Page 93 of The Love Hack

But what if us sleeping together had changed that? What if the memories I had of that night, which still made a wave of delicious pleasure wash over me, were something else entirely to him? What if…

For God’s sake, Lucy, pull yourself together, I told myself sternly, gulping down the lump in my throat. Keep the faith. If it’s meant to be, it will be. If it’s not, it’ll hurt and you’ll get over it, same as Amelie will – same as every woman does who’s found a good man and lost him. And at least now you know men can be good.

Because of Adam, I thought. Because of all the men – the young ones and the old ones, the arrogant and the diffident, the single and the attached, the dicks and the not-such-dicks, who’d confided their problems in Adam.

It must have been quite a leap of faith for all of them, I realised. Even if they genuinely believed in the existence of the smiley, bearded 30-something chewing on his pencil, they’d put their future in the hands of a stranger in an online column.

And what they’d got was me. Lucy Masters, twenty-nine and perennially single, who didn’t have a clue about men.

I owed them all something, I realised. I owed them for their time and their trust and their honesty, even the dicks. They’d given me that and, in a roundabout way, they’d given me Ross.

In return, what had I given them? I’d never really thought about it before. I’d been so focussed on getting the job done, meeting my deadlines, producing answers that I hoped made some kind of sense. Greg’s focus on click rates and read-through had made me spend far more time considering the response of Max!’s readers to my replies than that of the men who’d actually written to Adam in the first place.

Jonno’s email had changed that. I remembered how I’d felt writing my reply to him in the office all those months ago, shy and hesitant. I remembered showing the draft of it to Ross and how he’d reacted, and realised now that it must have reminded him painfully of the loss of his father.

But Jonno had read it, and taken it on board. It probably hadn’t changed anything – he’d clearly been a great dad before he read it, and he was still a great dad now. But it had given him confidence to keep on doing what he was doing – loving his daughter, talking and listening to her, parenting her.

I hadn’t just done my job – I’d done a good job, and the knowledge filled me with satisfaction and pride. I wished I could meet Jonno, shake his hand and tell him how much his story and its sequel had moved me, although I knew that could never happen.

The train rumbled to a stop and I got out, surprised that the journey had passed so quickly. I was almost home – and suddenly, I was looking forward to that. My flat would feel different now – I’d be able to see the dent on the sofa cushion where Ross had sat and imagine him sitting there again, right next to me.

I’d probably need to invest in a second controller for my X-Box.

By the time I reached the stairs up to my flat, I was almost running, my bag thumping on my back. I was out of breath when I unlocked the door and flung it open, and when Astro came to meet me I scooped him up and kissed him and told him how much I loved him.

By the next morning, my see-sawing emotions had settled down a bit. I’d unpacked all my stuff and done a load of washing (although I have to admit I didn’t wash the sheets that Ross had slept in) and spent lots of time catching up with Astro and telling him all my adventures. I ate a ready meal and went to bed early, and woke up with a stomach full of butterflies at the prospect of seeing Ross again – not just that day, but maybe that night too, and every day in the office after that.

He was waiting for me when I got to the coffee shop and we placed our latte orders together and walked to the office together. For the first time, I got into the lift with him and neither of us blushed. We walked across the office together and took our seats at our desks.

I was so buoyed up by happiness that it was only then that I realised something was wrong.

Well, not necessarily wrong, but definitely weird. There was an air of tension across the pod of desks. Although it wasn’t yet nine thirty, everyone had their heads down and their eyes focussed on their screens. Chiraag had already changed out of his cycling gear into his work clothes. Marco wasn’t using the reflection on his screen to fuss with his hair. Neil got up and offered to make a round of drinks but no one took him up on this once-in-a-lifetime offer.

Something was definitely going on, and I didn’t know what it was.

Had the office grapevine somehow got wind of what had happened between me and Ross? But if that was the case, why weren’t they relentlessly taking the piss out of us, like they had when Simon snogged one of the girls from Accounts?

Had they learned not only of what had happened, but somehow knew Ross had changed his mind about me? But there’d been nothing amiss between us that morning, and even now, when I looked up at him across the desk, I could see his face was just as puzzled as mine must have been.

And then it came to me. The reply to Zack that had gone viral and sent Adam’s column shooting to the top of the Max! landing page hadn’t been enough. Greg and the ad sales people had run the analytics and decided that Ask Adam wasn’t washing its face, that they’d run it up the flagpole and not enough people had cheered, that the whole thing lacked long-term sustainability – or however they’d have phrased it in their meeting.

Ask Adam was for the chop. I was for the chop.

I knew how that felt. I'd experienced it before – not just a few months ago when Marion had told me my job was in jeopardy, but years before that.

After Kieren ended things between us, I’d thought I’d never be able to show my face in the office again. But I knew I had to. Even though I'd spent the whole night crying, I forced myself to get up the next morning, shower, dress and go to work. My job mattered to me – it was my future. A future that would no longer have Kieren in it – but if I was honest with myself, I’d known that for a while.

So I needed to focus on what I could control. What I was good at. What I was doing that was for me, not for a man.

I gave myself this little pep talk, and it worked. Kind of. When I arrived at the office I was shaking, feeling sick and wanting to run away. But I was there. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to walk through the door, into the lift and to my desk. I didn’t look in his direction.

You’ve got this, Lucy, I told myself.

But I hadn’t.

It was mid morning when the blow fell.

I’d been keeping my head down, getting on with my job as best I could, managing not to cry. There had even been moments when I was engrossed enough in my work to not think about Kieren for whole minutes at a time.

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