She tore her gaze away and stared out of the taxi window, watching Belgravia flash by as if everything was normal. As if her insides weren’t melting.
At five o’clock Isaac ordered the whole pro-social team to down tools, insisting that everyone traipse around the corner to the Albion Inn for drinks and nibbles. Toby, thrilled with the day’s success, was coming along too. He’d already sent a celebratory email to the whole office, congratulating Rachel and Jack on winning their pitch and extending the invitation to enjoy some free fizz as soon as the working day was over.
The pub was already busy when they arrived, but Isaac had had the foresight to pre-book a large table earlier in the day. Rachel went with a handful of her colleagues to claim it while the others made a beeline for the bar.
She sat down in the centre of a polished wood bench peppered with well-worn squashy cushions and felt Jack squeeze around the table to sit next to her. Shit. She’d hoped he’d go and help carry the drinks so she could blend in with the client and copy juniors, shielding herself from him by sitting in between a few of them.
Before he could speak to her Rachel seized the opportunity to turn away, joining in a conversation about the terrible film she and Anna had recently watched. Apparently they weren’t alone in having hated it.
She was more than halfway down a flute of cava before she finally had to acknowledge that Jack was right beside her. He nudged her gently and said, ‘Is everything okay? Have I done something?’
Rachel took a fortifying slurp of her drink and shook her head. ‘No. Everything’s fine. As fine as it can be, I guess, given the inherent weirdness of this whole situation.’ Booze had already loosened her tongue. ‘If anything,’ she sighed, ‘I should probably say thank you. For having my back this morning, I mean – for not letting me be window dressing when I’d actually done half the work.’
‘More than half, I’d say,’ Jack said. ‘And don’t mention it.’
He grabbed an almost-full bottle of cava from one of the silver ice buckets on the table and topped up their glasses.
‘We did well this morning,’ he said. ‘And my suspicion is that Humphrey’s going to quibble over costs, which probably means the likes of you and me are too expensive to stay on this account day-to-day. Here’s to passing him on to some juniors.’
‘God, I’ll drink to that,’ Rachel replied. Jack lifted his glass and she clinked hers against it, relieved at the prospect of moving on to other projects.
‘So,’ Jack said, his face folding in a wolfish grin, ‘are we friends again yet?’
‘No. Maybe … Stop looking at me!’
She buried her face in her hands and he chuckled.
‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said after a minute, peering through her fingertips, then finally lowering them. ‘I’m pretty sure I still hate you.’ She said this without conviction.
Jack dipped his head towards her, unbothered. ‘You always did a bit, even when we were together. So, in all honesty, I’m not sure how relevant that is.’
Rachel looked around them, alarmed at the thought that their teammates might have overheard this reference to the past – but also shaken that he’d brought it up at all.
‘It’s fine, nobody’s listening,’ he said, smiling again, laughing at her panic.
She made a face at him, narrowing her eyes. Even if no one was listening, some people were looking. A new crowd of R/C staff had arrived at the pub, Kemi and Greg among them.
Kemi was deep in conversation with Ella, who had a whole bottle of Prosecco in one hand. Both of them were glancing every so often at ‘Hot Harper’ with undisguised thirst. Greg was trapped at the bar chatting to Theo, but his gaze was focused over the office bore’s shoulder, locked on Rachel and Jack. Rachel lifted a hand to greet him, and he raised a sardonic eyebrow in answer.
Rachel shuffled on her backside, trying to put some space between herself and Jack for the sake of common decency – and to help calm her surging blood pressure. He’d thrown his suit jacket over the back of a chair, removed his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves: a look that, much to Rachel’s dismay, was working for him.
As she fidgeted, the cushion she was sitting on slid too quickly against the smooth wood beneath it, tumbled towards the floor and tried to take her with it.
She yelped and Jack grabbed her before she could slip too far, catching her hand in his, pulling her towards him and holding her steady. His palm curled around her fingers and stayed there too long, clinging on as she righted herself. It was delicious and excruciating. She wanted it to end right now, and absolutely never.
