The Note: An uplifting, life-affirming romance about finding love in an unexpected place

by Zoë Folbigg

  Emma blushes. She doesn’t want to get involved. In fact she just wants to get out of the office ASAP and go on maternity leave. Maya feels a roar rising from the pit of her stomach, inflamed by injustice, gaining momentum thanks to Olivia’s rebellion, but still stifled by the oppressive regime.

  Olivia pushes her laptop towards Holly. ‘Can you take the lead on the pictures today, Hols, I can’t stomach that,’ she says, nodding towards Cressida with sass as she stands.

  ‘Oh, if you’re going to be so sensitive don’t worry about it, Olivia. I’m sure I can find a much more enthusiastic and talented freelance picture editor for FASHmas,’ snaps Cressida. ‘You’re obviously burnt out.’

  The door slams.

  Cressida’s face shows the awkward cocktail of embarrassment and defiance. ‘Someone’s feeling sensitive today!’ she says, widening her eyes. ‘Pictures please, Holly, before we waste any more time.’

  Maya looks across the table at Alex and Emma doodling in their notebooks and opens her laptop. Under the guise of working double time through the morning meeting, she opens her personal mail and emails Tom.

  Hi Tom,

  Lovely to see you yesterday, thanks for coming. So excited about your wedding!

  About your contact at the Standard… if she’s interested then I’m game. It’s a total joke here.

  Mx

  Maya presses send and feels discomfort in the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t know what she’s more disgusted by: what Cressida said or the fact she herself sat back and said nothing.

  *

  James stands on the steps of Mayfair Library and looks through his lens. He sees old sweethearts, people who have been in love and lost love a long time ago and fallen back in love again. He sees proud adult children, throwing pastel-coloured paper, cut in to the shapes of hearts and horseshoes and four-leaf clovers, swirling and dancing in the wind. James feels heartened. He wonders how many happy couples have walked down these steps. He is proud to capture this particular couple doing it.

  Earlier, when James was standing in a window of their mews home, taking pictures of the happy couple getting ready, he asked the groom how old he was when he had fallen in love with his bride the first time around.

  Startled, a man with thinning hair and a bushy black and white stripy beard stopped tying his tie and looked at James, who dropped his lens for a second.

  ‘How did you know we were sweethearts?’

  ‘I saw it through the lens.’

  The man turned back to admire himself in the mirror – ox-like shoulders, thick neck, tiny wise eyes behind rimless spectacles – and finished tying the tie on his Armani suit.

  ‘You’ve seen her. Can you imagine what a knockout she was back then? She came from Germany on a school exchange, fifty-one years ago. I never should have let her go back.’

  James smiled and raised his lens again, taking a side profile of a man who didn’t look like he had many regrets.

  ‘But it turned out good. Our families have come together beautifully. You’ll meet our grandkids later.’ Eyes like currants turned back to look at James. ‘She was worth waiting for, son,’ he said with a wry smile.

  On the steps after the ceremony, James lowers his lens and bends his knees to capture small children with ruddy cheeks in pretty coats. A little girl asks Oma to pick her up. A woman with sleek silver hair, artfully coiffed back to a point at the base of a long tanned neck, picks up her granddaughter. Her new husband nestles in and the little girl snuggles into his badger beard. A shake of his head tickles the little girl and a belly laugh tumbles down the grandeur of South Audley Street on the tail of a wind.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  ‘Is this OK?’

  Pip Smith cautiously pulls out a little armchair at a table for two, next to a huge arched window looking out onto an Indian summer’s evening over Hazelworth.

  ‘Great,’ smiles Maya. It is the bar area of the restaurant she spent New Year’s Eve with her siblings. If Maya looks over to the noisy restaurant area, lit by stainless-steel pendants and the flares of the sizzling steak pan in the open kitchen, she can see the table where Velma sat with Christopher, Conrad and Madison. Maya’s heart drops.

  ‘You want to sit somewhere else?’ Pip asks nervously.

  ‘No it’s fine, Pip, really,’ says Maya, putting on her happy face. She doesn’t want to bring the evening down. And the room is so full of hope this Saturday night.

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘French Martini please,’ Maya says with a smile, propping herself up in her chair.

  ‘I’ll just get them, back in a sec.’

