Chapter 19
‘What’ll I do if no one wants to talk to me?’ I asked Astro. He was lying on my bad, half-watching in case I stepped on his tail as I wobbled precariously, craning over my shoulder to see the reflection of my back in the mirror.
I was wearing denim dungarees panic-bought the previous day in a smash-and-grab Primark trip, with a purple crop top underneath them and my trusty Doc Marten boots. I had no idea whether the look was even remotely appropriate for the work summer social, but at least it was different from what I wore to the office and my hair looked decent. Also, thanks to a TikTok tutorial Miranda had sent me a link to, I’d more or less nailed the summer’s signature “super-glowy, no-make up make-up look”.
But none of that helped much. I was going to have to spend the day socialising with my colleagues. There’d be Pimms to spill down my front and sausages in buns that would dribble ketchup down my chin if I so much as looked at them. There’d probably be rounders or volleyball or some such horror – the exact nature of the entertainment on offer was ‘a surprise’, according to Neil, who was on the organising committee.
But whatever it was, there’d be men. Loads of them, everywhere, all busy out-manning one another over who wielded the BBQ tongs in the most manly way and whose team came first in the touch rugby.
And one of the men would be Ross.
The thing was, the more time I spent sitting at my desk opposite him, the more I was coming to see him as a human being, rather than just another man. I liked the way he was always first to offer to help if someone was stuck with a work problem. I liked the way he always put a fiver in birthday collections, rather than Neil’s paltry handful of small change. I even liked the way he still – sometimes although not always – blushed when he looked at me. I’d come to realise it mostly happened when I smiled, so I’d been trying to ration my smiles in case I exhausted his capacity to blush.
But Ross was still going out with Bryony, and I’d made a promise to myself years ago that I was never going to allow myself to be hurt by a man again.
The pain I’d experienced over Kieren had been more than enough to put me off for life: no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t see what men – any man – could offer me that would be worth risking that again. I could change fuses myself and evict spiders myself and take my own bins out. I didn’t need romantic candle-lit dinners or someone’s lap to put my feet on when I watched television in the evenings. I didn’t care if I went to weddings without a plus-one.
And sex? Whatever. With Kieren, as I’d had to admit at the time, it hadn’t been all that. But even if it was, no orgasm I’d ever experienced was worth the hassle and pain and risk of heartbreak of actually getting a man to provide it for me.
I’d managed perfectly well for all these years and I intended to go on managing.
So why did Ross make me feel the way I felt?
I let my knees go bendy and flopped down on the bed next to Astro, who bounced slightly as my weight hit the mattress, and looked offended.
How did I actually feel about Ross? It was surprisingly hard to pinpoint, because it was such a complex jumble of emotions. Sometimes he was annoying bloke’s bloke, like when he took the piss out of Barney when Queens Park Rangers beat Charlton four-nil over the weekend. Sometimes he made me feel almost protective, like I had when he’d inexplicably freaked out over the terrorist attack on the tube that had turned out to be nothing of the kind. And when I read his sharp, knowledgeable tech column in Max! every week, I felt a surge of something like pride.
And – yes, damn it – there was the way I felt when I saw him walk across the office in his gym kit, all loose-limbed and sweaty, or brush his hair back from his face, or grin when I made a joke. My assessment of his looks as middling might have been correct, but they were ordinary like perfect things are ordinary – a simple white shirt, or a fried egg with the edges crispy and the yolk still runny, or a daisy on a green lawn. Like when I opened the door to my flat and Astro came to meet me and everything was ordinary, because I was home.
‘God, I need to get a grip,’ I told Astro, who opened one eye and gave me a hard stare like he one hundred per cent agreed. ‘Going around comparing a bloke to a daisy like I’m William fricking Wordsworth or someone. And I need to get going or I’ll be late for this stupid party, not that that would be the end of the world.’
Astro blinked slowly at me and I blinked back, and we carried on doing that for a minute or so until he lost interest and went to sleep. Reluctantly, I stood up, checked my reflection in the mirror one last time, gathered up my things and left the flat.
