Flying Solo: The new laugh-out-loud romantic comedy coming this summer from Zoe May!

by Zoe May

  ‘Mr Pearson! What a surprise. How are you?’ I reach over to shake his hand.

  ‘Very well thank you,’ Mr Pearson says, pumping my hand, his grip tight.

  I suppress the urge to wince. Mr Pearson has a strong handshake, and when I say strong, I mean vice-like. I force a smile while he crushes my hand, my mind racing. What’s he doing here? Why’s he making a surprise visit like this? Should I be worried? One of our competitors made a huge round of redundancies recently. Could we be in for a similar cull?

  ‘How are you doing, Rachel?’ Mr Pearson asks.

  Nothing about his placid friendly expression screams, ‘You’re about to lose your job’ but he could just have a poker face. Or else his Botox is hiding how he’s really feeling. Mr Pearson must be in his late sixties, but he’s done everything he can to hold back ageing. His forehead is unnaturally shiny and smooth. He corrected his once-receding hairline with hair plugs a few years ago that provide a wispy and slightly unnatural-looking coverage, but it’s coverage nonetheless, and his teeth have been whitened so much that they practically glow.

  ‘I’m great, thanks!’ I reply keenly, plastering on an enthusiastic smile, which I hope hides how rubbish I feel inside, although Mr Pearson will probably see through it.

  Not a lot gets past Mr Pearson. I learnt that a long time ago. He has an extraordinary ability to see right through people, cutting to the quick of things. His ability to combine an almost psychic level of intuition with razor-sharp business acumen is probably what makes him so powerful. He’s able to effortlessly grasp a person’s strengths and weaknesses, assembling teams like an army general, with a unique ability to envision how relationships will pan out and how one person’s strengths will complement another’s weaknesses. I’ve seen him assessing new recruits on interview panels and his insights into candidates’ characters and predictions of their performance have always been eerily spot-on. I often feel somewhat unmasked around him since he probably understands my strengths and weaknesses even better than I do.

  ‘Good…’ he replies hesitantly, narrowing his eyes, clearly not quite buying how ‘great’ I am.

  He asks about one of the cases I’m working on. I specialize in tax law and I’ve recently been overseeing a case against a drugs company that’s allegedly been underpaying tax. It’s been going well, and I start to feel more confident as I fill Mr Pearson in on my progress. The case has certainly been proving more of a success than my rocky personal life.

  ‘It sounds like you’re doing an excellent job. Keep it up, Rachel,’ Mr Pearson says, pumping my hand once more.

  ‘Thank you! Great to see you again,’ I say, pumping his hand back.

  He smiles, but his smile is a little tight, as though something’s still bothering him.

  He releases me from his grip and slips past me, heading into reception. I’m about to walk down the corridor to my office when his voice pulls me back again.

  ‘Rachel, pardon me for saying this, but I thought I should let you know, your jacket’s on inside out,’ he says, gesturing towards his own neat perfect-looking blazer, while smiling apologetically.

  I glance at my jacket. It’s a gorgeous tailored number I picked up in the Jigsaw sale a month or so ago and it’s rapidly become one of my favorite items of work clothing. I put it on today because it usually makes me feel smart and confident, but in my warped emotional state, I clearly wasn’t paying enough attention. I glance at the shoulder and spot an exposed seam. Mr Pearson’s right. I put my jacket on inside out. Who does that?

  ‘Thanks for letting me know,’ I croak, cringing.

  Mr Pearson nods, throwing a wave at me and the receptionist, before crossing reception and slipping through the revolving doors leading out of the building.

  I glance at the receptionist who’s now smiling at me in an awkward, sympathetic way like she’s sharing in my embarrassment. I give her a squirming smile before slipping through the doors and racing to the office toilets.

  Once inside, I take in my reflection. I’m a mess. My jacket’s on inside out, my hair looks flyaway and messy from having been blown around on my mad dash to work and I have dark shadows under my eyes that lashings of concealer have failed to mask. My eyelash extensions, which were meant to look good for my date last night, now just look out of place and a little trashy. I look like I’ve been out on the town and I’ve crawled into work with a hangover. I groan, shaking my head. On the one day I look like this, Mr Pearson has to see me. Typical! He’s probably regretting his decision to make me partner last year. I look nothing like the partner of a law firm. I don’t even look like an intern; even they make an effort to look less scruffy than this.

