and the devil for good measure.
I scrolled rapidly past, knowing that if I allowed myself, I’d return to the photo again and again, torturing myself with it although I knew I had no right to find it painful. My sister’s friends didn’t even know who Ross was. They had no idea I worked with him. I hadn’t mentioned it; he and I hadn’t spoken or even made eye contact.
Rapidly, I scrolled to the end of the chat. About a dozen posts up from the final one, Nush had posted, ‘Has anyone heard from Lucy? She was absolutely sparko when I left her place last night.’
Amelie: Nope. I tried calling but there was no reply.
True. There had been a couple of missed calls on my phone, but I was too deep in the Fear to check who from, or listen to the messages.
Miranda: @Lucy? Are you there? Are you okay?
Nush: I fed the cat and I thought about crashing on the couch but I didn’t want to be a pain, so I got an Uber home.
Amelie: If I don’t hear from her I’ll go round there. I’m sure she’s fine.
Elspeth: I bet she’s feeling better than me. I’m legit dying. I’ve had two bacon rolls and they’re not even touching the sides.
Elspeth? One of the interchangeable blondes, I guessed.
Amelie: How about Bryony? Any update on the hot man she hooked up with?
I couldn’t read any more. I muted the chat – the hen do was over, after all, and any further business would be conducted on the separate bridesmaids’ group.
Then I messaged my sister and told her I was fine, just feeling as rough as I was sure everyone else was, and I’d speak to her during the week.
And then I went back to bed, pulled the duvet over my head and stayed there for the rest of the day.