Happy Endings (3 page)

‘Early today, Hornsby, eh. Trouble with the missus?’

‘Something like that, sir.’

He chortled and kept on walking, leather briefcase in hand and stomach jutting out like a Swiss mountain face. Hugh ran the office with the cut-throat ruthlessness of an army general. If you did well you were rewarded, but one mistake, one black mark against you and you were gone. Despite being a working-class speck in a sky of upper-middle-class employees, I’d stuck around for seven years, slowly easing my way up the banking ladder towards safety.

I turned on my PC and checked my email. As I drank my cappuccino and ate my bacon roll, I began working on the building blocks of an idea. In six months I could get a promotion. Without Kate and all the distractions of a relationship, I could work harder, longer and better. Maybe Kate pissing off across the globe could be a good thing after all. Kate had her dreams and I had mine. She wanted to ponce about in South East Asia with a bunch of drop-outs, hippies and graduates trying to find themselves, while I would stay behind and make sure everything she needed, we needed, was still in place and working better when she got back. It would also help keep my mind off what she was doing and with whom.

By ten o’clock the office was a tornado of energy: people were working hard, making and losing millions. It was like a beautiful symphony, every aspect working together to produce a capitalist masterpiece. Our floor was an open-plan football field of computers, telephones, fax machines and men in expensive suits shouting at each other for twelve hours a day. However, on that Monday morning at ten o’clock an office of fifty bankers all stopped working as a girl walked across the floor. She was beautiful: every man’s dream in a grey business suit and high heels. All eyes, including mine, stopped scrolling through emails and watched her walk, slowly, gracefully, with Harriet from HR, until they stopped quite suddenly at my desk.

‘Ed, this is Georgina Hays. She’s new and going to be shadowing you for a few days. Make her feel at home and keep the vultures off her back, will you?’ said Harriet with a motherly smile. Harriet was the office matriarch, head of human resources and feared and loved in equal measure by every employee. I suddenly felt like every pair of eyes in the office were on me and when I looked up I realised they were.

‘Hi,’ said Georgina, shaking my hand briskly and then sitting down next to me. ‘Call me Georgie, please.’ She had the poshest voice I’d ever heard, which was no mean feat considering I worked in an office packed to the rafters with Oxbridge alumni. She was stunning. She had long blonde hair – but not just regular blonde, it was pure, clean, almost ethereal – the biggest, bluest eyes and a small, perfectly formed nose with a spattering of freckles. Her face was symmetrical, balanced, refined and she had a flawless body to match.

‘Ed, before we start, I just want to say thank you.’

‘I haven’t done anything yet. I could be awful.’

‘I doubt you’re awful,’ said Georgie with a gorgeous little giggle. ‘Uncle Hugh wouldn’t have put me with someone awful.’

‘Uncle Hugh?’

‘Oh, yes, Hugh Whitman is my uncle, but that doesn’t change anything. I want you to treat me like you would any other employee.’

‘Right, will do,’ I said, suddenly terrified of what this training session might lead to. ‘Then you’d better get us both a big cup of coffee before we start,’ I said with a smile, and she smiled back, probably the most perfect smile I’d ever seen.

The next hour was something of a blur. I learnt that Georgina Elizabeth Hays was twenty-two and grew up in Bath. She attended boarding school in some Hogwartian mansion in the home counties, took a gap year and helped underprivileged children in Peru, went to the University of Cambridge, represented England at youth-level netball, was currently single and trying her hand at the world of banking. When Harriet eventually came to rescue her for some mandatory paperwork, she thanked me with a warm smile and told me she would see me after lunch.

On my way out for a quick bite, I shared the lift with Hugh.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why did you put Georgina with me?’

‘Because you’re the only one I can trust not to bang her senseless, Hornsby. My niece, you see, but mum’s the word, eh. Promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Take good care of her. No funny business.’

‘Of course not, sir, no problem,’ I said as we stepped out of the lift.