  Sighing, I pull off my jacket and put it on the right way around. I take a comb from my bag and smooth my hair. Then I lean close to the mirror and press gently on my eyebags, as if I might be able to zap them away, while staring blankly into my sad-looking eyes.

  The toilet door swings open and I straighten up, plastering a professional smile onto my face in anticipation of whoever’s coming in. Fortunately, it’s my colleague, Priya, who I don’t have to be fake around. Priya and I started working at Pearson & Co on the same day eight years ago. We were in the same intake of the firm’s graduate recruitment scheme and we’ve been through a lot together over the years, from our first day as nervous new recruits, to our early years as bumbling trainees, to climbing the ladder with both of us managing to reach partner level. We’re pretty much best friends. In fact, Priya and a couple of the other solicitors at my firm, Sasha and Julia, formed a, sort of, group. There’s four of us, and it’s a bit like Sex and the City meets Legally Blonde. When we’re not all totally overrun with work, we go for lunches together, chatting about everything and anything, from our cases to sex and relationships and everything in between.

  ‘Christ, what’s happened to you? Heavy night?’ Priya asks, raising her eyebrows.

  She’s never been one to mince her words.

  ‘Hardly,’ I grumble.

  Back in the day, I used to have a bit of a work hard, play hard attitude, but like Paul made clear last night, my days of being fun are behind me. These days, I’m all about DIY and home furnishings, apparently.

  ‘What’s happened then?’ Priya frowns at me, lingering by the sinks and eyeing my reflection.

  I hesitate, wondering whether to launch into it when she starts squirming.

  ‘Damn, I really need a wee. One sec.’ She heads into a cubicle.

  ‘So what’s up?’ she asks over a tinkling sound.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I reply, gazing blankly at my reflection. ‘I missed my Tube stop this morning, knocked a newspaper out of an old man’s hand, then I saw Mr Pearson, updated him on my case, feeling all professional, only for him to inform me that my jacket was on inside-out.’

  Priya bursts out laughing, before her laughter is drowned out by the sound of the toilet flushing.

  She emerges a moment later, tucking her shirt into her trousers, while clearly trying to look more serious, although the corners of her mouth are twitching.

  ‘Sorry…’ she comments, still smiling slightly, before she clocks my downbeat expression and realizes that now might not be the best time to laugh at me.

  ‘Shit, are you okay?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ I sigh. ‘That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Paul broke up with me last night,’ I admit, flinching at how it feels to say it out loud.

  ‘What?!’ Priya balks, all traces of amusement gone from her face. ‘Paul broke up with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I croak, my voice tremulous as I fight the urge to cry.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Priya utters, her eyes wide with concern. She moves in to give me a hug.

  ‘Err, wash your hands!’ I tut.

  ‘Ha,’ Priya laughs. ‘Even in the depths of despair you’re still worried about hygiene.’

  ‘Of course,’ I reply as Priya rolls her eyes, squirting soap from the dispenser onto her palm before wringing her hands together u
nder the gushing tap.

  ‘So, what happened?’ she asks. ‘I thought he was going to propose.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ I sigh.

  Priya has been almost as excited about Paul’s proposal as I’ve been. Straight after I saw him outside the jewelry shop, I came back from the office and told her. Since then, we’ve both been gearing up to the big moment of Paul popping the question. Priya quite literally bought a hat. During her lunch break last week, she found a beautiful half-price wide-brimmed ocean blue hat in a boutique down the road and bought it to wear to the wedding. We both agreed it was a good investment. I can only hope that she kept the receipt.

  I tell her the whole sorry story of last night, from how the restaurant wasn’t quite how it used to be to how it turned out that Paul didn’t even remember that we’d had our first date there. I recount him informing me he’d quit his job and explain that he’s now jetting off to India to find himself and hadn’t been buying a ring in Hatton Garden’s, but pawning one.

  ‘He pawned his mother’s ring?!’ Priya balks.

  I nod weakly.

  ‘That’s awful. For a stupid self-discovery mission to India?’ Priya sneers.

  ‘You’re Indian!’ I remind her.

