‘You look hot – like you’ve just been for a roll in the heather with Poldark,’ she said, admiring her friend’s headful of disorderly waves. ‘It’s working for you.’
‘I’d honestly rather throw on a hoodie and come to the Hope,’ Rachel moaned. ‘Is this dress too short?’
Anna eyed her, appraising her outfit. ‘It’s cheeky, but you look good. And it has sleeves, which balances out the legginess. Stop worrying. Go. Have fun,’ she admonished.
She didn’t even think to suggest that Rachel steer clear of Jack: a mark of how little she knew about their increasingly messy relationship.
Rachel rummaged in her make-up bag, mainly for the sake of avoiding Anna’s eyes. There was so much she wasn’t telling her just lately – so many things they weren’t sharing. It felt wrong.
Rachel patted a little cream blush and highlighter onto her cheeks, then smeared clear gloss onto her lips.
‘You look lovely,’ Anna said. ‘Where is it you’re going again?’
‘Some secret speakeasy near London Fields,’ Rachel told her. ‘Apparently there’s this totally innocuous door on a bog-standard street, and behind it is a twenties-style bar. First you have to find it, then you have to say the right password to get in.’
‘Wow,’ Anna said. ‘That’s elaborate. Kind of cool, though.’ She was smiling.
‘I imagine Greg had something to do with the choice of venue,’ Rachel said, unable to resist rolling her eyes. ‘Not only is it very trendy, it’s about five minutes’ walk from his house.’
‘Well, I think it sounds fun. Park your snark and enjoy it. You can tell me all about it in the morning.’
‘Sure.’ Rachel nodded, all but certain that she wouldn’t.
It was only when Rachel got off the bus in Hackney that she realised she should have paid more attention to Greg’s directions. She was on the right street, but too many of the buildings looked the same. How was she supposed to know which one was the front for a Prohibition-style bar?
When she passed by a storefront with bright-red window frames, she remembered: Greg had said to find the black door to the right of the barber’s. Rachel looked through the glass: this must be it. The walls were covered with photos of well-coiffed bearded hipsters and blokes with Peaky Blinders haircuts.
Next door to the salon was a building that looked, to the casual observer, like a house – but the door was black and there was a shiny chrome intercom panel beside it. Rachel pushed the button firmly, letting it go when she’d heard it buzz.
‘Password, please?’ someone said.
Oh hell.
‘Hello? Is there someone there?’ came the intercom voice again.
‘Argh, sorry!’ Rachel cried. ‘My boss told me the password but it’s totally slipped my mind.’
‘I can’t let you in without the password, I’m afraid.’
Rachel sighed and looked up at the sky. It was dark, but she could see it was full of angry grey clouds. Any second now it was going to start raining.
‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘I’m with the work group that’s booked out the whole venue for this evening. How would I even know about that if I wasn’t part of the same company?’
‘I can’t let you in without the password,’ the disembodied voice repeated. ‘You’ll need to call one of your colleagues and ask for it.’ The intercom connection cut off.
‘For the love of God,’ Rachel wailed. She put her handbag on the pavement, then bent down to fumble for her phone. She rang Greg and got his voicemail, then tried Kemi with identical results.
Clearly everyone was having too much raucous fun to hear a mobile ring. Rachel felt fine raindrops stippling the exposed skin of her hands and face. Perfect.
Just as she’d concluded it was time to give up and go home, Rachel felt a presence behind her. She knew, without even looking, that it was Jack.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, as she turned to face him. ‘You forgot the password.’
Rachel nodded, then mumbled something about pretentious nonsense.
Jack stepped forward, putting a hand on her waist to move her a little to his left. Her stomach flew up into her throat, and he smirked at her – as if he’d seen it move.
He pressed the button on the buzzer panel.
‘Password, please?’
‘Mint julep,’ Jack said.
‘Push the door.’ There was a dull click, and Jack opened it with a shove. ‘After you,’ he said, motioning for Rachel to head inside.
