Chapter Seven
Seven
I walk along the street with Katie, half numb with fear and half wanting to burst into hysterical laughter. Everyone else is in the office, trying as hard as they can to impress Jack Harper. And here I am, strolling off nonchalantly under his nose for a cappuccino.
“I’m sorry I interrupted you!” says Katie as we push our way through the doors of Starbucks. “With Jack Harper there and everything! I had no idea he’d be just sitting there! But you know, I was really subtle.” She adds reassuringly, “He’ll never know what we’re up to.”
“I’m sure you’re right!” I manage. “He’ll never guess in a million years!”
“Are you OK, Emma?” Katie looks at me curiously.
“I’m fine!” I say with a kind of shrill hilarity. “I’m absolutely fine! So…why the emergency summit?”
We edge our way past two mothers with pushchairs and reach the counter.
“I had to tell you. Two cappuccinos, please.” Katie beams at me excitedly. “You won’t believe it!”
“What is it?”
“I’ve got a date! I met a new guy!”
“No!” I say, staring at her. “Really? That was quick!”
“Yes! It happened yesterday, just like you said! I deliberately walked farther than usual in my lunch hour, and I found this really nice place where they were serving lunch. And there was this nice man in the line next to me—and he struck up conversation with me. Then we shared a table and chatted some more…and I was just leaving, when he said did I fancy having a drink sometime?” She takes the cappuccinos from the counter. “So we’re going out this evening!”
“That’s fantastic!” I say in delight. “So, come on, what’s he like?”
“He’s lovely! He’s got these lovely sparkly eyes, and he’s really charming and polite, and he’s got a great sense of humor….”
“He sounds great!”
“I know! I have a really good feeling about him! He just seems different. And I know this sounds really stupid, Emma….” She hesitates. “But I feel like you somehow brought him to me.”
“Me?”
“You gave me the confidence to speak to him.”
“But all I said was—”
“You said you knew I’d meet someone. You had faith in me. And I did!” Suddenly her eyes begin to shine. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, and dabs her eyes with a napkin. “I’m just a bit overcome.”
“Oh, Katie.”
“I just really think my life is going to turn around! I think everything’s going to get better. And it’s all down to you, Emma!”
“Really, Katie,” I say awkwardly. “It was nothing—”
“It wasn’t nothing!” She gulps. “And I wanted to do something for you in return.” She rummages in her bag and pulls out a large piece of orange crochet. “So I made you this last night.” She looks at me expectantly. “It’s a head scarf!”
For a few moments, I can’t move. A crochet head scarf.
“Katie!” I manage at last, turning it over in my fingers. “Really, you…you shouldn’t have!”
“I wanted to! To say thank you.” She looks at me earnestly. “Especially after you lost that crochet belt I made for you for Christmas—”
“Oh!” I say, feeling a pang of guilt. “Er, yes. That was…such a shame.” I swallow. “It was a lovely belt. I was really upset to lose it…”
“Oh, what the hell!” Her eyes well up again. “I’ll make you a new belt, too!”
“No!” I say in alarm. “No, Katie, don’t do that!”
“But I want to!” She leans forward and gives me a hug. “That’s what friends are for!”
—
It’s another twenty minutes before we finish our second cappuccinos and head back for the office. As we approach the Panther building, I glance at my watch and see to my dismay that we’ve been gone thirty-five minutes in all.
“Isn’t it amazing we’re getting new coffee machines?” says Katie as we hurry up the steps.
“Er, yes. It’s great.”
My stomach tightens as I think of facing Jack Harper again. I haven’t felt so nervous since I took my grade one clarinet exam, and when the examiner asked me what my name was, I burst into tears.
“Well, see you later,” says Katie as we reach the first floor. “And thanks, Emma.”
“No problem!” I say. “See you later.”
As I head along the corridor toward the marketing department, I’m aware that my legs aren’t moving quite as quickly as usual. In fact, as the door is nearing, they’re getting slower and slower…and slower…
I can’t go in there.
Yes, I can. It’ll be fine. I’ll just sit down very quietly and get on with my work.
Maybe he won’t even notice me.
Come on. The longer I leave it, the worse it’ll be. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, walk into the marketing department, and open them.
There’s a hubbub around Artemis’s desk, and no sign of Jack Harper.
“I mean, maybe he’s going to rethink the whole company,” someone’s saying.
“I’ve heard this rumor he’s got a secret project…”
“He can’t completely centralize the marketing function,” Artemis is saying, trying to raise her voice above everyone else’s.
“Where’s Jack Harper?” I say, trying to sound casual.
