How to Get a (Love) Life

by Blake, Rosie

  The sound of the downstairs door opening pulled me back to the present and I straightened in anticipation of James’ imminent arrival. Whereas I knew every intimate detail of Caroline’s personal life (she was a sharer), I knew very little about James’. Although I did know that he had lots of girlfriends. His latest – Tahlula or Tuilie or Tinkerbell, one of those exotic names – did something arty with clothes. She often swept glamorously into the office in search of James, chatting overly loudly with the actors and demanding coffee espresso, which Caroline always went out and got her from the cafe next door.

  In a whirlwind of energy, James Sullivan burst through the door and made a beeline for his office, wrestling himself out of his caramel-coloured woollen coat. ‘Caroline, can you do me a favour? Get me Pamela’s PA on the phone and tell her—’

  ‘—Morning,’ Caroline smiled at him, waving a pen.

  He blinked, ‘Oh, yes, morning. And, Nicola, will you tell Chris that he really needs to make a decision about that camera ad? Can you also chase Prince Productions for the repeat fees from that police TV series? Thanks.’ He dived into his office and closed the door. A few seconds later it opened again and he popped his head back round. ‘You’re both darlings.’

  ‘And you’re welcome,’ Caroline laughed as he re-closed his office door. She turned to me and shook her head. ‘That man needs to slow down or he’ll have heart failure by the age of thirty-five.’

  ‘I concur.’ I nodded, as I reluctantly dialled Chris’s number.

  Chris was one of our agency’s most successful actors. Which was good. But was a complete nightmare to deal with. Which was bad. He liked me, though, which made him marginally less irritating to deal with. When I’d first met him he’d been sitting at James’ desk laughing uproariously, beautiful head thrown back, perfect bleached teeth flashing dangerously as a deep growl of a laugh reverberated around the room. It was rare that any man made an impression on me, but even I had to (begrudgingly) admit that Chris was very, very good looking. He had the lazy confidence of a man who was used to being looked at by women. He’d landed a ton of commercials playing the smouldering hero and was now a main character in a soap. He’d recently been requested for a digital camera ad. The ad agency creatives wanted Chris to play a smouldering hero who meets a smouldering woman for plenty of smouldering looks, etc. He’d known about the advert for a week but still hadn’t confirmed if he could do it. Other actors would visit the office weekly, ask what we’d put them up for, update their CV, ring us back the second they picked up our messages. But not Chris. Oh no. I sighed as his answerphone kicked in and his smooth drawl announced: ‘You’ve reached Christopher Sheldon-Wade’s phone … you know the drill.’

  I cringed at the message. ‘Chris, it’s Nicola calling from The Sullivan Agency. We need an answer on the camera commercial so we can set it up with the client. Could you please call us back when you pick up this message. Thank you.’ I replaced the receiver, careful to straighten the phone so that it was in line with my notepad.

  Caroline didn’t look up from her work, ‘He won’t call you back, you know, Nic. He’ll make you chase.’

  ‘I know,’ I muttered grumpily.

  ‘He’s just sitting there, Nic, looking at his phone as it rings, laughing at us!’

  I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘I’m sure he’s not!’

  ‘I bet he is. That boy needs a good … a good …’ she waved her pen around again, struggling to find a suitable phrase. ‘A good smash round the ear,’ she finished triumphantly.

  ‘Er …’ Smash?

  ‘Honestly, Nic,’ she continued, warming to her topic. ‘He swaggers about, flicking his hair and refusing to say yes or no to anything, never has the decency to tell us when he becomes “ill”.’ She put her pen down so that she could mime the quotation marks. ‘Never cares if we secure him a job or get him an audition, and he never calls back, never, never, never, nev—’

  The ringing of the phone silenced her rant. I smirked at her as I lifted the receiver to my ear.

  ‘Well, it won’t be him,’ she said, crossing her arms.

  I poked my tongue out at her and smiled smugly as I replied into the phone receiver, ‘Ahhh, Chris, how nice of you to phone back so quickly.’

