Chapter 8
“That was a really shitty thing to do, Lila. You must have known she would react like that.”
It was fair to say that Seb was angry. His jaw was clenched, and a little vein was throbbing away at his temple. I wasn’t used to seeing him angry; he was normally the most laid-back person you could ever imagine. Most of the time he made the Dalai Lama look as if he was dealing with executive stress.
I laughed awkwardly, trying to make light of the situation.
“Shitty being the operative word here, it would seem.”
Things hadn’t ended up going too well at the office the previous day. I had started off with the very best of intentions. I fully intended to try and make things good with Jocasta: to hold out the olive branch, so to speak, by holding out a mug of coffee. It was a start, but as soon as I had made my exceedingly kind offer, in my mind, her unreasonable demands had started.
“Thank you, Lila, I would absolutely love a coffee. But if you’re not going to Costa, can you make a fresh pot? I simply can’t abide that instant rubbish. And I need it piping hot, with just a whisker of my almond milk. Can you make sure you add one and a half teaspoons of my special sweetener too? I keep it in the top cupboard above the microwave. You’ll need to stir it clockwise with a spoon for at least forty seconds, so it dissolves properly, and then it will be perfect.”
That, in my mind, was taking the piss.
I had nodded sweetly at her. Well, I hoped it appeared sweet. My rictus grin was no doubt as saccharine as the crap she kept in a jar above the microwave. I entered the gloomy little kitchenette with its chipped Formica units and slight whiff of mildew. It could really do with a facelift, but then again, checking my appearance in the back of a teaspoon, it might not be the only one.
Why could Jocasta not just accept the offer of a cup of coffee with a simple “thank you”, rather than making me feel I was a waitress taking her drinks order. I half expected her to ask me what the daily specials were. A nice hearty serving of “fuck you” would have been my answer to that.
Sighing to myself, I rooted around in the top cupboard to locate the packet of ground Arabica beans to make the pot of coffee. The foil packet was almost empty. And let’s face it, considering I was still sporting a coffee stain on my clothes like a dirty protest, I had no intention of going out to the grocer’s shop at the end of the street. I pushed the near empty packet back where I found it and reached for the large trusty jar of Nescafé instead. Unscrewing it, I added a heaped teaspoon to two mugs, one for me and one for Little Miss Entitlement.
I don’t know what made me then decide to add white sugar to her brew in place of her sweetener, and a generous slug of UHT whole milk for good measure, but that is exactly what I did. I almost did it on autopilot. I suppose part of me thought she was being a precious plant-based princess with all her demands. I must admit, I felt a little frisson when I passed the mug over to her and she took a hearty swig of her full-fat full-sugar dairy beverage with a satisfied sigh.
How was I to know what a seemingly innocent mug of coffee with cow’s milk would do to her bowels? I had no idea she was lactose intolerant. Fair to say, she would have given Usain Bolt a run for his money the way she dashed to the ladies’ toilets, one hand clutching her stomach and the other holding her posterior like she expected it to explode at any second. I couldn’t help but notice as she raced past my open office door that she appeared to be having no difficulty at all running in her shoes.
It was now the following evening and Seb and I were sitting opposite each other at a table neatly set for four diners, awaiting the arrival of Lottie and Leo. I had picked the venue for the evening, another reason why Seb might not be too happy with me.
It was a new Italian restaurant that I had read about in one of my favourite glossy magazines. It was cool and chic and quite the place to see and be seen, apparently. It was quirkily named The Low Cal Zone, and boasted a delicious menu that erred on the healthy side, with less cheese and cream and more saintly salad and sparkling water. After carefully scanning the entirety of the menu twice, I couldn’t find any evidence of them offering a calzone pizza for their diners, despite their name.
There was a somewhat combative air wafting off Seb as he studied the menu, taking in each dish and the exorbitant prices alongside. His expression was as stony as the basket of rye bread sitting between us.
Seb loved to go out for pizza almost as much as his beloved shepherd’s pie. He was a man who knew what he liked and liked what he knew. Any time we went to an Italian restaurant, you were guaranteed to hear Sebastian Young order “thick crust” and “extra salami”. He also had a habit of losing concentration more than a wayward toddler when the waitress was adding parmesan to his dish; she would be scraping the dregs off the bottom of the bowl before he finally lifted his hand, met her eyes and announced, “That’s enough, thank you.”
He was nothing if not predictable. And predictably I knew he would no doubt order pizza yet again, or if not that then pasta carbonara, or the closest thing he could find amongst the nutritious choices on offer.
He also hated to see anything he thought was “poncy” on a menu: like when salmon was described as “pan fried”. He would always grumble at that and ask anyone in earshot exactly how fish was supposed to be fried if not in a pan? An old tin bath perhaps. And that was before considering his dismay at seeing the humble cauliflower zhuzhed up a bit and described as a “steak”. For ￡18.99 he wanted his steak to be all meat and his cauliflower to be under a nice thick cheesy sauce.
So with that in mind, it was never likely that Seb would push himself out of his comfort zone and plump for a nice light caprese salad or grilled sea bass, for example. No, that would never pass muster with him. And he looked far from comfortable in his current surroundings; in fact he couldn’t have looked less comfortable if he’d had a cockroach planted firmly up his arsehole.