“He’s gone,” says Nick, and I feel a whoosh of relief. Gone! He’s gone!
“Is he coming back?”
“Don’t think so,” he replies. “Emma, have you done those letters for me yet? Because I gave them to you several days ago—”
“I’ll do them now,” I say, and beam at Nick. As I sit down at my desk, I feel as light as a helium balloon. I cheerfully kick off my shoes, reach for my Evian bottle—and stop.
There’s a folded piece of paper resting on my keyboard, with “Emma” written on it in a handwriting I don’t recognize.
Puzzled, I look around the office. No one’s looking at me, waiting for me to find it. In fact, no one seems to have noticed. My desk is half hidden behind the photocopier. And besides, they’re all too busy talking about Jack Harper.
Slowly I unfold it. There’s a message inside.
Hope your meeting was productive. I always find numbers give me a real buzz.
Jack Harper
It could have been worse. It could have read, “Clear your desk.”
But even so, for the rest of the day, I’m completely on edge.
Every time anyone walks into the department, I feel a little spasm of panic.
And when someone starts talking loudly outside our door about “Jack says he may pop back into Marketing,” I seriously consider hiding out in the loos until he’s gone.
On the dot of five-thirty, I stop typing mid-sentence, close my computer down, and grab my coat. I’m not waiting around for him to reappear. I all but run down the stairs, and only begin to relax when I’m safely on the other side of the big glass doors.
The tubes are miraculously quick for once, and I arrive home within twenty minutes. As I push open the front door of our flat, I can hear a strange noise coming from Lissy’s room. A kind of thumping, bumping sound. She’s probably moving her furniture around. Which would make sense.
Lissy had a big victory in court yesterday—and every time she finishes a case, it’s the same thing.
She gathers all her bits of paper together and puts them in a file box.
She tidies her room and puts all her clothes away.
And then she invites me in to admire, and says, “This is how I’m going to live from now on. ”
Sure.
“Lissy,” I call as I go into the kitchen. “You will not believe what happened today.” I grab a bottle of Evian from the fridge and hold it against my hot forehead. Then I wander out into the hall again, to see Lissy’s door opening.
“Lissy!” I begin. “What on earth were you—”
And then out of the door comes not Lissy but a man.
A man! A tall, thin guy in trendy black trousers and steel spectacles. He’s got jutting cheekbones and a pretty good physique, I can’t help noticing, and as he sees me, he inclines his head politely.
“Oh,” I say, taken aback. “Er, hi.”
“Emma!” says Lissy, following him out. She’s wearing a T-shirt over some gray leggings I’ve never seen before, is drinking a glass of water, and looks startled to see me. “You’re home early.”
“I know. I was in a hurry.”
“This is Jean-Paul,” says Lissy, clearly flustered. “Jean-Paul, my flatmate Emma.”
“Hello, Jean-Paul,” I say, as though this were all perfectly normal.
“Good to meet you, Emma,” says Jean-Paul in a French accent.
God, French accents are sexy.
“Jean-Paul and I were just, um, going over some case notes,” says Lissy.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Lovely!”
Case notes. That would really make a whole load of thumping noises.
Lissy is such a dark horse!
“I must be going…” says Jean-Paul, looking at Lissy.
“I’ll just see you out.”
She disappears through the front door, and I can hear the two of them murmuring on the landing.
I walk into the sitting room and slump down on the sofa. My whole body aches from tension. This is seriously bad for my health. How am I going to survive a whole week of Jack Harper?
“So!” I demand as Lissy returns. “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Jean-Paul! How long have you two been…”
“We’re not…” starts Lissy, turning red. “It’s not…We were going over case notes. That’s all.”
“Sure you were.”
“We were! That’s all it was!”
“OK.” I raise my eyebrows. “If you say so.”
Lissy sometimes gets like this, all shy and abashed. I’ll just have to get her pissed one night, and she’ll admit it.
“So, how was your day?” she asks, sitting down on the floor and reaching for a magazine.
I don’t even know where to start.
“My day,” I say at last. “My day was a bit of a nightmare.”
“Really?” says Lissy, looking up in surprise.
“No, take that back. It was a complete nightmare.”
“What happened? Tell me!”
“OK.” I take a deep breath and smooth my hair back, wondering where on earth to start. “OK, remember I had that awful flight back from Scotland last week?”
“Yes!” Lissy’s face lights up. “And Connor came to meet you and it was all really romantic….”
“Yes. Well.” I clear my throat. “Before that. On the flight. There was this…this man sitting next to me. And the plane got really turbulent.” I bite my lip. “And the thing is, I honestly thought we were all going to die and this was the last person I would ever see, and…I…”
“Oh, my God!” Lissy claps her hand over her mouth. “You didn’t have sex with him.”
