Page 11 of Better Left Unsent

And as my eyes drift, from the smart, brown shoes, to the straight, pressed black trousers, to the fresh, grey-blue shirt, the round, muscular shoulders .?.?. I literally swallow, a massive gulp, like aSimpsonscharacter.

It’s Jack. It’s Hot Jack Shurlock.

Oh, God, I want the ground to collapse beneath me and suck me into nothingness. Especially when Jack’s eyes drop to the floor and meet mine.

‘Um. So, yeah. Anyway. Better get on, mate,’ he calls out to Owen, his eyebrow lifting, just a fraction, eyes still on me.

He’s covering for me. Hot Jack of Christmas Party and Sexy Dream fame is covering for me. I’d be touched, if I didn’t want to die of embarrassment. What on earth must he be thinking? That I’m having some sort of meltdown? A breakdown. First, a mass email send-out. Now, hiding behind a cardboard cut-out during the working day .?.?.

Jack moves into the room, tall, authoritative, pushes the door to, leaving just a crack, and I watch as he strides across the floor. He slots his hands into his pockets, scans the shelves, clicking his tongue. Then a tiny half-smile lifts the corner of his mouth.

‘Afternoon, Millie,’ he whispers, gruffly, still not looking at me. ‘And Gary.’

‘Hi,’ I whisper. Embarrassment creeps hotly up my neck.

‘Am I .?.?. interrupting something?’ Jack asks deep and low. He meets my eyes then, remains poker faced, but the corner of his mouth dimples again, just slightly.

‘Probably best not to ask,’ I wince, and Jack gives a singular nod.

‘Understood,’ he says, and for what must only be a few seconds, but feels like much, much longer, I stay here, crouched on the floor, my knees aching, my calves starting to bloom with pins and needles, as Jack scans the files on the shelves. It’s quiet in here, except for Jack’s slow footsteps and my breathing. I can hear Owen’s distant voice, talking again now to someone else, outside. Fundraising Steve from IT maybe? Oh, please nobody else come in.

‘I was actually hoping to get some information from you,’ whispers Jack. ‘Missed your meeting. Had something tedious to sort.’

I nod. ‘Yes, well, as long as you don’t write this down,’ I say, quietly. ‘Hiding behind cardboard cut-outs of Gary Lineker won’t exactly go in my favour. After .?.?. everything.’ I give a smile, and worry I’m smiling like someone at gunpoint, because all I can think about is what Jack must be thinking of the whole thing. The woman on reception whose emails all got sent. That woman who is currently squatting on the floor by his feet?

‘Can’t imagine I missed much,’ Jack says softly, slowly pacing, eyes on the files. ‘Paul being all sweet uncle?’

I nod. ‘Um. Maybe .?.?.’

‘Lots of management speak, and Michael, being .?.?. a prick?’His eyes drop to meet mine then, a playful, glinting hazel .?.?.

And this.Thisis why I liked talking to Jack at the party the Christmas after Owen had left me. This is why I spent that whole weekend thinking up excuses to talk to him again after our flirty drunk chat. We’d found ourselves at a table together either side of Cherry, one of our sound engineers, who’d fallen asleep after too much mulled wine. We hadn’t really chatted much, until that point, but that night, Jack and I talked for a whole hour, our faces strobed by disco lights (and Cherry’s passed-out head, on the tabletop between us like a Christmas centrepiece).

And although I can’t recall exactly what we talked about, I do remember just how much fun I’d had; how often his hand had lingered on my arm, how a button on the hem of my puffed-sleeve kept unfastening, and when it had happenedagain, I’d rolled my eyes, and he’d laughed, and fastened it gently, carefully for me, bottle of beer, still, in his other hand. I remember how much he’d made me laugh, too, which surprised me. Because Jack – he’s sort of coolly unreadable. The type of guy who arrives at work in immaculate shirts, gets his head down, and is unfussed about making meaningless small talk by the kettle, becausework is just work. But there’s something in the stubble, the slightly ruffled, messy hair, the tiny smiles he sometimes gives as he’s texting on his lunch breaks, that hints at a life lived looser the second he leaves. Like hearing your strait-laced Geography teacher listening to rap music; seeing the hint of a tattoo under a surgeon’s scrubs.

‘Drop me an email or something before I leave,’ he’d said hotly into my ear, over music and drunken cheers. And, of course, I did (well, nottechnically, as per My Email Drafts Law) and then he went travelling across the globe. Gone.Poof.Until he came back as temporary maternity cover a couple of months ago. And there hasn’t been an interaction between us since really, beyond good mornings and polite passing smiles. Until now.

‘Huh,’ mulls Jack, sliding another file from the shelf. ‘So, does the silence mean Michael was .?.?.courteous?’

‘Oh. No, no,’ I whisper. ‘Definitely not.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’m just .?.?. after yesterday, I’m just a bit too afraid to speak right now or have an opinion that isn’t endorsed by like, the Bible, or something?’

Jack lifts a round-shirted shoulder to his ear. ‘Nobody’s listening,’ he says. ‘It’s just you and me. And Gary Lineker.’ He smirks over at me then and I stifle a laugh.

Silence again, just the sound of Jack leafing through a file that’s open on his palm. I don’t know if he’s eking this out, for my sake, or if he’s genuinely looking for something.

‘Petra says your work computer was definitely here that night.’

I nod.

‘Hm,’ he continues, deep and low. ‘I left at six. IT aren’t very insightful either. They just say all work laptops have VPNs on since the hack last year?’ He paces slowly. ‘That glitches of all kinds, happen, that it simply looks like you sent them—’ He glances down at me. ‘I’m just relaying what I’ve been told.’

I nod again. ‘I know,’ I say, as a sudden breeze from the lobby closes the door with a click, shutting us both in. The room falls silent, and I imagine a camera, zooming out, snapshotting this moment, sending itself to Ralph, with the caption ‘plan of forgetting it ever happened is going very well, as you can see (smiley-face)’.

‘I’ll speak to a mate of mine, Matt – about the server thing,’ mutters Jack. ‘He’s a coder.’ Jack is good at this. At being whateverthisis. Discreet. Deft.

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