Chapter Thirty
The next two days passed in a blur, and I was grateful that years of dealing with things on behalf of my family meant that I had excellent compartmentalisation skills, so was able to banish thoughts of Olly in the bedroom from my head. Most of the time, at least.
Esme decided, in her wisdom, that she wanted me to be part of the Chroma team sessions, to lead breakout groups.
This took me away from working on their statement, and away from working with Olly.
And in the sessions, they were asking questions that I thought should have been answered by wider focus groups, gathering people’s subjective thoughts on art, and on what was important when dating.
Esme and Ajax were excellent at flourishes, at injecting positivity into the room, but their charisma – so powerful when they were acting together – started to look like empty performance to me.
‘We need to do proper market research,’ I said to Esme.
‘All in good time,’ she murmured.
‘Has a decision been made on which images to use?’
‘For the beta version they’re using pieces from my last exhibition,’ she said, not looking at me as she spoke. ‘But we will want a range of artists, so we can be in contact with public collections when we get back to the UK.’
In the past she had communicated, if anything, too openly. Voice notes, emails, stream-of-consciousness chats which it had been my role to turn into concrete actions. But now she seemed shut off, and when I queried what the technical team thought about timelines, she shut me down.
‘Why don’t you concentrate on finding yourself a beautiful costume for Anderson’s masked ball?’ she said. Anderson was the collector and party thrower who adored Esme.
‘Because that’s not my job,’ I insisted. ‘And I’m not even sure I’ll be going.’
Olly had stayed out of the way, carefully crafting the speech based on gushy voice notes from the happy couple and the vague technical details I picked up at the sessions. He sent me drafts of the speech, his emails brief and light.
Have a liqueur before you read this version. O.
A couple of times during the day sessions I caught sight of him, his eyes on me, but he was always being diverted away by another member of his team, by Ajax, or even by Esme.
Every so often a message would arrive from him on my personal mobile rather than the work one.
OLLY: Are you okay?
LIZZY: I’m fine. Are you okay?
OLLY: Always.
I concentrated on documenting the group sessions on Chroma.
If my experience had taught me anything it was the importance of writing stuff down to protect yourself when the shit started getting thrown later.
You never knew what was going to happen: someone who’d agreed to do something might renege on it, or an intern might claim in three years’ time they’d come up with the Chroma logo.
Well-written minutes were the stuff of accountability and protection.
I was in the business centre, attempting to upload my latest notes after a morning of bumpy internet connection, when Sasha came in.
She didn’t see me at first and set up her laptop, chewing her lip as she typed.
I tapped her on the shoulder, and she swung round.
‘Oh! Hey!’ She minimised her screen. There was something about the way she did it which sent a barely heeded flicker of unease across my consciousness.
I took a breath. I was getting paranoid.
‘Hey, Sash, working on your lunch hour?’ I said.
‘Same to you,’ she said, with a bright smile. ‘I guess I’m a chip off the old block.’
‘Don’t work too hard,’ I said. ‘I’m just writing up some of the points from this morning’s meeting.’
‘Wow, you really are writing everything down. Isn’t there someone else who can do that?’
The truth was, if I’d entirely trusted her to capture everything, I could have asked her. But over the weeks my relationship with Sasha had changed, slowly, almost imperceptibly. As I looked at her now, I sensed, with a jolt, something like hostility behind her smile.
‘It’s good for me to make sure everything’s being noted,’ I said.
‘Once I’m done, I might send the notes to you to format, if that’s okay.
’ We had an office template for minutes, a dark art for most people.
Usually once a week, someone in the office exploded in the face of its minutiae (it had about five different margin settings and eight types of bullet point).
‘Or you could just do it yourself?’ she said.
For a moment, I thought I’d misheard her, and my shock was echoed in her own face. She converted her expression into a fake smile. ‘Guess I said that out loud,’ she said.
‘You did, yes,’ I said. ‘Is there a problem with you doing admin?’ Doing admin was approximately ninety percent of her job description.
She ran her fingers through her ponytail. ‘No, of course not, it’s just – well, I thought you said there’d be scope for development in this role?’
I suppose travelling to Venice and being part of the team brainstorming Chroma isn’t enough development, I thought.
I could feel my expression tightening. ‘There’s fifteen minutes of the lunch break left, Sasha.
Perhaps we can talk about this at your next appraisal? Make sure the job is developing?’
‘That would be good,’ she said, turning back to her computer.
After the afternoon discussions, I arrived back at the hotel, exhausted.
It was the masked ball that night, followed by a final day of brainstorming, then a meeting for potential investors the following afternoon.
The conversation Olly and I had had with Esme and Ajax was stuck in my brain, on repeat.
Something was rotten in the state of A I sent a soothing text to Dad, then messaged the person I wanted to be with, right now.
LIZZY: Are you going to the ball?
OLLY: Er, yes, I’m Cinderella, don’t you know? If you mean the ball of nightmares, yes, I am. Unless you want to bunk off and eat gondolier cake with me on the side of the canal.
I was smiling.
LIZZY: Normally the answer would be yes, please, let’s bunk off, but Esme has sent me a costume that looks like it costs four figures.
OLLY: Who are you going as?
LIZZY: Colombina, apparently.
OLLY: What a coincidence, I happen to have a massive crush on Colombina.
LIZZY: Ha! How do you even know who Colombina is?
OLLY: I’m a cultured man. Also power googling like a pro.
I snorted.
LIZZY: Just to clarify: Colombina isn’t that supermodel who was so trendy a few years ago. I know models are your type.
OLLY: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I frowned, remembering the picture of him stumbling out of a nightclub with a model. Why was he playing dumb?
OLLY: Lizzy?
LIZZY: Still here.
OLLY: Let’s come back to Venice one day. Let’s come back when we don’t have to act professional.
LIZZY: I’m struggling to ‘act professional’ now.
OLLY: You have no idea.
I stared at the screen.
OLLY: And… you don’t answer.
I looked at his messages, the flicker of suspicion I’d felt cancelled out by the feeling of warmth blooming in my chest like roses opening in spring sunshine.
Olly felt like a secret that I wanted to keep; a source of happiness that I wanted to hide from the world, just in case outside influences tarnished us – whatever we were to each other.
This was a beautiful, dangerous feeling.
LIZZY: Yes. Let’s come back, one day.
OLLY: Said with minimal enthusiasm. But I like it.
LIZZY: Minimal enthusiasm is my MO.
OLLY: Maybe we’ll test that at some point.
LIZZY: It’s just, I’m not sure I really know you, Olly. As in, you’re lovely, but you’re lovely with everyone. You know how to make everyone laugh, when to be nice, when to be cool. You’re a social chameleon. You’re great at communicating.
OLLY: Communicating is my thing…
LIZZY: But who is the real you? I’m not sure I know you, really. Is this too deep for messaging?
OLLY: Damn right. The next time we have a conversation like this I want you to be in my arms.
I bit my lip.
LIZZY: See you later.
OLLY: Buh-bye.
I put my phone on the bedside table and stared at my costume, glittering at me in the gloom.