The One Who's Not the One: A feel-good, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

by Keris Stainton

  She made herself a cup of tea and nicked a KitKat out of Phil’s drawer, before opening Facebook and typing in Sam’s mum’s name. She’d promised Kelly she wouldn’t google Sam, she’d promised herself she wouldn’t search for Harvey – she’d said nothing about their mum. So she wasn’t doing anything wrong. She scrolled down Jan’s timeline pretending to be interested in the Christmas shopping day she’d had at Brent Cross or the new boots she’d bought, while the rest of her brain was screaming at her to click on Sam’s page.

  Instead she came to a photo of Jan and Harvey. They were standing in the middle of a white room with big windows down one side. Harvey had his arm around Jan’s shoulders – he was at least a foot taller than her – and her arm was curled around his waist. They were both beaming into the camera.

  The photo was captioned ‘#proudmama’.

  Harvey was tagged in the photo, so Cat clicked on the link to his page while shoving the last two KitKat fingers in her mouth. That wasn’t googling. She was just clicking on a link. She clicked on links all the time; it was no big deal.

  ‘Holy shit,’ she whispered, as his page loaded.

  His profile photo showed him in a grey hoodie, hood up, but he also had sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, holding his messy hair back. His forehead was furrowed and he was looking into the camera as if to say ‘What?’ There was a view of London in the background, so it had obviously been taken on a rooftop somewhere. Cat studied the dimples at the corners of his mouth, the hint of scruff on his upper lip. The small mole on his jaw, his one slightly arched eyebrow.

  ‘Boyfriend?’ a voice said from behind her and she jumped, clicking away from the page. Unfortunately, the next open tab was a Google Image search for ‘The Rock shirtless’, which was arguably worse. She minimised the whole thing.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, turning in her chair to smile up at Nick. ‘Back again?’

  Nick had definitely been turning up more often since he’d told them about New York. Cat assumed he was tying up some loose ends.

  ‘I was just passing. Thought I’d pop in. You’ve got a bit of…’ He reached out towards her face and she didn’t know what to do. She stared at his hand coming closer, until his thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. ‘Chocolate?’ he said.

  ‘KitKat,’ she croaked. ‘Ta.’

  He smiled. ‘Are you busy?’

  Cat forced herself not to look at her screen. ‘Not so much actually. Why?’

  ‘I was wondering if you could run me through your cases. I want to make sure I’m up to date on everything before I, you know, bugger off.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Cat said, sliding her drawer open and pulling out her live account folder. ‘Still can’t believe you’re doing that, by the way.’

  ‘I know,’ Nick said. ‘I’m a monster. Do you want to do it here or in the conference room?’

  A vision of exactly what she’d like to do to Nick in the conference room flickered through her mind. And it wasn’t anything to do with accountancy.

  Cat shook her head to try to clear her thoughts. She’d attempted to fantasise about Nick more than once, but she was terrible at it. Once she’d come up with this elaborate scenario of her working late (would never happen) and him dropping by to pick something up (unlikely) and bending her over her desk. But then Colin had walked in and asked if Cat had done the filing and then just stood there, arms folded, shirt buttoned up wrong, while Nick humped away and Cat tried to answer some emails. Pitiful.

  ‘Conference room,’ she said. And hoped she wasn’t blushing. The way Nick was smiling at her suggested that might have been a vain hope.

  Cat followed Nick to the conference room, watching his long legs in black trousers, tight around his arse. That probably constituted inappropriate workplace behaviour actually. She should probably stop.

  In the conference room, Nick opened the windows overlooking the square.

  ‘It’s hot in here,’ he told her, as she watched the way his shoulders pulled at the fabric of his shirt.

  So take off all your clothes, Cat thought, and then immediately tried to think of another song to chase away the earworm. She did not want to idly start singing that as she showed Nick the spreadsheets.

  (Spreadsheets? Since when was accountancy so full of innuendo?)

  ‘I just need to pop to the loo,’ Cat told Nick, pushing her chair back and heading for the door. ‘Feel free to start without me.’

  ‘Oh my GOD,’ she muttered, as she fast-walked to the bathrooms.

