by Lindsey Kelk
‘The thing is,’ I started before pausing for a moment to take him in. His black hair curled in the damp air that followed the storm, brushing the collar of his shirt at the nape of his neck. His big, dark eyes, his broad face with its strong nose and wide mouth were all focused on me so intently but there was nothing in his expression but hope.
‘The thing is, I don’t know if this is the right time to be rushing into … something,’ I said as I let go of his hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want to be your rebound,’ he said solidly, eyebrows creasing in towards each other. ‘And I absolutely want you to take all the time you need. But there is one problem.’
‘What’s that?’
John leaned in towards me and my body moved to him, our fingers winding around each other, furling and unfurling, one hand learning the other, the light pressure of his thumb stroking circles around my palm.
‘I think I might be in love with you.’
‘Really?’ I asked, snapping out of the moment.
‘Oh my god, the look on your face,’ he laughed, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Is that so hard to believe?’
‘It’s just I’ve got so much going on, you know, just so much stuff.’ Words bubbled out of me as though someone had shaken up my bottle of pop. Keep talking, change the subject, he doesn’t mean it, he can’t mean it, don’t let him say it again. ‘With my job and the podcasts and Lucy’s baby and Sumi’s going to have a baby, did you know that? And I need to find somewhere to live now my shed is gone and …’
I tailed away, running out of words.
‘I only understood half of that but, sure,’ John said, staying right where he was as I backed away. ‘I’m not going to push you, Ros. Only, life is short and when you meet someone who makes you feel excited to be alive, who you can talk to about anything, who makes you laugh, who makes you want to get up in the morning just because there’s a chance you might get to see them that day? I reckon you should tell them how you feel.’
Before I could reply, I noticed something above his head.
‘Look,’ I said, pointing to the sky. ‘A rainbow.’
As he turned to see what I saw, a bright, bold rainbow that started somewhere near Big Ben and stretched all the way over to Whitechapel, I suddenly realized.
The way he felt about me was just how I felt about him.
‘John?’
He turned back to face me.
‘Ros?’
‘I’ve had a chance to think about it.’
‘Oh good,’ he said gravely. ‘You gave it a whole minute, thank you.’
‘I think I am not ready to be in something new. But …’ I rested my hands on his chest as his eyes widened with surprise and a slow smile spread across his face. ‘But I also would really like to kiss you right now if that’s OK.’
‘You’ve got good instincts,’ he whispered, stroking my damp hair out of my eyes. ‘You just need to trust yourself more. I say, go for it.’
I reached up to wrap my hands around his face and pulled it down to meet mine, pressing my lips to his and holding him as close as I possibly could. The sodden fabric of my dress soaked through his shirt and I could feel the warmth of his skin against mine. It was wonderful. As my mouth opened to his, he curled his arms around my shoulders, sliding his hands down my back and circling my waist before lifting me up off the floor.
And just for a moment, I felt like I was floating.
TWO MONTHS LATER …
I chose the desk closest to the window.
Veronica couldn’t argue, she was having her own four walls built into the back of the office, complete with a state-of-the-art air-filtration system so she could smoke away to her heart’s content. I did remind her it wasn’t technically legal to smoke in a workplace but she simply reminded me there wasn’t technically a workplace at all without her investment and so we came to a silent agreement.
The glazier was finishing up on our glass door, polishing up the sign as I popped my last pencil in its pencil pot.
‘What is it you do here, anyhow?’ he asked, giving the BroadCast logo a last rub with the sleeve of his boiler suit.
‘We’re a podcast network,’ I said proudly. ‘We make podcasts.’
‘Any of them about serial killers?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Not yet,’ I said, shaking my head apologetically. ‘But give it time.’
‘Hasn’t been a good serial killer in ages,’ the man lamented. ‘You should do one about Shipman. I’d have known right away if he’d been my GP. Shifty fucker, that one, you could see it in his eyes.’
