Chapter Two
The green floor comprised all our meeting rooms and was on the fourth floor of The Hexagon.
It was so named because it contained more plants than the rainforest: an enormous fern swiped me in the eye as I exited the lift, and I had to stop and double-check it hadn’t taken out my eye make-up.
Appearance as facade is very important to me, a hangover from my days in celebrity communications.
I’ve always felt if you have a tiny chink in your armour, ‘they’ (journalists, your boss, your colleagues) will spot it at thirty paces.
Katrina, who staffed reception on the floor, gave a double-clap of excitement when she saw me. ‘Isn’t it romantic?’ she said. ‘I mean, so weird! But love conquers all!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said, giving her a hollow smile and thinking, If that’s the narrative you want to read into this.
‘BTW,’ she said, her smile turning brittle, ‘there won’t be any redundancies, will there?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ I said. ‘Where are they?’
‘Succulent Room,’ she said. I thanked her and went on, checking my clothes for signs of greenery.
I saw the familiar silhouette of Esme, clasping hands with a long-legged man sitting beside her in the glass-walled meeting room.
Yep, there were Esme and Ajax, Ajax and Esme: I tried not to look at them as I strode towards the door.
‘Lizzy!’ Esme came rushing out, embracing me in a cloud of Esme’s Secrets – her bespoke perfume: a dense combination of rose and patchouli – which overtook me.
She was dressed in a pleated shot-silk tunic over leather trousers, and she combined it with her trademark smudged eyeliner, 2am look, which somehow converted her from merely rich to hip.
‘You’re not answering your messages,’ I said as I accepted the embrace mechanically.
‘Don’t be angry with me,’ she whispered in my ear as she squeezed me in her pleated arms. Firmly, she steered me towards a large fern where we could talk out of earshot of the Succulent Room.
‘What, exactly, is going on?’ My voice was low but infused with steel.
‘It’s for real, Lizzy – he’s amazing,’ she whispered back urgently.
I needed cold, hard facts. ‘How do you know him?’
She bit her lip. ‘We met on Friday night,’ she said softly, naming a club in Mayfair where she socialised. ‘And we’ve been together ever since.’
She said ‘ever since’ as though it had been forty-eight years rather than forty-eight hours.
I waited for more words of explanation, but she already had her hand on my elbow and was steering me into the Succulent Room.
A single, unimpressed looking cactus sat in the centre of the meeting table. I knew how it felt.
The rooms at EKArts were styled with a splash of eccentricity.
Esme sat down on an Eames-style chair she’d selected for herself, upholstered in fake leather and with a laid-back slant to it.
In a similar chair next to her sat Ajax, long legs stretched out, in a retro pin-stripe suit which he wore flawlessly, tailored to his muscled torso.
My first thought was how large he looked, since I normally viewed him in a tiny square on my phone – either in the tabloids, with his latest model girlfriend, or on socials if he somehow sneaked into my feed.
He didn’t get up, possibly because he was modelling his handmade Italian leather shoes and they were at the perfect angle.
‘Babe, this is my amazing Lizzy,’ said Esme.
Ajax smiled serenely at me, looking so pristine it was as though he’d just stepped out of hair and make-up; with his perfectly symmetrical features, he could have been a model.
Yes, it is I, his half-smile seemed to say.
For a minute, I thought he was going to put out his hand for me to kiss it.
Ajax was a fitness influencer and entrepreneur with a successful lifestyle app, as well as the host of Resilience Needs…
a podcast which focused on various aspects of health, personal development and, er, resilience.
I knew his figures were excellent, and he was royalty in the podcasting world, but I could not have him thinking that I would treat him as royalty.
I looked at him, unwilling to break the silence.
‘Hey, Lizzy,’ he murmured.
‘Hi,’ I said, infusing the word with as much coolness as I could without sounding rude.
I heard someone enter the room behind me, and turned just as he took a seat.
Goodness. Who was he, my prize for turning up?
This guy was much too handsome for his own good, but unlike Ajax, a small scar just above his lip gave his handsomeness enough grit to light up the attraction grid in my brain: dark eyes, strong brows, and brown hair thick on top with a fade cut, he wore his single-breasted navy suit with a relaxed panache.
‘Hi, guys,’ he said, in a soft Scottish accent.
As our eyes met, I felt an unexpected jolt of electricity which made me pause for a moment. One: I had definitely drunk too much coffee, and two: I needed to put my shields up with this man.
‘Hi,’ I said, keeping my expression neutral and sitting down on the office chair next to him.
Esme smiled a touch too widely. ‘Lizzy, this is Oliver MacLeod, your opposite number.’