“Worse. I told him all my secrets!”
I’m expecting Lissy to gasp, or say something sympathetic like “Oh, no!” but her face is blank.
“What secrets?”
“My secrets. You know.”
Lissy looks as if I’ve suddenly told her I’ve got an artificial leg.
“You have secrets?”
“Of course I have secrets!” I say. “Everyone has a few secrets.”
“I don’t!” she says at once, looking offended. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“Yes, you do!”
“Like what?”
“Like…like…OK.” I start counting off on my fingers. “You never told your dad it was you who lost the garage key that time.”
“That was ages ago!”
“…You never told Simon you were hoping he might propose to you.”
“I wasn’t!” says Lissy, coloring. “Well, OK, maybe I was…”
“…You think that sad guy next door fancies you.”
“That’s not a secret!” she says, rolling her eyes.
“Oh, right. Shall I tell him, then?” I lean back toward the open window. “Hey, Mike,” I call. “Guess what? Lissy thinks you—”
“Stop!” says Lissy frantically.
“You see? You have got secrets. Everyone has secrets. The Pope probably has a few secrets—”
“OK,” says Lissy. “OK. You’ve made your point. But I don’t understand what the problem is. So you told some guy on a plane your secrets—”
“And now he’s turned up at work.”
“What?” Lissy goggles at me. “Are you serious? Who is he?”
“He’s…” I’m about to say Jack Harper’s name when I remember the promise I made. “He’s just this…this guy who’s come in to observe.”
“Is he senior?”
“He’s…yes. You could say he’s pretty senior.”
“Blimey.” Lissy frowns, thinking for a few moments. “Well…does it really matter? If he knows a few things about you…”
“Lissy, it wasn’t just a few things.” I feel myself flush. “It was everything. I told him I faked a grade on my CV…”
“You faked a grade on your CV?” echoes Lissy in shock. “Are you serious?”
“…I told him about feeding Artemis’s spider plant orange juice. I told him I find G-strings uncomfortable…”
I trail off to see Lissy’s aghast expression.
“Emma,” she says at last. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘too much information’?”
“I didn’t mean to say any of it!” I know I sound defensive. “It just kind of came out! I’d had three vodkas and champagne, and I thought we were about to die. Honestly, Lissy, you would have been the same. Everyone was screaming, people were praying, the plane was bouncing around…”
“So you blab all your secrets to your boss!”
“But he wasn’t my boss on the plane!” I cry in frustration. “He was just some stranger! I was never supposed to see him again!”
There’s silence as Lissy takes this all in.
“You know, this is like what happened to my cousin,” she says at last. “She went to a party, and there, right in front of her, was the doctor who’d delivered her baby two months before.”
“Ooh.” I pull a face.
“Exactly! She said she was so embarrassed, she had to leave. I mean, he’d seen everything! She said somehow it didn’t matter when she was in a hospital room, but when she saw him standing there, holding a glass of wine and chatting about house prices, it was a different matter—”
“Well, this is the same! He knows all my most intimate, personal details! But the difference is, I can’t just leave! I have to sit there and pretend to be a good employee! And he knows I’m not—”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know! I suppose all I can do is try to avoid him!”
“How long is he over for?”
“The rest of the week,” I say in despair. “The whole week.”
I pick up the zapper and turn on the television, and for a few moments we both silently watch a load of dancing models in Gap jeans.
The ad finishes, and I raise my head. Lissy has a curious look on her face.
“What?” I say. “What is it?”
“Emma…” She clears her throat awkwardly. “You don’t have any secrets from me, do you?”
“From you?” I say, slightly thrown. “Er…”
A series of images flashes rapidly through my mind.
That weird dream I once had about Lissy and me being lesbians.
Those times I’ve bought supermarket carrots and sworn to her they were organic.
The time when we were fifteen and she went to France and I got off with Gary Appleton, whom she had a complete crush on, and never told her.
“Er, no! Of course not!” I say, and quickly take a sip of water. “Why? Have you got any from me?”
Two dots of pink appear on Lissy’s cheeks. “No! Of course I haven’t!” she says in a stilted voice. “I was just…wondering.” She reaches for the TV guide and starts to flip through it, avoiding my gaze. “You know. Just out of interest.”
“Yes, well.” I shrug, trying to look nonchalant. “So was I.”
Wow. Lissy’s got a secret. I wonder what it—
Of course. Like she was really going over case notes with that guy. Does she think I’m a complete idiot?