‘JAKE!’ she hissed, really getting alarmed now. ‘Please tell me you’re kidding?’
‘Course I am, you eejit. It went so well that they guy interviewing me asked me if I’d mind hanging on a bit so I could meet the school principal, who took one look at my grades, told me they were a bit short staffed for the summer months and basically asked me when I could start. Just a few hours a week at first, is all they could promise me, but am I complaining? Are you kidding me?’
Without even knowing she was doing it, Eloise let out a whoop of pure joy, causing Rachel, who’d been having a discreet earwig nearby, to nearly spill an Americano all over her keyboard.
‘So I just have one question for you, Missy,’ Jake asked down the phone.
‘What?’
‘Where do you want me to take you tonight to celebrate?’
Jake had bought her a bouquet of flowers for starters, to really start the night off in style. Lilies. For some reason, he’d remember her saying something about loving lilies and that single word – lily – had lodged in his mind. So earlier, he’d gone to a local florist and gone the whole hog, splashing out on the biggest bunch they had in the shop. And when he presented them to her, she actually blushed, like it had been years since anyone had spontaneously bought her flowers. Made her look so pretty and young and vulnerable, he thought, suddenly getting an impulse to hug her, but afraid she’d misinterpret it.
After all, ostensibly, the only reason she was even in his life in the first place was because of the feature piece she’d claimed she was about to run in the Post. Jake had tried raising it with her a few times lately, but all she’d do would be to swat his concerns away, saying that, for the moment at least, his job interview should be their sole focus. The feature, she’d crisply told him, could be shelved until he’d become an upstanding, tax-paying member of the community again. Will even make for better reading, she’d added. Because after all, who didn’t love a happy ending?
‘Oh … They’re absolutely beautiful,’ Eloise said, sounding utterly shocked as she played with the ribbon tied around the cellophane-wrapped bouquet and burying her face deep into the lilies, breathing in their gorgeous sweet smell.
‘You deserve them. You should be given flowers more often. And while we’re on the subject, you should be chloroformed, physically dragged out of that shagging office and taken out to dinner more often.’
‘Me? Ha! That’s a laugh.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, let’s not even go there.’
‘I don’t get the kind of fellas you must hang around with, I really don’t,’ he said, shaking his head as he pulled on his jacket and got ready to leave his flat.
‘You’re a lovely, gorgeous person, intelligent and successful too. Any guy should be proud to have you on his arm, only delighted to take you out on a Friday night.’
She looked up at him, deeply touched.
‘I mean that, by the way,’ he said, simply.
‘I know you do,’ she said, an inconvenient lump suddenly appearing in her throat. ‘And thank you. After the day I had, I needed … Well, let’s just say I needed a bit of kindness.’
‘So come on then, what are we waiting for? I said I’d take you out to spoil you rotten tonight and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’
He knew exactly where too. He’d walked past Raoul’s, a gorgeous local French restaurant, nearly every day for the past few weeks and made an inner vow to himself; if he got the job, he’d treat Eloise to a celebration dinner there as a way of thanking her.
As usual, he could practically see the tension beginning to roll off Eloise after a few gulpfuls of wine. She’d begun to open up to him more and more, he’d noticed, every time they talked now. Told him more about Seth Coleman and his latest shenanigans and how he was insidiously going out of his way to get rid of her once and for all.
But there was something else too, something she’d skirted around before but never really got to the marrow of. Eloise knew only too well, she confided in him, how unpopular she was in work and all the horrible nicknames her colleagues had given her behind her back. No one really liked her and they never had. Not even the few, the very few who, even if she didn’t count them as actual friends, were at least allies. If it came to a heave against her in favour of Seth, she stressed, and he swore he could hear the agony in her voice as she articulated the terrifying thought out loud; then who in their right minds would possibly choose her?
‘But you’ve been there for years,’ he counselled gently. ‘Why is it that you feel so friendless? Tell me, because I honestly don’t get it. The Eloise I know is nothing like the woman you describe.’
She took another sip of wine and gazed distractedly down at her napkin.
‘Been like that all my whole life,’ she eventually confessed and her honesty touched him more than he could say.
‘Seriously?’
‘Not a word of a lie. So you can’t really miss what you never had, can you?’ she added, musing aloud. ‘I’ll tell you this though, if I had my time over, I’d do things differently. Maybe not try to drive everyone around me in the office as hard as I do, maybe be a bit more human around co-workers, a little more lenient and understanding. Because it’s bloody hard going in there day after day, trying to keep the show on the road and in return just being practically hate-vibed out of it, by people whose jobs I’m only trying to protect.’
‘How do you mean?’ he asked, listening intently.
Another deep-soul searching sigh from her.
‘Well … it’s like this. If people need a bit of time off, I tend to just jump down their throats and remind them that if they can’t hack the job, there’s scores behind them who could and who are only gagging to be given the chance. My catchphrase in work, is that I never ask anyone to do anything I’m not doing myself. And it’s true, I don’t. But instead of respecting me for driving myself and all around me so hard, they all seem to hate and despise me for it. No matter what I do. But if I don’t, we won’t reach our targets, and then even more people’s jobs are on the line. So there you go; catch twenty-two. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. No matter what I do, they’ll still all hate me.’
She didn’t even tell him the worst of it; that was something to be kept locked deep into a secret file marked ‘humiliation’, never to be discussed. The dozens of petty slights she suffered on a daily basis; the way other women instantly stopped talking and left the room whenever she went into the ladies, how on the rare occasions when she would go into the staff canteen, anyone around her would instantly shuffle guiltily back to their desks, like she even begrudged them meal breaks. Hearing about all the birthday parties and weddings and nights out that she was never asked along to.
Not that she’d even have had the time to go, but sometimes she thought it would just be nice to be asked, that was all.
‘Never too late to change,’ he told her softly, instinctively reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. It felt right though and she didn’t pull away.
‘Never too late to go a bit easier on everyone around you, maybe even cut them a bit of slack every now and then,’ he added. ‘So maybe try being a bit more tolerant and social with people, give them the time of day a bit more. Go on, give it a chance,’ he suggested, looking at her keenly. ‘You might well be astonished at the turnaround. Remember the people around you are the greatest asset you have.’
He didn’t think it appropriate to bring it up, but he remembered all too clearly overhearing the brusque, almost dismissive way she’d spoken to her culture editor on the phone that day while he was at the barber’s a while back and knew how very little it would