‘Are you all done with the door?’ I asked, very keen to be talking about literally anything else.
‘Yeah, I’ll wash my hands and be out your way,’ he nodded, taking his mucky boiler suit and filthy mitts into the bathroom I had just stocked with brand-new white hand towels.
Looking around the office, I felt a surge of pride. Once Veronica and I were in agreement, things had moved quickly. Luckily, she knew a teenager who knew a man who got all the online end of things organized – our website, our domain names, our social media handles – and I got in touch with a few friends who I thought might be interested in working with us. It turned out, I was right. They all jumped at the chance to have their voices heard and now, just a few weeks later, we were a real company, moving into real offices with desks and chairs, white walls, lots of windows and a positively gorgeous all-glass recording studio. We already had show sponsors, I’d hired someone to sell advertising, we had a marketing person starting on Monday. I couldn’t quite believe it.
‘Where do you want this?’
A giant succulent pushed through the door with a six-foot-four man attached.
‘Just down by the wall?’ I said, grinning as John lowered my plant carefully to the ground. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s looking good!’
John had been our unofficial moving co-ordinator, fixer and all-round hype man from day one. He brought us food when we worked late, he drove me home when I missed my last train and, as Veronica said to his face the first time they met, he had ‘shagged a smile’ onto me that I simply could not wipe off. I’d always assumed sex with Patrick was the best sex could ever possibly be but, apparently, that was only because I didn’t know better. Sex with someone you fancied like mad was great but sex between two people who fancy each other like mad and really cared about one another? Another stratosphere.
John crossed the office floor in three strides and put his arm around my shoulders as I leaned into him. He sniffed the air and pulled a face.
‘Is Veronica here?’ he asked.
‘Left four hours ago,’ I groaned. I knew that filter would not work.
Outside, I heard a ruckus on the street and turned to see Sumi, Adrian and Eva banging on the glass, faces pressed against my freshly washed window. Next to them, and very much not participating in the banging, Lucy waved as she rocked her pram back and forth.
‘Argh, look at it!’ Sumi crowed as they barged through the door, leaving fresh palm prints as they went. They spread out across the office, Eva hopping up on a desk, Sumi rattling the water dispenser, Adrian going straight for the big, pink retro fridge. ‘Ros, it’s brilliant.’
‘I still think it’s just an elaborate front for a knocking shop,’ Adrian said, his face bursting with delight as Eva laughed out loud.
‘Why aren’t any of you at work?’ I asked, planting my hands on my hips theatrically as John greeted them all with hugs and kisses. ‘Does no one have a job any more?’
‘I had a doctor’s appointment,’ Sumi said, frowning as she prodded a tender spot on her stomach. Getting pregnant wasn’t proving to be as easy as she’d hoped but she wasn’t giving up. Adrian had offered to ‘lie back and think of England’ if she wanted to ‘get it done the good old-fashioned way’ but Jemima had voiced a stern objection about the idea of raising anything with Adrian’s DNA and Sumi had politely declined, explaining it was still early days and, quite f
rankly, she’d rather eat her own face than have sex with him.
‘I trained classes this morning,’ Eva explained, her CrossFit-honed muscles rippling in a strappy vest, even though it was no longer strappy-vest weather. Eva loved a bit of nice athleisure wear.
‘And I’m rich,’ Adrian shrugged as he admired his girlfriend’s rippling muscles. ‘So, yeah.’
‘How do you put up with him?’ I asked Eva but she just smiled and laughed and they gazed at each other with the same gooey intensity I’d seen on both their faces every day since they’d met. Her birthday was in a week and it couldn’t come fast enough. The sooner Adrian put the beautiful diamond ring I’d helped him choose on her finger, the better.
‘We wanted to bring you this.’ Lucy stooped to produce a small gift bag from the tray underneath the pram. Underneath a very comfortable-looking selection of blankets, Baby Penny slept on, already well accustomed to ignoring our nonsense.
