I looked from Dani to Mike and back again. Mike was smiling, faintly amused. Dani looked like someone had just chucked a bucket of cold water over her head.
‘I think I know the answer to this already,’ I said slowly, ‘but what’s the name of the app he started, again?’
‘Stargazer,’ Dani and Mike said together.
‘And speaking of which,’ Mike went on, ‘look what the cat dragged in.’
I considered telling him that even if Frazzle had been gifted with superpowers that enabled him to lift a fourteen-stone man as easily as he did a baby blackbird, he wouldn’t deign to put his mouth anywhere near Fabian Flatley. But I couldn’t, because, as always, Fabian’s presence seemed to have robbed me of the power of speech.
He was wearing his usual designer gym kit: a muscle top and skin-tight Lycra shorts. The former had a prominent logo on it that I’d googled once out of curiosity and discovered cost over a hundred quid; the latter showed off far more of Fabian’s anatomy than I or anyone else wanted to see. He smelled overpoweringly of the cedar deodorant he always used, which meant that he hadn’t started his workout yet, because then he’d have smelled overpoweringly of sweat.
He strolled over to us and gave Mike a slap on the shoulder that looked friendly but would have sent him flying if he hadn’t been such an absolute unit, then slipped an arm round Dani’s waist.
‘Hey, mate. Hey, baby. You over your huff yet? Fancy going out tonight?’
He ignored me, which I felt almost pathetically grateful for. But Dani froze, as if Fabian’s arm was made of lead rather than muscle and bone and had rooted her to the spot. I saw her turn her head and look at him, her eyes widening in a mix of fear and desire.
Fabian reached out and pinched her cheek. ‘Bit overemotional, were you? Silly girl. It’s okay, I’ll give you another chance. Just the one, mind.’
Dani reached up and touched the place he’d pinched like it hurt. But she didn’t say anything – it was like she physically couldn’t.
But Mike could. ‘Stop me if I’m wrong. But this woman asked you not to contact her again. I don’t know the details and I don’t want to. But I won’t have my clients being harassed in my gym.’
‘Am I harassing her? Does it look like that? Does it feel like that, baby?’
Dani found her voice, although it came out in a thin squeak, as if she could still feel Fabian’s hands around her neck, squeezing.
‘Yes, it does.’
‘Well, then,’ Mike said. ‘Looks like we’re pretty clear on that. This gym is a place where I want everyone to feel safe, and so you won’t be welcome here any longer. I’ll refund the balance of your membership.’
‘But… I pay for daily personal training sessions, and I don’t even use half of them!’ Fabian spluttered. ‘I’m worth almost twenty grand a year to you. These girls pay peanuts. Are you trying to destroy your business?’
Mike folded his arms over his chest. His hands barely reached his elbows because his pecs and biceps were so big. ‘Money isn’t everything. And I prefer clients who actually follow my advice. Wherever you go next, Fabian, listen to them when they tell you you need to do cardio as well as lift, and you need to have a healthy lifestyle, too. Maybe slow down on the Colombian marching powder and the little blue pills. No point having the best body in the morgue, right?’
Fabian looked at him like he was getting ready to protest, or even fight. But Mike’s face was implacable, and in that moment actually quite scary.
‘Fine.’ Fabian let go of Dani and spun around on his designer trainers. ‘There are plenty of better places than this. See if I care.’
And he flounced off through the gap in the metal shutters. I heard the roar of his car’s powerful engine, and then, instead of it fading into the distance, I heard a sickening crunch and a tinkle of glass. Through the open door, I could see the bollard he’d reversed into, his car’s crumpled bumper and a group of teenage boys outside the fried chicken shop breaking into ironic cheers.
Dani didn’t notice the unfolding drama, though. She was gazing at Mike, wide-eyed, like she’d never seen him before, a huge happy smile spreading over her face.
Twenty-Nine
There is good fortune in the stars today, Aquarius. Just don’t expect any of it to be coming your way, okay?
‘Zoë? Earth to Zoë?’ Robbie poked me in the ribs with a wooden spoon and I jumped like he’d given me an electric shock.
