Chapter Eleven
‘Good afternoon, my lady.’ Olly’s sarcastic tone rang out as he came in step alongside me, heading for Esme’s office.
I carried my work backpack, complete with snacks, make-up bag, essential oils spritzer and insulated cup for coffee.
If I was heading into a late-night speechwriting session, I would need all these things.
And Olly had… nothing at all, apart from his laptop tucked under his arm.
Walking in a smooth glide, tweed scarf doubled up around his neck, he looked positively bouncy.
‘You look more perky than you did earlier,’ I said. I didn’t add that the twelve o’clock shadow he’d sported earlier had very much suited him, roughening his smooth good looks in a way which had literally made me catch my breath. Now, he was converted back to his clean-cut self.
‘You have the best espresso machine in your breakout area,’ he said. ‘Juice wasn’t going to cut it today. Although we could work out together later, if we hit a lag? The gym’s not far and I could sign you in.’ There was a definite competitive glitter to his eyes.
‘Sadly, I don’t have my workout gear with me,’ I said. In fact, I didn’t even know where my workout gear was. I did Pilates routines gleaned from YouTube, in a pair of old leggings and a Race for Life t-shirt. Not quite Resilience Needs standard.
He shrugged. ‘Takeaway and caffeine it is,’ he said.
Olly and I settled into Esme’s office. I’d forgotten how luxe it was.
So luxe, in fact, that I found it difficult to relax; I deliberately kept my own office austere and professional.
In Esme’s office there was an abundance of soft fabrics, from the deep buttoned armchair in teal to the mustard yellow chaise longue to the piles of cashmere throws.
Olly enjoyed it at first, posing like a Roman emperor on the chaise longue with a bunch of grapes (there was a vast fruit bowl) but after five minutes he got tired of it and laughed at me, perched on the edge of one of the armchairs.
‘Shall we just sit at the meeting table?’ I said, and he agreed.
We set up our laptops on the small dark circle of wood and Olly wheeled a flipchart over.
I felt a lot better: it was still cosy, but more formal.
This, I could deal with. We began brainstorming the points for the speech Ajax had emailed over, jotted down possible content ideas for discussion, then moved onto Chroma, the dating app which was currently just a beautiful dream in the mind of its creators.
‘What do we say about this?’ said Olly. He had finally taken off his scarf and was eating the grapes in earnest, two at a time.
‘Make shit up, I guess,’ I said. ‘Do you ever stop eating, by the way?’
‘You have raised this point before,’ he said, giving me a picture-perfect smile. ‘And it’s how I keep my metabolism high. Plus, once you’ve lived off army rations you learn to appreciate real food.’
I looked up from my screen, but for once he didn’t catch my eye, concentrating on his grape selection a little too hard. ‘Where did you serve?’ I asked.
He paused. ‘A number of places.’ When he finally looked up, his eyes had lost their twinkle. ‘My first posting out of training was in Afghanistan. I served in other locations, too, but it’s fair to say that stayed with me.’ I felt a shift in the air. A tightness in my chest which surprised me.
‘Anyway,’ he said, cracking a smile, visibly trying to push away what he’d just said.
‘The important thing is, we’re here now, with this excellent fruit selection and – excuse me…
’ He had opened the bar to the side of him, and its marquetry door revealed Esme’s whisky collection in all its splendour.
He turned to me and raised an eyebrow. ‘I had no idea you soft southerners would have such a fine collection. Fancy a drink?’
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Not now, anyway. I need to think. Let’s order food and get some text on the page.’
Around us, the rest of the office shut down.
Beyond the smoked glass walls of Esme’s office lights were turned off and groups drifted out into the twinkling London night.
Sasha was the last to go, fixing Olly with a saucer-eyed gaze as she forced her feet into mint-coloured stilettos.
‘Is there anything I can get you before I go?’ she said, waving in a courier who delivered us our noodles and steaming bao buns. ‘I’d stay later, but I have a date.’
‘Even if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have to stay late,’ I said. ‘Go and have a life.’
She smiled. ‘I’ll be in late tomorrow, if that’s all right? There’s that acrylic still life workshop I’ve been wanting to try.’
‘Sure.’ I nodded. ‘See you.’
As Olly tucked into the food, my fingers drummed on the keyboard. ‘How about this?’ I turned the laptop to show him the finely tuned paragraph I’d just typed.
He scanned it with his dark, unblinking eyes. ‘Looks great. You’re giving me an easy ride here. I’d take out the “however”, though.’
I hummed in agreement and deleted it as he gave a groan of ecstasy.
