Читать книгу Girls Night Out 3 E-Book Bundle - Gemma Burgess - Страница 25

Chapter Sixteen

Tonight I’m going to wipe my date slate clean and find some fresh men to play with.

I’m going speed dating.

‘Why don’t you come?’ I say to Robert over breakfast. ‘Speed dating! Don’t you want to try it? It’s run by a workfriend of Plum’s. Lots of posh PR girls . . .’

‘I did try it,’ says Robert. ‘More coffee . . . Years ago. When everyone else was trying it. It sucks arse.’

‘Well, bully for you,’ I say, taking my mug. ‘I can’t imagine why you’re still single, with that attitude.’

‘Not single, baby,’ he says, smiling lasciviously and stirring honey into his porridge. ‘Multiple.’

‘You are beastly,’ I say sniffily.

‘Why are you talking like the lost Mitford sister?’ asks Robert.

‘I’m rereading The Pursuit of Love,’ I say, thrilled that he noticed. ‘It’s utter bliss.’

‘Are these chopped almonds on my porridge?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Full of happy fat and very good for you.’

‘My digestive tract has been delighted ever since I stopped having a ham and cheese croissant for breakfast,’ admits Robert.

‘What a shock,’ I say, hopping down from my chair. ‘Right. Ready to go? I’m just going to clean my teeth again.’

‘Cleaning your teeth both before and after breakfast is a little weird, you know,’ he shouts after me as I head up the stairs.

‘So is having four ladyfriends on the go at once,’ I shout back. ‘But no one is judging you. Except God.’

Last night’s blind date with Jon is long forgotten. It’s a crisp November morning, the sun is just coming up as we get on the moped, and London is so new and fresh that I feel like singing. For all that everyone always goes on about summer, and heat, and parks, and ice-cream, London can be a real armpit in August. Dawn in autumn, on the other hand, feels clean, and when the sky is clear and the sun is promising to do its very best to shine, the whole city sparkles.

My I-love-London attitude is helped by the fact that I always get a lift to work with Robert on his moped, rather than taking the tube. (In winter, the London underground becomes a warm, pungent hug of humanity-infused air.) I love the moped, and I’ve even purchased my very own helmet. It’s black. I am thinking about adding little glow-in-the-dark stars. Unless that’s childish. In which case I won’t. I’m 28 in January, after all.

‘You’re going to need proper protective weather gear soon,’ says Robert, as I zip up my warmest coat.

‘You’re protective weather gear,’ I say with a dazzling smile.

Robert grins to himself and gets on. I prop myself on the back, and off we go. It’s chilly, but such a smashing way to get around London. The hours I used to spend waiting for buses and trains! What a waste of time.

I do miss tube flirtations though. (Accidental eye contact, grin to yourself, repeat.) But the moped is an improvement in every other way. I feel very safe sitting behind Robert. And very warm. His body temperature is, I swear, about five degrees warmer than mine at any given time. He’s so broad and tall, and I hang on to him like a baby koala all the way to work. With Robert, I’m always sure he knows what he’s doing.

We’re at Blackfriars in minutes, and Robert nods goodbye and heads towards Liverpool Street. I still don’t know what Robert does for a living, you know. He will not discuss it.

Today, I have to announce the quarterly figures to the trading floor. This is usually my least favourite part of the job (it’s seriously intimidating), but new cool-and-bulletproof me is faking that I LOVE it. And to tell you the truth, whether as a result or by coincidence, I am almost looking forward to it today. So I stride down the corridor, past Suzanne’s office, with a spring in my step and sit at my desk for a few minutes.

Then I take the lift up to the trading floor. I read out the above-average results, and say that we expect the stock to go up. I have a little tummy-wobble of nerves just before I start speaking, but apart from that I’m fine. I even finish with a big, beaming smile. Wow. Fake it till you feel it, indeed.

As I walk back to the lifts, a guy bounds ahead of me. He presses the button and turns around, and I see it’s the same guy who asked me about whips and bridles all those weeks ago. The jackass. The lift opens and he holds it open for me, grinning broadly. I get in, and still grinning, he steps in next to me.

‘Hey,’ he says casually. ‘Going down? . . . I mean, uh, which floor?’

‘Sixth,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

‘So, I had the craziest night last night,’ he says. ‘Cuckoo Club till 4 am.’

‘Wow,’ I say.

‘Yep,’ he says. ‘Uh, great report, by the way. A couple of my clients will be pleased to hear about this. Perhaps we could, uh, meet up—’

‘There’s a full report on the way,’ I say. ‘You can read about it.’ Silence.

The lift gets to my floor and I get off without looking at him.

As we walk to our desks I see a very tall, broad-shouldered man coming out of Suzanne’s meeting room. He reminds me of Robert from this distance.

‘Abigail,’ barks Suzanne. I walk over with a ready smile. I quite like standing up next to her, as I’m about nine inches taller than her and she doesn’t scare me quite as much. ‘This is Andre.’

I turn to smile at him, and he fixes me with a charming grin. ‘Nice to meet you.’ French. Long eyelashes. Charm oozing from every pore.

‘Andre is going to be in the London office a lot over the next few months. He’s currently in the Paris office and is heading to China in February.’

‘Smashing,’ I say, meeting Andre’s warm, chocolatey gaze without flinching.