  Pip heads eagerly to the bar and Maya looks around. She sees some friends of Jacob and Florian but stays seated and shuffles on the orange armchair. A seat James Miller sat in on New Year’s Eve, but Maya doesn’t know that.

  Pip returns. Pint of cider in one hand, small coupé glass in the other. He is careful not to spill the skilfully shaken raspberry red drink with the pale peach foam on top. Boyish blue eyes concentrate. His tongue pokes out from one corner of his mouth.

  ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I have to say you look beautiful, Maya, just how I imagined you would have turned out.’

  ‘Me? What this?’ she blushes. Smoothing down the collar on a lemon yellow shirt dress that poufs out at the waist into a circle skirt. It’s still October, but a balmy evening demanded a last-clutch-of-summer dress. ‘It’s from the vintage shop off the square.’

  ‘It’s pretty.’

  ‘Well you don’t look so bad yourself, Pip. I miss the bomber jacket with the sheepskin collar though. Even my sister remembered that. But the years have been kind to you.’

  Pip is wearing a grey T-shirt that’s a little bit too tight for him, but deliberately so, Maya thinks, and blue jeans.

  ‘That’s running for you,’ he winks, then smiles bashfully.

  There’s a slightly awkward silence for a second and they lock eyes.

  ‘So what do you do when you’re not running, Pip Smith?’ Maya takes a sip from her coupé glass. ‘You do realise I can only call you Pip Smith don’t you? The way kids call classmates by their full names.’

  ‘Lottie Sharman!’ laughs Pip.

  ‘Ricky Hill!’ counters Maya. She won’t mention it now, but Maya’s Special Memory skill means she could probably list all of the kids from that class almost twenty years ago.

  ‘Well, Maya Flowers, I’m a personal trainer now. I’ve done about four thousand things since leaving school, but this is the only one I’ve stuck at for more than a year. I love it. I love being the guy to get people up and moving. I love seeing results. I love the feeling of using my body. I guess I loved it ever since I chased you around the silver birches.’

  Maya laughs. His enthusiasm is sweet and endearing.

  ‘Sounds brilliant. Although I always thought you’d go into something artistic. You were always giving me drawings, you were really good.’

  ‘Yes but Ninja Turtle drawings don’t pay the rent.’

  Maya doesn’t tell him she remembered that one. Something holds her back.

  ‘I was a graphic designer for a couple of years, but it was really dull stuff, like posters for estate agent windows and burger bar leaflets. Not exactly the V&A displays I pictured doing. I was working for a really shitty agency in Bracknell. Then I worked in airport parking at Heathrow, then a pet insurance call centre, and then I couldn’t stand being so miserable and lazy, so I retrained as a personal trainer.’

  ‘Sweat more, bitch less, huh?’

  Pip laughs. The speckled apples of his cheeks rise.

  ‘That’s great you do something you love now. Something that makes a difference to people.’

  ‘Well it doesn’t really. It’s badly paid and most of the time it’s a thankless task, I’m the person clients don’t want to see at 6 a.m., especially now the mornings are getting darker. Lazy people mostly just want to stay lazy. But when you get a breakt
hrough and a client says you’ve changed their life… it’s worth it. That’s why I moved back here. Tap into commuter clients and mums trying to get back into shape. Bracknell wasn’t overly full of people wanting to get fit.’

  ‘Why Bracknell?’

  Pip Smith looks sheepish. ‘My ex-girlfriend was from there.’

  I don’t mind.

  ‘Oh well it sounds more inspirational than what I do,’ puffs Maya, the cocktail stick threaded with a blueberry and two raspberries falls from its perch on the side of the thin coupé glass and into her drink.

  ‘What do you do?’ asks Pip, taking a sip of cider.

  Maya’s mind flits to her upcoming meeting on Monday with Tiffanie Doyle from the London Evening Standard, and she doesn’t want to talk about work.

  Pip throws Maya a lifeline. ‘In fact, what have you been doing since we were eleven? We must have gone to different secondary schools.’

  ‘We did, silly! You went to the boys’ school. I went to Hazelworth High. I didn’t ever see you after that.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ says Pip, sucking cider off his top lip. ‘But it’s one of those things you don’t question when you’re eleven. You just let your parents work out your social life for you. But you meant so much to me, I can’t believe I didn’t push it.’