‘What? What do you want?’
‘I’ve asked you four times if you want coffee, twice if you want to use the posh honey we got from Archie in the blondies or the standard stuff, and three times if you wanted to take some of those butternut squash and sage bruschetta out for Maurice and the boys to try, or whether I should do it and get the glory. And you’ve been completely blanking me. I know you’re a bit long in the tooth at almost twenty-eight but it’s a bit early to be going deaf, surely?’
‘Sorry. I was miles away. Yes to coffee, we may as well go ahead and use the posh honey, and I’ll handle the quality control. Thanks, Robbie.’
‘No worries.’ He switched on the coffee machine, its full-throated roar convincing me that I wasn’t in fact going deaf.
I had been lost in my thoughts, and I was still. I picked up the plate of toasted bruschetta topped with rich roast squash, drizzled with sage oil and sprinkled with nduja crumbs and carried them out to the bar, where Maurice, Terry, Sadiq and Ray were beginning their dominoes game. Alice was behind the bar; Kelly was down on her knees with a dustpan and brush cleaning up the crumbs left by the mums and tots group. Fat Don was on his usual stool, sipping his pint. Frazzle was spread out on the chaise longue in a patch of sun.
The Ginger Cat felt the same as it did on any Wednesday morning: bright, cheerful and serenely busy. But I felt different. I felt like I’d been hollowed out inside. It wasn’t hunger; Robbie had insisted I ate a bowl of granola when I got in that morning after fussing over me and demanding to know why I was looking like a vampire’s cold leftovers, and I’d confessed that I’d had no supper the night before and almost no sleep.
‘Are you going to tell us what those are, love?’ Ray asked. ‘Or are you just going to stand there staring at them?’
‘Sorry, sorry!’ I’d walked across the room to the dominoes table on autopilot, my mind in another place entirely. ‘They’re a new snack we’re thinking of putting on the autumn bar menu. What do you reckon?’
I put the plate on the table and stood there as I always did, waiting for their verdict.
‘What’s this brown stuff then?’ Terry poked a suspicious finger at the top of one of the bruschetta.
‘It’s an nduja crumb.’
‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’
‘It’s a kind of spicy spreadable sausage. Like salami only softer. And we’ve fried it with some breadcrumbs and sage so it’s crunchy. It’s got pork in it, sorry, Sadiq.’
‘Nduja really want to hurt me,’ Terry sang tunelessly. ‘Nduja really want to make me cry?’
They all cracked up, and I couldn’t help laughing too. Maurice picked up a piece, tucked a paper napkin into his collar and took a crunchy bite.
‘Delicious,’ he said. ‘Really autumnal flavour. I’m going to tell Wesley about this nduja stuff; it would work a treat with rice and peas.’
‘Cor, that doesn’t half blow your head off,’ Ray said. ‘Ought to come with a health warning.’
But he finished his piece and immediately took another.
‘I’ll take that as an approval, then,’ I said, leaving them to their game as Alice approached the table with a tray of drinks.
I made my way back to the kitchen, feeling my mind drift back into the tangle of thoughts that seemed to envelop it, tangled and clinging like the fake cobwebs Alice had arranged in the windows for Halloween, which had paper spiders ensnared in them.
For months, I reflected, shaping sourdough into loaves, I’d let myself be governed – or at least steered – by what th
e Stargazer app had told me to do. I’d followed its guidance on dates and relationships and my own life, not slavishly exactly, but faithfully enough. And now, thanks to Mike, I knew the truth.
I’d read through various threads on Twitter, outlining the story of how Fabian had launched the app, using fake downloads and fake reviews to get it trending. How he’d made all sorts of claims about the authenticity of its predictions being based on genuine astronomical data, when all the time a content mill of writers in Manila had been writing the daily horoscopes based on nothing but a stringent style guide.
I’d read how, when Fabian had unilaterally cut the fee he was paying to the business owner in the Philippines, the writers’ already rock-bottom wages had been cut, too. Threatened with losing their jobs if they objected, they’d taken matters into their own hands, writing horoscopes that were darker and more depressing than before, pushing one another to see how far they could take it before the editors noticed.