  * * *

  Nick’s here, she texted Kelly, as soon as she was locked in a cubicle.

  Three dots appeared immediately. Phwoar.

  He’s wearing tight black trousers.

  Kelly sent back an unseemly amount of aubergine emojis.

  He touched my mouth. I had chocolate on my face.

  A row of alternating tongue and blushy faces.

  Pregnancy hormones? Cat texted.

  Kelly replied with a row of water splashes.

  And, to be fair to Kelly, she’d been thirsty for Nick before she got pregnant, first via Facebook stalking and then after meeting him in a bar when she’d come to pick Cat up after work.

  Cat gave up on texting and called. ‘Everything I say sounds like an innuendo,’ she said, as soon as Kelly picked up.

  ‘You know why that is.’

  ‘Because he’s hot.’

  ‘Because he’s hot and you haven’t had sex for, like, ever.’

  ‘I can’t sleep with Nick.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I work with him. I mean, I work for him.’

  ‘Ah, but he’s leaving.’

  ‘The country, not the company. He’d still be my superior.’

  ‘That could be hot,’ Kelly said.

  ‘Oh my god. That is not going to happen.’

  ‘I’m just saying it could. If you wanted. And I think it would be good. For you. And also for me when you gave me all the details. Tell me more about his trousers.’

  ‘Never mind his trousers. He asked me if Harvey was my boyfriend. And I said yes.’

  ‘What? Why would you say that?’

  ‘He surprised me. Came up behind me.’

  ‘Imagine I’m sending you many aubergine emojis right now.’

  ‘I’m starting to think you’re the one who needs to get laid.’

  ‘You’re not wrong. You still OK to take Arnold to the grotto on Sunday?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  It was actually the only thing she was looking forward to. Which was pretty bloody sad.

  ‘I’d better go. Don’t want him to think I’m pooing.’

  After ending the call, Cat splashed cold water on her face, pulled her hair out of its haphazard ponytail and put on lipstick. And then blotted it off again because what the fuck was she thinking. Nick had seen her with melted KitKat round her mouth earlier; the mystery was already gone. And she wasn’t going to sleep with him anyway. Of course she wasn’t. They were colleagues. And that was all they’d ever be.

  * * *

  Cat could hear the TV from the stairwell. Which meant that Georgie and her boyfriend were both home. Great. She pushed open the door and thought about going straight to her room, but her stomach was rumbling and she wanted the beer she knew she had in the fridge so she crossed the living room, calling out, ‘Hiya!’ as she went.

  Something caught her eye and she stopped and looked over. Pete was lying on the floor and Georgie was sitting on his back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, before she could think better of it. They both appeared to be dressed, at least. The coffee table was covered in take-out containers and empty bottles.

  ‘Cracking his neck,’ Georgie said.

  ‘You should let her do yours,’ Pete said. His voice sounded strained. ‘I’ve often thought you hold a lot of tension in your neck.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Cat said, even though she did. ‘How do you know how to do that?’
r />   ‘YouTube,’ Georgie said, leaning forward and sliding her hands down the side of Pete’s neck. ‘You can learn literally anything on YouTube. Just relax.’

  ‘You’re doing it again?’ Cat asked.

  ‘Love the sound it makes,’ Georgie said.

  ‘And it feels really good,’ Pete added.

  Cat’s stomach lurched. She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to see it. Was half convinced Georgie was about to snap Pete’s head clean off.

  ‘Could you just wait till I’m in my room?’ Cat said. ‘I’m squeamish about things like—’

  There was a crack like a gunshot and then Pete groaned in relief.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Cat muttered, almost scurrying to the kitchen. ‘I need to move.’

  While her burrito was reheating, she ignored the dirty dishes piled up in the sink, the overflowing bin, the puddle of what she hoped was water on the counter, and instead opened the fridge to get her beer. More takeaway containers. A massive brick of cheese. A plastic tub of mini pork pies that Pete snacked on constantly. But no beer.

  ‘Have you seen my beer?’ she called out, pointlessly.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Pete yelled back. ‘Sorry. Didn’t know it was yours.’