  Maya twists her hair into a side bun fumblingly.

  ‘Well, the summer after I left Hazelworth High I worked in a call centre myself. Saved up some money and booked a one-way ticket to LA, knowing I had a year to get through Central America and back home before uni.’

  ‘Wow, you went alone?’

  Maya nods. ‘It was the bravest thing I had ever done.’

  ‘“Had” done? You did something braver since?’

  Maya thinks of him. Wide, lovely, brown eyes. Eyes she misses every morning. ‘Have done. It’s the bravest thing I have ever done.’

  ‘Amazing. Tell me what that was like.’

  Maya feels uncomfortable, so she takes an unladylike slurp of a ladylike drink. As the vodka, raspberry and pineapple seep through her tummy and the alcohol to her blood, she feels more relaxed. Pip Smith. He’s cute. Their freckles face off. His are more prominent. Hers are vibrant from the last of the summer sun, soon to sink back to just a winter fluttering. Their laughs are warm on a warm autumn night.

  *

  ‘I want to run it in this Thursday’s paper, sign for four weeks, then take it from there on a rolling monthly contract. We’ll pay eight hundred pounds a column. But my editor will only commit to four for now.’

  Tiffanie Doyle sits in the cafe of a health food store on Kensington High Street nursing a carrot, beet and ginger juice – and a hangover. Impatient eyes. Short black hair cut into a severe bob with a high fringe. Her face is so close to Maya’s in this intimate corner of a huge energy-promising emporium that Maya can see red lipstick bleeding ever-so-slightly beyond the corners of Tiffanie’s mouth. Maya is nervous and intimidated and trying not to show it. She told Cressida she had a doctor’s appointment this morning and that she would be late for conference.

  Maya is almost lost for words. ‘Eight hundred pounds for five hundred words?’

  ‘Yep, we loved it. But we’ll play it by ear yes?’

  Tiffanie Doyle says ‘yes’ a lot at the end of a sentence, even though she’s telling, not asking.

  ‘I must be anonymous. I can’t lose my job, I’m not even a year into a twenty-five-year mortgage.’

  ‘That’s fine. We’ll get you a commissioning form that will specify anonymity. We’ll come up with a name. In fact have a think over the next couple of days. I’m thinking Belle De Jour meets City Scoop meets Bridget Jones with a fashion twist. And without the sex. For now…’

  Maya narrows her eyes suspiciously. ‘You want personal stuff in there too?’

  ‘Not right now. The fashion empire stuff is just great. But if the column flies we’d need to know more about what FASH Girl does off duty.’

  ‘You won’t mention FASH right?’

  ‘Of course not, dear, we’d be slapped with a libel order faster than you could say sweatshop. Rich Robinson is an old, erm, associate of mine. He wouldn’t hold back, I can tell you.’

  Maya feels even more nervous. And wonders from the way Tiffanie spat ‘associate’ what happened between her and the FASH CEO. She also wonders how Tiffanie knows Tom Vernon, but thinks she’d better not ask.

  ‘I’ll get our art team to do one of those funny little silhouette drawings of you, doesn’t even have to look like you, to use as a byline. But if you can just tighten up column one for me by the end of the day and come up with that handle. I’ll be in the office until 11 p.m., file it by then, yes?’

  Understood.

  Maya looks at her watch and remembers they met at 8.30 a.m.

  Wow, I thought FASH days were long.

  ‘Will do.’

  With that, Tiffanie stands, signalling the end of their meeting, and swigs the last of her carrot, beet and ginger juice. She winces in the same way she did when she said the word associate.

  ‘I need a fag.’

  *

  On the 390 bus from High Street Kensington to Oxford Street, Maya thinks about whether she ought to get involved in treachery and subterfuge and secret meetings with commissioning editors, who must meet people about much more serious issues, like weapons inspections or government whistle-blowers or failing NHS trusts. Then she realises how silly this all is. Four columns. Four weeks. That’s £3,200 – potentially more – to spend on windows her flat could really do with. And some light-hearted journalism about life through a fashion lens. See how it goes. It’s not as if Cressida isn’t giving her enough material lately. After ordering the retouching of all size 8, 5ft 10in FASH models to make them look slimmer (which Lucy and Rich Robinson signed off), she’s bullying the fattest girl in the office, and still keeps harping on about that monstrous day she disgusted herself by eating panini for lunch and pizza for dinner: in Cressida Blaise-Snellman’s world, double denim = #bigwin; double carbs = #epicfail. Maya knew exactly how her first column should go. She just needs to tweak it tonight.

