Chapter 5
I hung up my phone and slipped it back in my bag. The sun was matching my mood today and there was less of a chill than there had been this morning. If it wasn’t for the buildings plunging me into the shade I’d have no need for my woolly scarf.
It was the tiniest hint that winter was almost over, and between that and Noah’s voicemail, it was enough to put a spring in my step.
‘Look at you, like the Cheshire cat. Take it easy; smiling gives you wrinkles,’ said Mags. She was smoking outside the revolving doors to our office block. She’d managed to find herself a sliver of sun to stand in.
‘So will those things.’ I pointed to the cigarette.
‘Touché. I’m quitting.’ She took one last puff before she stubbed it out.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I am, honestly. I’m just finishing up my last pack. Don’t want any around to be tempted.’
‘You could throw them away.’
‘At the prices they charge? I’m getting my money’s worth.’
She dug out a little metal pill box of mints from her pocket and popped one on her tongue. She held the box open to me.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
‘So I can see. What’s with the big smile?’
‘What big smile?’ I said, trying to push the corners of my mouth down, but it was no use; they kept springing back up.
‘You know what I’m talking about. It’s got to be a man. Is it the guy from My Single Friend?’
I shuddered. ‘Definitely not. You know he dumped me in the end for his mate that wrote the advert for him?’
‘What?’
‘Yep, apparently when she wrote his profile to attract other women, she realised what she was missing. It was the last straw when he started dating me.’
‘And of course, he just happened to be in love with her?’
‘Always had been.’
We flashed our badges at the security guard and headed towards the bank of lifts in the centre of the lobby.
‘Tale as old as time. You know, men can never be friends with women. It’s a known fact. No one has a platonic male friend.’
‘Yes, you can and people do.’
‘No, you can’t. It’s the gospel. And the whole point of When Harry Met Sally.’
We squeezed to the back of the lift as other people filed in.
‘Which is a good movie. But that’s not real life. Besides, I do have a good male friend. And we’re just that. Friends.’
I hadn’t really noticed that I’d never had a male friend before I met Noah.
I’d hung around with boys in sixth-form college, and we had a couple in our university group but I wouldn’t have called any of them real friends.
I wouldn’t phone them up for a chat, or turn to them in my moment of need.
But the day I met Noah, all that changed.
I’m not sure if it was just that we’d had our mini adventure in Calais, or because we were born under the exact same star alignment that cosmically meant we were destined to get on, the truth was he was one of the few people that I felt comfortable around.
Comfortable telling him what I thought. Comfortable in silence.
And for the last year and a half he’d gone and messed that all up doing his working holiday visa in Australia.
‘I don’t believe you. One of you will have fancied the other at some point.’
‘Nope,’ I said, almost with conviction. There had been a few moments over the years when I’d questioned whether there could be something more, but as quickly as the thought popped into my mind, it popped out again. ‘He’s like my brother.’
‘Your brother?’ Her eyebrow arched. ‘Let me get this straight, you’re telling me you’ve been friends for how long … ’
‘Four years.’
‘You’ve been friends for four years, and not once have you had a drunken hook-up?’
‘Nope,’ I said, thinking of that first night and how we almost kissed, too lost in the fantasy of what a relationship could be. ‘Not once.’
‘No drunken snog?’
‘Nope. Just friends. I mean, he’s had a girlfriend for pretty much most of it.’
‘Ah, that explains it.’ The lift doors pinged open and we pushed our way through the others to get out. ‘You never got the chance.’
It hadn’t even crossed my mind when Noah and Hayley briefly broke up when he was in second year.
‘Honestly, it’s not like that. Even now that Noah’s single I still wouldn’t.’
I could tell from the look on her face that she was having none of it, and I rolled my eyes at her, and headed straight for the coffee machine.
‘Surely you have at least one platonic male friend,’ I said to her. ‘Who was the guy that came to your Christmas drinks? Teddy?’
‘We slept together that night.’
‘You did not?’
She shrugged like it was no big deal.
‘We’re each other’s go-to fuck buddy when we’re lonely and single.’
‘You were still with Aiden at that point.’
‘Huh, OK, we’re each other’s fuck buddies when we’re lonely.’
I squinted at the new coffee machine that was so complicated it felt like you needed a master’s degree to work it out. I pressed on what I hoped was a decaf latte.