The lighting in the bar was warm and moody, and mostly came from wall lights and old standard lamps. Many of them had red shades, which added to the shabby-chic, deliberately sleazy look of the place. The furniture was tasteful but mismatched, and there were old cream tiles and exposed plaster on the walls. The air smelled aged and leathery, but still clean – antique rather than musty.
The glassware Rachel could see was all vintage in style. Most of her colleagues seemed to be holding heavy-bottomed cut-glass tumblers full of dark, amber liquid, or gold-rimmed champagne saucers brimming with pale, pastel-coloured froth.
‘Drink?’ Jack asked.
‘Yeah.’ Rachel nodded. ‘I’ll come with you to the bar and see what there is.’
It wasn’t ideal that they’d arrived together, she reflected. Even though they’d only met on the doorstep, it must look as if she and Jack had been together all evening. Kemi caught Rachel’s eye and made a kissing face.
‘What do you fancy?’ Jack asked.
‘Hmm,’ Rachel said, scanning the chalkboard above the bar. There must have been fifty different cocktails listed there, many of which she’d never heard of before. ‘Ooooh, I’ll have a French 75, please.’
‘Lemon, sugar, champagne and gin,’ Jack read, looking up at the menu. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
‘I don’t think it’s my alcohol intake we need to worry about,’ Rachel said, nodding at Kemi after Jack had placed their order. She was giggling, winking at them from the other side of the room through hands that she’d cupped into a heart shape.
‘D’you think she’s trying to tell us something?’ Jack asked, leaning in so Rachel could hear him over the general hubbub. Beneath her colleagues’ conversations and laughter there was the sound of glasses clinking, the clang of cocktail shakers in motion and soft jazz spilling from well-concealed speakers. This was the sort of bar Jack belonged in, Rachel decided; old-fashioned, classy and expensive, but somehow suggestive of smut.
‘I said, do you think she’s trying to tell us something?’
‘Nothing I don’t already know,’ Rachel said, suddenly rash. She hadn’t even had a drink yet, and she was letting herself spar with him.
There was something about this place. If Rachel was coquettish tonight, maybe she could blame the dim, sexy lighting.
A bow-tied barman handed them their drinks, and they moved away from the serving area to make space for the people behind them.
‘Is that so?’ Jack’s eyes were dancing dangerously. ‘I like you in this bar, Ryan. And in that dress.’
He leered at her melodramatically and she whacked him on the arm.
‘Stop it. People already think we’re having some sort of affair.’
‘Let them,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It makes no difference to me. But I suppose you have your boyfriend to consider.’
‘Exactly.’ Rachel nodded, pleased that he sounded put out and already feeling wobbly after a few glugs of her cocktail. ‘Now, make yourself useful and introduce me to some Manchester people.’
As the night wore on, the agency’s most senior staff began to head home. This, combined with the copious quantity of free cocktails they’d provided, meant many of those left behind misplaced the inhibitions they’d held on to while their bosses were around. There was still money behind the bar, and one way or another it was going to be spent.
As closing time approached, Rachel – far from sober but of comparatively sound mind – took stock of the state of her colleagues.
/> Greg was arguing with Theo, who didn’t want to accept he was too drunk to drive his scooter home to Fulham. Ella’s new boyfriend had come by to collect her some time ago, but Kemi – who’d been her partner in Prosecco-guzzling for most of the night – was slumped in a corner looking sleepy.
‘I should help her get home,’ Rachel said to Jack, who’d been hovering beside her for most of the night. ‘She doesn’t live far from me.’
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ he said. ‘We can share a cab.’
Between them, they hauled Kemi up and out into the street. She was chatty but mostly incomprehensible, which Rachel was grateful for; the handful of coherent comments Kemi did manage were about Rachel, Jack and their ‘sitting in a tree’ status.
Jack laughed every time Kemi insisted they must be ‘doing it’, but listening to lurid speculation about her own sex life made Rachel want to die.
Greg had shaken his head at her when he’d seen them pulling Kemi towards the door – not in disapproval, exactly, but perhaps in disappointment. Combined with the alcohol sloshing around in her stomach, it had made Rachel feel a bit sick.
‘Do you know her address?’ Jack asked.
‘Yeah. I’ve done this before.’