During the short walk to Pret thoughts of a BLT and images of Georgie in her netball kit clouded my mind. I didn’t know if Hugh trusting me was a good thing or not. Was it a slap on the back? A hearty gesture of goodwill that would garner a mutual respect and eventual promotion, or did he just consider me an unattractive, spineless eunuch?

The afternoon wore on much like the morning had, with Georgie and me in close proximity, knees occasionally knocking together under the desk, while I tried to give her a rundown of what I did on a daily basis. It was a little after six when we started to pack away for the night.

‘Thanks so much for today, Ed, you’ve been brill.’

‘Oh, no worries, my pleasure.’ A few co-workers walked by, loitered for a moment, pretending to fiddle with scarves, and then smiled at Georgie and gave me a cursory, ‘Night, Ed’ before they waltzed away. ‘Does that annoy you?’

‘What?’

‘Men ogling you all day. Making lame excuses so they can try and peek down your top.’

‘Oh that. You get used to it.’

‘It must get a bit annoying though,’ I said, grabbing my bag and scarf.

‘Sometimes, but mostly they’re harmless and it’s flattering when people find me attractive.’

‘As if they wouldn’t,’ I said without thinking. Georgie flashed me a smile. ‘I . . . umm . . . didn’t mean anything by that, sorry.’

‘Of course, and bravo, I didn’t see you peek down my top all day,’ said Georgie with a cheeky smile. I suddenly and without warning went a deep shade of red, my face sweltering in embarrassment. ‘Oh, Ed, I was only joking.’

‘Right, well, see you tomorrow?’ I said, wrapping my scarf quickly around my neck with Hugh’s words ringing in my ears, ‘no funny business’.

‘Yes, yes, can’t wait and honestly, thank you so much. I was so nervous this morning.’ I smiled and started to walk away before Georgie stopped me. ‘Actually, do you have any plans for tonight?’

I was caught off guard. I didn’t know what to say. Did I have any plans? The answer was a definite no, unless plans involved getting a curry, a four pack of lager and watching television on my own, which I’m sure is the very definition of a sad twat.

‘No plans.’

‘Then, and just to say thank you, how about a quick drink?’

Had she actually said that? The gorgeous, ultra-posh new girl at work was asking me out for a drink? I stammered like a far less attractive cross between Colin Firth’s King George and Hugh Grant at his upper-class bumbling best.

‘I . . . I . . . err . . . umm . . .’

‘I don’t have many friends in London at the mo. All off doing the travelling thing or their MAs and you seem like a nice bloke and Hugh trusts you, so you can’t be that dodgy.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ I said for no apparent reason and then I laughed like a bloody idiot.

‘Then let’s have a drink and you can show me how dodgy you are,’ she said with a delicious wide-faced smile.

I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t cheating or even technically wrong. I’d gone out for copious work drinks over the years and yes, admittedly, none of them had been only with women, but still, it wasn’t like anything would happen. For a start, I would never cheat on Kate and, secondly, Georgie would never, in a million years, fancy someone like me. It was just a drink. Mates. Co-workers.

‘Sure, why not.’

‘Fab. I have to pop to the toilet, back in a jiff,’ she said and then skipped off.

I watched her for a moment. Her perfectly formed little bottom was squeezed into a tight-fitting grey skirt above long, slender legs that curved towards a pair of black high-heeled shoes. A couple of men stopped to gaze at her on their way out and ran their salacious eyes over her pert, ripe little body. A knot of fear unexpectedly formed in my stomach and began to work its way towards my brain, making me feel nauseous: the terrifying fear that maybe I was just like all of those other men, and all it would take for me to lose everything would be a solitary word from her soft, beautiful lips and the promise of a glimpse at what lay beneath her glossy white blouse.

Jack

‘Ready?’ said Emma, walking into the room, fiddling with a pair of earrings and looking flustered.

Emma always got nervous when she had business dinners. Of course, it wasn’t me who was trying to get a part in a film that could change the course of my whole life. I was nervous too, but trying to keep it together for her. She had spent years treading the boards, getting small parts in small plays, a few lines on television and even a couple of call backs for lead roles, but nothing like this. This was huge. This would make her career and change our lives forever.