‘You have to try one of these buns.’ He leaned over the table, one balanced in his chopsticks.
My mouth watered, but the gesture felt too intimate.
So intimate that – good God, was I blushing again?
I snatched it prissily with my fingers and took a tiny bite, giving him a thumbs up as I chewed.
‘You’re not one of those dreadful people who still use the thumbs up emoji, are you?’ he said.
‘So what if I am?’
‘Dear, dear, dear. So modern looking, and yet so stuck in the past.’
My heart sank. ‘Is this another thing I’m missing now that I’m not twenty-one years old?’
‘The very same, my dearest passive aggressive colleague.’
I pointed a biro at him. ‘I’m not passive aggressive, I’m aggressive.’
A slow smile dawned across his face, and I turned back to my keyboard, somehow unable to meet his eyes.
‘So,’ he said as Sasha turned the last light out in the wider office and disappeared, leaving it lit by safety lights in blue-tinged darkness. ‘You’re mother, then?’
‘Hmm?’ I frowned at him as I finished the bun.
‘There’s a maternal air to your relationship with your team,’ he said, those eyes fixing on my face.
‘I like a happy team,’ I said, with a shrug. ‘That’s all.’
‘You see’– he gracefully waved another bun in the air – ‘I like a team that’s professional and turns up on time.’ He frowned as he took a bite and chewed. ‘I’m polite, don’t get me wrong, but we’re not here to make friends.’
‘I like to mentor younger people who might not have a chance in this industry ordinarily.’
‘There’s mentoring, and being an invested mentee,’ he said. ‘And then there’s “sure, hon, take the morning off any time you want”.’
‘She’s going to an art workshop,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is she, though?’
‘Now who’s the one being old-fashioned?’ I said. ‘EKArts employees are encouraged to explore the arts during working hours, within reason. Now, if you’ve finished criticising my management style, let’s brainstorm what we’re going to say about B Corp status.’
Olly nodded his assent, offering me another bao bun.
It was 11pm before I let Olly loose on the whisky; charmingly, he seemed to be waiting for my permission. The bulk of the speech was there, we were just finessing details, and we had a couple of pages’ worth of content ideas. I gave him the nod and he strode over to the drinks cabinet at speed.
‘Easy,’ I said, as he sloshed Laphroaig into a crystal tumbler.
‘Easy?’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. We deserve as much as we want, or need, to get this thing finished.’ He slid the glass across the table and watched me take my first sip.
God, it was good. Fiery and peaty. Within a couple of minutes, the room felt a lot more comfortable.
We sampled a tiny bit of one of the other whiskies.
Then we had a third, yelling ‘chin chin’ at each other as we knocked it back, more like tequila than Scotland’s finest. ‘I need a break,’ I said, kicking my shoes off.
Olly was still laughing at an impression I’d done of Phil from The Times at the press conference.
Again, it was his laugh which threw me off balance.
I enjoyed our banter, but I still felt he was hiding behind the barrier of his manners, every word considered, every gesture intentional.
Then he would laugh, and it was as though I’d unlocked an entirely different Olly.
‘Sooo,’ I said, warmed by the whisky and abandoning any attempt at hiding my nosiness. ‘Are you from Edinburgh?’
He nodded. ‘Originally, although we moved around a lot with my father’s job.’
‘What brings you to bad old London?’ I sipped the liquid fire. It stung in a very good way.
‘My brother married a Londoner,’ he said, pulling a sad face. ‘I wanted to be near him and his family. If you ever meet him, do not tell him that. His head is already the size of Edinburgh Castle.’
I laughed a bit too loudly, adding a measure of water to my whisky to slow me down. When I looked up, he was watching me with his warm, rich dark eyes.
‘What was the name of your date last night?’ I asked abruptly. Just to be clear: I never would have asked this if I wasn’t three sheets to the wind. And also just to be clear: the question had been nagging at the back of my mind all day.
‘Ah,’ said Olly, slumping back in his seat, the first time I’d seen him relax his spine. ‘Jemima.’
I snorted, then nodded an apology at his narrowed eyes. ‘Sorry, it’s just your names go so well together. They sound so posh. I can see the wedding invitation already. What’s she like?’
He made the ‘perfect’ sign with his right hand, then adjusted his cuff. ‘Cut glass accent, blonde, nice figure, intelligent conversation, loves dogs and horses.’
‘That’s quite a tick list,’ I said. For some reason all the mirth had left me, but I kept the smile on my face. Men like him were so predictable. The army officer wants a wife: pearls, polo, extreme poshness.