By the time I stepped off the Tube at an obscure West London station I’d never heard of – let alone visited – before, the sky had clouded over and it was beginning to rain – only a thin drizzle for now, but it looked like the kind of thin drizzle that had big ambitions to turn into a proper downpour. It wasn’t looking good for the barbecue and volleyball.
But, to my surprise, the pin on my phone led me to an industrial estate. Hulking warehouses surrounded a large car park, and there wasn’t an open field suitable for a sporting event anywhere in sight. I wandered around for a few minutes, trying to locate the exact location of the pin, and eventually saw a small group of men clustered around a metal roll-up door, looking confused. One of them was Greg, my boss. Another was Ross.
‘Lucy!” Greg reached out as if he was going to give me a hug, then changed his mind and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Glad you made it. We’re still waiting for about ten others and then we’ll go on it and get you guys divided into teams. There’ll be coffee and bacon rolls laid on before we get started.’
Teams. Apprehension flooded me again, coupled with awkwardness as Greg moved away, leaving me standing next to Ross and a couple of the guys from the art department.
‘Do you know what they’re going to make us do?’ I asked.
Ross shrugged. ’No idea. Last year was clay pigeon shooting and it was a disaster. Well, it was for me, anyway. I just shut my eyes and blasted away and missed everything.’
This made me feel a bit better.
‘At least it looks like we’ll be indoors,’ I said, shivering as a fresh breeze brought a gust of rain onto my shoulders, and wishing I’d brought a coat.
‘Here,’ Ross rummaged in his canvas messenger bag and got out an umbrella. ‘We might be about to get splattered with paintballs or something but we may as well be dry when we start.’
I moved under its shelter, which meant moving nearer to Ross. I’d never been this close to him before – although there was at least four inches between his bicep and my shoulder, I was close enough to smell whatever soap or shampoo he’d used that morning, and feel a faint but welcome warmth coming off his body and meeting my bare skin.
‘What would Adam advise in this situation?’ he asked.
‘What would – what?’
‘Dear Adam,’ he improvised. ‘I’m heading on a corporate away day with a g— with my colleagues. How do I avoid making a total tit of myself?’
I laughed. ‘I mean, obviously I’d say, “Dear Ross, developing a non-fatal but highly infectious disease will allow you to get out of going to the horrible thing.”’
‘Bit late for that.’
‘I’m afraid so. But Adam would probably say, “Dear Ross, team-building activities are meant to be just that. Be yourself, have fun, remember not to take any of it too seriously. And?—”’
‘Don’t be a dick?’
‘Exactly. So I’ll be watching you closely for any signs of dickish behaviour.’
He grinned. ‘Looks like we’re going in.’
A metal door had swung open, and we all filed inside. A corner of the vast industrial unit had been cordoned off with hessian screens, and a table was set up with food and drink. The staff of Max! descended on it as if they hadn’t been fed for weeks, and I joined in. Ross had been separated from me by the hungry throng, and I found myself eating my cheese croissant and drinking my coffee alone, which was fine with me.
After a few minutes, someone tapped a teaspoon against a coffee mug and Neil called for attention.
‘Good morning all, and welcome to the Max! summer social. In case you haven’t worked it out yet, this year’s activity is an escape room challenge. I’ve divided everyone into teams of three, so please listen up and I’ll announce them in just a second.’
‘Aw, why can’t we choose our own teams?’ someone grumbled.
‘Because everyone would be fighting to have Lucy on theirs – duh,’ said Chiraag from behind me, and I almost choked on my croissant.
But there was no time to ask him why on earth he thought that, because names were being called and people were moving to the end of the room in awkward little clusters of three, discussing strategy and analysing the various skills their team members boasted, before being hustled out through a gap in the sacking screen to begin their adventure. Eventually, only Ross and I were left, standing awkwardly by the food table.
‘And finally, Ross, Lucy and… where is Declan, anyway?’ Neil asked.
‘Someone said he emailed,’ Ross said. ‘His boiler’s fucked and he’s got to wait at home for a gas engineer.’
