‘No – you couldn’t stand another bad first date,’ said Gaby. ‘But what if this was the last first date you ever had, because it was so good?’
Nadia was grateful that Gaby was playing to her more romantic inclinations, because she was enjoying imagining what would happen if she met the love of her life through a newspaper ad. How they’d laugh about it, and be forever united in their appreciation of big gestures and taking chances. But Nadia was suddenly suspicious too: Gaby was usually sceptical and pithy about love, priding herself on dating man after man but not needing any of them. It wasn’t like her to coax anyone into believing fairy tales were real.
‘What’s made you such a romantic all of a sudden?’ Nadia asked, eyes narrowed. ‘You’re supposed to be my cynical friend.’
Gaby shrugged, non-committal. ‘What are you working on today?’ she said, by way of reply.
‘Now who’s changing the subject!’
‘Don’t get smart with me, Fielding.’
Nadia made a mental note to follow up with Gaby later on her sudden softening. Something was different about her, now she thought about it. Nadia was a tart for her work, though, and so was seduced by her own vanity into talking about it.
‘It’s crunch time on the prototypes for the fulfilment centres soon. That newspaper exposé really damaged the stock price and John wants actual humans out of the role as soon as possible to get the whole thing boxed off as an HR issue. Which sucks for the thousands of people who don’t know they’re going to be unemployed by Christmas …’
‘Oh, that’s hard. That’s really hard,’ Gaby said.
‘I feel bad, yeah. I’m building robots to replace humans, and … well. It’s so conflicting, you know?’
The lift pinged back open, and seeing that it was going up, Nadia stepped in.
‘To be continued?’ said Gaby.
‘To be continued,’ said Nadia. ‘I’d like to maybe brainstorm ideas about making sure everyone gets jobs elsewhere? I’d like to help.’
‘Sure!’ Gaby said, adding: ‘Maybe over lunch this week? Wednesday? I’ve got a lunch meeting tomorrow. We’ve not been across to Borough in ages. And we’re not done talking about this missed connection.’
‘Stop talking to Emma about my love life!’
Nadia could hear Gaby giggling even as the lift went up.
Daniel
‘You’ve been infatuated with her for months, mate. Today is a big day!’
Lorenzo had called him at work, despite being asked not to. But Lorenzo hated his job and got bored easily and liked winding up his flatmate and also feigning busyness at his own desk, at a publishing house north of the river. Plus, he was charming enough to persuade the receptionist, Percy, to connect the call, even though Daniel had given Percy numerous and explicit instructions not to. Lorenzo enjoyed practising his charm and getting his own way. Reaching Daniel at his office was another way for him to show off.
‘She’s not bloody seen it, though,’ Daniel hissed down the phone.
‘Can you change the adjectives and send it again, for somebody else you’ve spotted? Throw enough shit and something will stick,’ Lorenzo said, and Daniel was about 70 per cent sure he wasn’t joking. Lorenzo said he wanted a relationship, but from what Daniel had seen his requirements for dating were that she had a pulse, and didn’t talk too much. It was very Lorenzo of him to suggest simply trying the same tactic with another woman.
‘Go and sell some books,’ Daniel retorted.
‘Can’t be arsed, mate. Still on a comedown.’
Daniel hated that Lorenzo did coke Thursday through Sunday. He never did it at home, Lorenzo promised, but Daniel was still the one made to put up with his mood swings as he scaled the walls and then festered on the sofa for the first half of the week – even if he did watch great telly as he did it. Lorenzo was a good bloke, but didn’t half make some choices that Daniel couldn’t help but think weren’t exactly sound. It was so frustrating to be witness to. They’d ended up living together through a SpareRoom.co.uk advert Lorenzo had put up, and Daniel had his suspicions from the beginning that they were a bit chalk and cheese, but the location of the flat and the rent price were basically perfect, so Daniel had made a decision to largely overlook their differences, not quite becoming friends, but certainly becoming more than just strangers who lived together. They had forged their own, very particular, double act, and until Daniel had a place of his own, it did the job.
‘I’m going now,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve got actual work to do. I’ll see you at home.’
Lorenzo was still talking as he put the phone down. Not seconds later, Daniel’s mobile flashed with a message. It was Lorenzo.
Well done on having the balls, mate, it said. That was Lorenzo’s way of saying, I know you hate it when I’m a twat but I can’t help it. Daniel double-tapped it and gave it a thumbs-up.
Daniel resumed idly scrolling through the emails on his desktop, trying to focus on the day ahead and not on the morning that had been. He couldn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He couldn’t stop thinking about the day they first met.
Not long after Daniel’s father had died, just after Easter, Daniel had begun to force himself to leave his desk whenever he felt claustrophobic, or uneasy, or like he might cry. In his grief – the word ‘depression’ still sort of stuck in his throat a bit, sounded a bit wet – his therapist had said that being outside, in nature, would always help.
Christ. He couldn’t believe he had a therapist.
‘Keep using your body, make sure you engage with the world, take a stroll around the nearest park, even, just to get the energy moving differently,’ she told him at one of their first sessions together, when he’d said about panic attacks that grabbed him by the throat and made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
He’d had to pay sixty-five pounds an hour to go private because the NHS waiting list was too long, his situation too dire to wait because he could barely function, and he wondered, not unkindly, if this was the kind of advice he could expect for two hundred plus quid a month. Anyway. Walk he did, at the very least to feel like he was getting value for money, and she’d been there, Nadia (of course, he didn’t know that was her name then), in the courtyard tucked away off Borough Market. A random Friday. Poof. At his lowest, in a moment of pure emotional desperation, this positive, engaged, clever woman had appeared and her verve – her very essence, her aura – was like sunshine, solar-powering everyone around her. It had knocked Daniel sideways.
Daniel knew exactly which day he’d first seen her because it was two weeks after the funeral, and five weeks after he’d started his six-month consulting contract at Converge, a petroleum engineering firm. It was the day his mother had rung when he was in a meeting about the design flaws of a submersive drill, and he’d excused himself in time to pick up in case it was urgent.
She’d said, ‘He’s here.’
‘What do you mean, Mum?’ Daniel had replied. ‘Dad’s … Dad died, remember?’
He’d held his breath as he waited for her to realize she’d used the wrong word, said the wrong thing. He held up two fingers to the guys on the other side of the glass partition, signalling two minutes. He just needed two minutes. They were impatient, needing his sign-off before lunch, and suspicious of an outsider