‘Just finishing up, love,’ I said, closing down my laptop.

‘Do you think Ed’s going to be all right?’ said Emma, zipping herself into a little black dress she’d treated herself to from Reiss, and looking every inch the film star: cropped blonde hair, a beautiful face with Audrey Hepburn features, big green eyes, full, curvaceous lips and the most perfectly petite body.

‘I hope so. He seemed a bit lost in the car.’

‘He did, didn’t he, poor thing. Although if I lost you for six months,’ she said, looking across at me with a tender smile. ‘I think I’d be depressed too.’

‘You never have to worry about that. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘You’d better not, or—’ said Emma with a smile, making a scissor action with her fingers and nodding toward my groin.

Emma had been telling me to get ready for the last hour, but I was lost in thought over my book. I needed this novel to be The One because I’d already decided it would be my last attempt before I gave up and got a proper job.

I needed to prove to Emma, and more importantly to myself, that I could do something worthwhile. Ed told me frequently about jobs he could get me in the City, where I could earn four times the amount I made at To Bean or Not to Bean, the shitty Shakespearean-themed café I managed, serving ridiculously named coffees like The Taming of the Brew, the Caramel Macbeth and, my personal favourite, the Antony and Cappuccino.

I didn’t want to work in a dreary, soulless office, but it would give us a life. At that moment we were living off hand-outs from Emma’s parents and in the flat they owned. My life wasn’t mine, or as Ed said in the pub last week: ‘You’re a man, Jack. You need to be a man. To provide. To have something to measure your success against. Instead you’re being emasculated by her in-laws and a job you hate. It’s time to face reality, stop living a pipe dream and get a proper job.’ I was finally coming to the conclusion that perhaps he was right.

‘How do I look?’ said Emma, bouncing across the room, a ball of nervous energy as she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Stunning,’ I said, grabbing her around the waist.

As we headed out of the door, hand-in-hand, and towards an expensive restaurant in Soho, I looked at Emma and a terrifying thought suddenly popped into my head. Maybe after dinner, we wouldn’t ever be like that again.

Matt Wallace was from Glasgow, had directed two very successful films already and was being touted, along with Rhys Connelly, as one of Britain’s brightest young things. He didn’t look that bright or young though as he sat opposite us: he was bald, probably nearer to forty than thirty, with ashen skin and a pair of tatty blue jeans and a creased green shirt.

‘It’s yours,’ he’d said as soon as he sat down.

‘Excuse me?’ said Emma, although we’d both heard him quite clearly.

‘The role of Sarah. It’s yours. If you want it, that is.’

Emma started squealing; she cried, hugged me, kissed me, kissed Matt and I fell to pieces. I was elated for her, but also suddenly petrified that our lives were about to change dramatically and that, as much as I wanted the change, I might get left behind in the scramble.

‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it, really?’ she said about twenty times.

‘Emma, you’re going to be amazing. From the moment I saw you at auditions you were my first choice,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve asked Rhys to join us. He should be here any minute.’

My heart began to ache and suddenly I didn’t want to be in that restaurant with Matt and Rhys Connelly. My chest tightened and I needed some fresh air. Before I had the chance to go, a hum of muttered voices reverberated around the room and when I looked up Rhys Connelly was striding confidently towards us. A flash of paparazzi cameras snapped through the restaurant window like small fireworks.

Matt made the introductions and Rhys sat opposite us. I reached across and put my hand on Emma’s leg. Rhys Connelly got his big break in Matt’s first film,
On Primrose Hill
, as the dashing lead in a syrupy romantic comedy. Then he traipsed across the Atlantic, starred in a huge American production and became a household name. Rhys was tall, ridiculously handsome and had the swagger and confidence you’d expect from a film star.

After some polite chit-chat, Emma excused herself to go to the toilet and so it was just Matt, Rhys and me.