I imagined them – highly educated graduates working for pennies from their laptops at home, or at shared desks in a café if they had no space or quiet at home – exchanging messages over Slack or glances across the table, taking a bit of glee in getting one over on their exploitative employer. Because the Stargazer brand was all about being edgy, about sending out push notifications that were acid almost to the point of being brutal, it took a long time before anyone noticed. Hell, I’d barely noticed myself. I’d assumed that the app simply knew me well enough, through some mysterious algorithm or through genuine astrology, to reflect my thoughts back to me.
If I hadn’t been so invested, I’d have found it funny. But now I couldn’t shake the sense of dislocation, of something having changed in my world so significantly that I no longer fully understood it.
The rest of that morning passed in a blur. I worked, I chatted to Robbie, I listened to music on my headphones. But I couldn’t remember a word of our conversation afterwards. I could barely taste the food, and had to keep passing the spoon over to Robbie for him to confirm that the seasoning was right. When a new song started on my playlist, I couldn’t have told you what the previous one had been.
Robbie seemed distracted too, I noticed. He kept glancing anxiously at his phone, and when it buzzed with an incoming alert he pounced on it like Frazzle on a feathery toy, only to put it down again, disheartened. And then, when the opening bars of ‘Half a Man’ came through the speaker, I heard the thunk of his wooden spoon falling to the floor and a choking sob.
‘Shit, Robbie! What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Rex.’ He mopped his eyes on a tea towel.
I put my arm round his shoulder and shushed a bit, my mind whirring. What could have happened? Some sort of horrible accident? Rex turning out to have a wife and kids on the side? Or just Robbie getting ghosted, when things had been going so well?
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ I asked.
‘I can’t believe what he’s gone and done,’ Robbie gulped. ‘The bastard!’
‘Ssshh, you poor thing. Whatever it is, you’ll be okay.’ And, remembering saying almost exactly the same to Dani, I added in my head, And dump his sorry arse so he can never hurt you again.
But Robbie went on, ‘He says he wants us to be official. Like, boyfriend and boyfriend. The deadass headass.’
For a second, I was too surprised to speak. ‘But… but that’s good, right? I mean, you’re totally into him. You haven’t seen anyone else for ages.’
‘That,’ Robbie said, ‘is not. The. Point. We weren’t meant to be serious. I was meant to have years of casual shagging ahead of me. And then bloody Rex turns up and not only is he my dream man, but he says I’m his. He told me he loves me, the total melt.’
‘But you love him too!’
‘So what? I wasn’t going to admit I’d fallen for him, was I? So I dumped him. By text.’
I shook my head in bewilderment, then gave Robbie’s shoulder a final pat, picked his spoon up off the floor and wagged it at him.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘You’ve given me your fair share of advice about my love life, and it’s my turn to read you the riot act. Are you listening?’
Robbie nodded, his lip trembling.
‘Rex is asking you to be his boyfriend. That’s all. He’s not asking you to marry him, or chaining you up in a dungeon, or making you sign in blood saying you’ll never have sex with anyone else again ever. Am I right?’
‘I guess.’
‘He’s saying he wants you two to be exclusive for now – to take your relationship to the next level, and see how that goes. Correct?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And that’s what you want, really, isn’t it? You’ve just got a massive attack of cold feet.’ Like I did when I was twenty and in love with Joe, and ended it because I was too frightened, only to spend years regretting my decision, when I could have just gone with it and let it run its course. I didn’t regret that decision any more, not really – but that didn’t stop me wanting to prevent Robbie from making the same mistake.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Robbie admitted.
‘Of course I’m right! And another thing. You’re allowed to be happy, you know. You’re allowed to fall in love, even if it doesn’t feel like the right time.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘Sheesh, you doofus! Pick up your phone right now and text the guy and tell him you made a mistake!’
‘I…’ Robbie hesitated for a second, then he did the pounce thing again, and seconds later his phone was in his hands and he was bashing away at the screen like a man possessed.
