Page 46 of I’m Dreaming of a New York Christmas

‘There’s around thirty of us, plus a roster of freelancers,’ Ethan said, finally accepting I was happy to be there and connecting his own laptop to one of the largest monitors – pleasingly, it happened to be diagonally opposite my desk, in the optimum eye contact spot.

‘Huh, smaller than I was expecting.’ I plonked myself onto the fancy ergonomic chair and began fiddling with the adjustment levers until it felt right.

‘You’ve never worked for an agency?’

I did a full spin in the chair as a final comfort test, bringing myself to a stop by grabbing the edge of the desk. I shook my head. ‘Nope. In fact, before I went freelance, I’d only ever worked for the civil service.’

‘What’s the “civil service”?’

‘Oh, the public sector. Basically, I worked for the UK government before I became self-employed: first in comms and PR, and eventually specialising in speechwriting once people realised I had a knack for it. Me and… I mean, I joined the civil service straight from university. I worked in the public sector for almost ten years.’

‘Why’d you decide to go freelance?’

How to answer this? Because my government career was another thing I’d lost when Will had left me. We’d joined the same graduate scheme together, and had been working in the same department while we were engaged. When we split up, I was already on annual leave for the wedding and the easiest thing for me to do was resign to avoid all the pity and weird looks. I’d tried to find an internal transfer option, but the only speechwriting gig going at the time had been for a minister whose remit appeared to be to defund the arts and redivert the cash into the pockets of AI-peddling tech bros. Having written speeches for other questionable politicians over the years, I just couldn’t face it.

‘Let’s just say that writing government speeches isn’t the most fun field to be working in at the minute. It was time for a change, for a whole host of reasons.’

That’ll do.

He glanced up from his screen and grinned, but I could tell he was already in his creative zone, so I zipped up my mouth and finished setting up my workspace.

‘Help yourself to anything from the fridge, by the way,’ he said, gesturing to a glass-doored unit in a corner next to a couple of vintage armchairs and a coffee table, his eyes still on his screen. ‘There’s snacks, soda – even beer, if you want one.’

‘Oh, I had quite enough to drink last night.’

He glanced up at me. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yup.’

I was fresh out of little white lies. If he wanted to know more about my evening – or my life – he was welcome to probe, but he didn’t.

I plugged in my laptop and connected my devices to Wi-Fi. My phone immediately buzzed with a WhatsApp message. It was a photo of Mum and Anneka from about twenty minutes ago, standing in Times Square surrounded by – for no obvious reason – the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Mum was still clutching her staff, which, in this context, didn’t look out of place, as if she were their rat sensei who had momentarily transformed into a human. I was already anticipating that she would try and bring the branch home on the aeroplane, and I also anticipated an awkward stand-off when the airline staff inevitably said ‘no’. I forced myself back into the very pleasant present, tapping out a quick reply:

Flora:

Turtle Power! Hope you’re having fun. I’ve found a good spot to get some work done for the next couple of hours.

I looked at the time – it was just gone noon.

Flora:

Shall we maybe meet back at the hotel at 4 p.m.? Or is that too late?

Anneka:

Sounds good, Flo! We’re just having lunch in another fun bar. And guess what… it’s happy hour here, too! Enjoy DMing your fit client!

Little did they know I was currently within touching distance of him.

Three or so hours later, the first draft of my soapy speech was done and I’d sent it off to the client. Ironically, I knew that if I weren’t in New York working alongside Ethan today, procrastination would have taken over and the speech would have taken me days to write. Ethan’s visual speech was also progressing well; he’d sketched out a few cartoons, which had been awe-inspiring to witness, and I’d helped him come up with a framework he could use to map it all into a slide deck. He felt confident he could finish it off and get it printed in the next couple of days.

All in all, it’d been a productive afternoon for both of us – fuelled by a delicious pizza that Ethan had insisted on ordering from his favourite place – but one that was disappointingly about to end since it was almost time for me to get going.

‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you with a beer? We’ve got… Blue Moon?’ Ethan extracted two bottles from the fridge and wiggled them in my direction. I figured it would only take me twenty minutes or so to walk back from here, so decided to make the most of what would be my final moments with this talented and funny person.

‘Go on, then.’

‘Correct answer!’ He popped off the lids with his thumb and we each sat on an armchair. Ethan’s cheeks were flushed pink with creative exertion and satisfaction and I assumed mine were, as well.