After a fifteen-minute cab ride, they pulled up outside a three-storey building. Set back from the road, it had at least twelve stone steps leading up to the front door.
‘What are you doing?’ Jack asked Rachel as she unbuckled her seatbelt.
She made a face at him. ‘Kemi’s never going to get up those stairs by herself,’ she pointed out. ‘And she lives on the second floor of the building.’
Jack sighed, then scrambled out of the front passenger seat and walked around the car to open Rachel’s door.
‘Want me to wait?’ the taxi driver asked.
‘Not for me,’ Rachel said. ‘I only live five minutes away. Jack?’
‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said, then shook his head at the driver and handed him a twenty-pound note. Kemi, who nobody had thought was listening, burst into triumphant laughter.
Once they’d deposited Kemi safely in her bedroom, Rachel and Jack strolled in the direction of Stroud Green Road.
‘I’ll never hear the end of this,’ Rachel sighed. ‘Kemi was already convinced that there’s something happening between us. After tonight she’s going to be unbearable.’
Jack just laughed.
‘It isn’t funny,’ Rachel said. ‘Nothing that people are saying is true, but it makes me look terrible.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, for a start,’ she replied, straightening her spine, ‘I have a boyfriend. But also, a woman who has a workplace romance always ends up with the rough end of any rumours that go round. It’s always her who’s supposed to have seduced him.’ Rachel wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘And if the man is someone senior,’ she continued, ‘it’s usually assumed that she’s shagging him for the sake of getting on. When have you ever heard of a bloke being accused of sleeping with a co-worker to help kickstart his career?’
‘Never,’ Jack admitted. They were standing side by side outside Rachel and Anna’s building now, their backs against the wall that separated the front yard from the street. ‘You’re wrong, though.’
‘About what?’
‘You were wrong when you said that none of the gossip is true.’
His voice was low and urgent. Sparks skittered down Rachel’s spine.
Self-reproach mingled with anticipation as Jack turned his body 180 degrees to face her, planting his hands either side of her on the wall, boxing her in. She could feel him breathing. His air smelled like mint leaves and bourbon.
‘People are saying there’s something between us, and there is,’ he went on. ‘People are saying I want you, and I do.’
Rachel shook her head, refusing to look at him. ‘People don’t have all the information. They don’t know we were together at uni. They don’t know what a bastard you were. They don’t know that I—’
‘—have a boyfriend,’ Jack finished, sounding bored. ‘That makes them … ill-informed. It doesn’t make them wrong.’
He skimmed a fingertip over the skin on the back of her hand, tracing up from her knuckle and then dipping it inside the sleeve of her jacket. He circled her wrist, then turned her hand over and placed his palm on top of it. It felt something like being electrocuted.
He lowered his face towards hers. Just as she thought he was going to kiss her – just as her mouth opened a fraction in readiness – he stopped.
He was grinning.
He stood up a little straighter so that, for their lips to touch, she’d have to reach for him.
No. No way was she going to kiss him.
‘Such a pity you’re attached,’ he breathed, his mouth so close to hers she could practically taste it.
She pulled her hand out from beneath his, tipped her head to one side and said, with far more composure than she felt, ‘Not for me, it isn’t.’
Jack was still smiling, but he’d stepped back completely now. His hands were in his pockets.
‘We make sense together, Ryan. We both know it. We always did.’
‘You do realise this is all a terrible cliché, don’t you?’ Rachel asked, common sense fighting for supremacy over the champagne buzz still warming her blood. She groped for something sarcastic to say. ‘People like you always want back the love they gave away!’ she cried eventually. ‘And people like me want to believe you when you say you’ve changed.’
This second point, she had to admit, she wasn’t so thrilled about.
Jack’s forehead scrunched up, but he was still smirking. ‘Are you quoting at me? I’ve heard that before. Is that poetry?’
‘Yes, it’s poetry,’ Rachel said, drawing herself up to her full height. ‘It’s Taylor bloody Swift, you philistine.’
She stomped past him, letting the front gate slam shut and instantly hoping that it hadn’t woken Anna or any of their neighbours. Jack was laughing softly.
