Tom nodded, perhaps more to show he was listening than to agree that she ought to feel bad.
‘And maybe she has a point, anyway. She keeps on about Anna and Will moving in together. They clearly have a future. Whereas who knows where I’m going to be in two years’ time, or five? Still on my own writing copy about vegetables for a living if I’m not careful … Plus I’ve been slightly perturbed by the bus ads,’ she added quickly, before Tom could interject with anything too nice about her employability or chances of finding a life partner. Rachel was suddenly aware that excessive kindness might make her cry, and she didn’t want to end up sobbing and snotting all over Tom’s sweater.
‘Yeah. I imagine they’re a bit of a shitter,’ he said, stashing clean and dry items in their correct cupboards and drawers. ‘The thing to remember, though, is that they’re truly awful.’
Rachel scoffed, then turned to face him as the cold tap ran into the sink, flushing away what remained of the scummy washing-up water. ‘They are,’ she said. ‘But she looks incredible in them.’
‘Does she?’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘She doesn’t do anything for me.’
He poured them the final two glasses of wine from the third – or was it the fourth? – bottle. Either way, Rachel knew she was going to feel fuzzy in the morning.
She looked up to see Tom holding his drink in his fingertips, tilted just so like Jessica’s Angeljuice bottle. He was smirking mock-seductively in a bad impression of her pout. They both burst out laughing.
‘Seriously, Rach,’ he said. ‘If, on any level, you are torturing yourself with these images, stop. You have no reason to compare yourself to this woman, or to any other, for that matter. There is no comparison. You’re one on your own.’
Rachel laughed again as they made their way to the sitting room.
‘I guess that’s one way of putting it,’ she said.
3
Rachel received a text from Greg at 5.58 a.m. the next morning.
She didn’t read it at 5.58 a.m., of course; she picked it up at 7.23, having pressed the snooze button on her alarm twice and just as it was dawning on her that she was really quite hung-over, and there was now a 99.9% probability she’d be late for their cauliflower meeting.
She sat up in bed and groaned as she clicked to open the message, which her phone’s home screen informed her was eighty-five minutes old. What on earth could Greg have wanted before 6 a.m.? If this was an early-morning missive about vegetables, she feared she might actually strangle him.
The text, when Rachel read it, was short and to the point. Very un-Greg, though typically shouty and insistent.
Greg: Call me AS SOON as you’re up. Need to tell you something IMPORTANT!
Just as Rachel was asking herself if she could face calling him before she’d had a shower, her mobile began to vibrate in her hand. She considered ignoring it, then reasoned that, for all his melodramatic tendencies, this was the first time Greg had ever tried to contact her so early.
Maybe he had a good excuse. If not, she could tell him to calm the hell down – as well as take the opportunity to confess that she’d never make it to the coffee shop by nine.
‘Hello …?’ she said. She wondered if he’d be able to tell from her voice that she was still in her pyjamas.
‘Oh, thank God,’ Greg sighed. ‘FINALLY. What the hell have you been doing? Why didn’t you call me back?’
‘I, er … um. Ha. I only just read your message.’
Rachel’s brain was too wine-fogged for fabricating excuses. Now that she’d opened her mouth to speak, she discovered it was dry and sticky – as if her tongue had been coated in desiccated coconut.
‘You’re still in bed?!’ Greg bellowed, so loud that Rachel flinched and moved the phone away from her ear. ‘This is a DISASTER! Get up, get to the office and make sure you look presentable. This. Is. Not. A. Drill!’
‘Greg, what is going on?’
Rachel was heading to the bathroom now. She clamped the phone between her right ear and shoulder, then ran the cold tap until the water was freezing. As she filled a glass, Greg said, ‘That better not be the sound of you pissing!’
‘Of course it isn’t! I’m just getting a drink! Now, kindly tell me what it is that you needed to talk to me about at SIX IN THE SODDING MORNING.’
