The Love of Her Life

‘Just – thanks for asking me out to lunch and stuff,’ she said, as they stepped out onto the street. ‘It’s weird when you start a new job. Not knowing anyone, you know.’

‘Course I know,’ said Charly. She didn’t look at Kate. ‘When I joined last year no one spoke to me for three weeks. Hey.’ She pushed her hair out of her face. ‘I reckon we could be a bit of a team, don’t you think? Show Sophie and Jo and Georgina, those bitches, show them we’ve got our own thing going on. OK?’

‘I’m not bothered about them,’ Kate said, surprising herself.

‘Sure, whatever,’ said Charly darkly, and Kate wondered which one of them had incurred her wrath. ‘No worries.

But still, we’re going to stick together. I’ve decided. You up for a drink then?’

‘Definitely.’

‘I’ll see who else is around, too. Introduce you to some other people. We’re going to have a great time.’

The sun was warm on Kate’s hair; she felt relaxed, herself, for the first time since she’d started there. ‘Great,’ she said, as they turned the corner and walked up towards their building.

‘Look at that loser over there, with the Beckham haircut,’ said Charly, flinging her arm out so that she nearly knocked over a teenage boy who was staring at her. ‘What a jackfruit.’

The loser with the Beckham haircut was coming out through the revolving doors. He raised his sunglasses and smiled at them. He was extremely good looking.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ Kate said, then wished she hadn’t.

‘You never called me back, Charly,’ he said, looking hopefully at her. ‘When are we going out again?’

‘Fuck off, Ian,’ said Charly. ‘It’s not happening. Kate, I’ve got to get some gear from the postroom. See you later, OK? Atlas, straight after work? I’ll come and pick you up.’

‘Great,’ said Kate, and Ian stared at her, annoyance crossing his otherwise perfect face.

That night, when Kate rolled back to Rotherhithe at twelve a.m., swaying and singing softly to herself like a sailor on shore leave, Sean was still up watching American football on Channel Five. As she staggered into the sitting room, Kate waved at him nonchalantly, trying to prove she was sober, and her hand flew back and hit the door frame with a loud thwack. Sean smiled to himself but only said,

‘Good night then?’

Kate’s mind was whirring, with the white wine pooling in her stomach, in her throat, in her head. Good night? The best night, that’s what. She and Charly, Claire and Phil had gone to the Atlas, sunk a few drinks, then some more, then Sophie had joined them, and the five of them had played the pub quiz machine, screaming with joy when they got one of the questions right. It was Kate who knew that Chairman Mao died in 1976. She didn’t know how she knew, she’d just known, and as she’d leant forward, punching the big plastic square on the machine, shouting ‘Yesss!’ as she did so, she felt, slightly hysterically, as if all those years of being the class swot, the one who got their homework in, the one who really never did anything bad, they were paying off. Charly had screamed, jumped up and down, and high-fived Kate, and then ‘Spice Up Your Life’ had come on the juke box, and they’d both jumped off their stools and danced like crazy.

‘I hate the Spice Girls!’ Charly had shouted. ‘They’re fucking awful!’

‘I love them!’ Kate said. ‘Sort of …’ she continued, as Charly looked on at her in horror, and both of them laughed again.

Gorgeous Ian had turned up – Kate didn’t know how he’d worked out where they’d be. Charly ignored him all evening, drinking beer from her bottle, cheering Kate on in the quiz and then, as they all stood around outside the pub after they were kicked out, suddenly walked off down the street with him, her hand carelessly clutching the back of his neck. Kate had been almost shocked, impressed by her total insouciance, the very Charly-ness of it, and then it had made her smile.

As she sat on the night bus home, trying not to acknowledge that she did feel a bit sick, she thought how great life was, how all the usual things that worried her – her dad, her mum, her sad little life, her fear that, since she split up with Tony, her university boyfriend, nearly two years ago, she would never find love again, her fear of her job, that she was just a big fat failure – all these things seemed to vanish, with the optimism of youth, and what she remembered instead was Charly’s face as she bought them all another round of drinks with the winnings from the machine. Her amused expression as she said, ‘You’re hilarious Kate, you know that?’

‘Thanks, Charly,’ Kate had said. ‘This is great.’ She patted her arm.

Charly had shrugged. ‘My pleasure.’ She’d looked strangely pleased. Kate fell onto the sofa next to Sean, put her head under his armpit, and smiled, ridiculously.

‘Found some friends then?’ Sean said. ‘Or have you been drinking alone again?’

‘Shurrup,’ Kate said, her voice muffled by Sean’s sleeve. ‘Friends from work, nice.’

It was so cosy on the sofa, next to him; she loved Sean. ‘So, where did you go?’ he said, muting the sound on the TV. He turned towards her, and stretched his arms, yawning, and pulled Kate towards him. She wriggled into him, happily.

‘Just pubs near the work, near the work building,’ she said. They were silent together, for a moment, and she could hear his breathing, feel the rise and fall of his chest, her head against him.

‘Oh, Kate,’ he said, softly.

Kate sat up slowly, suddenly not feeling so drunk, knowing he was looking at her, and their eyes met.