After what felt like hours Rachel reconnected her brain with her body, pulled her hand free and took a deep breath of air that smelled, unavoidably, of Jack. She scrambled away from him as if he’d stung her, almost upending several drinks as she got to her feet.
With Jack staring at her as if she were mad, she managed to choke out ‘Sorry, loo’ before pushing past him and dashing in the direction of the ladies. She had to get out of here. No good could come of staying and drinking more alcohol.
When she emerged from the toilets, she’d resolved to collect her things and be on her way. She crossed her fingers and prayed that she could creep out of the pub without Jack noticing – that he’d moved away from their seats to chat to someone in a corner, or on the other side of the bar … Or in a completely different building, several miles away.
No such luck. Jack was still sitting with Rachel’s stuff and had even put her handbag on the bench next to him in an attempt to save her place. Theo, resplendent in his raspberry-pink trousers, was no longer lecturing Greg but had closed in on Jack, undeterred by the bag and talking non-stop despite receiving little encouragement to do so.
‘Ah! Rachel! You’re back!’ Jack said, his voice shrill, his eyes beseeching. Rachel choked back a laugh. He had never more clearly needed rescuing, and after the way he’d stood up for her this morning she didn’t have it in her to abandon him. Today, at least, Jack didn’t deserve to be thrown under the Theo bus – doomed to a whole night of conversation that consisted entirely of buzzwords.
‘Sorry, Theo,’ Rachel said. ‘D’you mind if I nab my seat back? It’s just all my stuff is here and I don’t want to lose track of it.’
‘Oh … Yah. Sure.’ Theo nodded, not moving.
‘Also,’ Rachel said, momentarily inspired, ‘I heard Donna say she needed to speak to you a minute ago when I was going by – something about your last expenses claim. I think Greg told her you’d come over here.’
Theo shrunk in his seat, staring around him like a small rodent suddenly aware of a nearby snake.
‘Thanks, Rachel,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll, er … I’ll go and find her.’
Once she was back in her seat, Jack handed Rachel a new drink and asked, ‘Was that true?’
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Fastest way to get rid of him, though – nobody wants a lecture from Donna on a Friday night. Twenty quid says he’s scooted halfway home by now.’
‘You’re evil,’ Jack said. ‘I’m impressed. What is his deal, by the way? I only understood about thirty per cent of his waffle, and at one point I think he said, “Sometimes you have to punch a puppy to pivot your thinking.” I was quite alarmed.’
Rachel laughed. ‘Standard. I’m told his clients love him, though my gut feeling is they’re too scared to risk looking thick by admitting they have no idea what he’s on about.’
When Rachel had exhausted her knowledge of Theo’s best corporate catchphrases and they’d finally stopped giggling at ‘Let’s face our fears and just open the kimono’, Jack asked: ‘So how come you’re still here? It’s past ten. I assumed you’d have one drink and then shoot off to meet your man.’
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised it was so late. Then, ‘Business trip. I’m seeing him tomorrow.’ The lie skipped out of her mouth before she could stop it.
‘Ah. Love’s young dream!’ Jack warbled. ‘And here’s me, a sad singleton with no weekend plans beyond Netflix
and a Chinese takeaway.’
Rachel whipped her head left to look at him. ‘What’s that?’ This doesn’t make any sense.
‘Yes. You are looking at a man in the throes of a very unpleasant, very expensive divorce.’
‘Wow. I’m sorry to hear that.’ Very sorry. Definitely. Sort of.
‘Thanks,’ Jack said, scratching the side of his stubble-shadowed face. ‘I deserve it, though. I guess you could call it karma. The dumper becomes the dumpee, the player gets played, blah blah blah.’
‘Wow,’ Rachel said again.
So the lovely woman in the white dress had finished with him. Had cheated on him? Had broken his heart? This did not compute.
Yet it also made sense, in a ‘through the looking glass’ kind of way. Jack had transferred down here to lick his wounds, to get away from his messed-up marriage, Rachel supposed. This explained his behaviour that morning when they’d been at the office early: the sad set of his shoulders and his general air of defeat. Maybe he’d been on the phone to his wife, or a lawyer …
And this was why Jack had been determined to stay at R/C after the takeover, in spite of the awkward discovery that he’d have to be around another, different ex in order to keep his new job.