Rachel generally avoided yelling at Greg, but this morning’s hangover had robbed her of patience with his histrionics. The idea that he thought she would urinate within his earshot was also horrifying – though, annoyingly, it underlined the fact that she was in dire need of a wee. She perched on the edge of the bathtub.
‘The agency is being taken over,’ Greg said, deliberately pausing for effect.
‘What?!’
Rachel was stunned, which was precisely the effect he’d been hoping for. Her shock echoed off the sage-green metro-tiled walls.
‘Apparently it was confirmed last night. I found out very early this morning, from a source who’s asked not to be named.’
Rachel rolled her eyes at this, but decided to say nothing. She chugged a mouthful of water, crossed her legs and waited for him to carry on.
‘I’ve suspected this might happen for a while,’ he said, and Rachel marvelled that – even at a time like this – he couldn’t resist grandstanding. ‘I’m not supposed to be telling anyone, but I felt like I had to warn my friends ASAP – you know, to make sure you all come in on time looking professional and ready to slay. This is not the day to turn up zombified, stinking of stale booze and clutching a Pret bag full of pastries.’
While she’d had no intention of going to work wearing Eau de Red Wine, Rachel was grateful for Greg’s warning. She felt her annoyance with him soften as panic began to swirl in the pit of her stomach.
‘Why is all this such a big deal this morning?’ she asked, fearful she already knew the answer.
‘WOW, you are slow!’ Greg roared. ‘The new owners are coming into the office today! The announcement is going to be made, they’ll be introduced, and then they’re going to spend the day looking around – working out how our agency is going to mesh with theirs.’
‘Mesh?’
‘Yes, mesh! For God’s sake put me on speaker and start brushing your teeth or something. You don’t have time to waste.’
Obediently, Rachel switched her phone settings and smeared Colgate onto her battered toothbrush.
‘The headlines,’ Greg continued, ‘are that we’re being taken over by Mountaintop Media, based up in Manchester. Apparently they wanted to set up a London office, then decided that acquiring a smallish agency wholesale might make more sense than setting up from scratch. HOWEVER, we may lose some accounts if clients don’t like the look of the change. There may be things that Mountaintop can run from Manchester instead of from London, if they’re looking to cut costs …’
Again Greg stopped on a cliffhanger.
‘So you’re saying there might be job losses?’ Rachel spluttered, minty foam spattering the sink.
‘I’ll be amazed if there aren’t,’ he said. ‘Which is why we all need to make a good impression from the word go. Now get your arse in the shower and get to the office AS SOON AS YOU CAN!’
‘Shit – yes. Thanks,’ Rachel said, and rang off.
Twenty-five minutes later Rachel had showered, thrown half a can of dry shampoo at her hair and pulled on a slouchy black minidress that ideally should have been ironed. She smeared moisturiser onto her face and resolved to apply some make-up on the Tube, then poured herself into a pair of thick grey tights that, though snug, at least helped to smooth her silhouette.
She longed to sink her feet into the flat cherry-red Doc Martens sitting beneath her bedroom bookcase. Instead, she squeezed them into a pair of chunky-heeled black leather boots she’d bought last winter but barely worn since because walking in them required too much concentration.
She knew they’d slow her progress towards the office but reasoned that her usual slightly studenty look might not be ideal f
or today. Relate/Create – R/C for short – was one of those arty workplaces where penchants for piercings, tattoos and quirky clothes had never been troubled by a corporate dress code. While Rachel had always enjoyed going to work in skinny jeans, slogan tops and vintage finds, she now wondered whether the takeover might condemn her to a life of plain black trousers, inoffensive V-necks and smart, sensible shoes.
Get some perspective, she told herself. After all, the dreariness of Rachel’s future work wardrobe was hardly the biggest problem she might face after today. More serious by far was the risk that redundancies would follow the takeover announcement; if the new mega-agency she was about to become part of found itself with too many copywriters on the payroll, she could end up unemployed.
Rachel suddenly felt nauseous and wasn’t sure whether to blame the thought of losing her job or the after-effects of too much vino rosso.