‘Hi,’ Oliver and I said again, in unison.
‘Oliver is my right-hand man and Head of Vision,’ said Ajax, ignoring the nose-wrinkle I made at the title Head of Vision, his expression indicating that I should be impressed. ‘Ex-Army, Scots Guards. I’d trust him with my life.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Wow.’ I glanced at Oliver, and decided sarcasm was my best defence. ‘Are you also his… bodyguard?’
‘Very much not,’ Oliver said, mirroring my sarcasm with a curl of his lip. He was well-spoken, with the cultivated Edinburgh accent that so many people went gaga for, including me – shields up, my brain screamed, shields up.
‘And this is Elizabeth Brinks, my Lizzy, Senior Director here at EKArts, who has an amazing reputation in the communications industry,’ said Esme. ‘I stole her away from it to make her the cornerstone of my company.’
‘I have, in fact, heard of Ms Brinks,’ said Oliver.
I looked at him properly then. He raised his eyebrows. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘please do call me Olly.’
‘I can see this is going to be an amazing synergy,’ said Esme, ignoring my narrowed eyes.
When Esme was determined to be positive, she wore her smile like armour.
Such intense, blinkered positivity set up a forcefield around her.
You could have fired an arrow at her and it would have bounced off. Ditto for a cannonball.
‘Guys.’ Ajax leaned forward, his hands clasped together. ‘We’re so excited to share this news with you. Esme and I are getting married.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘The intranet told me. And this big decision is – the work of a few days, I gather?’
Esme’s mouth quirked at the expression on my face. ‘The thing is, Lizzy – when you know, you know.’
Any more clichés you want to roll out? I thought.
Ajax was nodding, smiling at his fiancée. ‘One hundred and ten percent.’ So there were! ‘And it’s not just personal, it’s professional. We’re going to be creating a new product together which combines our skills. Taking things in a brand-new direction. Our baby.’
He looked between me and Oliver with a studied calmness, nodding gently, as though we were agreeing with every word he was saying, even though we were sitting there silently. This really didn’t bode well. I’d been in the room with him for two minutes and I already wanted to kick him in the shins.
‘A new dating app,’ said Esme, ploughing on into the silence. ‘Which will revolutionise the field. Called Chroma.’
‘And it will do – what?’ I said.
‘People will be matched according to their artistic leanings,’ she said, throatily.
‘Via art choices, and a series of questions. No profile pictures until matches have already been narrowed down, no superficial flirting, just vibes. For people who want a deeper connection from the get-go; matched because of their souls, rather than their bodies.’
Olly and I glanced at each other, clocking each other’s disquiet. Olly cleared his throat. ‘I think attraction tends to be a combination,’ he said, ‘of both.’
I nodded, shamefully aware of the blush seeping across my face. When was the last fucking time I’d blushed? It had to be fifteen years ago. I really needed everyone not to notice this, but in my peripheral vision I saw Olly tilt his head and had a feeling he was looking at me.
‘We’ll discuss the specifics later.’ Esme’s glittering positivity flickered with steel.
‘Chroma is going to be huge,’ said Ajax, steamrolling on.
‘But at the moment it’s just a sketch on a cocktail bar napkin.
’ He glanced at Esme and she returned his look with hazy eyes.
‘We’re going to hit the ground running, start developing it, get investors on board.
There’ll be lots of promotional events, but the best event of all, after we’re done, will be our wedding.
’ He reached out and took Esme’s delicate, manicured hand in his bronzed, muscular one.
‘So, as you’re each other’s opposite number, we thought we’d bring you together now, at the outset,’ said Esme.
‘We won’t be merging our separate companies yet.
But we’ll need the expertise of both of you to help us tell the story of Chroma; to make this new’– she took a breath – ‘adventure sing, in all of its wild colours.’
Silence hung in the room. I wondered whether you could actually sing in colour.
Olly cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s excellent news,’ he said, in a perfectly pleasant but expressionless voice.
‘Congratulations. Perhaps Elizabeth and I can convene now, for an introductory chat. No need for the major players to be part of this.’ He made a shooting gesture at them.
Their faces broke into broad smiles. They were already stroking each other.
If only there was a room that wasn’t a glass box for them to use.
‘If that’s okay with you, Elizabeth?’ Olly was already standing.
I nodded. ‘Let’s go.’ I got my phone out and sent a message to Sasha to cancel all of my meetings that day. I’d had a couple of journalists lined up to discuss the latest EKArts’ initiatives. But Esme and Ajax’s love match was going to blow what should have been a normal Monday out of the water.