“No eyelash batting,” I say, jaw clenched. “I was just presenting the facts.”
Harold pats my shoulder, a gesture of condolence that makes my skin crawl. “You want to know what the real problem is here?” he goes on.
“What’s that?” I ask, knowing I won’t like the answer.
“You’re too pretty for this kind of work,” he says. “You’re wasting your prime grubbing away when you should be out having a bloody good time.”
I feel like I’ve been slapped on the skin beneath my turtleneck. “Looks don’t have anything to do with it,” I reply, trying to think of a more assertive retort to put him in his place, but too caught off guard by his unabashed ambush.
“Looks always have something to do with it, luv,” Harold says. And he waves his hand to let me go in front of him through the doorway, as if he’s the most chivalrous man of them all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I swing by the King’s Head after work, in need of a drink and a distraction. Tucked into the ground floor of a Victorian townhouse, the pub is quaint and cozy, heavy on mahogany and musk. In the window, a sign boasts “Oldest theatre pub since Shakespearean times,” a rather common claim in these parts. A coal fireplace burns in the corner, and an eclectic mix of antique mirrors, sepia-tone portraits, and health and safety certifications dot the forest-green wallpaper.
It’s Thursday, London’s rowdiest night of the week, and the tables and high-tops are packed with cigar-puffing men who give off the impression they’ve been coming here for thirty years, juxtaposed with younger creative types who had likely intended to soak up some culture in the backroom theatre but were so wrapped up in their groundbreaking arguments about the meaning of life that they decided to skip the show for another round of pints and pickled eggs.
I’m hoping Jules will be there. And sure enough, she is, working behind the horseshoe-shaped bar, pouring liquid gold fromthe everlasting tap. Her curly red hair is slung into a top knot, and she’s wearing frayed jeans and a King’s Head polo that she’s cut the collar off of, pushing the dress code as far toward casual as it can go. “Y’right?” she says when she sees me. “Bloody ’ell, look at your costume.”
Having come straight from the office, I’m still in my pantsuit. “It’s not a costume,” I say, though I wonder if it might be—if maybe I’m just playing dress-up to try to get people to see me as someone they never will.
Claiming the last open stool, I keep my leather tote bag on my lap so it won’t have to touch the dusty floorboards. “Long day at work,” I say with a grimace.
“A tumble down the sink should ’elp,” Jules declares with confidence.
“What?” I scowl. “How on earth would tumbling down the sink help?”
“It means a drink,” she says, setting a foamy pint of Young’s ale in front of me. “Keep up with the cockney rhyming slang, what’d I tell you?”
In East London where Jules grew up, it’s tradition to randomly replace the word you actually mean with a rhyming phrase. The coded language evidently started centuries ago as a traveling salesmen’s tactic to confuse buyers, and some of it has stuck around, likely for the sole purpose of confusing outsiders like me.
“Oh,” I say, sipping gratefully and feeling the ale seep down into my stiff bones like oil. “Wipe the tears.”
“What’s that? You gutted ’bout something?”
“No,” I say. “‘Wipe the tears’ fits the cockney rhyming scheme for ‘cheers,’ doesn’t it?”
“Ah no, you can’t just make it up as you go, I’m afraid. There are specific phrases you’ve got to choose from.”
“No fun.” I pout.
“So ’ow’s the prince hunt going?” Jules asks, leaning her elbows on the counter and flashing her wrist tattoo. She’s told me that she and Nina got matching designs—overlapping circles—the night of their engagement, to symbolize two wholes joining together, not two halves. “Give me all the goss.”
Bubbles fizz in my stomach. “I saw him yesterday,” I say. It feels achingly long ago. “He looked at me again. Straight in the eye.”
Jules lets out a whistle. “Why aren’t you more chuffed about this?”
She’s understandably thrown off by my low-key demeanor after I’ve been high-key obsessing about him.
“Just frustrated with work stuff.” I want to be daydreaming about Alexander, but Harold’s self-righteous face is taking up all the real estate in my mind, poisoning my bliss.
“We work to live, not live to work. Don’t forget that,” Jules says. “Now I’ve got ter get your nosh.” She heads back to the kitchen and returns a moment later with a plate of food that she puts in front of me. “Salt beef bagel,” she presents proudly. “Best in town.”
A toasted bagel is overflowing with meat, mustard, coleslaw, and pickles. I take a bite, mostly to be polite, and I’m surprised at how good it is, filling a craving I didn’t know I had.
“Lush, innit?” Jules says, looking pleased. “So when’s the engagement ’appening?”
I can tell she’s trying to boost my spirits, but I’m not in the mood for it. “Don’t mock me. You said so yourself, I’m wasting my time with the bus lad.”
