“Really? Thanks.”
“Thankyou,” she says, “for not choosing a holiday during half-term week, which is when every other bugger here puts their forms in for. Where are you going?”
I tell her about George and Thailand.
Her eyes glaze over in wistfulness. “Christ, I could do with getting shagged in a super-king bed by a fit personal trainer in Thailand. I will need all the details when you return, please.”
“As an HR professional, Clare, are you actually allowed to make sexual assumptions about me—out loud?” I watch her turn white. Then I can’t suppress my laughter any longer and put her out of her misery.
“Fucking hell,” she says as she exhales. “Don’t scare me like that. The last thing this company needs is another tribunal.”
I give her a kiss on the cheek and wave goodbye to everyone else. I can’t be bothered to explain that George and I are just friends, so now seems like a good time to leave, simply to put an end to the conversation rather than start a whole new volcano of questions erupting. Also, I’m tired. As I leave, I pull my coat around me and watch as office Christmas parties pile out into the street. There’s a couple standing under a streetlamp, kissing—office workers, I’m guessing—and I make up a story about them: of secret love undeclared until the night of their Christmas party. And now they’re going to have to hide it from the rest of their office until the end of time. My phone rings and I laugh at myself.
Davey is WhatsApp-calling me, and I realize how much I’ve been willing him to get in touch again.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi, yourself. Good night?”
“Yeah. Pub quiz.”
“How did you—”
“Last,” I admit, almost with pride.
“Ah, you can’t win ’em all. Besides, I still think you’re great.”
I see the green man flash on the crossing up ahead and make a dash for it.
“Was that too much?” Davey asks. “Me saying you’re great. It feels like too much. Sorry.”
“No, sorry, I was just running for the green man.”
“Green man?”
“The light crossing,” I clarify.
“OK,” he replies. “I don’t wanna be creepy.”
“You are not creepy,” I reply, thinking again of that image of him: shirtless, droplets of water on his chest. “I’m glad you rang, even though this is all completely out of the ordinary.”
“Me too. And who wants ordinary anyway?” he asks.
We talk as I walk toward Liverpool Street Station. He’s on a late lunch break and tells me he’s sitting in a park with the sun beating down on him, eating a “sub.”
“I need to know what that is,” I say.
“What my dad always calls a ‘roll’—pretty much. A big sandwich thing.”
“Is it nice?” I ask as a filler question to nowhere.
“Uh-huh,” he says and I can tell he’s chewing.
The lights of the pubs and offices shine out at me as I walk. London is never dark. It’s comforting. Oversized Christmas trees adorn the foyers of offices. “Is it Christmassy where you are?” I ask.
“You bet. I mean, not in the park. But I can’t turn around in a coffee shop without seeing red cups everywhere, and there are flavors of coffee you’d never drink at any other time of year.”
I tell him about Joan and our quest to get through all the Nespresso flavors. “We were almost there, only they keep introducing these limited-edition ones and Joan does get lured into a flavor parade.”