  Caroline rolled her eyes at me. The grin was soon wiped off my face, however, when Chris purred down the line ‘Nicccccola … will I ever see your kniccccccckers?’

  Instantly flustered, I ignored his question and instead replied with a formal, ‘Right, okay, so this camera ad wants you to confirm—’

  ‘—Your voice is so sexy on the telephone, Nicola,’ he whispered laughingly.

  As always, I tried to remain professional. Chris was used to having women fall at his feet and he’d been pretty put out that I never had. Consequently, he now seemed determined to make me agree to go out with him. It was tricky because he was one of our biggest clients and I had to keep him on side, meaning I’d spent four years making up feeble excuses and dreading his every phone call.

  ‘Um, Chris, I just want an answer one way or another so I can call the people back.’

  ‘Nicola, you never play with me. Always work, work, work.’ He sighed. I pictured his peachy lips in a childish pout.

  ‘Yes, well, it is my job,’ I reminded him, reaching out to put my pencil back in its place, on the right of the keyboard. ‘So, Chris …’

  ‘So, Nicola,’ he teased, not at all put off by my clearly unenthusiastic tone.

  ‘Chris.’ I repeated.

  Caroline gave me another quizzical look; I shifted a little under her gaze.

  ‘Nicola.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nicola, Nicola, Nicola,’ he went on, ‘my answer is …’ he paused, and I waited, refusing to give him any new distraction.

  ‘It’s a …’

  I waited some more.

  ‘A … yes!’ he exclaimed grandly.

  I exhaled quickly and swung into action. ‘Wonderful, that is wonderful. So, I’ll just book that in and let you know when you need to be there.’

  ‘You do that, Nicolllllla.’

  ‘I will. Okay, well, that’s everything!’ I said briskly, the end of the phone call in sight.

  ‘Oh, and Nicolllllla,’ he drawled in an irritating sing-song voice.

  ‘Yes, Chris?’ I gritted my teeth.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you soooon,’ he whispered. Then, with a roar of laughter, he hung up. I stared blankly at the receiver.

  Caroline didn’t look up from her work. ‘Prick,’ she muttered and I gave a snort of laughter in reply.

  Chapter Three

  As usual, the morning swept by, the phone rang off the hook and I barely even had time to sip at my eleven o’clock glass of chilled mineral water. At five to one, I swivelled around in my chair. Caroline looked up.

  ‘It must be five to one,’ she smirked.

  ‘Ha ha ha, yes, you win.’

  ‘You are as regular as a watch.’

  I shrugged. I liked routine! Caroline teased me about it but I didn’t get what was so bad about wanting to do things on time. I took out a cellophane sandwich bag from the top drawer of my desk.

  ‘Ooh, what are you splurging on today then?’ taunted Caroline, accustomed to my weekly meal plan. ‘Let me guess,’ she put both hands to the side of her head and massaged her temples in the manner of a psychic. ‘It’s … avocado salad with pine nuts?’

  I silently produced my avocado salad with pine nuts from the container in the bag. I only glanced up when she cackled and yelled ‘Bingo!’ My cheeks flushed with heat. I lifted out my cutlery, getting up to wash it carefully in our miniscule kitchen, before popping a tea towel on my desk so nothing could spill. I sat back down and started eating my salad. As I chewed, my mouth watered at the thought of my chocolate mini roll, not to be eaten until one fifteen. I fantasised about the smooth case of chocolate, giving way to the succulent sponge underneath, made complete by the spiral of cream piped through it. I stared longingl
y at it over my lettuce.

  Caroline giggled. ‘I dare you to leave it till half past one,’ she said, pointing at the mini roll.

  I laughed casually, in an attempt to pretend that I was unbothered. But I would not be leaving it until half past one. I liked to eat my mini roll at quarter past one. There was nothing weird about that.

  ‘Go on, Nicola,’ she teased, ‘leave it till half past, I double dare you.’

  Caroline often dared me to do things. She often double dared me. Sometimes she even double dared me with no returns. Of course, I never took her up on them.