Banging her bedroom door closed, she picked up her forest-green handbag from the kitchen, dropped her phone inside it and grabbed her laptop case. Doing her best not to panic about what awaited her at work, whether she’d make it there on time, or the very real prospect that she might break her neck in her too-high heels, she exited the flat and dashed in the direction of Finsbury Park station.
Relate/Create was housed in a glass-fronted office complex towards the top of St John Street, just south of Angel. Set back from the road behind a line of trees so tall they dwarfed its five storeys, the building’s many large windows and black metal beams looked strikingly modern amid rows of elegant, primarily Georgian townhouses.
The ground floor housed a bar, a cafe and a pizza parlour, while the upper levels were let to businesses of various types and sizes. R/C sat on the first floor, its ninety-eight employees occupying around half the available space.
Rachel passed through the entrance foyer and waved hello to Frank, the security guard currently sitting behind the front desk. She summoned a lift and, as its doors slid shut, examined her reflection in the mirror inside it.
Not too bad, considering she’d done her face on the train. Her pale cheeks were flushed from fast walking, and her wavy auburn hair – tied back in a ponytail – looked deliberately, rather than accidentally, dishevelled. Pure luck.
She wiped away a stray smudge of mascara with her fingertip and looked at the time: 8.57 a.m. She’d made it, but she was starving – not to mention woefully under-caffeinated.
As she entered R/C’s open-plan office, Rachel looked for Greg. He was in the far corner of the room, where the client services team was based, chatting to his boss, Karen. Eyeing him from her own desk over in editorial, Rachel eventually managed to catch his attention and let him know she’d arrived. Behind Karen’s back, Greg gave her a relieved thumbs up.
The atmosphere was thick with anticipation. Even if Greg hadn’t called her, and even in her fuzzy state, Rachel would have realised something was up. Florence, Toby and Isaac – the founders and owners of the agency – were in the main meeting room, visible through its glass wall and door. Seated at the large oval table inside, their heads and shoulders were visible to anyone who walked by. Toby, who was the agency’s managing director, seemed to be in full flow, and the people on the other side of the table – presumably the interlopers from Mountaintop Media – were nodding as he spoke.
Rachel could only see their backs, but all three of them looked male and were clad in suit jackets. This didn’t bode well, she decided, either for equal opportunities or office culture.
Neil from the tech team – a very clever, if occasionally stroppy, developer – gestured at Rachel from across a bank of desks as she made her way to the kitchen. He nodded his head towards the meeting room and mouthed, ‘What’s going on?’
Rachel made a face and shrugged like she had no idea. The last thing she wanted to do was get Greg into trouble.
Ducking into the kitchen, she placed an R/C-branded mug beneath the coffee machine spout and pressed the button for an Americano, to which she added a heaped teaspoon of sugar.
When she got back to her desk, her laptop had finished booting up. She settled down to check her emails and spotted that a whole-agency briefing had been scheduled for 9.15 a.m. Thank God for Greg and his gobbiness; without his warning she might well have come in late, even if he’d cancelled their cauliflower chat.
In a bid to appear busy, Rachel opened up the fruit-and-vegetable copy she’d been working on the day before. She began looking for opportunities to ‘sex it up’, as requested – confident she’d conclude there were none.
Within a few minutes, though, figures began to emerge from the meeting room and conversations dwindled into silence.
All pretence of useful work abandoned, everyone in the room looked up.
Toby had made his way to the centre of the office, Florence and Isaac keeping watch from behind.
Donna, R/C’s grouchy office manager, shuffled her special orthopaedic chair slightly to the left as Toby hovered in front of her desk. She stared out into the crowd, narrow-eyed, her cerise-pink lips pursed in distaste. Rachel wondered if Donna had recently been force-fed a plate of something foul, or if the cat’s-arse face merely signalled her irritation that – just this once – she didn’t know what was going on before everybody else.
Toby signalled for attention.
