Chapter 1
Now
The moment I step into the function room of the pub, I can feel it, the unwanted familiarity.
The walls are dark burgundy and covered in faux gilded frames filled with nineteenth-century comic strips.
Sun cuts through the sash windows and brightens every smudge of dirt, splash of beer and missing button from the Chesterfield sofas.
It’s the kind of place that is probably cosy most of the year, but something of a dump on a hot and sunny evening like this.
Above the bar is the ugliest stuffed beaver I’ve ever seen.
I say that like I have countless stuffed beavers to compare it to – I don’t, I just know this one is hideous.
There are over three and a half thousand pubs in London, so if I start trying hard enough, it should be possible to avoid all the ones I’ve been to before.
If I dedicate myself to putting in the research, I can successfully blot out whole parts of the city until it’s my own restricted map.
I don’t think I’ll ever do that. I’m just going to accept that each time I go out, I might be drinking from the same glass, holding the same laminated menu, or pretending to understand the contextual frame of the same piece of crap modern art I once did before.
The beaver’s eyes follow me as I make my way around the pub in search of my colleagues.
I’ve been back at work for two days. Two days and I’m already expected to be out socialising again. Though maybe it’s a good thing, to jump straight back into my old skin and habits. Maybe if I start acting like the old me, I can become her again.
‘Zoe,’ Nicole shouts as she waves me over to the bar, ‘where have you been? You said you’d come at five. Did you change your shoes? Come and drink with us.’
Nicole’s a fast talker, and often I’m still thinking about her first question when she’s already moved on to her third.
‘Have you seen this?’ She points at a flatscreen which is playing a photo montage of our boss, Jimmy Jones Jr. ‘on stuff’: horseback, camelback, yacht.
In each photo he looks so pleased with himself, as I would be too if my family had founded an online language platform and given me a nonsense job at it where I could spend all my time getting fillers and firing people.
‘The man’s a narcissist,’ Nicole says as the photos progress to a series of Jimmy posing on and around his desk.
She’s right, Jimmy is a narcissist, though I’m reluctant to make fun of him after he was so surprisingly kind to me the last time we spoke. It was also the first time, in the three years I’ve worked at Chat Around the World, that he’d ever spoken to me about something other than work.
‘There’s a company tab and it’s not going to last long around these animals from the design department,’ Nicole yells in the direction of some ponytailed guys at the bar, strawberry daquiris lined up three deep.
A free bar at a Chat social is rarer than a week where no one ends up crying in the toilets.
‘I’ll have a Coke,’ I try.
‘No, you certainly will not.’
‘A spritzer?’ I say, feeling this is something a person who doesn’t really drink would order.
Nicole gets a bottle of wine. ‘You love seafood, don’t you? I’ve ordered calamari. Can you believe it’s seven pounds fifty for a piddly little bowl? I’ve asked for three. I can wrap some of it up in a tissue and take it home for my kids.’
‘I don’t think seafood travels well.’
She puts a hand on my shoulder and stares at me long enough that I can see the clumps of mascara in the corners of her eyes. ‘You’re so clever and I love working with you. You know why?’
‘Because I pretend you’re in the toilet when you’re an hour late for work.’
‘Yes,’ she grins, ‘and I’m so happy to see you smiling. I’m proud of you.’
When will people stop congratulating me on smiling? ‘Why are we here?’ I ask, suddenly confused about why we’re having a forced fun work event.
‘You don’t know?’
I probably do know, though it’s hard to keep things in my head at the moment.
‘Seriously, hon, you’ve got to start reading Jimmy’s emails. At least the first few thousand words. Chat hit another paid subscriber milestone this month. Should I order you some curly fries? I saw your lunch earlier, it was pathetic.’
‘Nicole, I’ve eaten enough. Don’t worry about me.’ Again, the stare and this time I shrink in it. ‘Fine, I’ll have some chips.’
Nicole was my first boss out of university at a telemarketing company where we cold-called colleges and tried to sell them language packages.
After that, I spent a few years teaching English abroad and, when I returned, she got me in at Chat.
Together we now work on high-level social media campaigns while sending each other low-level memes.
She drags me to a packed table where I drink a small glass of wine, eat my chips and, despite the pub’s three-star hygiene rating, eat a whole bowl of calamari.
‘Another round?’ someone says, and over the next hour I find myself having another drink, this time a large, and before I’ve drained it, I also find myself flirting with Taron from Finance.
This is it. I’m doing the thing. The sinking glass after glass to get funnier and sexier kind of thing. Just like I used to.
At one point, I catch Nicole attempting to stifle a yawn, which sets me off.
She notices me mirroring her and laughs.
She’s the only one at work I’m truly close to, yet everyone has tried in their own various ways to support me since I came back.
Whether that be through copious cups of teas, which I don’t drink, or by pretending not to notice how behind I am on everything.
Taron launches into an incredibly dull anecdote about setting up a Chat padel league, while I glare at the hunched beaver. I take my phone out and type:
Me: Remember that pub in Soho we came to for Elle’s engagement party? We sat upstairs and there was a stuffed beaver above the bar. You claimed it was making eyes at you and made me switch places. I’m here now. You were right. It does have flirty eyes.
Nicole slides in next to me and I lock my screen. ‘You good?’
‘Yeah. Good.’
‘Go home,’ she whispers.
‘I’m fine, really. I’m out now.’
‘Go home,’ she says again with more authority.
She’s right. I’ve done my time.
Once outside I pull out my phone which flashes with a message. I get a spark of hope that is abruptly extinguished when I open it.
Kasie: Undelivered