  ‘Go away,’ I said, chomping decisively down on a carrot stick and eyeing my mini roll with concern. Would she take my mini roll to prove a point? Would she ruin my one pleasurable lunchtime treat? I bit my lip.

  I nibbled at the lettuce, enjoying the taste of the avocado and wishing for a moment that I’d added some dressing. But the moment passed and the voice of my super thin mother echoed around the office space, ‘Little pickers wear bigger knickers.’

  I took another look at the mini roll.

  Caroline sighed mournfully as she watched me delicately picking through my first course. ‘I wish I could limit myself to salad,’ she said, polishing off an enormous baguette that contained so much cheese and meat the sight was almost indecent. She grabbed what she could; always far more concerned with her kids or her husband David’s eating habits. As she carefully wiped a crumb from her top lip, I realised she’d managed to finish the thing in less than four minutes.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ I laughed.

  ‘I’m going for the world record,’ she said solemnly. ‘You just wait, Nicola, one day when there is a universal food crisis, all the people with lots of flesh are going to last a lot longer than you skinny belinkies. Right, I’m popping next door for a Snickers, do you …’ The question died on her lips and she sighed again. ‘I’ll bring you back some Tic Tacs.’

  The rain outside was persistent and the heavy drops on the window next to me made their unpredictable routes downwards. I looked out and onto the street below; a woman battled with an umbrella and a child, scolding one and then the other as they both refused to do her bidding. I was pleased to be inside, in the comfort of our office, heating always turned up to near tropical, prints on the walls depicting calming oceans and rolling sand dunes.

  Caroline, having returned from her Snickers run, was sitting quietly at her desk, systematically binning junk mail and opening the day’s post. It was calm, easy, comfortable. And yet, as ever, I had a nagging feeling, something forgotten, a hole. As I glanced back out at the grey skies, a face swum into my mind’s eye. Thick blonde hair, cheeks red from the cold. He was tenderly wrapping a black scarf around my neck and the look in his eyes made me shiver. He held out one gloved hand to me, inviting me onto the ice. I took it, feeling a surge of love for him.

  I shook the thought away, looked down and mentally scolded myself for failing to pay attention to my work. I’d almost put all the ‘W’ contacts into the ‘P’ column.

  Focus, Nicola.

  I heard a low whistle and glanced up. Caroline was looking at the CV of another aspiring young thesp seeking an agent. She inhaled sharply and followed it up with a ‘Oooooh. He’s lurvely!’ She held up a black and white headshot of a brooding hunk. ‘Nicola, look at him!’

  ‘Thanks, Caroline, but I’m still digesting my lunch.’

  ‘Isn’t he wonderful? A face that could get lots of ships to sail.’

  ‘Divine. But I think that prize goes to Helen.’

  ‘He’s wonderful, but’ she paused, ‘he’s still not quite up to Patrick’s standard, is he?’

  ‘Hmmm.’ I replied non-committally.

  Please don’t bring out Patrick’s picture again, please don’t, please don’t, please … But Caroline was already carefully taking Patrick out of her desk drawer. She sat in a familiar pose; eyes glassy, face focused on the piece of card she was now holding carefully in both hands, lest she bend it.

  ‘Look at him,’ she sighed.

  ‘Oh God,’ I giggled, leaning back in my chair. ‘Let him go, Caroline.’

  ‘Just … look at him,’ she repeated, standing up abruptly and clutching his face to her substantial bosom.

  ‘Caroline,’ I laughed as she walked towards me with the picture of Patrick: her favourite on the agency’s books, her Number One, her 10/10.

  ‘It’s like he’s looking right at you, isn’t it?’ she crooned, thrusting the photo of the brooding young actor – all toothy smiles, deep pools of loveliness for eyes and lustrous dark hair – under my nose.

  ‘Yes, yes, he’s very nice,’ I nodded. I knew what would come next.

  ‘Nice?’ she spluttered. ‘Is that the best you can do, girl? Look at those eyes, look at those cheekbones, look at the sculpted face and hair you could rake your fingers through of an evening. Look at those long eyelashes and the haunted expression that says lie with me, come hither, I want you …’ She sighed dreamily and stroked the photograph.

