The Ex Factor

Undaunted, he said, ‘S’pose. Listen, you busy Saturday?’

She misunderstood at first. ‘I don’t work weekends, and anyway…’

‘Nah, I meant you and me. Curry, pint. You know some good places for a curry I bet. What’s it short for, by the way? Ani’s not an Indian name?’

She stared at him for a minute, speechless. A voice cut in. ‘Anisha. Sorry, Ms Singh, I mean. I just wanted to say: no hard feelings?’

It was the bloody barrister, Adam Robins, sweeping his dark hair off his face. Mark shook his outstretched hand, seemingly unperturbed by the character assassination Robins had just carried out on him in court. Ani glared at him. How dare he be so handsome and so confident. ‘Mr Robins, is it? Maybe you could try not to be late in future? My time is valuable too, you know.’

Adam Robins blinked. His eyes were the exact shade of green Fruit Pastilles. ‘I’m sure it is—I know your hourly rates, after all.’

Mark’s eyes widened. ‘You’re saying she…’

‘For law.’ Ani turned her back on the barrister. To Mark she said briskly, ‘I’m leaving now. I have other clients.’

‘Can I get your email then? Personal, like.’

‘Sure. It’s ani@notinamillonyearspal.com. Do contact me for the next divorce you will almost inevitably have.’

As she stomped off, she heard Adam Robins make a small noise that could have been a laugh, and Mark asking, ‘Is that all lower case, you reckon?’ It was unprofessional, but she didn’t care. And that was why she was, at thirty-two, more single than a single LP—no B-side—and why when she saw her parents at the weekend she’d have to once again tell them that, no, she wasn’t seeing anyone, and no, she still didn’t want them to find her a nice boy, thanks all the same. Because how could you believe in love when you spent all day sweeping up the smashed remnants of it?

At least she had dinner tonight to take her mind off things. After all, if there was one person who was more terminally single than Ani, then that was Marnie.

* * *

Rosa.

Rosa was sitting at her desk again, running through her mental checklist. Eye make-up smears? Check, she’d stopped wearing it two weeks ago, after she’d interviewed a mid-list actress without realising she had massive smudges all down her cheeks like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Snot on face, dress, hair? Check, she’d taken to carrying around so many tissues that were she to fall out of an aeroplane she would probably survive without even minor bruising. Her floral dress, cardigan, and thick tights might have caused her fashion-forward boss to visibly wince that morning, but at least she looked respectable. Was she currently making loud gasping sob noises without even noticing? Check, unless she’d gone deaf at that frequency. All was fine, or at least as fine as it could be given her husband had left her two months before.

She looked at the copy on her screen. Star of TV cop drama ’Aving a Laugh Natasha Byrd lived up to her name at our brunch. Picking at a salad, she told me she eats only once a day and…

Crap. Like jungle drums, she knew when David was approaching. Rosa’s desk was right on the route to the main meeting room, and the editorial conference must have ended early—most days she hid in the loos at this time, waiting for him to get safely back to his desk. Only one thing for it. After grabbing her phone, she slid gently to her knees and ducked under the desk again. It was cosy down there, among the trailing leads and decades-old dust. It was fast becoming her new favourite place.

‘…So I think let’s go big on detox for Jan—more quinoa, more mung—what’s the newest grain, anyone?’

Ow! The castor of Rosa’s chair, pushed aside by unseen hands, rolled over her thumb. ‘Holy CRAP,’ she yelled, before she could stop herself.

Oh no. ‘Bloody hell, are you OK?’ She peered up to see Jason Connell, the new whizz-kid editor who’d been poached from clickbait site Listbuzz, along with her boss, Suzanne, who was in metal-look leggings and on a two-week Botox cycle.

‘What are you doing, Rosa?’ demanded Suzanne. ‘Aren’t you a bit old for hide-and-seek?’

But Rosa could only look at the third person in the group, in his skinny red jeans and clashing yellow T-shirt. The man she’d married five years ago, the man she’d intended to spend her life with. Who she’d never expected to see wearing red jeans, or packing up his collection of vinyl and moving out, or for that matter, sleeping with an intern. She’d advised him against the jeans, but he’d bought them anyway, and in retrospect that should have been a sign.

‘Rosa?’ David was staring down at her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine!’ She tried to summon every ounce of journalistic nous that might be left to her. ‘Um, it’s a new trend I’m testing. It’s called—head-desk-space.’

‘Head-desk-space?’ Suzanne’s over-plucked brows nearly met in the middle of her Botoxed forehead. She had no facial expressions left, so she had to inspire sheer terror through slight flares of her nostrils. It was a closely guarded secret—which meant everyone from the cleaner to the board members knew—that Suzanne had once been caught in flagrante with Bill McGregor, the married MD, in the old print rooms of the newspaper, and consequently could never be fired, despite being the personification of pure evil—the impressions on the evening edition had apparently left little to the imagination.