‘Bad luck,’ Neil said. ‘Looks like you’ll be a team of two, then.’
I looked at Ross and Ross looked at me, and part of me went, Nooooo, but a bigger part went, Yesssss!
Then he grinned at me, a delighted smile full of excitement and promise, with not a trace of a blush on his face. ‘Come on then, Lucy. Let’s do this thing.’
We stepped forward, Neil parted the hessian barrier for the final time and we passed cautiously through. We were in a space designed to look like an old-fashioned library, with leather-bound books lining the walls, a desk with a green-shaded lamp on it, and a heavy Oriental rug on the floor. Everything smelled old and musty, the way second-hand bookshops do, and there was a hit of potpourri in the air. At the far end of the room was an oak-panelled door with a brass lock, but no key.
‘Right,’ Ross said. ‘So we find the key, and that gets us to the next stage. Easy, huh?’
‘Piece of cake.’ But I realised my hands were trembling. The more I looked around, the more possible hiding places I could see.
‘So where do we start?’
‘Where do people usually hide keys?’
‘My dad used to put his car keys in the dog’s bed overnight.’ A smile flashed across his face and vanished almost straight away.
‘Really? Was he vicious? The dog, not your dad, obviously.’
‘Soft as butter,’ he said. ‘Both of them. Until – but anyway, he reckoned it was the last place anyone would look if they broke in.’
I was intrigued to pursue this line of questioning further. What if a burglar gave the dog a treat to keep it quiet and spotted the keys? Did his dad still do this random, slightly mad thing? What happened after ‘until’?
But I knew if I started distracting him with questions, we’d never solve the challenge in time.
‘There’ll be clues,’ I said. ‘Let’s look at the papers on the desk.’
There were almost as many of those as there were keys. Old letters, piles of invoices, and several sheets that were blank.
‘The blank ones, right?’
‘Got to be. And the lamp.’
Feeling a surge of excitement, I held one of the blank pages up to the light, but nothing happened. I tried a second, then a third, then hit pay dirt. When the light hit the paper, faint lines appeared on it.
‘Look here!’
Ross leaned in close, so close I could feel his breath tickling my hair.
‘Looks like a floorplan of the room,’ he said.
‘And there’s an X – look. Right there.’
I pointed to the spot on the map, and Ross did the same, at the exact same second. Our fingers brushed each other, and then jumped away like an electric current had passed between us. The paper fluttered to the floor.
But there was no time for awkwardness. Together, we hunkered down on the dusty floorboards and pulled back a corner of the rug. There, taped to its underside, was a key.
‘Yes!’ I saw Ross’s grin flash out again in the gloom. ‘Nailed it! You’re good at this, aren’t you?’
‘I think I played a game ages ago that had the same thing,’ I said modestly. ‘When you know, you know.’
I unpicked the tape and fumbled the key into my hand. We scrambled to our feet and almost ran the couple of steps to the door.
‘You want to do it?’ I offered.
‘Nah, you worked it out.’
‘Fine. I’m not going to waste time being polite.’
He laughed, and I slipped the key into the lock. It turned easily. We exchanged a half-high-five, our palms not quite meeting, and hustled through into the next room.
This had been arranged to look like the kitchen of some ancient manor house. There was a scrubbed pine table, a white ceramic sink beneath a window offering a fake view of a vegetable garden, and a trapdoor in the floor, an iron ring sunk into it.
I paused. ‘God, this reminds me of a place we went to on holiday when I was little. Somewhere in Cornwall. The kitchen was full of clutter like this – my sister and I thought it was magical but Mum moaned about what a pain it was to clean.’
‘I’m Team Your Mum,’ Ross said. ‘My flatmates call me Mari Kondo – I’m always tidying.’
I thought of his desk at work – the keyboard always arranged just so, the few papers he had on there stacked neatly in trays, his jacket on the coat rack instead of draped over the back of his chair like everyone else’s.
‘Fully house-trained,’ I said approvingly. ‘I like it. So what’s our mission here?’
‘Guess we need to get through the trapdoor,’ Ross said.