Lucy handed me the bag as my other friends cheered, John peering inside as I tore out the tissue paper in the top. It was a giant mug with something printed on the side.
‘“You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps”,’ I read, holding it out in front of me. ‘Thank you, it’s exactly what I was missing.’
‘It was that one or My Boss Is a Bitch, Get Me Coffee,’ Sumi explained.
‘But I’m the boss?’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Adrian replied.
‘Are you done?’ Lucy asked. ‘We were going to take you out for supper.’
The toilet flushed and the glazier re-emerged with sparkling clean hands. My poor towels. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said, picking up his bag. ‘See you next week.’
‘Thanks, Dave,’ I called. He touched the brim of his baseball cap on his way out the door, completely ignoring the others.
‘You’re hiding other men in the loos now, are you?’ John asked, squeezing the back of my neck.
‘Yes.’ I tilted my head back into his hand and melted. ‘That was my lover, Dave. He might not look like much but it’s the experience you can’t beat.’
‘Oh, don’t let me forget,’ Sumi said as John clipped me gently on the back of the head and the others began piling back outside. ‘One of the girls at work is moving and she needs someone to sublet her flat for a couple of months. It’s tiny but it’s nice, not far from here actually. Remind me to give you her number.’
‘Anything that isn’t my mother’s yoga studio,’ I replied gratefully, grabbing my keys from my desk. Since shedmageddon, I’d been living in my parents’ house proper. All well and good while they were on their month-long second honeymoon but now they were home and three was most definitely a crowd. It was one thing to know your parents were going through a mid-life sexual renaissance, it was quite another to be in the next room while it was occurring.
I quickly paused behind my desk to scribble down an idea in my notebook before it vanished. A podcast of ASMR bedtime stories for adults, especially adults who had to sleep with earphones in every night. Well, not every night, I thought, looking up at John, who was holding the door open for everyone. Officially speaking, we were still taking it slow, but the toothbrush in his bathroom and the drawer of my things beside his bed certainly had a sense of speed about them.
I was cautious, I was taking things day by day, but I was also fairly sure I was in love.
‘Ready?’ he asked as our friends assembled on the pavement outside, laughing and whooping and then scolding each other on behalf of the baby.
I looked at him, I looked at Sumi, Adrian and Lucy and at the October sun, starting to set against the London sky. And then I turned to gaze lovingly at my office, my desk, my chair, my mug. It was all starting to come together.
Picking up my bag, I slid the strap across my body and straightened my hair before taking John’s hand in mine.
‘Yes,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’m ready.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
They say it takes a village to raise a child and I say it takes a medium-sized city to make a book, perhaps something like Birmingham or Seville.
Firstly, thank you to my agent, Rowan Lawton, the greatest cheerleader in the land. I could not and would not want to do this without you.
I owe so many thanks to my HarperCollins family, it’s hard to know where to start. To Lynne Drew, without whom there would be no book (and not just this one, literally there would be no Lindsey Kelk books, full stop), thank you for all your wisdom, guidance and support. Martha Ashby, your keen Yorkshire eye is always appreciated. Felicity Denham, you’re the best at what you do and I could not appreciate you more. I might be sat in a room, pouring my guts into a laptop but it takes killer editorial, sales, rights, marketing, publicity, production, art, design, logistics and legal teams to make sure this book finds its way into your hands. I’m lucky to be held together by some of the very finest out there, in the UK and all over the world.
The last year has been a lot. Who thought it would be a good idea to move house, plan a wedding and write a book all at the same time? This idiot. And this idiot would be completely on her arse without the love and support of Kevin Dickson, Della Bolat, Terri White, Emma Gunavardhana, Danielle Radford. Also, he won’t ever see this but I couldn’t get through a day without my big brother, so thanks Bobby. I owe a lot of thank yous to a lot of people that will never be properly expressed (I mean, I still haven’t sent all the thank you cards out from the wedding) but I hope everyone in my life knows how much I appreciate and love them.