‘Morning, all! Good morning! Hi. Hopefully you’ve seen from your emails by now that I’ve popped a whole-agency briefing into your calendars,’ he said in a voice loud enough to reach all four corners of the office. ‘We’ll get started in a moment or two, and we will need the full hour today – so if you want a glass of water or a comfort break, then now’s the time.’
Several people exchanged nervous glances. Some made for the kettle and a few headed towards the toilets. The Mountaintop suits, Rachel noted, were hanging back inside the meeting room, fiddling with laptops and phones. She assumed they’d come out when the time was right.
Rachel stayed seated, now with a clearer view of the glass meeting room. Two of the men from Mountaintop were standing, chatting quietly – one with his back to the room and the other looking out into the office.
The one Rachel could see was maybe in his fifties. His navy suit was simple but perfectly cut, and she had no doubt it was expensively made to measure.
Whoever he was talking to was younger, as far as she could tell. He was taller and trimmer, with warm brown hair just on the right side of the stylishly mussed/messy divide. Even though she couldn’t see his face, she felt sure it must be handsome. Good-looking people carried themselves a certain way, in Rachel’s experience, and she recognised the telltale stance even at a distance: easy and relaxed, but confident enough to take up space. Beautiful people rarely felt the need to shrink themselves, as she sometimes did.
Toby was using his public speaking voice again, asking everyone to return to their seats.
‘Okay. We’ll make a start now,’ he said. ‘Thanks, everyone, for coming along this morning at such short notice. I’m sure you’ve all worked out that we’re together today so I can share some great, and very important, news with you all.’
Rachel glanced beyond Toby towards the meeting room again, her eyes snagging on Mr Probably Good-Looking. He’d now turned slightly towards the crowd, and she willed him to twist his body further around so she’d have a better view.
She wasn’t listening to Toby and realised, dimly, that this was not ideal. She should pay attention, but there was a heavy thudding in her ears and a tightness in her chest. For some reason Rachel couldn’t fathom – perhaps anxiety, perhaps attraction – she was possessed by a weird determination not to shift her attention until she’d seen this man properly.
Get a grip, she told herself.
Toby was talking timescales now. Rachel forced herself, fleetingly, to look his way and then around the room at her friends and colleagues. There were wide eyes, downturned mouths and furrowed brows. Some faces were blank, as if their owners hadn’t yet joined the dots that led from merger to jobseeker
’s allowance.
Rachel couldn’t concentrate. She was aware of Toby talking but was taking nothing in. Mr Almost Certainly Handsome still hadn’t moved.
She was reminded of her early days at university; whole lectures lost to staring across the hall at Jack Harper, always followed by the frantic borrowing and copying of important notes (usually Anna’s). It hit her then. The physical longing to see this man was habit. It was muscle memory.
With a jolt, Rachel understood the sharp, fluttering sensation behind her ribcage – the odd muddle of horror and impatience that had seized her almost as soon as she saw him.
He chose this moment to shift his feet, turn his head and stand, straight-backed and smiling, facing out into the crowd. Her neck was sweaty, her head felt light and her stomach was in her shoes. They were in the same room for the first time in ten years, and it was Jack’s face Rachel had been straining to see.
4
Her first instinct was to hide. She considered crouching further behind the large computer monitor that sat at the back of her desk, directly above her laptop.
Rachel could feel her face burning. Sweat was beginning to collect between her shoulder blades and she wondered if this was the start of a medical emergency.
No, she thought. I can’t let this person – the only man I have ever loved and hated – see me for the first time in ten years, just as I’m seized by what will surely be a deeply unattractive panic attack.
She tried to take deep breaths, but quietly so that nobody nearby would notice. Maybe if she scrunched herself right down in her seat he wouldn’t spot her. Then – once he’d turned away again – she could find her line manager, feign some sort of crisis and head home.
But then what? What would happen on Monday? Would he still be here?
Even if he was back in Manchester by then, their paths were sure to cross sometime. Now they worked for the same firm, it seemed unlikely that Rachel would be able to avoid Jack altogether – even if she managed to put off this initial, excruciating encounter.
Rachel Ryan's Resolutions Page 3