He looked at his feet and I saw that his hands were clenched.
“You’re right. We need to just be colleagues.”
I felt a weight leave my shoulders. Seph could star in my fantasies, but that would be it. Maybe it was time to date a little more, get rid of the sexual frustration I was pretty sure I was being eaten up with, and find something that wasn’t plastic to relieve it.
“Friends. I want to be friends too.” He looked back at me.
“Friends. Let’s try that.”
I wasn’t sure that was going to be a good idea.
Marie Callaghan didn’t lookas tidy when she found me in my office an hour later, and I knew I was similarly unkempt. Her hair was looser, some of the tendrils having escaped the pleat, and her lipstick had vanished.
She sat down at Seph’s desk. He’d found an excuse to escape when one of the secretaries had tapped on the meeting room door to tell him that another client had arrived, and after one look that lingered far too long, he disappeared.
I had enough reading and advices to write to keep me busy through till Christmas, so I’d buried myself in them, forgetting that Marie was going to look for me after she’d finished herself.
“How’re you finding it? Settling in?” She started to tidy Seph’s desk as if it was second nature, which I suspected it was.
I’d seen him try to organise himself only for it to descend back into chaos a few hours later. It’d been frustrating in a cute kind of way.
I nodded, glad of the distraction from my work and from my thoughts. “Everyone’s been really welcoming.”
“Even Sandra in accounts?” She frowned and raised a brow, just the one, unlike Seph.
“Maybe not Sandra. But every office has a Sandra.” It was a fair point.
Marie nodded. ‘It would’ve worried me if Sandra had been nice. She’s worked here since the sixteenth century, I think, and I don’t believe she’s smiled in all that time.”
I laughed, totally getting what she meant. Sandra had eyed the form I’d filled in with my bank details as if it had been dipped in vomit and catarrh. The look she’d given me had only been slightly worse.
“How’s Seph? He’s been working like a maniac since before Christmas and I was hoping that having someone else senior in the department would level him out a bit. I never thought I’d be worried about him stopping partying like I am.” It was a mum-thing to say and I understood. Seph was about the same age as me, an adult and definitely a full-grown man, but I knew full well that no matter how old Rose was, I wasn’t ever going to stop worrying about her.
“He’s been really helpful. He was amazing on Monday when I needed to take Rose to hospital.” He was amazing in the kitchen yesterday too, with just one kiss, but that wasn’t something his mother needed to hear about.
Marie beamed. “He’s good with kids. Probably because he’s still one himself.”
I shook my head, feeling the need to defend him. “Actually, when we worked from my house yesterday he kept an eye on Rose and he put the right boundaries in place. He was pretty firm.” I’d been really impressed with them both. Rose could be shy with new people, especially men, and I hadn’t been sure of what Seph was going to be like with a little girl. They’d taken to each other straight away and he’d been sweet enough with her to make my ovaries purr.
Marie’s expression changed to one of curiosity. “He’s been around his nieces and nephew enough, I suppose. How’s your daughter settling in after your move?”
“Better than I thought. I was really worried, but it’s like she’s been here forever.” I told her about Elspeth and the nursery, and she asked how I was finding motherhood and working full time.
I relaxed, breathed. This wasn’t an interview; I already had the job, and this wasn’t someone who was going to judge me for being a working mother. She wasn’t going to guilt me for having someone else look after my daughter so I could go to work, and she wasn’t going to question my commitment to my career.
“It’s hard. If I didn’t have Rose, I’d be working later here, in the building, but I can’t. So I leave here to pick her up, make her dinner, do the whole bedtime routine, then when she’s asleep, that’s when I start working again, and it doesn’t matter if I’m tired or not. I have to.” It felt good to say the words, a release almost. “My mother lived near us until she moved to Spain, and my sister is with us at the moment, so she helps when she can with picking her up from Elspeth’s.”
“But it’s difficult, especially if you’re a single parent. Grant – the kids’ father – was a workaholic and it took me a couple of years to get him to realise that he needed to parent too. By the time Ava came along and I went back to work, he knew how to be more involved and realised that I had my career too. Thankfully, none of my boys have the same old-fashioned ideas. Does Rose’s father have much to do with her?” She loosened her hair completely from its pleat.
I wondered if she’d heard of Rose’s father. He was a solicitor too, the son of one whose firm had been acquired by another company, so if Marie hadn’t heard of him, she would no doubt have heard of the old law firm.
“No. We broke up when he found out I was pregnant.” There was more to it than that, but wasn’t that always the case?
“His loss, lovely. Seph told me that your little girl’s an absolute gem. That’ll be all credit to you.”
My heart burst a little bit. Any praise for my daughter was better than a first-class degree from Oxford for me, and that Seph had said that polished it even more. I was trying not to think about that kiss, or that there would be no more replays of it, only the ones in my head.
“Thank you. She’s a really good kid. Loves books more than electronics, so I can’t complain.” I smiled at Marie. “I still don’t know how you managed to bring up seven kids and hold down a career.”