‘Right.’ I gave the ring a half-hearted tug, but predictably it didn’t budge.
I moved over to the sink, as if the backlit, painted view of the garden beyond would give me some sort of inspiration.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That cabinet, and the windowpanes – they’re the same layout and dimensions.’
‘So they are,’ Ross agreed. ‘You’re a genius.’
I felt a glow of pride. ‘I just like figuring stuff out. So I guess we open some of the drawers. But which?’
‘We could try random ones and see what works?’
I gave him a withering stare. ‘There’s sixty-four of them. The number of possible combinations will run into millions.’
‘Fine, whatever, Archimedes. So the clue must be in the window.’
I stepped forward and studied the painted view. ‘What do the labels on the drawers say? Start from top left.’
’Pepper,’ Ross began. ‘Salt.’
’Stop.’ In the second window pane, there was a distant view of the sea. ‘Open that one, then carry on.’
We carried on, Ross opening drawers that matched the view of a wheat field, a honeycomb, a couple of roosting chickens, a dairy cow, a grapevine and a tree that I guessed was meant to be bay.
As soon as he tugged open that final drawer, we heard a grinding sound and the trapdoor in the floor slowly opened. I joined Ross at its edge, and we could see a ladder leading down into darkness.
‘Awesome!’ he said. ‘Come on, Lucy, we’re killing this.’
‘You go first,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I love this bit.’
‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘I mean, isn’t there something in the Health Safety manual about climbing down ladders in the dark?’
He laughed. ‘Guess not, or they wouldn’t make us do it. Come on, it won’t be far down.’
‘No. You first.’
Honestly, I don’t know what had come over me. I mean, I wasn’t crazy about heights, but I knew, rationally, that Ross was right – it would only be a few steps down. There’d be a light at the bottom. But somehow, looking at it, I couldn’t quite work out how I’d arrange my hands and feet on the rungs, which looked like they were made of shiny brass, how I’d manipulate my body through the trapdoor, how I’d arrive at the bottom in one piece. Suddenly, all sorts of scenarios were rushing through my mind: the ladder breaking, my hands losing their grip and letting me slip into a bottomless abyss, the trapdoor coming crashing down on my head and knocking me unconscious.
‘Shit. You really don’t love it, do you?’ he said. ‘Right. Gotcha. I’ll go first and I’ll help you from the bottom.’
Nimbly as an acrobat, Ross grasped the top rung of the ladder and stepped through the gap. I heard an almost musical clong as his feet frond a rung. Then his head disappeared from view, followed by his hands.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
‘Sure.’ His voice sounded surprisingly close. ‘I’m almost – ah, I’m there. It’s maybe twelve feet? Piece of piss. I’ll be able to reach you right from the start.’
‘Right. I’m going in.’
I took a big breath and swallowed, hoping the feeling that my stomach was going to shoot up into my mouth would go away. It didn’t – but I had no option but to go down. Same as I’d seen Ross do, I knelt on the floor, gripped the top rung of the ladder and eased my feet back through the trapdoor.
‘Keep feeling for the rungs,’ he instructed. ‘There. You’ve got the first one. Now, right foot down, left foot down – easy.’
My face was pressed against the carpet, my knuckles white on the brass rail. Tentatively, I groped in the darkness with my feet, feeling first one rung and then the next beneath the heavy soles of my boots. My body followed until I was almost all the way through.
Then I let out a squeal of shock. A hand had grasped my ankle from the darkness below.
‘Sorry!’ I could hear concern in Ross’s voice, but also amusement. ‘I should’ve warned you. I’ll hold your legs and guide you down.’
Shit. Did I shave my legs? I thought. But there was no time to worry about that. I felt Ross’s hand moving my left calf and then my right, surely and competently, from one step to the next. I didn’t dare look down, but I could see a rough brick wall in front of my eyes, steadily moving upwards as I moved down.
‘You’re three rungs from the end,’ he said after a bit. ‘You can literally let go your feet now and jump to the bottom if you want.’