  Priya may have grown up in north London, but her family hail from Delhi.

  ‘Yes,’ Priya rolls her eyes, ‘but that doesn’t mean I support people dumping my friends to gallivant around over there.’

  I laugh, although I still feel a sinking sensation. ‘I don’t even think he’s even trying to be a horrible person though, that’s the thing. The things he was saying made it sound like our life together has been getting him down for a while. He hates my obsession with the house, he says he feels bored and trapped.’

  ‘Sorry, but I’m not having that,’ Priya scoffs, chucking her paper towel into a nearby bin. ‘You don’t just quit your job and disappear to India when you have a problem in a relationship. That’s not how adults behave.’

  ‘Unless you’re totally unbearably sick of your life,’ I counter.

  Priya rolls her eyes. ‘No. He’s being a child,’ she insists and it’s a comfort to hear the anger and sense of injustice in her voice.

  It makes me feel better. It makes me feel less like the boring insufferable noose around Paul’s neck that I’ve been feeling like ever since I left the restaurant.

  ‘I don’t exactly love what he’s doing, but it is what it is,’ I reason.

  ‘Really?!’ Priya frowns. ‘No. You need to sort this out,’ she insists.

  ‘What do you mean? I can’t. He’s a grown man. If he wants to hop on a plane to India, I can’t stop him.’

  I eye my reflection despondently in the mirror.

  ‘Has he actually left already?’ Priya asks incredulously.

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t come home last night. Some of his clothes were missing. He could have gone straight from the restaurant to the airport for all I know.’

  ‘He’s just left?’ Priya gawps.

  ‘Yep!’

  ‘You know I’ve always really liked Paul, but this is some next level bullshit.’ Priya shakes her head.

  ‘Yeah, it really is,’ I admit, taking a wand of concealer from my bag to top up the lashings underneath my eyes.

  ‘You shouldn’t tolerate this,’ Priya insists.

  ‘What can I do?’ I sigh, dabbing the wand onto my eyebags, while meeting her pointed gaze with less enthusiasm.

  ‘He’s really taken the wind out of your sails,’ Priya observes.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  Priya gestures at my reflection. ‘This is not the Rachel I know. The Rachel I know doesn’t slump her shoulders like that. She doesn’t look despondent and defeated. She has a smile on her face. She’s confident. She’s a go-getter and she doesn’t take shit.’

  I laugh weakly. ‘That Rachel didn’t just get dumped!’ I point out. ‘Like I said, I can’t force Paul to be with me if that’s not what he wants.’

  Priya shakes her head. ‘No. He’s clearly having some kind of quarter-life crisis. This isn’t Paul. You need save the relationship and save him. It sounds like he’s having a breakdown,’ Priya observes.

  ‘How can I save him when he’s jetting off to the other side of the world? He’s out of my hands,’ I remind her, turning to face her.

  ‘Okay, look…’ Priya leans back against the sink, a pensive expression on her face. ‘The guy clearly needs a holiday, that’s understandable. Work’s obviously got too much for him. Happens to the best of us. But I really don’t think you should let your relationship go without a fight. You guys have been together for ages, that means something. One stupid argument in a restaurant shouldn’t spell the end of all that.’

  ‘One stupid argument and a getaway mission to India!’ I add fretfully.

  ‘Okay.’ Priya meets my anxious gaze. ‘Let him have his break in India. Give him a few weeks to unwind, relax, get some headspace or whatever it is he needs to do and then go and make up with him, talk to him, and get your lives back on track. You’re not the kind of person who lets life just wash over you, Rachel. You’re not just a piece of flotsam that gets swept up in the stream and chucked about. You’re the kind of person who has a Life List, for crying out loud,’ Priya reminds me.

  We had a drunken heart to heart in the pub one night back when we first started at the firm and I told Priya about my Life List. She wasn’t particularly fazed. She’s just as ambitious. She’s a strong believer that you forge your own destiny. Like me, Priya comes from a modest background and worked hard to get to where she is. But unlike me, she’s the kind of person who wakes up at the crack of dawn every day, blitzes a protein-filled smoothie and listens to motivational podcasts while pounding the treadmill at the gym. When she broke up with her cheating ex-boyfriend, instead of wallowing in self-pity, watching movies and scoffing ice-cream like the rest of us, Priya stayed in hermit-like all weekend and emerged with an action plan. It was a detailed military-style dating strategy with clearly outlined objectives (namely, find a guy worth marrying) and key performance indicators (number of high-quality matches, dates per month, etc.). Within six months of actioning her plan, Priya had a new boyfriend, and within a couple of years, they were married. His name’s Rene and she’s totally smitten. Priya’s methods may be unusual, and they’re certainly not the stuff of Shakespearean romances, but they’ve worked for her.

