Rachel heard footsteps slowing behind her, then felt a presence over her shoulder. Ohno… Was this it?
‘Ray, let’s duck into the meeting room and just read over this vegetable stuff again, shall we? The client meeting’s at three, so we need to agree on final versions of everything.’
Rachel felt her knotted neck muscles loosen slightly. It was Greg, wanting to chat about cauliflowers again – a prospect she remembered finding rather annoying yesterday, but which now felt like sweet relief.
Once the door of the meeting room was shut, they both exhaled dramatically.
‘Serious shit, hey?’ Greg said. ‘I’msoglad you managed to haul your arse in here on time.’ There was a judgemental edge to his voice that she didn’t balk at because it was entirely deserved.
‘Thank you for that. It would have looked horrific if I’d strolled in after the meeting had started with a giant coffee and a pain au chocolat.’
Greg cringed and laughed in agreement. ‘What about Mr Gorgeous, though? There’s a bonus I wasn’t expecting out of this whole thing!’
Brilliant, Rachel thought. Jack mania had seized the whole office and it wasn’t even lunchtime.
‘I might be a happily married man,’ Greg went on, ‘but I’ve always been a sucker for a silver fox.’
‘Oh, you mean the MD!’ Rachel cried, realising too late that she sounded high-pitched and vaguely hysterical.
Greg smirked at her. ‘Absolutely I do,’ he replied. ‘Jack’s pretty but a bit … well. Obvious. Though now we know whoyoulike the look of.’
He waggled his eyebrows at Rachel suggestively. She bit her lip and decided to keep her mouth shut.
They spent the next hour and a half dissecting the work Rachel had done for It’s All Good – the grocery box company – over the past week or two. She successfully spiced up the cauliflower content without turning it into a work of erotic fiction, and also managed to prevent Greg from bastardising the descriptive snippets she’d written about beetroot.
‘Beetroots are the MILFs of the vegetable world!’ Greg had bellowed halfway through their conversation. ‘Once decried as fuddy-duddy things nobody could fancy, now they’re fresh, fashionable and LUSCIOUS! We need more on beetroots.Lotson beetroots. We need to put them in a PRIME spot on the homepage.’
Having talked Greg down from this insane ledge, by lunchtime Rachel was happy with the final copy they’d be presenting that afternoon. Concentrating on her job had also calmed the incessant jangling of her nerves and she realised, now she was no longer feeling sick, that she was starving.
She’d skipped breakfast and survived, but there was no way she’d be able to cope without lunch.
Craving a gigantic baked potato, a full-sugar Coke and an hour of solitude, Rachel told Greg she’d see him later and slipped away.
Rachel made her way along St John Street and rounded a corner, heading for her favourite no-frills cafe. Cyril’s Kitchen had probably been open since before Rachel was born, and it appeared the owner had a strong attachment to its original early-eighties decor.
Old-fashioned, uncool and specialising in deep-fried stodge for committed carnivores, Cyril’s was a very poor fit for modern Islington. It was the sort of place that sold builder’s tea in oversized mugs, and sausage sandwiches made with doorstep-thick slices of sweet white bread. Almost every item on the menu came with a side of chips, including the full English breakfast.
It reminded Rachel of the greasy spoon down the road from her parents’ house in Stoke-on-Trent, and she liked its lack of pretension. At times of emotional-slash-hormonal strain, this was somewhere she could indulge her love of carbs without chiding herself that she should make healthier choices. In this place, there were none.
Cyril himself was behind the counter today, his sizeable pot belly threatening to liberate itself from a too-tight T-shirt that was straining at the seams. He grinned at her as she placed her order.
‘Looking lovely as always, sweetheart.’
Rachel suspected he said as much to all his female regulars, but the compliment was cheering nonetheless.
Having paid for her lunch, she settled at a tiny table that was tucked behind the dresser where Cyril stored mismatched crockery, dog-eared paperbacks and week-old tabloid newspapers. You wouldn’t know this spot was here if you weren’t familiar with the place, and today it felt like a sanctuary. Rachel revelled in being alone for a while.
A few moments later, half-heartedly skimming through a magazine article about ‘theREALcauses of crow’s feet’, she heard the chime of the cafe door’s bell. Then came muffled conversation – stilted, unnatural chat from Cyril and someone stuffier.
Fuuuuuuuck, that sounded like Laurence’s voice. Leaning to her left so she could look beyond the dresser in the direction of the counter, she glimpsed a familiar pinstriped suit and shiny brown brogues. What was hedoinghere?
Rachel wasn’t arrogant enough to assume Laurence was pacing the streets in search of her, but this was an odd place for him to be on his own account. While Cyril’s was one of Rachel’s favourite haunts, Laurence had always refused to set foot in here when they met up for a workday lunch – instead bundling her into Pret A Manger or the local gastropub.
Rachel peeked at him for a second more, then retracted her head for fear he’d spot her. She’d decided not to hide from Jack earlier because, in the brave new world she suddenly lived in, she was going to have to face him sometime. Laurence was a different prospect entirely, and altogether more avoidable.
‘Skinny double-shot cappuccino to go, please,’ she heard him demand.
Incredible.Read the room, Laurence: they’ll have none of your frothy coffees here. No skimmed milk either.