I escaped to the gym after lunch as usual, but I wasn’t feeling it and, after a few minutes on the rowing machine, I gave up and did some gentle stretches instead, ignoring Mike’s disapproving gaze. And then I went home and got into bed with Frazzle, and had a long afternoon nap, filled with shadowy and confusing dreams.
I thought about sacking off that evening’s D&D game, but I couldn’t do that – we were at a crucial point in the adventure, with Galena, Annella and Torvid nearing the heart of the castle where we thought Zarah might be imprisoned. Without me, the others would have no fighting power and a real chance of being captured or worse. I’d just have to front it out, and act like nothing had happened between Adam and me. We were friends and that was it.
Of course, I reminded myself, the game wasn’t real either. It was an imaginary world, but that didn’t make it any less important. If we succeeded in our adventure, we’d have done so as a team, looking out for each other, strategising together, making the best of whatever fate a roll of the dice threw at us.
So, when I woke up feeling no less sleepy than I had two hours before, I told myself I had to get my shit together and make this work, however awkward I felt about seeing Adam again after our last strange and unsatisfying encounter. I showered and washed my hair and put on make-up for the first time in ages, put serum in my hair and pulled on a black jumper dress, tights and boots. I was doing it for me, I insisted to myself. Nothing whatsoever to do with Adam, who clearly wasn’t interested in me anyway.
I looked around the tidy, orderly flat. It smelled of my aromatherapy body lotion and coconut water shampoo. The laundry basket was empty and the bed was made. Frazzle was on the sofa, curled up tightly with his paws crossed over his nose. There were worse things than being alone, I supposed. I’d managed it – enjoyed it, even – for years and I could continue to do so.
I locked the door and walked down the stairs, passing the kitchen and entering the bar, a customer again instead of an employee. I bought a bottle of wine and headed over to the Dungeons & Dragons table, where Nat and Archie were already sitting, sipping their drinks and chatting.
‘You look amazing, Zoë,’ Nat said. ‘Heading out somewhere later?’
‘Nah. I just felt like making a bit of an effort. I’ve been dressing like a slob for too long.’
Freddie hurried over and flopped into a chair. ‘Looking good, Zoë. Nothing’s too much tro
uble for your fight with the evil lord, right?’
‘You’ve scrubbed up a bit too,’ I said. ‘Not sure a silk shirt is ideal for crawling through mazes looking for treasure.’
‘But think of all the quality gear I’ll be able to buy once we find it.’
We all laughed, slightly awkward in the moments before the game began, when we were half our characters and half ourselves; half in the Ginger Cat and half in the dungeons below Castle Drakeford; aware that this was a slightly tragic, dorky game but also caught up in the magic of the story Adam had woven for us.
‘And here’s the man himself,’ Lana said.
Adam approached our table, half-smiling, his heavy bag slung over his shoulder. The shirt he was wearing looked new too – it was a dark bottle-green that seemed to have turned his eyes exactly the same colour. I said hi to him and he replied, but his was more of a general greeting to the whole table. It was like he’d barely noticed me there at all. The others followed shortly after him, and soon the usual rituals of drinks-pouring and food-ordering were complete, and we began.
As soon as Adam started speaking, the real world receded. I stopped being Zoë, stopped thinking about my future as a crazy cat lady who lived above a pub, and became Galena. I wasn’t wearing my jumper dress and faux suede boots any more, but leather armour and boots, because Galena had other things on her mind than animal rights, like not getting her head chopped off with a broadsword.
‘We return to the upper levels of the castle, where Galena and the others are continuing their quest to find young Zarah. Last week, we left you in an antechamber near to the rooms where you believe the evil Lord Brandrel is holding the girl prisoner. The walls are hung with slightly faded tapestries and lit by oil lamps. There is woven rush matting on the floor and a wooden chest in one corner. On the wall, you notice a large mirror in a heavy wrought-iron frame.’
‘Oh God, I’d better not look,’ Nat said. ‘My root growth will be horrendous after all this time on an adventure.’
Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy Page 25