‘Did you … Do you have any children?’ Rachel asked.
‘No. That was one of our issues. I wanted them, she didn’t.’
Rachel nodded, mute, not wanting to say ‘Wow’ for the third time in five minutes. Her head was fizz-foggy and this was too much to take in.
She couldn’t avoid the impression that this news threw some of Jack’s recent behaviour into sharp relief, and she needed to work out how she felt about that. Rachel was more thankful than ever for her recently acquired fake boyfriend – not to mention the no man’s land he’d laid down between her and the real, live man sitting two inches away.
Rachel felt her phone vibrating inside her handbag, shoved between her feet under the table. She ducked down and fished it out to see several messages from Anna, culminating in:
Anna: Heading home from the Hope. We all missed you
Rachel tapped out a reply.
Rachel: Yep. Sorry, big celebrations here … Leaving shortly x
Anna is typing …
Anna: You’re coming home alone, right?
Rachel: FFS, OF COURSE I AM.
Rachel looked up from her mobile to find Jack watching her. ‘Time to head off?’
‘Yeah, I should probably get going,’ she said, aware that he’d assumed the messages were from her boyfriend.
‘I’ll walk you out – head back to my little bachelor pad.’
Rachel got her stuff together, not sure what to do with his self-deprecation.
They said goodbye to several colleagues still dotted around the pub and propping up the bar, some of whom were now quite worse for wear. Kemi and Ella had both been served large glasses of tap water by Toby, who was watching them fearfully – willing them to drink some non-alcoholic fluid before he had to find them taxis.
Greg squeezed Rachel’s arm, kissed her cheek and said, ‘Tell me he’s just putting you in a cab.’
She squeezed back. ‘He’s just putting me in a cab. There’s nothing happening here, I promise.’
‘See you Monday, everyone,’ Jack announced above the general chatter, waving as he and Rachel made their way to the pub door.
Brilliant, Rachel thought. She really could have done without him advertising the fact that they were leaving together. It didn’t look good, even though it was totally innocent.
They waited on the pavement for just a few moments before Rachel’s Uber appeared.
‘I’ll see you on Monday, then,’ Jack said. ‘Have a great weekend, and thanks for tonight. It’s the best fun I’ve had with anyone since moving here.’
He inclined his head towards Rachel’s, grazing her cheek with his lips. They were soft and cool, chilly as the winter air, but her skin blazed at the touch. Heat radiated from the spot where his mouth had been, spreading down, up and out until her entire body felt hazy and warm.
It would have been easy to lock her hands behind his neck and tip her head back, to let herself be kissed. In this moment she was sure that Jack wanted her to, and her certainty terrified her.
‘Bye,’ she said, stepping away from him, breathless and not a little unsteady.
Rachel climbed into the taxi without letting herself look back, fearful that – for all her assurances to Anna, regardless of her good intentions and despite his past misdeeds – she’d pull Jack in after her.
17
By ten o’clock on Saturday morning Rachel had made her way to Shoreditch, procured an overpriced coffee and picked up a selection of bite-sized breakfast pastries. The sweet, buttery aroma drifting through the gaps in their cardboard container was so good her stomach grumbled, audibly tormented by the promise of food. Resisting the urge to sink her head into the box and inhale its contents, she looked down at her phone to consult Google Maps again.
The address Tom had given her for today’s photo shoot was supposedly close now. She needed to concentrate on where she was going or she and her delicious-smelling croissants would sail straight past it.
A minute or so later Rachel was standing next to the bricked-up arch of an old railway bridge. This couldn’t be it, surely? But allegedly she’d reached her destination, and she was definitely on the right street. She noticed there was a slender black wooden door in the right-hand side of the wall. Next to it, above a bell push, was a neat brass plaque with A24 written on it.
Rachel checked Tom’s message again. Yep – that was the number he’d given her. This had to be the place.