  ‘Hmm, I agree he’s very attractive,’ I nodded, trying not to giggle. Caroline could get quite cross if I wasn’t suitably appreciative of the sculpted face of Patrick.

  ‘God, Nicola, say it like you mean it. Would you even care if he walked into this office right now?’ She gestured dramatically to the empty doorway.

  ‘Er.’ I followed the direction of her arm uncertainly, almost expecting to see Patrick standing there. ‘Sure, yes,’ I said, trying to bury this conversation quickly.

  Caroline continued, ‘If he swept in and said—’ she held his photo in front of her face so it looked like he was talking to me, ‘—Nicola, Nicola Beautiful Brown, come away with me to Paris tonight, for dinner, you and me. Come away with me under the stars and let me woo you.’ Then she made kissy noises and waggled his photo at me. I started to giggle as this weird puppet with a pretty boy’s head and Caroline’s enormous flowered breasts bobbed up and down in front of me.

  ‘Stop it, Caroline,’ I squeaked.

  She carried on with the kissy noises, making them even more amorous.

  ‘Stop it,’ I insisted more firmly.

  She pulled the picture away from her face. ‘And what are you doing tonight anyway? What if someone did ask you to Paris?’

  ‘I’ve got a nice quiet night in planned.’

  ‘No hot date lined up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No boyfriend cooking you a meal?’

  ‘No, you know I don’t have a boyfriend.’

  She put the photo onto her desk and looked at me seriously. ‘I know that, but it’s madness, Nic. You’re beautiful and lovely, you could get anyone.’

  ‘Don’t start that rubbish.’

  ‘It’s not rubbish. You’re rubbish!’

  We both stared at each other a little stonily, and then I started to laugh. James put his head around the door. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing’s funny,’ I said quickly, before Caroline could say anything to embarrass me.

  Caroline looked directly at me and, mouth downturned into a sad smile, said, ‘No, it really isn’t.’

  Chapter Four

  I lived alone. In many ways I would make an excellent room-mate: I am meticulously tidy due to an obsession with cleaning that borders on OCD, I like to catalogue my DVDs and label all foodstuffs neatly and clearly. After seven years of living like this – three in London, four in Bristol – it had become a welcome habit. Just me, in my house, with my things. No hassles, no fighting over the remote, no petty things to fall out over, no seemingly innocuous comment that plunges you straight into a hideous row you never wanted.

  Nobody to break your heart.

  Considering my preference for living alone, when I returned to my flat that evening I should have been surprised to find the lights already on. I should have been surprised to smell the pleasant aroma of a dinner in the air, to hear the television blaring out. I should have been doubly surprised to see my older brother Mark loungin
g casually on my leather cream corner sofa. But I wasn’t.

  ‘How the hell did you get in … again?’ Tiredness made my voice grumpy.

  ‘Ah, sister, what a greeting,’ Mark said, jumping up and pressing mute. ‘Your loopy Spanish landlord waved me in and kindly lent me the spare key.’ He dangled said key from his finger.

  ‘He’s Portuguese,’ I corrected.

  My brother shrugged. ‘Still loopy though.’

  I made a mental note to tackle the landlord again but knew in my heart I wouldn’t summon the guts required. I’d always nodded politely at him when I’d first moved in, thanked him quietly when he picked up the previous occupant’s post. Then he’d gotten a bit more personal, asking me questions about myself. He’d started calling me ‘Neecola’ and leaving me presents at my door (biscuits, cards, flowers, a porcelain rabbit). I hadn’t the nerve to ask him to stop and assumed he’d thought my silence signified his passion was not so requited. The final crunch had been when I’d come home to discover two towels on my bed rolled into the image of two swans kissing. I’d got my brother round to have some strong words with him and the two of them had hit it off. Bloody typical. The landlord had promised Mark that he would never enter my flat without my permission again, sculpt any of my linen into any shape of any kind of animal and the matter had been dropped without the need to pursue a restraining order. Sadly, this meant the landlord and my brother were now so bonded he clearly thought nothing of letting him into my flat at the drop of a hat.