Page 87 of Not in a Million Years

Only seated at the end of the table, deep in conversation with the woman next to him, was Claude.

I literally froze in the doorway, then some sort of survival instinct – or more likely autopilot – took over, and I followed Sasha to a seat at the far end of the table. Claude caught my eye, smiled and actually winked. I felt my features compose into a polite smile.

What the hell was he doing here? We’d been in touch intermittently since our last date, and he’d suggested meeting up again, but a date hadn’t been confirmed, and the truth was I had been too occupied with my other problems to give much thought to him and where our relationship was going – if indeed we even had one.

And besides, I realised, when it came to romance, there had been very little space in my mind for anyone who wasn’t Daniel.

‘Good afternoon, team,’ Sasha interrupted my jumbled thoughts. ‘We’re excited to welcome two new joiners today. Kate Miller will be with us for the next six months, working with the Compliance team on derisking our European operations. And Claude Anjambé, who’ll be leading on Governance. If we could all just go round the table and introduce ourselves. We’ll start with you, Lisa.’

One after the other, twenty-five or so people recited their names and job titles. I tried my best to focus on them – these were my colleagues now; if I got a Teams notification from someone called Melanie asking me to pop past her desk for a catch-up about something, it would be useful to remember whether she was the blue-eyed blonde woman or the heavily pregnant one with the pixie cut.

But my thoughts refused to be tethered, and my eyes kept straying back to Claude. There was no doubt I’d been right to fancy him. Even in a room full of people, even when he wasn’t speaking, he seemed to command attention. His presence was magnetic: the way he held his pen in his long, elegant fingers; the husky timbre of his voice when he said his name; the bright flash of his smile.

There was just one problem. He wasn’t wearing an overall with the arms tied round his waist. His smile didn’t make my insides go funny. He didn’t have wanky hair.

Okay, that was more than one problem. But it all boiled down to one thing – he wasn’t Daniel. And, I was beginning to realise with a stab of longing so intense it felt like pain, if I couldn’t have Daniel, I didn’t want anyone else, no matter how desirable.

Somehow, I got through the meeting, my pen flashing over my notepad as I wrote down as much information as I could, knowing that without notes, my brain had as much chance of retaining anything other than the potent memory of Daniel’s kisses as the battered wire sieve I used for my midnight bakes.

At last, the hour drew to a close. Chairs scraped on the polished wooden floor, chatter broke out as people shuffled towards the exit, and phones buzzed and trilled as they were taken off silent mode.

Including my own, with a message from Claude.

Fancy a spot of lunch?

I looked up from the screen. He was hovering by his place at the end of the table, looking at me expectantly. I nodded. He held up a hand, five fingers outstretched, and gestured towards the elevator. I nodded again.

Five minutes later, having retrieved my bag from my desk and dashed to the bathroom to comb my hair and top up my lipstick, I met him by the lift. A few other people stepped in with us, so we all made our way to ground level in silence, gazing up as if fascinated at the slowly descending floor numbers.

Outside, the sun was shining. Crowds of City workers were emerging from the surrounding office blocks like bees from hives, going in search of pollen – or more likely Pret a Manger.

‘What do you fancy?’ Claude asked. ‘Salad? Sandwich? Sushi?’

‘A sandwich would be great,’ I said. Sushi would have felt too fancy somehow – too much like a date.

‘I guess I took you by surprise back there.’ Claude smiled at me, lowering his sunglasses over his eyes. ‘They wanted to keep the offer under wraps for as long as possible. Fortunately, I had a load of holiday saved at the old place, so I barely had to work any notice. And here we are, colleagues once again.’

‘Only for six months,’ I reminded him. ‘I’m a hired assassin, remember? I do my thing and then move on.’

‘Not from everything, I hope.’ He gestured to the door of a sandwich shop – not one of the basic ones selling tuna baguettes and egg mayo on squashy white bread, but a high-end place advertising Reubens and salt beef on rye. ‘This do you?’

‘Looks great.’ Normally, I’d have been salivating at the prospect of hunks of warm, juicy salt beef squirted liberally with mustard and sharp with pickle. But now, I realised, the prospect of food was distinctly unappealing.

‘Fancy eating outside?’ he asked. ‘It’s such a glorious day.’

‘Let’s do it,’ I agreed, and we took our brown paper bags of food and drink and made our way to a bench in a garden square.

The sun was warm on my face. Eager pigeons strutted around our feet hoping for crumbs. Claude chatted about our new colleagues and the challenges he would face in his new, even more senior role. My sandwich was even better than I could have hoped.

But I felt a sense of sadness and inevitability, because I knew what I was going to have to do.

I tried to respond animatedly to Claude’s news of how our former colleagues were getting on (Lauren had been promoted, Lucia sacked, Gareth and Stephen were awaiting a disciplinary hearing after shattering a meeting-room table having sex on it after the annual away day). I gave him an edited update on how Andy was doing, without touching on the potential seriousness of his relapse and without mentioning Daniel. I heard about his forthcoming trip to Paris to see his old university friends. And then, once we’d finished our lunch and it was time to head back to the office, the moment I’d been waiting for arrived.

‘So, Kate,’ he said, standing up and carefully folding the used napkins, empty sandwich wrappers and soft-drink cans into the bag they’d come in, ‘I was wondering when you’re free to meet up again? Outside of work, I mean.’

I hesitated, hunting for the right words to use, and Claude seemed to take my silence as acceptance.

‘There’s a new place that’s opened in North London,’ he went on. ‘A climbing wall. Six storeys and twenty-one routes up, with a vertical drop slide. I’m keen to give it a try – would you like to join me?’

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