Page 86 of Not in a Million Years

‘Oh, mate. The two of you – you’re the on-again off-again of friends. What happened?’

‘It’s kind of a long story.’ I’d longed to confide in her, but now that I was, I wasn’t sure where to begin – with the night in Turkey after the party on the yacht? With the long-held secret that my relationship with Andy had been more than a friendship for so many years? With the new feelings I’d begun to develop for Daniel?

‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘He found out about you and Andy?’

‘What?’ I gawped at her in astonishment. ‘You mean you…?’

‘Kate. We all knew. It was obvious that something was going on between the two of you, and it was just as obvious that Daniel was jealous.’

‘Why didn’t you ever say anything to me?’

‘Why would we? If you or Andy wanted us to know, you’d have told us. And I can see why he didn’t. Being out as bi is tough. It’s not rational, but it makes dating harder – people find it hard to understand that if you’re going to cheat, you’re going to cheat, and the pool of potential people to cheat with being double the size doesn’t actually make a difference. So I get why he wanted to keep it between the two of you.’

I remembered what Ash had told us about her insecurity around Andy and realised Abbie was right.

‘What do you mean about Daniel being jealous? Of me and Andy being friends? Come on, Abs, we’re not six years old.’

‘Well, he’s always been a bit of a closed book. But think about it, all this time, he’s never had a long relationship. Girlfriends, sure, but no one serious. I always thought it was because he was hoping that one day you’d come to your senses and realise he was right for you. But you never did.’

‘He’d be right for anyone,’ I admitted. ‘Even if he does have wanky hair.’

‘So what’s the problem then? I mean, assuming it’s over between you and Andy?’

‘It was over years ago.’ I sighed. ‘I couldn’t do it any more – not feeling the way I did about him, and him being the way he was – is. I got to the point where I was just done. And Daniel helped me realise that he wasn’t going to change.’

‘There you go, see? He’s always had your back.’

‘Except now he hates me.’

‘Don’t be daft. How could anyone hate you? You’re fab. Of course he doesn’t.’

‘Well, he’s got a funny way of showing it.’

Before she could respond, the door opened and Matt came in with Shrimp, their highly disgruntled cat, in a carrier, and demanded to know whether there was any cake left. Although I knew he wouldn’t have minded me carrying on pouring out my heart to his wife – and would probably have had words of wisdom of his own to contribute – I felt suddenly all talked out. So shortly after that, I said goodbye and headed home, leaving them to their backlog of laundry and their cosy home, wondering if I would ever share such a life with anyone.

Thirty-Three

On Sunday night, I bowed to the inevitable and deactivated the timer on the speaker. There was taking a consistent approach to my campaign against the noisy Airbnb guests, and then there was starting my new job with at least some semblance of competence, which I certainly wouldn’t achieve if I’d been kept awake all night by my own recorded sex noises.

In any event, there was silence from next door. Either the guests had checked out early, or they’d gone out for the evening – either of which was okay with me. If they did return drunk and rowdy in the small hours, I’d be prepared, because I fully intended to be in bed by eight, just as soon as I’d ironed a shirt for the next day.

But the night passed uneventfully. I slept surprisingly well and woke at seven feeling refreshed and raring to go – although churning with first-day nerves. Carefully, I pulled together my ‘polished and professional’ look, putting on tights, a suit and heeled court shoes for the first time in weeks. Looking at my reflection in the mirror was like looking at a stranger – I’d almost forgotten what Senior Risk Management Executive Kate Miller looked like.

I only hoped that she hadn’t forgotten how to manage risk.

I was in the office by nine, following a brief panic when I hadn’t been able to locate the glass tower in which the company was based, hidden as it was amid the forest of near-identical glass towers in the heart of the City of London. I signed in and collected a temporary pass and then, taking a deep breath, joined the crowd of other suited, shiny-shoed executives in the lift.

The first couple of hours of the day passed as they always did on the first day of a contract: filling in forms in the HR department, being shown where to find the coffee machine and the ladies’ loo, adjusting my desk chair to the correct height and moving the mouse from the right to the left side of my keyboard, signing into my new email account and sifting through several dozen messages that might as well have been written in Turkish for all the sense they made to me.

Only today, I was trying my hardest not to think about Daniel – a problem I’d never had to deal with on my first day in any job before. Images of his grey eyes, cold with pure anger, kept appearing in my mind. The echo of his voice played constantly in my mind, like he’d installed a speaker in my head not just in my bedroom. When an email appeared in my inbox from someone called Daniel Something, my heart leaped with absurd hope.

At midday, just as I was wondering whether anyone would ever give me any actual work to do, Sasha, my line manager, appeared next to my desk.

‘We have a face-to-face with the wider team on the first Monday of the month,’ she said. ‘Downstairs in the main boardroom.’

I followed her and a stream of my new colleagues, whose names I’d been told but instantly forgotten, down a flight of stairs and into a glass-walled meeting room. The people might have been unfamiliar, but the setting was just like every other City boardroom I’d entered over the years. There was a polished wooden table with slots for wiring cut out of its top. There were chrome-framed chairs upholstered in inoffensive grey-blue fabric. There were people clutching notebooks looking eager and people staring at their phones looking bored. There was a wall-mounted screen and a paper flip chart in the corner.

So far, so normal.

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