Amy allowed herself a brief whimper, then stiffened her spine and nodded at him.
‘See you outside at six?’ he asked. ‘I’ll take you to the pub for a restorative drink before we head back to the flat. And Amy … You can stay with me for as long as you need to. You know that, right?’
‘Thank you,’ Amy said, ‘I do … and six it is. If I make it that far, the drinks will be on me.’
Chapter 4
Amy arrived at her workstation, unlocked the cupboard beneath her desk and retrieved her laptop. She tried not to focus on the fact that everyone had suddenly stopped talking.
The hush was horrible: the gloomy, ominous kind of silence that falls when a vicar stands up to begin a funeral service. She willed herself not to look up and survey the room, though she was certain people were staring at her. The thought of meeting eyes full of questions– or worse, judgement– had turned the skin between her shoulder blades cool and clammy.
As she sat down, Amy scanned the selection of brightly coloured Post-it notes she’d stuck to her desktop monitor last Friday: reminders of her priorities for immediately after the weekend. It felt like a lifetime since she’d scribbled on them.
Desperate for another caffeine hit, Amy debated whether she should risk going to the kitchen and joining the scrum that was bound to be gathered in pursuit of tea and coffee. After a brief internal struggle, she decided that waiting in line for the machine would be a very particular kind of torture: even if nobody asked outright what had happened between her and Hugh, she’d know that at least some of her colleagues were wondering. She hated the sensation of being talked about; it made her want to turn invisible.
She tried to relax into her seat and calm her disorderly breathing, but rapidly found herself wishing the chair would grow a gullet and swallow her. Marcia– a fellow editor who specialised in bloody horror stories and thrillers, but always dressed as though she were off for high tea at Fortnum & Mason– stood up from the desk opposite Amy’s and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, her floral maxi dress swishing behind her. Usually she’d offer to bring Amy a drink back too, and her silence– not to mention her refusal to look Amy in the face– did not bode well.
To Amy’s left, Jeremy– a slender cycling enthusiast and non-fiction editor– had his AirPods in. He was keenly focused on his computer screen.
Amy sank back behind the potted palm sat between their desks and instructed herself to calm down. She must be imagining it: whatever people’s opinions on the demise of her relationship might be, surely there hadn’t been a collective decision to give her the silent treatment.
She worked through the morning’s to-do list, scrunching her notes into tight balls that she threw into the recycling bin at her feet. At around 11, when she finally decided to come up for air, Amy faced the fact that nobody had said a single word to her since she’d arrived.The sense that she was being frozen out was palpable.
She clicked into Slack and typed a message to Kit:
No one is speaking to me. Literally, not a word. They’re giving me the kind of wide berth you’d usually reserve for people carrying open cans of cider on public transport.
A moment later, his reply appeared:
Okaaay. But haveyouspoken to anyone? Allow me to offer you a little PR expertise: people are worried they’ll look like they’ve taken your side if they’re overtly friendly today. You’re going to have to make the first move.
Amy made a face at the screen, then sighed. Perhaps he had a point.
‘Jeremy, Marcia,’ she said, in a slightly too-loud voice that, to her dismay, betrayed nerves. ‘Do either of you want a tea or coffee?’
Marcia’s green eyes widened as Amy got to her feet. A beat or two later, she shook her pretty auburn head and muttered a high-pitched ‘No! Thanks!’ as if it had just dawned on her that Amy was expecting a response. Her rabbit-in-headlights expression was grimly amusing, and Amy wondered how Marcia handled graphic descriptions of brutal murder if simply being asked whether she fancied a cuppa freaked her out.
Jeremy– his AirPods finally removed– rolled his eyes in Marcia’s direction and said, ‘Cheers, Amy, but I’m all right, ta.’ He shot her an apologetic glance that seemed to say,Sorry–I’ve got nothing against you personally, but it’s clear that talking to you this morning would be career suicide.
Now that Amy had said she was going to make coffee, she’d have to actually do it.Bollocks.
She stood up and started walking across the office, feeling a little like Cersei Lannister suffering through her walk of atonement. Based on some of the stares Amy was getting, there might as well have been someone shuffling along behind her, ringing a bell and shouting ‘SHAME!’ every three seconds.
Finally at her destination, Amy ducked through the kitchen doorway and let out a powerful sigh– only at that moment realising she’d been holding her breath.
Her relief was short-lived. Hugh was standing next to the coffee machine, deep in conversation with Rupert– an old family friend and his uncle’s overpaid, underqualified executive assistant. Rupert was both very rich and deeply unpleasant: a practised shit-stirrer who never missed an opportunity to bitch about someone when silence would suffice. He threw Amy a satisfied leer as he slunk from the room, the motion putting her in mind of the way a spider might slip behind a skirting board.
Amy realised that she should have considered the possibility Hugh could be in here. The walk-through kitchen she was standing in had been placed at the centre of the building’s second floor, serving the editorial department on one side and finance– the department Hugh managed– on the other. Yes, he typically bought his coffee from the swish deli on the corner, but that shouldn’t have distracted her from the reality that, in the aftermath of their wrecked relationship, the company’s Nespresso maker lived in No Man’s Land.
‘What’s the matter?’ Hugh demanded. Amy realised she was staring at the spot where Rupert had been, her mouth hanging open. She closed it immediately.
‘Nothing, I’m fine,’ she mumbled, even though she wasn’t. ‘How are you?’
Hugh’s face darkened and she instantly realised she’d said the wrong thing. His eyes narrowed to cold blue slits. ‘How do you think I am, Amy, after youbroke my heart?’
Amy flinched at the venom in his voice. At the same time, she felt like protesting: they’d never been sentimental with one another, and this was the first time he’d ever mentioned hearts as far as she could recall. He hadn’t even said he loved her during his actual proposal of marriage, so to claim he was in impassioned agony felt more than a bit rich.
Before she could come up with an adequate answer, Hugh hissed, ‘Do you have any idea howhumiliatingthis is for me? To have offered you the world, and then to be refused so brutally?’