Suzanne continues to talk about the project he’s here for, and I concentrate on not breaking eye contact with Andre first. The longer I hold his gaze, the more he’s trying not to smile. I wonder if it’s unprofessional of me to date you, when you’re living here, I think idly to myself. To hell with it, I want to. And I bet you do, too.

‘Andre!’ barks Suzanne, and Andre is forced to break the stare first, as she introduces him to one of the other managing dir ectors on our floor.

‘Shall we luncheon today?’ suggests Charlotte as I sit back at my desk. ‘And who the devil is that?’

‘Yes we shall,’ I reply. ‘And that is Andre.’

It’s now been over six weeks since Charlotte broke up with whatever-his-name-was, and she’s undergone a dramatic transformation. Drab Charlotte is gone. She’s highlighted her hair a buttery shade of blonde that makes her skin look luminous rather than washed out, started wearing make-up and heels, and stopped wearing ponchos. As a result she seems to stride and stand out, rather than sit and slouch. See? Singledom. Best thing ever.

It’s like having a brand-new workmate. In fact, at Alistair’s leaving party a few weeks ago, he told us he’d been asked three times who the new girl was, a fact that made Charlotte and I cackle with glee. Best way to turn a friend into a close friend, I’ve discovered, is to have a crisis. Or discover a shared love of Grease 2. (We did that, too.)

And the best thing? She smiles and laughs all the time. That’s what I didn’t understand about her before: she wasn’t boring. She was just bored.

‘Perhaps I’m in denial,’ she said blithely last week, when we went for an after work drink together and accidentally ended up in a dodgy late-night bar near Temple, swapping our newly-single stories. ‘But life really seems better without him. I’d rather be single than in an unfulfilling relationship.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, raising my glass to hers.

‘Have you spoken to Alistair?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m sure it’s crazy over there.’

Charlotte doesn’t know that at Alistair’s leaving party, at a typical City wine bar under the nose of our entire floor of colleagues, he made a play for me. An enormous, fumblingly drunken play, that consisted of flirty smiles and meaningful eye contact (7 pm to 8 pm), questions shouted at me over whoever else I was talking to (8 pm to 9 pm), and attempts to hold my hand and grope my waist when I was waiting for drinks at the bar (9.05 pm to 9.15 pm). Then I stormed furiously to the bathrooms to calm down rather than shout at him in front of everyone.

And he followed me. Right into the bathroom.

‘What is this, fucking Top Gun?’ I snapped. ‘Get out.’

‘Oh Abigail, I like you, so much, I want – I want to – you, with . . .’ he said, suddenly looking very young and vulnerable.

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘You don’t.’

‘You don’t even know what I’m about to ask!’ he said, then looked around and started laughing. ‘Tampon machine!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘The answer is no.’ I walked out, leaving him shouting my name in the bathroom and haven’t seen him since. He emailed me a couple of days later, saying sorry and asking me out for a drink, but I haven’t replied. I think it’s the best way.

Sophie and Plum think that was too brutal, considering he was a friend – I believe Plum’s term was ‘fucking harsh’ – and I’m sure Charlotte would not approve of my behaviour either. But it made sense to cut him off before he went any further, right? Am I fucking harsh? Or am I just taking cool and detached to the next, logical level?

Perhaps most girls are just too nice. Perhaps we get dumped because we date guys who just aren’t right in the first place. For example, if I’d been properly brutal about Adam The Tick Boxer, I would have dumped him because he said he played Doom for 10 to 12 hours every weekend, which is – let’s face it – weird. Instead I ignored that, went out with him, got a bit emotionally attached and then, well, you know. Boom.

‘I’ve decided I’m ready,’ Charlotte says over lunch. ‘To start dating. A new boyfriend might be nice.’

‘Yay,’ I say, holding up my bottle of water to clink with hers. ‘Though wanting to date and wanting a boyfriend are completely different things. In my mind, anyway.’

‘Then . . . why are you dating?’ says Charlotte reasonably. ‘It’s fun,’ I shrug. ‘And I’m making up for lost time . . . But I’m not getting carried away with some asshat like Adam The Tick Boxer again.’

Charlotte nods sympathetically.

‘That was a mini-disaster. I really fucked up,’ I add.

‘You did not fuck it up! You liked him,’ she exclaims. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t be cynical. You need to keep a positive mental attitude.’

‘This is a positive mental attitude,’ I say. ‘I can have fun and date without actually getting emotionally involved.’

‘OK,’ says Charlotte doubtfully. ‘If you say so.’

‘One day I might find someone . . . perfect,’ I pause, thinking about my fruitless search for a spark, and the someday-I’ll-fall-in-love-and-find-a-soulmate thought that Robert told me to ignore. ‘Until then, I’m having fun and staying in control.’

Charlotte laughs. ‘I don’t think I can be as . . . strong as you.’

‘I don’t think I’m that strong,’ I say, surprised. No one’s ever called me strong. ‘I just try to ignore my brain when it tells me I’m a bit shit. Robert told me to fake being bulletproof until I felt it, and that worked . . . Hey, what are you doing tonight?’

Charlotte shrugs. ‘Nothing. All my friends are in relationships, so Friday is usually quiet . . .’

‘Friday! Quiet!’ I am appalled. ‘Come to this speed dating thing with me.’

‘Are you sure?’ says Charlotte.

I nod my head firmly. ‘Definitely. Without question. Plum just forwarded an email saying they were still short of girls – there’s too many men! So you really should come.’

Charlotte bites her lip. ‘Well . . . alright.’