Page 32 of The Last Train Home
‘OK, so how about this?’ he asks when we’ve settled up the bar bill. He’s helping me on with my coat and, in doing so, gets closer to me than he’s been all evening. He smells nice, of a musky, wintery aftershave. ‘I’ve been invited to theopening night of a new bar soon,’ he tells me. ‘There’ll be free drinks and canapés. You up for it? A few friends are going, so there’ll be a little gang of us.’
‘Yeah, all right.’ Oh, this is good. This next meet-up isn’t a date, by the sounds of it. Free booze and canapés sounds great, and Sean is actually quite good company. He’s fun, easy to talk to, asks questions instead of solely talking about himself. We haven’t stopped talking all evening, and being with him isn’t stilted at all. I hope the friends he’s going with to this bar opening don’t include Tom. I’m assuming Sean doesn’t know what happened between us. Is it wrong of me to assume that? I can’t ask that. I can’t ask anything really. Perhaps going on a couple of dates with Sean is a really bad idea, now I think about it.
‘Do you fancy some dinner?’ he says, halting my inner angst.
‘Now? Or after the bar opening?’
‘Now.Andafter the bar opening,’ he says, with the kind of smile that makes his eyes crinkle, the kind of smile that weakens my resolve a tad. We leave the bar, climbing the stairs and entering the streets of the City once again. The sun was still out this time last month, although not as fierce as it had been the month before. But we’re tantalisingly close to Christmas now, and I’m permanently cold. They never turn the heating on in my building. But they do make up for it with an enormous expenses budget, so I’m feeling forgiving.
Sean pulls up the collar of his coat to shield him against the biting winter wind. I love a man in a peacoat, collar up or down.Oh dear, what’s happening?
‘OK, dinner sounds nice.’
‘There’s a great little Vietnamese place I know,’ he says, taking charge. ‘We might have to wait for a table, but they have a bar. So we can brush up on your beer-mat catching skills while we wait,’ he teases. ‘Although I’m not sure they have mats, now I think about it.’
‘Not to worry,’ I say, opening my bag to show him the contents within. ‘I’ve stolen two from in there, so I could practise at home. They only throw them away when they get wet anyway.’
He laughs, puts his arm around my shoulders and we huddle together against the chill as he takes me out for dinner.
Andorra is cold but fun, cosmopolitan and full of snow-capped mountains. Everywhere I turn I feel I’m looking at a postcard. It’s making me feel incredibly Christmassy and I’ve only been here twenty-four hours. It’s also full of very rich people who like to ski. I haven’t had time to get out on the slopes, but I do get to go Christmas shopping – it’s tax-free – and eat very well indeed, on company money. This is the dream job, surely. I just wish I got paid a bit more, so I could actually afford to start saving. I have nothing saved, which financially-minded Natasha tells me is a crime. I’m not sure it’s that bad, but she has encouraged me to start thinking about a pension. When I get home I find pension leaflets artfully fanned out next to the kettle, which makes me laugh. But I vow to take it seriously. I’m living like a grown-up, so I should start taking some grown-up financial decisions.
I’m telling Sean about Andorra while we’re sipping free cocktails at the bar launch. We’re waiting for his friends to arrive.Obviously we are both ridiculously keen, because we’re among the first there. He’s never been to Andorra, either, and he tells me he’s off on holiday for two weeks to the Maldives in the New Year.
‘Two weeks?’ I ask, as a waitress comes past carrying mini-hamburger canapés. We take one each. ‘Wow!’
‘Promise not to laugh if I tell you I’m going with my parents?’
‘Why would I laugh?’ I ask.
‘It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? A bit lame?’ He looks at me through his eyelashes, thick and dark, shadowing captivating eyes. I didn’t notice that on our first date.
I swallow. ‘No. If my parents stumped up for me to go to the Maldives, I’d be packing my bags to go quite happily.’ I adjust my bag on my arm.
‘Yeah, I really like going away with my parents,’ he says, ‘which is definitely sad. But it’s all right. We go and see stuff, I spend time with them because I hardly see them the rest of the year, we sit around on sun loungers a lot and prop the bar up each night. It’s actually pretty decent.’
‘It sounds it,’ I respond.
‘It’s also a good way to kill off some time.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘I’m leaving my job – I’m handing in my notice tomorrow. And because I’m going to a rival, the moment I tell Tom, he’ll put me on gardening leave, so I’ve booked this holiday during my eight weeks off.’
My stomach clenches at hearing Tom’s name and I try to ignore that Sean’s even said it. ‘What’s gardening leave?’
‘It’s when your boss assumes you’re leaving to hand over all the company secrets to your next employer, so they marchyou out the door there and then, so you can’t start nicking all the files.’
I blink. ‘Mercenary!’ And then, ‘Tom wouldn’t think you’d do that, surely.’
‘No, he wouldn’t, but it doesn’t matter what Tom thinks. It’s company policy. It’ll have to happen. So I’ve got eight weeks off. Paid.’
I raise my glass and we clink to ‘Cheers’. ‘Congratulations on your new job,’ I say.
‘Thanks,’ he replies with a warm smile. ‘Tom’s been a bit weird of late, so I’m not sure how he’s going to take it. You two don’t talk much any more?’ he probes.
‘No, not really,’ I say casually, praying Tom never told Sean what happened in his flat.
I change the subject and ask Sean what his new job is. But when people in finance start talking to me about what they do, I can’t seem to differentiate between one job and another. Tom, Sean and Natasha may have wildly different jobs, they may also haveexactlythe same job, and no matter how many times I’m told, I’ll never grasp it. It’s like someone’s trying to explain the offside rule to me while using terminology from theFinancial Times.