Tentatively, she pressed the shiny round doorbell and heard a high, brisk brrrrrrring from within. There was a creak and the door opened inwards, its bottom catching on a thick coir-and-rubber mat that sat just behind it.
Tom’s spectacled face appeared, smiling, and he beckoned her inside. He took the box she was carrying and set it on the zinc worktop of a tiny kitchen area tucked into the near left-hand corner of what Rachel could now see was a cavernous space.
Despite the irregular texture and greyish tinge of the Victorian bricks that curved high over their heads, it felt new in here; the air smelled like fresh paint, carpet underlay and cleaning products.
The opposite wall – which at one stage must have been the other open side of the railway arch – featured a tall strip of window that stretched, gleaming, across its full width. Soft, moody light streamed in from the drab sky outside, illuminating what was clearly the studio area: a patch of floor that Rachel guessed was roughly three square metres, around which a collection of photographic equipment was arranged.
‘Bloody hell,’ Rachel said. ‘This is quite a place.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Tom beamed. ‘I managed to get it cheap, there was a cancellation … You’re early, though – Zack with a K isn’t due until elevenish. I’m just experimenting a bit with the light in here so I can decide what to do with him. In fact, you can help me with that.’
‘Sure,’ Rachel said. ‘I thought you might need a hand setting up. I brought food too.’
‘I saw that, you’re a legend. I’m starving.’ Tom dug around in the box, pulling out a tiny pain au chocolat and devouring it in one bite. Rachel found a mini raisin whirl and ate it only slightly more gracefully, then gulped what was left of her coffee before depositing the cup in a recycling bin beneath the kitchen counter.
‘Also,’ Rachel said through a mouthful of almond croissant, ‘I thought it might make sense to have a catch-up on Zack before the shoot, and obviously I missed you last night.’
‘Yeah.’ Tom nodded, poised with a square of flaky jam-filled pastry between his finger and thumb. ‘The pub was weird without you.’
‘Sorry. Work thing. It was kind of unavoidable. Jack and I won a big pitch and the MD laid on free drinks to celebrate at the local. We couldn’t not go.’
‘We?’ Tom said, his forehead creasing slightly. ‘We as in you and Jack, your cheating ex-boyfriend turned workmate? So, what … You’re buddies now?’
Rachel turned away from him to riffle through the kitchenette’s cupboards in search of a glass. She found one, then filled it from the cold tap.
‘We’re not buddies,’ she said when she was facing him again. ‘But we’re getting on okay, I guess. You were the voice of reason who said I should give working with Jack a try, at least until I found another job. We could hardly function as a team if I spent every spare minute imagining his slow and painful death, could we? So I’ve pressed pause on the murder-plotting for now … Bloodlust is never a good look on redheads, anyway.’
‘I don’t think bloodlust is really the issue,’ Tom muttered, then cleared his throat and pointed at the stainless-steel fridge. ‘Whatever. There’s milk in there, and loads of coffee pods and tea stuff in the drawer. Help yourself while we’re here.’
‘Will do.’ Rachel nodded, wondering whether last night’s encounter with Jack was still hanging on her, fusty and lingering like stale cigarette smoke. She realised she felt embarrassed. Tom was shrewd and rational, and he’d consider it the height of stupidity to get close to someone who’d already proved they couldn’t be trusted. Rachel didn’t want to dent Tom’s good opinion of her, nor think too much about whether he might be right.
‘So, Zack …’ she said, hopeful that focusing on the task at hand might soften the sudden spikiness of the atmosphere.
‘Mr How to Wear a White T-Shirt,’ Tom said, eyebrows raised. He gestured at his torso. ‘Do you think he’ll tell me I’m doing it wrong?’
Rachel sipped her water and shook her head. ‘You’re not,’ she said, taking in his plain white top, blue Levi’s and the vintage Fair Isle cardigan that was hanging off his shoulders. ‘At least, I don’t think you are.’
His T-shirt pulled tighter against his stomach as he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and smiled, and Rachel flashed back to inadvertently eyeing up his abs on the morning she’d seen him in the park. Awkward.
Rachel Ryan's Resolutions Page 18