For a moment our gazes clamp together, and I find it hard to look away.
“This is kind of crazy,” I say, eventually. “How many people are there in Shoreley on any given day?”
“Hundreds? Thousands?” he says, smiling. He must be thinking what I am—how could he not? “And yet... here we are.”
We swap numbers, and then I watch him walk off along the cobblestones, a squall of thoughts inside my head. Could it be possible that my stupid app was right—have I just bumped into my soulmate? I’ve so often thought that, for me, Max was simply the right guy at the wrongtime.
Three
“You did the right thing,” Jools assures me, when I tell her I walked out of my job yesterday. “They’ve been stringing you along for long enough.”
I’m still in bed, video-chatting with my oldest friend, the person who’s been by my side since primary school, who never fails to reassure me in times of uncertainty.
“Thanks,” I say, biting my lip. “Feels a bit hasty in the cold light of day, though.” I’m not, as a rule, someone who makes rash decisions. I might occasionally drink coffee late at night, try a bold shade of lipstick, or pick an item at random off a takeaway menu, but that’s generally as risky as I get.
Jools sips her tea. Like me, she’s not been awake long. Her hair is falling loose from its knot, and she pushes it away from her face. “So, what did Georgia say, when you told her you were quitting?”
“Not much, actually. I think she was in shock.”
When I first started at Figaro nine years ago, it seemed like luck I didn’t fully deserve—a role at Shoreley’s only creative agency mere months after dropping out of university. I originally applied fora writing job, but Georgia employed me as a planner, because she had a vague idea her fledgling agency wouldn’t get very far without one. I said yes straightaway—I was so grateful to be offered a job at all—and vowed I’d mention a writing role again once I was settled and had proved myself. There were just six of us at the start, and together we grew the business to the forty-strong outfit it is today. And for most of those years, it was good. Fulfilling on many levels. But deep down, I wasn’t a planner: I’d always wanted to write. It was in my blood. The whole time I was researching products and industries, liaising with clients or composing briefs, I knew my heart really lay in writing. I’d scribble down headlines, feed creative angles to the team, sometimes draft copy to help the writers out.
It all came to a head yesterday afternoon, when I discovered Georgia had recruited an external copywriter. She’d promised the job to me on five separate occasions over the years, and now she’d given it to someone else.
I stormed into her office to demand an explanation, whereupon she informed me weakly that the timing wasn’t right, that she couldn’t afford to lose me from planning. So—surprising myself as much as anyone else—I simply walked out.
“So, what now?” Jools says, biting into a slice of toast. “Are you going to move to London?”
“London?” I echo, like she’s just saidthe moon.
“Yeah. Didn’t that big-time agency contact you a couple of weeks ago?”
I nod. “Only because they’re looking for a planner.”
As it happens, a recruiter for the crème de la crème of creative agencies, Supernova Agency of Soho, did message me a fortnight or so ago. Its staff is like a roll call of the industry’s hottest talent, and it regularly competes for the biggest accounts in the country, winning pitch after pitch, award after award. Famously ruthless, Supernova hasa fierce reputation: for poaching staff, demanding regular all-nighters, and refusing to acknowledge weekends. But the pay is eye-watering and the office has its own bar, gym, and nail station. Plus there are the legendary all-expenses-paid staff away trips.
I’ve received similar messages from various recruiters over the years, but they all seemed to coincide with reasons why I shouldn’t leave Figaro—another promise from Georgia about making me a writer, a pay rise, Shoreley being voted the best place to live in the UK, aGuardianarticle about Londoners fleeing the city in droves. And to be honest, I’ve been pretty happy in Shoreley, living with Tash and her husband and my nephew. I’ve never seriously considered moving to the capital.
“This is perfect timing, Luce,” Jools is saying. “We’ve got a room going free. Literally, today. Cara’s moving out.”
Jools left Shoreley for London nearly twelve years ago to study nursing, and never came home. For the past three years she’s lived in a house-share in Tooting. Like me, she’s been saving to buy her own place, and in the interim a house-share’s cheaper than a one-bed flat. Plus it’s just a street away from the hospital where she works.
She’s had various housemates and flatmates over the years—all too often a source of amusement for us—but her current lot seem pretty decent. I’ve met them a handful of times. Cara in particular is warm and sharp-witted, with a guttural laugh and a penchant for making cheese on toast in the middle of the night.
And Jools’s house is nice. Yes, it’s scruffy and well-worn, with peeling wallpaper and over-trodden carpets and a permanent symphony of drips and leaks. But there’s a warm and homely vibe there, too. And it’s always full of people. It’s a place I can imagine feeling safe.
Jools tells me Cara’s going traveling. Southeast Asia, then Australia.
My stomach swings as my gaze flicks to my bedroom window. An instinctive search for air, an escape route.
I take a couple of steadying breaths, then look back at my phone. “Are you serious?”
“Yes! Get that high-flying agency job and move in with me.”
“But... I don’t think I want to be a planner in London any more than I do in Shoreley.”
“Become a copywriter, then. I mean, you might have to start in a more junior role—but look at all the industry experience you’ve got.”
And a portfolio, I think, cautiously. Ads I’ve sketched out in my spare time, copy I’ve written when the team has been up against it, scamps I’ve worked up with designers, just for fun.