‘Goodnight, Ryan,’ he chuckled. ‘I’ll see you on Monday. I guess you’ll let me know when you decide whether or not you believe I’ve changed.’
24
The final Saturday of April saw Rachel on the Tube to Soho, on her way to meet Tom. He and Dev were keen to show her around the small gallery they’d booked for the #NoFilter exhibition, which was due to open in a couple of months’ time.
When she emerged from Leicester Square station into the crowds and commotion of the West End, the day was bright, the breeze was gentle and the pavement free from puddles. It finally felt like spring.
For the first time in months Rachel had left the house without a proper coat, throwing a thrift-shop blazer over her skinny jeans and sweatshirt. She felt light – liberated, somehow – and she was looking forward to seeing Tom.
It wasn’t lost on her that he was the person she’d been most honest with over the past few months. While Rachel’s truth-telling had been largely accidental, the consequence was that she felt more comfortable with Tom than almost anyone else at the moment. It was a relief to be around him, somehow – like she could press pause on trying to impersonate someone whose life was going swimmingly.
The only thing Tom didn’t know was that he’d been mistaken for her besotted boyfriend – and, frankly, this was information Rachel felt he could do without.
As she walked up Charing Cross Road, through throngs of tourists clustered outside theatres and chain restaurants, Rachel glanced up and noticed she’d just outpaced the number 24 bus. She span to look back at the shiny red double-decker – with a new photo of Jessica Williams emblazoned on its side.
Several people tutted, bashing into her or barging by as she stopped to stare at the glossy image.
Rachel’s sightings of Jessica had diminished in frequency since the January detox campaign, and their power to demoralise her had dwindled as more immediate problems claimed her attention. Now, though, Rachel found herself riveted. This was a genius bit of ma
rketing, she had to admit.
Gone were the flimsy-yet-wholesome clothes from Jessica’s previous ads for Angeljuice and its brand of cereal bars. Now she sported a shiny scarlet bodysuit – long-sleeved, but with a V-neck so wide and deep it was incredible her nipples weren’t on show.
Jessica’s lips – poutier and puffier than ever – were painted a vivid, blazing crimson, and a pair of pointed red horns peeped out above her curtain of lustrous pitch-black hair.
HELLFIRE FAT BURNER, shouted the picture’s big, bold caption. Then, in smaller letters: Look devilishly slim this summer. Try the hot new supplement from the makers of Angeljuice. Pinched between Jessica’s forefinger and thumb was a bright-red pill.
Rachel gaped at the ad. Was Jessica seriously promoting weight-loss capsules to her hundreds of thousands of fans? This was different from advertising supposedly healthy snacks or endorsing ‘cleansing’ drinks. It made Rachel feel a little sick.
Decade-old remnants of jealousy reignited alongside Rachel’s outrage, then seemed to burn away. As usual, Jessica looked incredible – but Rachel’s distaste for diet culture was stronger than her envy of an old rival’s sex appeal.
She shook her head at the bus, turned away and kept walking. She didn’t bother to look up again as it picked up speed and went past her.
The venue for #NoFilter was on Greek Street: a tall, thin building squeezed between a French restaurant and a posh optician’s. The outside was painted blinding white, and the brilliant, ‘blank canvas’ effect continued inside. The place was stylishly fitted with original stripped-wood floors and carefully considered lighting. Large sash windows overlooked the bustling street below, allowing sunshine to bathe the high-ceilinged rooms in brightness.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ Rachel said, beaming at Tom and Dev after they’d led her up to the top floor.
‘Newly refurbished,’ Dev said, smoothing a hand over his glossy black quiff. ‘We’ll spread the exhibition over all five floors of the building, ordering the images and words so that as people walk through there’s a sense of story. You two will be in charge of that, obviously.’
Rachel smiled at him and nodded. Dev looked as polished today as he had when they’d first met in January, though he’d shaved off his beard since the last time she’d seen him. His skin, she could now see, was radiant – perfectly smooth and poreless, like a baby’s. She wondered what moisturiser he used, then resolved to go to Boots on the way home and buy the retinol cream she’d been promising herself since New Year.
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