‘Lisa, come in and take a seat,’ he says. ‘Great to see the ratings forPawn Againdoing so well. My wife is obsessed.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ I say, feeling a swell of pride. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
The show is one of our most successful projects of the last twelve months. It’s a fly-on-the-wall format set in a pawn shop, focusing on the heartbreaking, comical and frequently life-affirming human stories behind some of the items being bought and sold.
‘Well, sometimes you are just presented with a gift and that was one of those times,’ I say.
‘You fought for that show and it paid off,’ he corrects me. ‘Now, let’s discuss this controversial modelling programme of yours.’
I take a seat opposite him and open up my laptop. Then I click on my first slide and begin my rundown. I’ve put so much intothis, I could do it backwards. But when I reach the slide with an image of a woman on a catwalk – one I’d picked out myself – I hesitate.
It’s just a random model, from a show in a previous Milan Fashion Week. I have no idea of her name and when I added the photo, nothing had seemed out of sorts to me. Now, all I can think about is how unbelievably thin she is. It’s such a normalised thing that it had never even occurred to me. Maybe that’s the problem.
‘Everything all right?’ Krishna asks, wondering why I’m stalling.
I think back to the picture of Zach’s sister Jenna. Shehasto be the reason why he was so against this format. His ‘personal feelings’ weren’t about me at all.
I remove my hand from the mouse. ‘Can I level with you, Krishna?’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘I’d say that’s exactly what you were here for, wouldn’t you?’
Chapter 20
I have a rare night to myself on Friday. Jacob is at his best friend’s house for a birthday sleepover, while Leo is away for the weekend on his Silver Duke of Edinburgh expedition.
I can’t begin to tell you the amount of preparation this trip required. I’m convinced I’d have a shorter kit list to get someone ready for six months on the International Space Station. I also spent most of last night traipsing around the supermarket (while he was allegedly ‘studying’) to purchase as many lightweight, high-carbohydrate food options as possible. I returned home laden with energy bars, instant oatmeal and Super Noodles, at which point Leo informed me that I’d failed to provide him with a mosquito net and water purifying tablets and if he came home from the Lake District with malaria then it was all on me.
I tell myself I’m going to really make the most of the breathing space. Perhaps I could get round to reading that novel I keep opening and managing half a page of before falling asleep? I could give myself a pedicure, have a long soak in the bath, or finally manage that elusive two-day streak on Asana Rebel.
Instead, I end up staying late in the office. It’s not exactly ‘me time’, but I do get a lot done – including an overdue clear-out of my desk drawer. I’m shocked at some of what I find in the back of it: out-of-date Well Woman supplements, a couple of Fox’s Glacier Mints and a menstrual cup that I was once convinced I’d lost in my actual vagina. I was on the verge of seeing the GP about an ultrasound but, after a rummage in the ladies’ loo,concluded – rightly as it turned out – that I must have left it elsewhere.
I slip it in my bag, when a light flickers on the other side of the office and Zach walks in, heads to Andrea’s desk and places something in her in-tray. His shirt is burgundy, a colour I never ordinarily like. Yet, on him, I could look at it all day. The way it warms his tanned skin and skims over the swell of his biceps and shoulders, the sinews of his neck just visible beneath the collar.
He spots me just as he’s about to leave and responds with an unselfconscious smile, all cheekbones and twinkly eyes. He makes a beeline for my desk.
‘Haven’t you got a home to go to?’
‘Haven’tyou?’
‘I was planning to head to the gym, but lost interest. What’s your excuse?’
‘The kids are both away tonight. I had a lot to catch up on.’
‘Surelyyou had somewhere better to be than this place?’ he says.
‘Well, I did have a ticket for the opera in Paris but had the option to stay here looking at a proposal for a show calledHaunted Supermarkets. There was really no contest.’
‘Sounds it. So, come on. Don’t keep me in suspense. How’d the meeting with Krishna go? Did I ruin your week or did you manage to get things back on track?’
I’m about to answer, but hesitate. ‘How about I tell you all about it over a drink?’
When it becomes apparent that Zach has seen little of Manchester, we take a short tram to Piccadilly Gardens, before I show him the way to one of my favourite places to go for a drink. The distance from the office feels like a bonus because I don’t want anyone to see us. Not that I’ve got anything to hide, but still – I don’t want people getting the wrong idea. And while there’sno chance of bumping into Calvin or Daisy on a pub crawl, I wouldn’t put it past Andrea to be propping up some bar with a Richard Madeley lookalike she met at last year’s Baftas.
The brasserie’s decor is so apparently contradictory that you’d never think to put them together – manor-house-style wood panelling and comfy leather chairs, with brutalist metal pipes on the ceiling and huge plants spilling out of free-standing pots.
‘I think we need a cocktail menu,’ he decides, as we climb up on two stools. They’re the only ones left and we’re at the end of the bar, tucked away in a relatively secluded spot.
‘You’re a bad influence.’