I, on the other hand, was enjoying the ambiance of the restaurant whilst savouring a large glass of Montepulciano, delighting in the toasty rich flavours and beginning to feel somewhat toasted myself.
I hoped Lottie and Leo would arrive soon. I had missed lunch and was ravenous, plus I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable that Seb was staring at me like he was studying a laboratory specimen under a microscope and was not pleased with what he had discovered.
He was slowly sipping on a long glass of mineral water with a lone slice of lemon. He was probably wise to savour it, as that was likely to be what constituted dessert in this joint. He had no choice but to be on the soft drinks as he was driving me home after the meal, and I was sincerely hoping he would have cheered the fuck up by then.
I picked up the red hard-backed menu once again ? even it was skinny ? and recommenced reading through the appetisers, even though I now knew them off by heart. I was opting for the grilled vegetable antipasti to start, and the Sicilian-style fish stew for main course. I just wished Lottie and Leo would hurry up and make an appearance.
I told Seb what I intended to order, and he physically shuddered. He really needed to open himself up to other culinary choices than cheese, carbs and anything he could buy in a wrapper from the service station.
I coughed to cover up a little rumble from my empty stomach.
“I hope they get here soon, I’m absolutely starving, and I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”
Seb’s eyebrows shot up for a couple of seconds in disbelief. Quite clearly, he couldn’t imagine anyone looking forward to visiting The Low Cal Zone. He probably found it about as pleasurable as a three-hour boardroom meeting with Fluck. He looked as comfortable in his seat as if he had been strapped to an electric chair. He sighed deeply again; he had been doing a lot of that so far this evening.
“You still haven’t answered my question about yesterday, Lila. I asked you about the milk. You know Jocasta always takes almond milk in her coffee; she even has her own carton labelled with her name in the fridge. It has a large grinning almond on it, you can’t exactly miss it.”
I put the menu down again with a sigh of my own and turned my attention fully to my companion. His face looked so earnest and concerned now. I couldn’t help but notice that the pale blue shirt and jumper combo he was wearing looked pretty good on him. Much more stylish than his normal attire. But then again, I suppose if you get dressed in the dark, like he appeared to, by the laws of average outcome eventually you’re going to stumble on an outfit that actually works.
He even resembled Hugh Grant a little, well in his geek chic roles anyway. Yes, definitely Hugh Grant with a bit of Jude Law thrown in for good measure. But then, what did I know? My eyesight was probably not to be trusted now, having sunk two large glasses of red wine on a completely empty stomach.
“OK…OK, maybe I should have used the almond milk, but I really didn’t think it was going to affect her quite like that. I just thought she was being a bit precious with all her demands, so I made her coffee the way I take mine. I didn’t mean for it to end like that.”
An image from the previous afternoon popped uninvited into my mind: the normally serene and sophisticated Jocasta racing to the loo like her life depended on it, whilst farting what sounded uncannily like the closing moments from Last Night of the Proms. However, her version was less Pomp and Circumstance and more pump and crap your pants.
I couldn’t help it, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to laugh, and I was right. Once the chuckling started, it erupted out of me like the explosive diarrhoea had from my workmate.
“Stop laughing, Lila, it isn’t funny.”
“Well, I think that’s debatable.”
“Seriously, Lila, she was stuck in the loo for nearly an hour; and when she finally reappeared, she looked so pale and pasty she resembled a wrung out old dish cloth.”
I was laughing so hard now that I had tears running down my face, probably taking my make-up with them. With a huge effort on my part, I managed eventually to curb my snorts and arrange my features into something I hoped resembled concern.
“I know it’s bad, and I shouldn’t laugh, but you’ve got to believe me. I really didn’t mean to make her sick…I guess I was just being petty, which I know isn’t a good act. But I’m going to apologise to her in the morning and make sure she’s OK.”
Seb nodded. He still had a face like a yard of gravy, but at least he seemed to be softening a little.
“OK, well that’s good. Just make things right between you. But I wouldn’t dwell too much on the details, as I think she’s going to be still really embarrassed about it all.”
I kept my head down and nodded. I was worried about catching his eye in case it set me off laughing again.
Finally, Seb’s expression softened, and he smiled at me. I was glad to see it. It almost seemed like the dingy dining room had eventually brightened up around us. It didn’t last, though, as his face fell when he began studying the menu again; probably already debating whether he should stop for a doner kebab on his way home from dropping me off later.
“Just make sure you do apologise, Lila. I know you think she threw the coffee at you first, which I really don’t think she did. But for argument’s sake, even if she did, I certainly think you’ve got your own back on her now. This is where it needs to stop. None of us wants to be in the office with a bad atmosphere because you two can’t get on. It’s like working in a vortex of misery. Just apologise, say it was a genuine mistake, not that you did it on purpose, and then say you would like to move on. I think she’ll be fine with that. She’s a reasonable woman, even if you did cause her to shit herself at work.”
I couldn’t help it, I was off laughing again. Rather like Jocasta and her gurgling bowels, I could hold it in no longer.