Special thanks to Caroline Hirons and the fantastic, not-at-all-Snazz-like, Max Hirons, for their insight into the minds and wardrobes of teenage boys.
To Jeff, thank you for all that you do, all that you are, and for taking care of me and our cat children. I love you very much. I can’t believe we got married. Lol.
Being an author is a very weird and often lonely job. I mean, it’s hard to go out for a drink after a hard day when your only office-mate is a cat, so thank you to Mhairi McFarlane, Kevin Dickson (again), Paige Toon, Giovanna Fletcher, Louise Pentland, Marian Keyes, Sarra Manning, Rosie Walsh, Rowan Coleman, Julie Cohen, Lia Louis, Isabelle Broom, Andrea Bartz for understanding and supporting and being absolutely brilliant. Sometimes it was just a tweet or a DM, sometimes it was an entire bottle of wine or a weeping three a.m. phone call (sorry about that) but I really want you to know it was appreciated.
There will never be a time I’m not completely stunned by the fact I get to do this for my job. The fact you chose to read this book means I am forever in your debt and you have my endless gratitude.
If you’ve enjoyed In Case You Missed It, read on for a taste of One in a Million, also by Lindsey Kelk.
The room at the end of the hallway on the first floor had been empty for as long as we had been at The Ginnel. It was a tiny, awkward sort of space with a glass front and only one small, square window to the outside, slightly above head height. It was too little to be a meeting room and too dark to be an office and, so far, no one who had been to look around had been interested in setting up shop.
Until today.
The first thing I noticed as I approached the working home of my newest client was the panels of white paper that had been sticky-taped to the glass wall, effectively closing out the rest of his co-workers and pretty much defeating the object of being in a co-working space in the first place. The second was the sign on the door. It was a nameplate that appeared to have been pilfered from a 1970s polytechnic. Everyone else had identical signs in the same, slightly retro serif font but Dr S. E. Page MPhil PhD had got ahead of the game and glued a narrow blackboard with block white lettering onto the door himself.
Charlie and Martin had been positively joyous when our subject selected himself but what could they know from one look? There was no reason to think just because he wasn’t some kind of Adonis he wouldn’t be interesting. For all they knew he could be an amazing photographer or he might have a dancing dog or any number of incredible, Instagram-worthy ski
lls. He already had more letters after his name than anyone I’d ever met and my sister knew some truly insufferable academic types who seemed to have been put on this earth solely to rack up qualifications.
‘There could be any number of reasons he’s covered up the windows,’ I told myself, tracing the edges of the white paper through the glass. ‘This space would make a decent dark room. Or he could be super light-sensitive.’
Inside the office, I heard papers rustling. I knocked, stepped back and waited.
The rustling stopped but he made no attempt to answer the door.
‘Or he’s an actual serial killer,’ I suggested to myself. ‘Making himself a nice skin suit for the autumn.’
I knocked again. Louder.
Still nothing.
‘Once more for luck,’ I said under my breath, rapping as hard as I could for as long as I could.
My hand was still mid-air when the door opened. The tall, skinny man had tied back his long hair in a man bun. His beard was still enormous, and not in a cool, hipster way and though it was huge, it completely failed to disguise the annoyance on his face.
‘Dr Page?’ I enquired with a forced, friendly smile.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, looking me up and down.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘At least, it wasn’t the last time I checked.’
‘Right, you can go away then?’
He phrased it as a question but it definitely felt more like an instruction.
‘I’m sorry, I’m Annie,’ I said quickly before he could close the door again. ‘We’re office neighbours. I work upstairs? I came to say hello, welcome you to the building.’
He pushed his smudged spectacles up his nose with a long, slender finger.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Hello.’
And then he slammed the door so hard, I felt it rattle my fillings.
‘Bugger,’ I whispered, the door a fraction of an inch from my nose.
There was the slightest of chances this was going to be more difficult than I had hoped.