‘Yep. It’s a new meditation trend,’ said Rosa desperately. ‘You know, research shows mindfulness can boost performance at work by up to…um…forty-seven per cent.’

‘I like it,’ said the new editor. He loomed over Rosa—he must have been over six foot tall, and was built like a surfer, his wavy blond hair slightly too long and his tie slightly too loose for London. On a better day, when she wasn’t hiding under a desk being watched by her boss, his boss, and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Rosa might have found his Australian accent sexy. ‘It’s a good angle. Ways to work smarter, not harder. Can we do a feature?’

‘Sure!’ said Suzanne gamely. ‘Whatever you like, Jason. We’ll get right on it.’ But her nostrils said—I will kill you, Rosa. I will crush you like I crush fresh lemon for my morning detox. Rosa, however, could still only look at David. He gave her a quick glance—was that pity?—then turned and walked away. She’d been right. Those jeans really did make him look like a Christmas turkey.

Jason Connell was still watching her curiously. She tried to communicate with a smile that she was a slick, totally professional, valued member of staff—not easy when you were hiding under a desk. He hunkered down to her, and gently flicked her long dark plait. She gaped.

‘You had dust in it.’ Then he smiled—was that a wink?—and went back to his office.

Rosa resumed her seat. Only four hours and twenty-three minutes before she could leave the office, have a drink and, with any luck, obliterate the bit of her brain that would remember this encounter. And Marnie was back! Marnie was sure to have some advice about how to cope with working in the same office as your ex. After all, there was no dating situation on earth she hadn’t experienced.

Chapter 2 Pickled Eggs and Popcorn (#ulink_d8c9c537-14bb-5eac-a2c4-0c400644b638)

Helen

‘The reservation was like for seven?’ The waiter gave Helen a scowl as he took her to the table (not actually a table but an old school desk, this being a trendy London eatery).

‘I know, I’m just early.’ Twenty minutes early. Helen-time. She wanted to check it wasn’t too noisy or too busy, and that they had a good table, not too close to the door or loos. It had to be nice, since she was dragging Ani and Rosa out on a school night. And things with Marnie might be a little weird, after her disappearing act. She felt another flare of nerves in her stomach.

‘Because like I can’t hold the table?’

Helen looked around the empty place—it was a Tuesday night in January after all—and tacked on a conciliatory smile. ‘Of course. They won’t be long, I promise.’ The waiter sniffed. He had tattoos up both arms and one of a butterfly on his cheek.

She wondered who should sit where—if only it was acceptable to make out place cards for casual social occasions! But despite it all, Helen was excited. For months now she’d had a slight, a very very slight, third-wheel feeling. Rosa and Ani had met in uni, and even though they’d all been friends for years, Helen was always aware she was the newcomer. But Marnie—well, ever since day one of primary school, Marnie and Helen had come as something of a package deal. ‘Like those twins, where one is living inside the other and slowly eating it,’ as Marnie had once cheerfully put it. Before Marnie left, the four of them had been a tight-knit group, where no one ever got left out or felt alone. Maybe they could go back to that? Helen’s stomach dipped again. So many things had happened since then. It seemed unlikely.

Rosa was the second to arrive, unwinding her long scarf from her plait. ‘I couldn’t stay another second,’ she declared. ‘I swear, working with David, it’s like—’ She mimed a rope around her neck. ‘I’m going to have to change jobs. Go back to Puzzle Weekly or Knitting Times. Oh God. And today I actually had to fabricate a whole trend that helps you chill out at work.’

‘I’m sorry. Want some Rescue Remedy?’

‘Yes please.’ Rosa opened her mouth and Helen squeezed in a few drops from the yellow bottle.

‘Berocca?’

‘Go on then.’

Helen rooted around in the massive handbag she always carried. Ani called it the Doombag, because it contained solutions for everything that could possibly go wrong in life, short of full-scale nuclear war. Ani herself arrived just then, shouting into her phone. ‘Tell them the offer is derisory. Yes, that actual word. D-e- Can’t you just look it up?’ She waved over to them. ‘I have to go. Just get it sorted, will you?’

Rosa put a guilty hand over her fizzing orange drink. ‘It’s, um, a new cocktail?’

Ani raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think caffeine is a good idea for you right now, judging by the manic texts I’ve been getting all day. How’s the fake trend?’

‘Booming,’ said Rosa glumly. ‘How was court?’

Ani took off her jacket, revealing a cream silk shirt and tweed skirt, and fluffed out her neat bob. ‘Well, we lost, and the opposing barrister was really hot—’

‘Ooh, was he?’

‘—yeah, so obviously I was really rude to him and basically called him a twat—’