The names blurred as tears came in a rush of uncontrollable sobs.
Across the open-plan room, the lift suddenly rumbled into life.
She snapped her head back up mid-sob, heart thundering in panic. In that brief moment it seemed entirely possible that the whole team, some thirty-odd people, were about to pour back in and find Alice a blubbering wreck with her head in her hands and a face full of snot, crumpled in the middle of the office.
The mortification of moments before stepped up to even dizzier heights.
She needed to get out of here. She did not need to be seen having an emotional meltdown by her colleagues. She needed a quiet space to think, calm down, get her head together. She stared madly around the room and finally made a manic dash for the only option of refuge within sprinting distance.
Sad cliché that it was, Alice Ford, top-class ambitious professional, was about to be reduced to crying in the Ladies.
Stumbling blindly between desks, knocking her thigh agonisingly hard against the corner of the printer table and upending a bin as she went, she sprinted in her high-heeled court shoes towards the door of the restroom, actually had it in her sights as the ping of the lift signalled its arrival and the doors slid smoothly apart.
She almost made it. A second or two faster and all Harry Stephens would have known about it would have been the slamming of the door behind her. Instead what he got was a full-on glimpse of her face as she shoved past him. Since the first thing she saw as she made it into the Ladies was her own reflection in the mirror, she knew that, humiliatingly, he’d just been treated to her beetroot-red face running with a combination of tears and snot and her always-sleek chignon looking like a rat’s nest where she’d been clutching in anguish at her hair.
A loud knock on the door made her jump.
‘Alice?’
She ignored him.
‘Alice?’ Louder this time. ‘Are you OK?’
Another knock. Perhaps if she kept quiet he’d give up. She clutched the side of the sink in frustration.
‘Sandra’s downstairs in Reception. I’ll go and get her,’ he said.
Sandra. The resentful marketing assistant who’d been passed over when Alice got her promotion to Account Manager and who would probably like to see her buried under a patio. No, thanks. She could envisage the ill-hidden glee and fake concern on Sandra’s face right now and it was enough to galvanise her into action.
‘I am fine!’ she snapped, hearing the nasal tone in her voice from all the crying and hating it. ‘I don’t need Sandra or anyone else. I’m perfectly all right.’
He totally ignored her.
‘No, you’re not. What’s up? Maybe I can help?’
The idea that she might want an emotional chat about her love life, or lack of it, with the man who was sleeping his way through the office actually raised a crazy bubble of laughter.
‘Go away,’ she snapped.
‘I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re OK.’
The concern that softened the deep voice was, of course, not genuine. Harry Stephens didn’t do concern. As Head of Graphic Design he did creative brilliance in the office and short-term devastation in his personal life. Emotions like concern need not apply. Anyone with a pulse and a pretty face in this building had probably at some point looked into his deep blue eyes and thought he would be different with her. So far, he never had been.
She was just trying to come up with an adequately cutting response that would get him off her case once and for all when he opened the door. She hadn’t considered for one second that he’d actually have the arrogance to follow her into the ladies’ room. She caught a glimpse of her own gobsmacked expression in the mirror as she dashed into one of the cubicles and twisted the lock.
‘You can’t come in here!’ she squawked.
‘I’m already in here,’ he said. A pause. ‘And I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re OK, so you might as well just come out with it.’
She heard the squeak of the wicker chair in the corner as he made himself comfortable. Despair rushed in and buried her. She’d let her guard down; let the mess she’d been in the past show through. And he’d seen it. The real Alice Ford—behind the iron-solid professional glossy persona she’d worked so hard to perfect.
The surge of grief swelled back up, too big to squash down or bat aside, and in her misery her guard slipped a little.
She sat down on the toilet, clutched her hot forehead in her hands, and closed her eyes against her wet palms. She had the beginnings of a headache.
‘It’s nothing,’ she mumbled. ‘Work stuff.’
* * *
A vague comment that would probably put most people off probing any further, Harry thought. She was the expert at keeping things on a work level. He couldn’t think of a single person in the office who had ever socialised properly with her.
He wasn’t most people.
‘Then I can definitely help,’ he said. ‘If it’s work related. I’m always happy to help out a colleague.’
‘Please will you just go away?’
The despair in her voice tugged unexpectedly at his heart. He jumped a little in surprise. Of course, he didn’t do crying women so no wonder his reactions were off kilter. He didn’t need emotional angst. Avoid like the plague.
Except that this situation was also an opportunity.
Alice Ford was the current subject of the office betting ring, an outwardly light-hearted but in reality deadly serious pastime. Naturally he had a huge stake in it and naturally he intended to win. He’d simply been biding his time. And now that time was here.
‘No chance,’ he said.
He heard her strangled sob and was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, moving across to the cubicle door. He spoke through it, making his voice gentle.
‘Come on. Tell me what’s up,’ he encouraged. ‘Is it family stuff? I know what that can be like.’ He certainly did. Putting family stuff out of his mind was pretty much up there at the top of his priorities.
‘No,’ she mumbled, between sobs.
‘Boyfriend stuff, then?’
A perfunctory suggestion and he knew it. The word was that there had been no boyfriend in years—the surprisingly high-stakes bet proved that. But no harm in confirming the fact, confirming the challenge.
‘You don’t know the first thing about it!’ she howled angrily through the door. ‘With your life-is-a-cabaret attitude.’
‘Oh, OK, so tell me the first thing about it. Has some bloke dumped you? Because if he has, he’s an idiot.’
In Harry’s opinion, flattery was always a good starting point.
She snorted bitterly.
‘Are you having some kind of a laugh?’
‘No. I just assumed that the main reason women cry in toilets is over men.’
‘Well, of course, you’d know that, wouldn’t you? I bet there have been plenty of tears shed in here over you.’
He chose to ignore that.
‘If it’s not over a man, then what the hell is it?’
‘Will you please just leave me alone?’ The anguished note rose in her voice. Maybe if he just pushed her a bit