  ‘You’re the master of your destiny, the captain of your ship,’ Priya tells me. ‘Are you really going to let Paul chuck your relationship away because of some childish tantrum or are you going to take control of this situation?’

  She regards me with a look of impassioned intensity. Priya is known for her rousing speeches. She delivers them in meetings sometimes and has been known to alter the mood of an entire conference room. She’s a natural born leader and has an incredible ability to fire people up. She’s right that I am a confident go-getter most of the time, but there have been a few occasions over the years when a speech from Priya is what gave me the strength to conquer a task or situation that felt overwhelming. She’s a good friend. And now is no different. Her words are affecting me. The look in her eyes and the passion in her voice is making me question myself. She’s right, I shouldn’t let a relationship I’ve invested six years of my life into simply collapse because my boyfriend has decided to jet off to India. No. I should fight for this. I’m not a piece of flotsam being swept along in the currents of life. I am the captain of my own ship.

  ‘I’m going to get him back!’ I announce, thinking out loud.

  Priya smiles widely. ‘That’s my girl.’

  ‘I’m going to go to India and I’m going to win my boyfriend back,’ I assert.

  ‘Damn straight you are. You’ve got this,’ Priya enthuses.

  I pull her into a hug.

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Anytime!’ Priya replies, hugging me tightly back.

  I look over her shoulder at my reflection in the mi
rror. My hair may still be a bit crazy-looking and my eyes are still lined with shadows, but there’s a trace of my usual sparkle back in them now. My jacket is on the right way around and I’m back in action.

  Chapter Four

  Staring into space, eyes full of tears, while despondently nibbling at a piece of toast, was definitely not on my Life List. And yet that’s exactly what I’m doing.

  It’s odd being home alone. This little terraced house has always felt like a symbol of mine and Paul’s relationship. It’s just an average two-bedroom red brick house midway along a suburban street in a not-quite-gentrified part of south London, but it was our home. When we bought it and began renovating it and making it our own, it felt like we were truly putting down roots, preparing for our future. It felt good. When we bought the house, it was run-down, old and neglected, but thanks to our efforts, it’s been given a new lease of life. We weeded the garden, scrubbed the bricks, gave the front door and windowsill a fresh lick of paint, and made it look almost as good as new. I’ve been so proud of our efforts. It’s gorgeous and cozy now, as my 2,398 followers on my Instagram account @rachnpaulspad would no doubt agree. And yet, this gorgeous house could have cost me my relationship. I sigh, nibbling my toast.

  The truth is, there are reasons I’m borderline obsessed with home furnishings. There are reasons I inadvertently went from a cool fun girlfriend to a home-furnishings obsessed #interiordecor bore. And there are reasons I never really wanted to talk to Paul about it.

  I don’t really like ruminating over the past. I mean, where does that get you? It certainly won’t help me reach any of the goals on my Life List, and yet since Paul left, I’ve been doing some reflection. I’ve been wondering if have taken the whole home furnishings obsession a bit too far. I might have done. And if I dig deep, I can sort of see why. There was definitely a turning point in my childhood that led me to be this way. I’m not about to pen a misery memoir. My childhood was pretty good. My mum and dad loved me. As their only child, they doted on me and my early years couldn’t have been happier. We lived in a quaint little house not too dissimilar to the one I have now, except we lived in the village of Oxshott in Surrey. My parents had good jobs. My dad was a construction manager and my mum worked in sales. We had a nice life. I wanted for nothing. I had lovely clothes, all the latest toys, and a beautiful girly princess-like bedroom that was the envy of all my friends. My parents were happy too. We were settled. We had all the things that are so easy to take for granted – stability, a nice car, a couple of holidays a year, a good home, but then when I was 12, everything changed.