Sean was a closed book to her in so many ways; she had known him for years, though they had never been best friends or gone out with each other. He was a genial, all-American kind of guy – the first impression, and then you realized, in his quiet, understated way, he was more British than that. His clean-cut, sporty appearance belied his more studious, careful character; though she knew him well, Kate never quite knew what he was thinking. Through the waves of cheap white wine, spirits and exhaustion, she looked at him now, blinking, wishing he would speak first, not knowing what was suddenly, now, between them. Someone more worldly-wise would have known what to do now, on the sofa, having a moment with their flatmate. They would either have leaned over and kissed him, or got up and made some coffee.

Watching him, watching his softly twitching lips, Kate wanted to kiss him suddenly, wanted it fiercely. But she couldn’t. It was Sean, after all. Her flatmate. And she was drunk. No.

‘Pfff,’ she said, rather helplessly, smoothing her skirt with her hands.

It broke the tension, and Sean smiled at her. ‘Oh, babe,’ he said kindly, and he patted her arm. ‘You’re hilarious.’

‘That’s what Charly said!’ Kate said, remembering the evening again, happily.

‘So the mean girls aren’t being mean to you any more?’ Sean said lightly, sitting back and taking another sip from his bottle of beer.

Kate sank against the sofa. ‘Oh,’ she said, her eyes closing, glad the moment was over, and it was normal again. ‘No, hope not.’

Sean nodded, and looked back at the screen. After about a minute, he realized that the head next to his arm was lolling, and that his flatmate was fast asleep.

The last thing Kate remembered that night was Sean’s gentle shove as he pushed her onto her bed where she pitched headfirst onto the duvet. She woke up early the next morning as the late September rays were creeping into her room, the curtains wide open, having not been drawn the night before. She lay there, reconstructing the evening slowly, from its unexpected start to its slightly strange finish – had any of it really happened? Had she imagined the lunch with Charly, the drinks, the general knowledge? The night bus – and that moment with Sean, last night, had she made it up? She patted the bedside table next to her, feebly, feeling for her water glass, and then sat up slowly. Her mouth was dry, her head was ringing, she felt as if she wanted to die, but for the first time in what seemed like a really long time, Kate realized she was looking forward to the day ahead.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)

March 2001

More than a year after she’d started at Woman’s World, the pie chart of Kate’s friendships was clear. Charly was her best friend. Zoe was her newly engaged, other best friend. Her other friends Betty and Francesca were happily ensconced in their chaotic flat in Clapham; Betty worked in a gallery and tied bunches into her short dyed hair, while Francesca, who was a banker, and the person Kate had been closest to at university, was now extremely grown-up, wore grey suits and worked in Canary Wharf, which was suddenly where everyone was working.

Charly and Kate were still editorial assistants, they sat across from each other and helped each other, they went to the same Italian deli round the corner for lunch (where Kate happily stuffed her face with carbs and fats and Charly gingerly picked out the tomatoes in her sandwich and ate them) and occasionally got the tube to TopShop on Oxford Circus where Kate would try on clothes that didn’t suit her and buy them, and Charly would try on clothes that made her long, leggy form look even more stunning and complain that nothing fitted her, and leave buying nothing. In the evenings, they went to the pub, where they gossiped and bitched about the day at work, their sometimes eccentric colleagues, and the endless fascination of the microcosm of the office.

Kate was changing; she only realized it when other people remarked on it. ‘Nice work, Kate,’ Sue had said briskly to her a couple of months ago, after she had written a little piece on Alma from ‘Coronation Street’. ‘You’re really coming out of your shell, aren’t you?’

The truth was she loved it, she loved her life now. She took to it like an ugly duckling to water. Now Kate strode to the Tube station in the mornings, her long legs flying out in front of her, her long hair catching in the breeze. She laughed with the mailroom boys, she said hello to Catherine the Editor with a bright smile on her face, not a mumbled, half-horrified grunt, in fear lest she might try to engage her in conversation. She loved answering the phone to random readers, calling to ask whether ‘The Darling Buds of May’ was ever coming back on TV again or where they could get the recipe for hot-pot that had been in last week’s issue. And she looked forward to relaxing, drinking, chatting, laughing in the evenings, as she had never done before.

One Friday afternoon in March, Kate sat at her desk, trying to concentrate on the letter she was writing, whilst resisting the temptation to play with her new mobile phone, her first, which she had picked up that very lunchtime. She hadn’t actually called anyone on it yet, but she had taken down everyone in the office’s number, entering each one in the address book, slowly and painfully. It was four o’clock, and the office felt dead. Kate felt dead too – it had been Sophie’s birthday drinks the night before, a long, messy night, culminating in Kate not getting home till two because of the vagaries of the night bus. Charly had disappeared at midnight, with a random ad exec she’d pulled hanging onto her arm. She had been in a strange, cool mood, and Kate could tell a storm was brewing.

Kate chewed on her biro and looked up from her desk, where she had been idly pressing buttons on her mobile. ‘So – did you go back to his place?’ she asked.

Charly was flicking through a magazine, exaggeratedly pouting. She was supposed to be checking the text for the recipe card layout.

‘God, I love Britney Spears,’ she said. ‘There’s no way she’s a virgin. No way. Look.’

She waved the magazine in front of Kate.