Chapter 3.
At lunchtime, Parveen returns from a meeting at a local architect’s firm.
She is humming.
Parveen never hums. In fact, none of us do. This isn’t that kind of office.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s a happy place to work. But it’s the opposite of leisurely. We are never carefree enough to hum. Some days, we barely have time to caffeinate.
‘What’s got into you?’ I ask her with a smile, as she slides into the chair next to mine.
‘Just had a great meeting. At Crave & Co.’
‘Oh, for the Millbrook thing? How’s it all looking?’
Kelley Lane Interiors, the interior designers where Parveen and I work, has won the interiors contract for the Millbrook Retirement Complex, a purpose-built facility currently under construction to the east of Norwich.
Parveen fans her face with an elevation plan. ‘Don’t know if I’m just hormonal, but the architect on it is hot .’
I laugh.
‘Seriously. What’s wrong with me? I couldn’t stop thinking about having his babies.’
‘You’ve already had babies with someone else, remember?’ (Twins, with her lawyer husband, Maz, whom she loves to bits.)
‘Oh yeah,’ she says, mock-dolefully. ‘Still. A girl can dream.’
I’ve known Parveen for eight years. We started work at KLI during the same summer, and I couldn’t imagine being deskmates with anyone else. She’s super smart, fiercely quick-witted, and – entertainingly – also the clumsiest person I’ve ever met, to the point where she now refuses to participate in office coffee runs due to a credible risk of inflicting third-degree burns.
‘Tell me about the project.’ I love the early stages of a new contract – the meetings and information-gathering, the glow of possibility and potential.
She smiles. ‘His name’s Ash Heartwell.’
I smile back. ‘Genuinely just interested in the project.’
I know Crave & Co. architects – we work with them all the time – and I know of Ash Heartwell, but I’ve never actually met him.
An email pings into my inbox. From Parveen. A link to Ash Heartwell’s profile on the Crave & Co. website.
‘Er, I’m not going to stalk him. Do you need to borrow my fan, or something?’
‘Just have a sneak peek,’ she pleads. ‘His profile picture looks like an aftershave advert. You can practically smell the Paco Rabanne.’
Reluctantly, I click on the link. It’s true – the black-and-white portrait does remind me of something you’d see on the inside front page of GQ .
I scan his bio.
Ash joined us after training at the Bartlett School of Architecture. He turned to architecture following an accident in his twenties, which made him reconsider his chosen career path. Having won multiple awards throughout his period of study, Ash is currently assisting on a number of projects.
‘You know who he is, don’t you?’
‘Hmm?’ I say, clicking out of the page and back into the fly-through on my screen.
‘He’s the one who got struck by lightning.’
I feel my mouth turn chalky. I reach for the glass of water on my desk and take a swig.
‘Don’t you remember? It was a few years ago now. It was in all the papers.’
I do remember the man who got hit by lightning. But I didn’t pay attention to it at the time. Because it happened on the same night as something else, something catastrophic that split my world – and my heart – in two.
‘. . . Neve?’
I blink away the threat of a flashback. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘I was asking if you could do me a favour later.’
I shake off my disquiet. ‘Yep, sure.’ This is easy: Parveen is one of those rare and gorgeous people who never asks awful things of her colleagues because she can’t be arsed to do them herself.
‘You don’t know what it is yet. And actually... it is your least favourite thing to do.’
Okay, I take it back. I groan and lower my head to my keyboard. ‘Please no more Year 11s.’
KLI does a lot of careers outreach locally, going into schools, sixth forms, and universities. We take interns at degree level, and work with degree providers across various projects. None of which I mind doing – in fact I quite enjoy it – but the last group of Year 11s I spoke to were brutal. I got laughed at, then heckled, and the teacher who assured me I’d gone down a storm had been typing on her phone the whole way through the session.
Heckling I can deal with. Having my time wasted, I can’t.
Parveen slides a cardboard invitation across the desk to me. ‘I’m supposed to be going to this private view tonight at this art gallery on Magdalen Street but I totally forgot, and Maz is leading this big mediation at work that might go into the night so I absolutely have to be home for the twins.’
I loathe talking to people about art, as Parveen well knows. She is KLI’s resident art expert, usually liaising with dealers on behalf of our clients, because she studied art history at uni and genuinely can’t get enough of the stuff.
It’s not that I can’t do it: I can turn my mind to pretty much anything if I have enough reading time. It’s more that I have a very low pompousness threshold. Leo used to love going to art galleries and talking nonsense to show off. He knew absolutely nothing, but his ego was rooted in pretending the opposite. It was the same with wine, literature, and – this was always the worst one, especially at dinner parties – international politics.
Parveen makes a pleading face. ‘Half an hour, tops, just so I can say the company showed its face. All you need to do is drink the free wine and mill a bit, and then you can leave.’
‘Drink, mill, and leave?’
‘Promise.’
‘I suppose I can stretch to that,’ I say, returning my attention to the Art Deco kitchen I’m working on. ‘But you’re doing the next load of Year 11s.’
‘Deal,’ she says brightly. ‘And hey, you never know – you might end up talking to someone really interesting.’
I think of Leo and raise an eyebrow. ‘Appreciate your optimism, Parv, but let’s not get carried away.’