Date Sunday 28 May Time 2.40pm
My thoughts and reflections:
It’s six weeks today since I last saw Matthew. You’d think it would get easier. I’m not sure it has.
Even Astrid has noticed something’s up but she assumes it’s because I’m missing Cara at work, and because Guy and I have broken up; I’m not going to disabuse her of that.
She keeps asking me over for supper, and I keep finding excuses; I don’t think I can risk sitting through another meal with Matthew and Ebba.
I’ve pretty much given up social media (apart from the TikTok content for teens) because coming across photos of them together feels about as pleasant as norovirus and recovery is slow.
The only person I’ve confessed all to is Drunk Stephen – I have to if we’re working together – and he was surprisingly kind about it, even the fact I didn’t tell him about Matthew Lloyd and the merger.
He just made me tell him everything, right from the beginning, and hugged me and said, Knowing you’ve missed out on Matthew Lloyd must be like realising you’ve given away your winning lottery ticket .
And that on reflection, Matthew Lloyd should really have stretched to a shirt and tie when he was working here, and even if you did look that indecently good in a T-shirt, there was such a thing as an iron.
The fact that that was Drunk Stephen’s best effort to be bitchy says a lot.
The worst thing is Ebba went to some film premiere a couple of weeks back and Matthew accompanied her and their photos are everywhere, and everyone at work has been poring over them and commenting and talking about how gorgeous he is and how weird it was that he was working on the nineteenth floor and how of course he’d be with a model like Ebba.
The media picked up on Matthew’s background and how he’s self-made, so everyone’s even more in love.
And it snowballed further when the media got hold of a recent Turner prize short-lister who credited their success to Matthew’s art foundation charity for disadvantaged youth.
The other day, in our team meeting, Yaz suggested that we use Matthew Lloyd for our Break Into series. That was a particularly low moment.
Drunk Stephen has tried to protect me from the worst of it, or compensate for it with margaritas, but we can’t drink quite as much tequila now we’re running an imprint – there’s too much to do.
At least Charlotte’s back from Scotland now, and it seems like it all turned out well for her, so I can stop feeling guilty.
She not only got everyone on board with the third-party distribution and increased overall productivity in the warehouse by fifteen per cent, but was behind Forklift Stewart winning the Forklift Championship finals in Canada, which resulted in loads of publicity and cash prizes.
Plus, bizarrely, she’s started dating Sweater-vest Gareth from Accounts; whilst she was in Scotland, there was a lot of emailing between them about distribution finances, and one thing led to another.
According to Drunk Stephen, Charlotte’s constantly posting clips of them doing couples trapeze skill classes.
Apparently Gareth’s arms have really filled out.
I am grateful for:
The fact there are still four weeks to go until the christening back home. Something might still happen in the meantime to save me from it.
All the positives. Like being alive. Etc.