Page 68 of The Happiness Project

And by everyone, I do mean that. Poppy and Peter have, well, popped in to see Charlie about the wedding, a customer managed to get herself locked in when we hurriedly closed up shop and Patty is here because she has very little else to do while waiting for her ship to sail. Add myself, Dad and Josie to the mix and we almost have a full house.

‘If you’re interested, you would definitely offer to buy the next drink,’ says Josie. ‘You’d probably suggest sharing a bottle of wine.’

Murmurs of agreement echo from everyone.

‘And yet he hasn’t been in touch,’ says Poppy. ‘Angie could be right and he’s just trying a few women on for size. Must be difficult after a bereavement.’

‘It is,’ says Patty. ‘But I don’t remember dating lots of different men — did I?’

She looks over at me and I shake my head. It was rather the opposite actually. When her hubby died, Patty became a recluse for quite some time. Hard to believe that now.

‘Tell us the timeline again.’ Charlie has pulled our whiteboard out of the break room. He wipes off our sales targets and instead draws a horizontal line like you see on detective shows.

‘New Year’s, you brought him to the party and he seemed to have a good time,’ he calls out. ‘As evidenced by this photo.’

He pulls out his phone and shows everyone the picture of all of us at the party.

‘Yep — that smile looks genuine,’ says Josie, getting nods from everyone. It appears that they have all become experts in behavioural psychology as well as selling holidays and entertaining on stage.

‘Then,’ continues Charlie, ‘there’s no word from him for how long, Angie?’

‘A week,’ I tell the room to gasps and whispers of ‘that’s a long time if you’re keen’.

‘But,’ I interject quickly, ‘when I did call him, it turned out that I hadn’t given him my number and he didn’t know Patty’s address.’

There’s a collective sigh of relief as Charlie jots these details on his whiteboard. It’s as if the office is watching some B-movie unfold.

‘So he now has your number and you arrange to meet,’ he says. ‘At the tea shop on the canal.’

‘So sweet,’ says the customer. Everyone turns to face her as we’d forgotten that someone came in to spend money. She blushes at the attention and tries to make herself smaller in the chair.

‘But he doesn’t turn up,’ says Patty. ‘And he doesn’t message or call to say why.’

A group ‘Oooooh’ this time. I think this B-movie might be The Twilight Zone — that’s what it feels like.

‘And he hasn’t done since?’ confirms Charlie, looking at me. I nod as he writes this down too.

‘Nope,’ adds Patty, ‘and when we were in the Lake District at the end of January we hear that he’s seeing someone, although we don’t have that confirmed.’

‘But if he wasn’t keen on the woman he met yesterday, that couldn’t be the person he was supposedly seeing back then — what stopped him calling between then and now?’ asks Poppy, tapping a well-manicured nail against their lips.

‘We can rule out him having fallen in the canal or being dead,’ says Mum helpfully.

‘But not a bump on the head and total amnesia,’ adds Josie even more helpfully.

‘Amnesia’s not real,’ says Patty. ‘It’s just a helpful plot device.’

Everyone stares at the whiteboard and the gap in time that can’t be accounted for.

‘Could he have lost your number again?’ asks Dad in his kindest voice. ‘I’m forever losing things. He might have stuffed your number in his pocket and then put those jeans in the wash.’

‘He put it straight into his phone,’ I say, squeezing his hand.

‘Well, maybe the phone was in his pocket and that went through the washer,’ he continues and Mum picks up that line of thought.

‘That could be it,’ she repeats. ‘Poor man hasn’t got a woman around; they’re always doing daft things without us.’

‘You know, we really aren’t,’ Charlie tells her haughtily. ‘I’ve done my own washing for forty years without incident.’

---