I thought about sex on Sunday and did an emergency underwear wash. I hung my black bra to dry on the radiator in my bedroom, so that it would be ready for my date. I thought about sex on Monday on the packed Piccadilly line, my face pressed up against someone else’s armpit, and then I stopped thinking about sex because I had a sudden vision of what it would be like to shag the owner of the armpit and started to feel queasy. As I walked to the Victoria line platform, I allowed myself to check out the other commuters. I hadn’t done that in years – it felt pointless and liable to lead to disappointment, like window shopping in Knightsbridge. That man has hands, I thought to myself. What a lovely smile. (I was a bit out of practice.)
Once I arrived at the office, all thoughts of sex fled from my mind, as if they’d been chased away by a very unsexy person. In a way, I suppose, they had; Tom followed me into the lift.
‘Ready?’ he asked, looking straight ahead, as the lift carried us up to our floor.
‘For what?’
‘Smriti. It’s her first day.’
There was an atmosphere in the office. I’d never known there to be an atmosphere in the office before, apart from a general sense of ennui. Owen was wearing a tie. Uzo was sitting up straighter at her desk than usual and, worryingly, wasn’t checking her mobile phone every five minutes. In fact, her phone seemed to be in her bag.
The lift opened with an ominous bing! and there, all of a sudden, was Smriti Laghari, our new Grade Six.
We pretended to work for about ten minutes, our attention very much focused on where Smriti was in the office, our bodies turning slightly to face her, like sunflowers following the sun. Smriti was a little bit like the sun – she was shiny, or at least her teeth were. Her hair too. Looking at her made me feel a bit unwashed, though I’d had a shower that morning and shampooed my hair twice by accident.
After about a quarter of an hour, Smriti walked into the middle of the office – next to the cupboard where we keep our biscuits – and said, ‘Hey guys!’ Even her voice was sunny. Everyone swivelled towards her. ‘I just wanted to introduce myself.’
‘She shouldn’t have said “just”,’ I whispered to Owen. ‘It weakens her message.’
‘This is my first role outside private office, so I hope you’ll be patient with me as I get up to speed. I’m psyched to be working with you guys!’
‘She shouldn’t have said “psyched”, either,’ muttered Owen. ‘No one should say “psyched”.’
There was an awkward silence – people didn’t usually make speeches on their first day in a new job – and then a half-hearted round of applause, because she seemed to expect one. I could see people on other teams looking round to see if it was a birthday or a leaving party, and whether there might be cake.
‘She didn’t mention restructuring,’ said Owen.
‘Would have been a bit bold to lead with that, wouldn’t it?’ I said.
‘She didn’t even say “streamlining”. I think we’re going to be OK.’
We watched Smriti walk, smiling at everyone she passed, into her new glass-walled office, followed by Tom. Uzo gave Tom a thumbs up. Tom looked straight ahead, like a child in a school play pretending not to see his parents.
Once Smriti’s office door was shut, the rest of us relaxed a little. Uzo took her phone out and started texting. Owen offered to make a tea round. Across the office, I saw Stan open a bag of ready salted.
‘I already wish it was Friday,’ said Uzo, eyes on her phone.
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘Doing anything exciting this weekend?’ Uzo asked.
‘Not really,’ I said, casual as anything. ‘Just going on a date.’
‘A DATE?’ boomed Uzo. ‘Owen. Owen, man. Did you hear that?’
Owen put the mugs down in a hurry, spilling a little tea on the pile of correspondence on my desk. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What have you heard?’
‘Nothing about work,’ I said. ‘Uzo’s just excited because I’m going on a date on Friday night.’
‘Oh! Who with?’ asked Owen.
‘No one,’ I said. ‘Just a guy I met at a party.’
I sipped my tea and logged the latest letters and emails in the system. I had to draft replies to several urgent emails from the Treasury, but I had another letter from Eric, the Bomber Command vet, so I read that first.
I’ll always remember the day I met Eve – 9 October 1943, in the sergeants’ mess at RAF White Waltham. She was a First Officer in the Air Transport Auxiliary and she could fly a Spitfire like the best of them! I liked the look of her, so I went to say hello, and she smiled at me, and that was that. She had beautiful blue eyes – right up until she died, they were the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. We were married for seventy years. I’ve got the telegram from the Queen framed here in my room at the home; I’m looking at it now, as I write to you. I don’t know why she had to die first. But I’m very lucky to have had her as long as I did, I suppose. Here’s a photo of us on our wedding day. (I photocopied it at my local library. Aren’t libraries smashing?)
I’ll let you go now, my dear. I’m sure you have much better things to do than read any more of my drivel!
Yours (as ever),
Eric Beecham
P.S. – Are you married? Or do you have a fellow?
Not yet, Eric, I thought. The ‘yet’ shows you how optimistic I was about my date. I looked at the grainy black-and-white picture of the young couple outside a church, squinting in the sunlight. They were arm in arm, beaming, Eve in a white dress and Eric in his RAF uniform, his ears sticking out beneath his Brylcreemed hair. They looked so young and happy. I tucked the picture into my wallet, so I could look at it when I needed a dose of Forties optimism.
My impending date was the talk of the correspondence team for the rest of the week. On Wednesday, Uzo sent me a link to an article about depilation and advised me not to use expensive new face products in the run-up to the date in case they irritated my skin. ‘I’m not going to make that much of an effort,’ I told her. ‘I’m not desperate.’ Uzo gave me a look that clearly meant, ‘You should be.’
And as I was getting ready to leave on Friday, Owen decided to give me some first date advice. ‘Ask him which three bands sum up his taste in music,’ he said. ‘Or what his childhood nickname was. If you get him to talk about himself, he’ll think you’re a good listener.’
‘You Googled “conversation starters” before your first date with Laura, didn’t you?’ I asked.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I just happened to read an article about them in Men’s Health.’
The idea of Owen reading Men’s Health made Uzo snort so loudly that Smriti came out of her office to see if anything was wrong.
‘Text us and let us know how it’s going, yeah?’ said Uzo, as I shut down my computer.
‘I am not going to text you in the middle of my date,’ I said. ‘Unless it’s really bad and I need someone to come and rescue me.’
‘I hope you don’t,’ said Owen.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Me too.’
I met Finn outside the BFI. It was my idea to go there; if he turned out to be incredibly unattractive or boring, at least I’d have seen one more Derek Jarman film, which would