  ‘Who else’s could it have been,’ Cat said under her breath. She poured herself a glass of water, got her burrito out of the microwave, and headed back to her room.

  While she ate her burrito, the sauce running down her arms, she tortured herself by looking for flats she could never afford. The first one she found – a one-bedroom in Highbury Hill – cost more than her month’s pay. A ‘wonderfully spacious maisonette’ in Shepherd’s Bush cost almost five grand a month, with its ‘pretty decked garden’ and ‘wood flooring throughout’. Cat didn’t need a garden, pretty, decked or otherwise, or wood flooring; she just needed somewhere where no one drank her beer or cracked each other’s necks in front of the TV.

  She gave up on the unrealistic propositions and typed her maximum rent budget into the box. The screen transformed from bright open spaces to poky dark rooms in which the single beds touched both walls and offered a microwave as a headboard in houses of ‘multiple occupation’.

  One of them showed a plain beige room with metal-framed bunk beds in the centre, and no other furniture at all. Another was an attic conversion that Cat knew she wouldn’t even be able to stand up in. She shut her laptop and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She should be doing better by now; she knew it. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t. How was Kelly married, with a child and another one on the way, living in a beautiful (huge) house with a hot husband and Cat was stuck in a poky room, working a job that bored her, and hadn’t even had sex for bloody years.

  Maybe she should ask Kelly if she could go and stay with her for a bit. Help out with the baby. Save some money for a better flat. Except last time Cat had lived with Kelly, Kelly had chucked her out and they’d had one of the worst rows of their friendship. Maybe she should look for another job. Particularly since Nick was leaving. She should definitely look for a different job. But tomorrow. Looking at flats had already depressed her; she didn’t need to be made to feel worse. She sat back up and opened her laptop.

  She’d finish her burrito, have a shower, a wank and an early night. That’s what she’d do.

  But first, she’d just have another little look at Harvey’s Facebook.

  Eight

  ‘Woah,’ Cat said, as she pushed open the door and let Arnold walk under her arm. ‘I didn’t think it would be this busy.’

  It was a Saturday a few weeks before Christmas, so of course the department store was absolutely heaving. People were scuttling in every direction and Cat couldn’t even see the best way to head or any signs for Santa’s Grotto.

  ‘You keep tight hold of my hand,’ she told Arnold. ‘I don’t want to get lost.’

  ‘I don’t want to get lost!’ Arnold said, gripping her hand with his tiny starfish one.

  ‘Oh, you’d be fine,’ Cat told him, giving his fingers a quick squeeze. ‘But I’d totally cry. Anyway, if you got lost, I’d be able to find you by scent.’

  She dipped down, pressed her nose against his hair, and sniffed. ‘Glitter. And reindeer bums.’

  As Arnold giggled, Cat spotted a gap in the crowds and headed in, tugging Arnold along with her.

  ‘It’s on the top floor, apparently,’ she told him. ‘So we either have to get the escalators or the lift. Which do you prefer?’

  ‘Escalator!’ Arnold yelled, hopping a little.

  ‘OK, calm down; they’re just moving stairs.’

  Cat craned her neck until she spotted a sign and they headed towards it, dodging people walking the opposite direction and hoping it was a little less jam-packed upstairs. They joined the queue for the escalator and Cat pulled Arnold a little closer, as shoppers bumped into them from both sides.

  ‘This is nuts,’ Cat muttered. ‘Why are we even here?’

  ‘To see Santa!’ Arnold yelled.

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right.’

  They shuffled to the bottom of the escalator and Cat stepped onto it, but Arnold, still holding her hand, had stopped dead. Cat’s right leg, still on the escalator, stretched away from her.

  ‘Shit!’ she said, clinging to the handrail with her right hand, while trying to keep hold of Arnold with the other.

  ‘Arnold!’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Can you step on? I—’ She tried to pull her leg back down, but she couldn’t move it. ‘Shit shit shit,’ she chanted as she felt Arnold’s hand slipping out of hers.

  The whole thing felt like it was happening in slow motion, but also too quickly for her to have time to think. Her other leg buckled and she fell to her knees on the escalator, which was, of course, still going up. She tried to turn back and check on Arnold and managed a glimpse of his worried face before she was at the top and someone was helping her to her feet.

