Page 8 of The Love Hack

‘Hope so.’ I allowed myself a tight smile and turned back to my screen, trying not to imagine what Ross would look like in a suit.

Then, right on schedule, the exodus began. All around me, heads and shoulders rose up like a man forest as they all stood, put on coats, carried empty coffee mugs to the kitchen, powered down computers. Little knots of people crossed the office towards the lift, first a trickle, then a flood, then a final few stragglers.

‘Have a good one, Lucy,’ Ross said. ‘Good luck with the date.’

I paused a beat, as if engrossed in my work, then said, ‘Thanks. Enjoy the pub,’ without looking away from my screen.

I waited until I was sure everyone had gone, then switched off my PC, picked up my coat and bag and left, turning out the lights and activating the alarm on my way out. Then I got the Tube to meet my family – the single daughter, cheerfully joining in the planning for her little sister’s wedding.

FOUR

Dear Adam

My girlfriend and I have been dating for two years and living together for one. She’s always been a casual kind of woman – only wearing make-up when we go out, comfortable clothes, all that stuff. Low-maintenance, you know? Not that I mind – I think she’s gorgeous and sexy just as she is. But lately, I've noticed that she’s getting up earlier in the mornings and blow-drying her hair and doing her face before she leaves for work. She even bought a pair of high-heeled shoes to wear to the office.

When I asked about this change, she told me she’s hoping for a promotion at work, but I'm not sure I believe her.

Give it to me straight, Adam – is she cheating on me?

Rufus, Dundee

The next week, though, two things happened. Good things – or at least things that had the promise of becoming good. I spent Monday with almost nothing to do: Adam’s inbox remained stubbornly empty, no matter how many times I checked it. When, at the weekly team meeting, Greg had asked how the agony uncle column was going, I had to stammer out an admission that, so far, it was all uncle and no agony. Greg raised an eyebrow and said something about a slow burn, but I knew full well that if the column wasn’t working, he would can it and therefore also can me.

The only work I’d done was reading through endless back issues of Max! (trying not to admire Ross’s grasp of his subject matter and elegant turn of phrase), helping Simon with some research into the apparently unstoppable rise of Grandpa-core, and proofreading an article about NBA basketball for Chiraag. Oh – and making endless rounds of tea and coffee for the team. I hated not being busy – it made me even more self-conscious than usual; I imagined Greg coming up behind my desk, seeing my screen blank and idle, and telling me that this clearly wasn’t working and I might as well pack my things and go.

So on Tuesday morning at around eleven o’clock, when I heard a voice behind me say my name, I started and felt a cold trickle of dread on the back of my neck. This was it – the axe was going to fall.

But it wasn’t Greg. It was a guy I didn’t know – a tall man with a luxuriant beard, carrying a tablet.

‘Uh… Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Lucy.’ Not that it would have taken Sherlock Holmes to work that out, given I was the only woman on the entire floor and therefore the only potential Lucy.

‘I’m Shane, from IT upstairs.’ He smiled. ‘I understand there’s a problem with your ItemProcSearch folder.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘With your incoming email,’ he translated.

’No, it seems fine,’ I said. Just five minutes before, I’d received an invitation to the Max! Monthly five-a-side football match, which obviously I would not be attending. ‘I’ve been getting mail just— oh wait. You mean the other account?’

‘[email protected],’ he confirmed. ‘The new address. We set it up last week.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Only I haven’t had any mail to that address.’

He nodded. ‘Thought not. Mind if I have a seat?’

I stood up and he swung into my chair and scooted over to the screen, clicking the mouse and tapping obscure commands into the keyboard. I half-watched, the way you do when an IT guy is doing stuff on your machine, clueless but curious, wanting to make helpful suggestions but also worried I’d be asked something I couldn’t answer.

I managed not to say, ‘Have you tried switching it off and on again?’ I suspected Shane might have heard that joke before, once or twice.

After a minute or two, he gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Yup, that’s it.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘There was an error setting up the inbox. My bad. Messages were getting stuck in a hidden folder. I’ve cleared the cache so it should be sorted now.’

He stood up, I thanked him and returned to my chair as he hurried away to his next rescue mission. The Askadam inbox was on my screen, containing just one message, from [email protected], titled TEST. So it was working – great. But there was still no one who wanted to Askadam anything – not so great.

Then, as I watched, another unread message appeared on the screen, below Shane’s test email and therefore sent earlier. Then another appeared below it, and another and another. Then there was a pause, then four more landed on the screen. Another pause – and then a rush. Email after email, their subject lines in bold because they were unread, came flooding into the inbox.

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