When She Was Bad(38)

‘Sure.’

It wasn’t the enthusiastic ‘I thought you’d never ask’ she’d been hoping for but it wasn’t a ‘no’ either and she’d gone back to her desk feeling buoyant, though her heart sank at the prospect of an afternoon of invoicing, still the air around her desk had thrummed with possibility.

Halfway through that Monday afternoon, just at the point where Chloe was contemplating heading to the kitchen to make tea in the hope that Ewan would follow her, the door to Rachel’s office had swung open.

‘Ewan. A word.’

That day, Rachel was wearing a sky-blue silk blouse tucked into a slim charcoal skirt, with high-heeled dark grey suede shoes with straps that went around her narrow ankles. Chloe felt suddenly shabby in the khaki top and brown skinny trousers and brown suede boots she’d agonized over before leaving for work.

The slatted blinds in Rachel’s glass office were closed so Chloe couldn’t see what was going on inside. There was something quite chilling about those blank white windows like giant backs turned to her. She went to the kitchen anyway, hoping that by the time the kettle boiled, Ewan would be out and he’d sneak in to join her and fill her in on what Rachel Masters had wanted. Perhaps he’d do one of his impressions like he used to do of Gill. But when she slid back behind her desk a few minutes later, Rachel’s door was still shut.

By the time Ewan had finally emerged, Chloe was on the phone and she missed seeing his expression. She tried to catch his eye as he sat down, but he was already concentrating on his computer screen. She saw a little muscle twitch in the side of his jaw and it reminded her of Friday night in his narrow bed and something turned to warm liquid inside her.

She tapped in an email.

Well?

From the corner of her eye she saw him click his mouse and then frown briefly at the screen before clicking it again. If he’d read her email, he didn’t respond.

When 5.30 came around, Sarah was first to leave as usual, trying to gather her things as discreetly as possible. Did she really think she was fooling anyone by leaving her coat off until she got out of the office doors? Gradually the others also got up to go until only Chloe and Ewan remained. And Rachel Masters.

Finally Chloe cracked. She stood and picked up her jacket and phone, lingering as if her attention was caught by something on the screen, hoping Ewan would turn around. When he didn’t, she took her things over to his desk.

‘Guess you’re too busy for a drink then?’

Before looking at Chloe he glanced over to Rachel’s office where the blinds were still down.

‘Sorry,’ he shrugged, drumming his pen on the desk.

Still Chloe hesitated, knowing she should leave but unable to tear herself away.

‘Is everything OK?’

Again that flick of a glance in Rachel Masters’s direction.

‘Look, she gave me a bollocking, all right? She didn’t mention your name but she asked me if I wanted to get ahead in this business, because having a fling with a co-worker was a sure way of stopping my career in its tracks. And she’s got a point, you know. It’s a mug’s game, isn’t it, getting involved with someone you work with? Well, isn’t it?’

His eyes had locked on to hers as if pleading with her to agree.

Chloe had smiled her default smile and nodded her head, up down up down up down, but really her mind had stopped working when he’d said that word. Fling. That’s how he saw their night together. She’d been thinking of box-sets with a blanket over their laps and mini-breaks to Rome or Berlin and making love in front of an open fire or on a deserted beach with the sun reflecting gold in those amber flecks in his eyes . . . and he’d been thinking ‘fling’.

Since then they’d hardly communicated at all, avoiding each other’s eyes and making sure they didn’t cross paths in the kitchen. And now it was Wednesday and her jaw ached from forcing a smile and there was an unfamiliar hard, metallic taste in her mouth, and when she looked at Rachel Masters’s office she experienced a rush of something so shockingly intense, she didn’t even dare try to analyse it but swallowed it with a gulp. She felt it burn as it went down.





21

Charlie



Charlie had come to believe himself an outsider to love. Not that he was incapable of it, or immune to it. Not at all. He was an incurable romantic, as many inveterate cynics often are. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe love was possible because he absolutely did, but rather that he didn’t believe it was possible for him. So he was doomed to live in a permanent state of quiet unfulfilment. And then he met Stefan.

Stefan had smooth olive skin that shone where the light hit it. His face was all planes and hollows in soft woody shades like beech and walnut, and when he smiled it was like the sun coming out so you just wanted to make him smile again and keep on smiling and never stop. But only for you. And that was the problem with Stefan. It was never really only for Charlie.