  ‘Are you OK?’ someone said.

  ‘I need to get down to my little boy,’ Cat said.

  ‘Someone can bring him up,’ a woman said.

  ‘No, he won’t. That’s why I—’ Cat shook her head. ‘Where’s the down one?’

  ‘Right here.’

  Someone guided her to the down escalator and held her arm as she stepped on, and continued holding her arm all the way back down. Cat couldn’t even think or look or focus on anything other than getting back down to Arnold. She’d heard about tunnel vision, but she’d never experienced it before.

  ‘That was so cool!’ Arnold said, grabbing Cat around the thighs.

  ‘It bloody wasn’t,’ Cat said, leaning down to cuddle him and sniffing just behind his ear. ‘I nearly did the splits!’

  ‘I got scared,’ Arnold said, looking up at her with big eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I worked that out, mate.’

  Now that she knew Arnold was safe and OK, she relaxed enough to look around and found that she was quite the centre of attention.

  ‘Thank you!’ she called out. ‘I’m fine!’

  ‘You should go and get a cup of tea,’ the woman who’d brought her down from upstairs said.

  Cat turned to look at her for the first time. She had short dark hair, bright-red lipstick and a tattoo of a crystal heart on her chest. Cat would have been scared to speak to her under normal circumstances. ‘Or something stronger.’

  Cat smiled. ‘Thanks for helping.’

  ‘No problem. But seriously, you probably feel fine now because of the adrenaline, but you’re gonna feel like shit later.’ She glanced down at Arnold and mouthed, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Cat said that when she fell down,’ Arnold told her.

  Cat rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I did. But that wasn’t very nice of me, was it? It was just cos I was scared. So you’re not going to repeat it, are you?’

  Arnold grinned up at her and the woman with the heart tattoo smiled at them both.

  Cat thanked the people who’d taken care of Arnold. She got the distinct impression that quite a fe
w people had hung around just to see what Cat was going to do, but she thanked them anyway. And then she and Arnold went to find the lift.

  ‘I think I need to sit down and get a cup of tea before we go and see Father Christmas,’ Cat told Arnold, once they were in the lift. ‘Is that OK with you? Sorry you have to wait.’

  ‘Can I have cake?’ Arnold asked.

  ‘I like the way you think.’

  ‘Woah,’ Arnold said as they walked inside and saw a table completely covered with desserts. Cupcakes, scones, macarons, brownies, meringues, even a gingerbread person under a bell jar. Arnold’s eyes were wide and bright.

  ‘Get whatever you want, babe,’ Cat said. She reached for a meringue for herself, figuring she needed the sugar. Arnold couldn’t seem to decide between a cupcake, a brownie and the gingerbread person. While he was deciding, Cat looked across the cafe to see where they’d like to sit and saw Harvey.

  Of course. Why not? He was sitting next to the window, the diffuse light shining over his face as he dipped his head to look at his phone. Cat checked out the rest of the room. If, once Arnold had chosen a cake, they walked straight over to the counter for drinks and then sat at the far side of the room and Cat kept her back to—

  ‘Cat?’

  Shit.

  ‘Oh hi!’ she said, turning and smiling. Except she said it before she turned, so totally failed at the pretending-she-hadn’t-seen-him-already. Harvey grinned at her, the dimple in his cheek popping.

  ‘Can I get two?’ Arnold said.

  Cat looked down to see he had a brownie in one hand and the gingerbread person in the other.

  ‘Well, you’re going to have to now, aren’t you? They’re meant to go on plates!’

  Arnold grinned at her and she suspected he’d known exactly what he was doing.

  ‘Hi!’ Harvey said, his voice sounding slightly strained. ‘I’m Harvey.’

  ‘God,’ Cat said. ‘Sorry. Arnold, Harvey. Harvey, Arnold.’

  Harvey had an expression on his face that Cat couldn’t quite identify. ‘We’re going to go and get drinks,’ Cat said. ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘Actually,’ Harvey said, ‘I need to get back to work.’