‘Well, OK, you might not be able to have platonic male friends, but I can. His name is Noah, and the reason that I was smiling is that he’s been living in Australia and he’s coming back tomorrow for our birthday.’
‘Our birthday?’
‘He’s a leapling too.’
The coffee machine started to make horrendous noises, a good sign that it was working.
‘Right, and that massive smile was just for a friend?’ She shook her head. ‘And you’re both now single? No, I don’t buy it for one second.’
‘You don’t have to buy it,’ I said, stepping back from the billowing steam coming from the milk frothing, ‘but that’s the reality.
Look, we’ve known each other for years, we’ve spent countless nights sleeping on each other’s sofas and honestly we’re just mates.
Plus, he’s one of those god-awful hopeless romantics and I’m—’
‘—a woman with a heart of stone?’
‘I was going for realist, but if the shoe fits.’
‘Ummhmm.’
‘Whatever. You know, he’s more your type than mine. Always looked like he’d stumbled out of a boyband. Don’t you like them preppy?’
‘Oh no, don’t let me get involved. I don’t want to go through what you just did, I get set up with this great guy only for you to realise you had feelings all along and swoop in.’
‘Honestly, never going to happen.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I’m looking forward to a full report on Monday about your night out and how you guys hooked up.’
The coffee machine finally stopped whirring and I took the cup, warming up my hands.
‘Aren’t you coming tomorrow? I thought you were swinging by on the way to your dinner?’
‘Yeah, I will, if I get a chance, but I hadn’t realised that the dinner is in Surbiton. I’ve got to catch a mainline sodding train.’
‘Oh, well, if you can stop by, I’d love to see you. You know I only get these birthdays once every four years.’
I did what I hoped were puppy dog eyes.
‘I’m going to make the effort, just to see you and your “friend”.’ She did air quotes around the word friend.
‘I’m leaving now.’
I headed back over to my desk, and, no matter the teasing from Mags, I couldn’t stop smiling.
I’d missed Noah. I’d missed that male perspective that’s hard to get through a ten-hour time difference when you’re only communicating in snippets of messages and emails, sometimes with weeks in between when you forget to reply.
I thought of what he’d missed out on in the last eighteen months.
I’m sure if he’d still been living in London, he’d have seen through the bullshit of Barney, a guy I’d dated for a few months, and he certainly would have picked up weeks before I did that I was never going to hear from Michael, my first foray into online dating, when he said he’d ring after he got back from his work trip to Yemen.
It took me a hangover and a day binge watching Friends to get that reference.
Of course, I reported the Yemen story to Noah, but it wasn’t the same seeing the response typed out: ha ha ha.
You didn’t get the high-pitched squeak that he had when he was laughing from the pit of his belly.
Or the little crease on the bridge of his nose, or that dimple on his left cheek that put in rare appearances.
‘Ah, Lucy,’ said Francis, marching up to my desk and jolting me out of my memories of Noah, ‘I wondered if we could have a little word.’
‘Absolutely.’
I put my coffee down and braced myself, waiting to hear what it was I’d done wrong this time.
Francis and I had started work on the same day, on the same graduate scheme, and yet he’d risen through the ranks at double the speed whilst only doing half the amount of work.
He liked to tell us at length that it was nothing to do with the fact that he was on first-name terms with the CEO – the CEO that his dad had shared a house with at Eton once upon a time.
Pure coincidence. Just like the coincidence that Mags and I, the only women on the scheme, always worked with the smaller clients.
‘I think you should come to my office. Better to have some privacy, don’t you think?’
I huffed as I stood back up. There was something about the way I had to follow him ten feet to his office, almost just for him to prove that he had one.
Not that there was much to Francis’s office.
It was cold, dark and dingy. Much like his personality.
I’m sure in any other floorplan it would have been a broom cupboard.
But to Francis, it was everything, and didn’t we have to know about it!
I squeezed into the chair, breathing in as he shut the door.
‘Now,’ he said, walking sideways to squeeze behind his desk, ‘it’s come to my attention that you’re taking on Mackenzie Field as a client.’
‘That’s right, I’ve just sent the prelim contract over to legal to check and—’
‘It’s just,’ he said, not letting me finish, ‘that you’ll know their parent company is P&R, who, as you’re aware, I manage.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I am aware of that. I did look into their company history before I went for the initial meeting. But they’re owned as a separate subsidiary so they’re fully autonomous and are a separate entity to P&R in daily operations.’