  ‘You’re not up the duff too, are you?’ Cressida barks as Maya walks into conference an hour late and slides into her seat around the long oval table.

  Holly and Chloe nudge knees under the table, so hoping Maya will bite back when they wouldn’t dare.

  ‘Jesus,’ sighs Olivia.

  Alex pushes his glasses back up his nose and Maya suddenly thinks of James Miller. She is overcome by a boost of empowerment, of boldness, of anger.

  ‘You absolutely can’t ever say that to a member of your team, Cressida,’ says Maya. Hot face, clammy fists, shaking knees.

  ‘No, of course you’re not,’ she says with a half laugh, giving Maya a disdainful look as if to say ‘who would impregnate you anyway?!’. ‘Jokes! We’ve just lost Emma to maternity, we don’t want to lose another stalwart.’

  ‘OK, well what have I missed?’ Maya asks, getting her laptop out of her bag.

  The pen is mightier than the sword.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  ‘You can’t leave, you shit.’

  ‘I told him the same, but then he’s never really listened to me,’ Dominic deadpans, briefly raising stubby eyebrows to the ceiling.

  James and Dominic are sitting in the office of Jeremy Laws, chief creative officer of MFDD. The room is painted grey from carpet-to-ceiling, apart from the fresco-style canvas rolled out above their heads, a sunny blue skyscape looking down on them to inspire all of Jeremy’s blue-sky thinking.

  ‘You bloody bastards are the star partnership here. I’ve got Fisher + Whyman phoning me up licking my balls over your Femme images from Jamaica, and they want to throw even more business our way. Why would you possibly want to leave? Where the fuck are you going? And why aren’t you going too?’ Jeremy shoots to Dominic. Jeremy’s ginger waves and ginger beard meet at his pockmarked cheeks, his thick neck bursts out of a black V-neck top, red and irrit
ated by the morning’s news.

  ‘I wasn’t invited,’ says Dominic, trying to make light of the thorny atmosphere.

  James coughs awkwardly and pushes black rectangles back up his nose. ‘I’m not going to a rival agency. I want to be a photographer.’

  ‘He’s been doing freelance shoots on the weekends,’ says Dominic, like a proud big brother. Often speaking up for his friend who always takes more time to answer.

  ‘Freelance shoots on the weekend? What, eighty quid plus expenses to shoot a fucking wedding in Wrexham? I don’t care if you’re shooting the Queen’s fucking Christmas card, it’s not much good to this agency and our clients. You’re not going.’

  Dominic laughs.

  James blushes. He’s never been so highly – or so rudely – praised.

  This could work to my advantage.

  ‘Give me three months then. Unpaid. If I’m only shooting weddings in Wrexham in three months’ time, I’ll come back. But I’m aiming for a travel portfolio, reportage, news even…’

  ‘Oh I bet you bloody are. Sauntering off to Barbados for the winter and pretending it’s for work. Jesus Miller.’

  The room goes quiet. Dominic, arms folded, looks out of the window at the leaves blowing down Charlotte Street. Jeremy Laws scratches his jaw until red stubble looks like a rash. James sits in the chair facing his desk. Relaxed. Knowing that he is doing the right thing.

  ‘Right you bastard. You’ve got my balls in a vice. If I give you three months off, every fucker here is gonna want three months off.’

  ‘Not unpaid. Most of the creatives who work here have families. I’m single. I don’t have a mortgage. I have no dependents.’

  ‘Jesus Miller, didn’t you get the memo about growing up?’ Jeremy drinks a ristretto from the smallest of paper cups, winces, and makes a grumbling murmur as he smooths back his hair through open fingers. ‘Just do it. I hope you enjoy your little A Level art project, but I’ll see you back here at the end of January. We’ll tell Fisher + Whyman you’re owed leave. I’m not telling them you want out.’