I didn’t want. Ross’s hands had moved upwards now – politely bypassing my thighs and bottom – and he was holding me firmly round my waist. Gingerly, I stepped my feet down the final rungs – one, two, three – then felt the welcome crunch of solid ground under my left boot. My right joined it and then, stiffly, I released my hands from the ladder, feeling Ross release my waist at the same time.
‘Phew,’ I said. ‘That was proper scary. Sorry to be such a wimp.’
I turned around, an embarrassed smile on my face. Ross was smiling back – and then, to my amazement, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me.
‘Well done,’ he said. I could feel his lips moving against my hair. ‘You’re hardcore.’
‘You helped me.’ My own voice was muffled by his shirt. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Now let’s get on and smash this thing.’
He let me go and we stood in the gloom for a second, beaming at each other. My legs were still a bit shaky, but I didn’t think it was from the climb any more.
Together, we turned around, ready to assess the next challenge.
It – and the following five rooms – passed in a bit of a blur. Afterwards, I could remember putting together jigsaw puzzle pieces to make one of a whole gallery wall of pictures, behind which was the key to the next room. There was a code we had to crack, where hieroglyphic symbols corresponded to letters of the alphabet and spelled out a line from a poem hidden in a book. There was an algebra problem whose solution was the code on a combination lock. There was a chemistry lab where the final key was hidden in a test tube of liquid, made invisible by its refractive index and revealed when the solution was changed by the addition of a specific chemical.
Ross got that one – I’d never even heard of refractive index, but he’d studied chemistry at A-level and explained it to me. Although, by that point, I had to admit being conscious of a different sort of chemistry – a kind of fizzing connection between him and me, the way our brains seemed to fit together like they were puzzle pieces themselves, so that when I got stuck Ross stepped in, and when he was at a loss the answer popped straight into my own head. Never mind the fact that I could still feel the places where his hands had touched my legs, my waist and my shoulders, like they’d also been coated with invisible ink that would leave a mark on my skin only I knew was there.
By the end, we were laughing as we entered each room, confident that none of the others had beaten us and this one wouldn’t either.
It was no surprise, really, when we emerged from the final room to find that all our colleagues were gathered round Neil, who was holding a stop-watch, and erupted into cheers when they saw us.
‘Forty minutes and fifteen seconds,’ Neil said. ‘You beat the next-quickest team by a clear six minutes.’
‘How the hell did you do that?’ Chiraag asked. ‘I thought our team had won it for sure.’
‘Just natural talent,’ Ross joked.
‘Ross did the hard bits,’ I said, remembering the climb down the ladder.
‘Hey, don’t throw shade on yourself,’ reprimanded Greg. ‘You can tell us your secrets over a drink. Grab your bags from the first room where you left them, gang, and let’s go to the pub.’
Ross walked next to me, both of us still glowing with our shared triumph.
‘That thing with the windows,’ he said, ‘that was genius. And you got it in like five seconds.’
‘It took us at least fifteen minutes,’ Chiraag complained. ‘We’d have beaten you if it wasn’t for that.’
‘If it wasn’t for Ross, I’d still be standing around at the top of that ladder, too chicken to go down,’ I said. ‘You took one for the team there.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Ross moved a fraction closer to me, so his shoulder brushed mine. ‘It was totally worth it.’
‘Why?’ Marco asked. ‘Did you get to see her knickers?’
‘Shut it, you sleaze,’ said Ross.
‘I big brave man.’ Chiraag stooped over so his knuckled almost brushed the ground. ‘I help frightened ladies down ladders. Then I?—’
‘Oh, piss off, the pair of you.’ But I could see Ross was grinning.
What had he actually meant, though? Was he saying that he’d enjoyed touching me, or that it had been a necessary, unfortunate price he”d had to pay for coming in first? But I didn’t need to analyse that now: we’d have the whole afternoon together, chatting, drinking beer in the sun, getting to know each other even better.
I couldn’t believe I’d been dreading this day. It was turning out far, far better than I could have dreamed of.
But when I picked up my bag and checked my phone, I had six missed calls from Amelie.