Girl on the Run (9 page)

‘It depends what you mean by “well matched”,’ I say as diplomatically as I can. ‘You’re very different in some ways, but lots of people think different’s good. You know, opposites attract.’

‘
Are
we opposites?’ She says this as if it’s news to her.

‘Well, I suppose on the one hand you’re intelligent and outgoing and fun, and . . .’

‘And Adam?’

‘Well, he is intelligent and . . .’ I take a bite of cake.

Jess decides to change the subject. ‘Have you had any second thoughts about returning to the running club?’

I nearly choke. ‘Jess, if you think there’s any way I’m going back, you’re insane. I turned up dressed like someone you’d give your spare change to, trudged round hopelessly, then regurgitated the contents of my gut in front of a fellow member with whom – to top it off – I happen to be in an insurance dispute.’

She laughs. ‘You make things sound far worse than they are sometimes. At least you didn’t throw up in front of Doctor Dishy.’

‘If that’s the best you’ve got to say on the issue, God help me. Has he said anything about me?’

‘Um . . . yes.’

‘Liar.’

‘I’m not,’ she replies. ‘He asked whether you were coming back. I told him it was unlikely.’

‘What did you say that for?’

She looks at me incredulously. ‘Because that’s what you’ve spent five days telling me.’

I bite my lip. ‘Fair enough. I wish there was a way I could see him again, but without any running being involved. Can’t you throw another dinner party?’

‘Sorry, but our weekends are crazy for the next couple of months,’ she tells me. ‘Look, don’t bite off my head, but why don’t you do as I suggested in the first place? Get a bit fitter – then join. I know you felt it was a disaster on Monday, but that’s only because you were with people who were way above your abilities. And there’s no shame in that, by the way. They’ve been doing it for years.’

‘Bully for them. I got home and considered having a Stannah Stairlift fitted.’

‘Oh, come on, just start again. You can go in the slow group this time. Plus,’ she says, nudging me, ‘I’m sure if you asked nicely, Doctor Dishy would help you limber up.’

There is no doubt Jess knows how to push my buttons. Because by the time I get home, I’ve thought about nothing but Doctor Dishy and his lithe body in that running gear. I push the thought out of my mind as I sit down at my computer and reluctantly compose the following email.

I press Send and feel a bitter lump in my throat. A thousand pounds. I click onto my internet banking site and check out my savings account – otherwise known as the Australia Fund.

I’ve been putting money into it for years, the intention being to visit my Aunt Steph in Sydney at some point. I haven’t seen Steph – my mum’s younger sister – for years, but she used to email me all the time to say I should plan a trip.

Mum’s never been close to Steph, for no other reason than their personalities are polar opposites, something you can tell just by looking at old photos.

There’s one picture of the sisters outside their terraced house in Anfield, Mum plastered in lipstick and with a feather boa round her neck, while little Steph – who can only have been seven – gazes up solemnly with wide eyes. You get the feeling that even then she’d accepted it was her destiny to live in Mum’s shadow.

Which is part of the reason I’ve always wanted to take the plunge and visit her one day. She has no family of her own, never having married, and it’s as if she’s become an irrelevance in our lives. This isn’t a situation Mum engineered on purpose, but it still doesn’t feel right.

I’ve always told myself that if it means digging out my bikini to soak up some Bondi Beach atmosphere at the same time, then all the better. Except I might be waiting rather a long time now.

I click on the balance and the figure appears: £1,036.

‘Great,’ I mutter. That leaves a grand total of thirty-six quid.

At that rate, by the time I reach Bondi I won’t be in a bikini, I’ll be in a FiftyPlus catalogue swimsuit.

‘I see Building Services are on the offensive again,’ says Heidi, picking up the latest memo to drop through the door.

‘What have we done now?’ asks Matt. ‘Surely nothing can be worse than the toaster?’

Heidi clears her throat. ‘“It has come to the attention of the Building Services Manager that Certain Employees of Certain Businesses are regularly failing to bring their Swipe Card into Work and still expect to be permitted entry to the building Willy Nilly. The Building Services Department would like to remind All Employees of All Businesses that No Employees of Any Businesses will be permitted entry to the Building without a validificated Swipe Card. It is no good relying on Building Services to let you in as Building Services has better things to do. A Certain Business on the Fourth Floor is doing this disproportionately. Signed, The Building Services Manager.”’

‘We really are in the naughty corner,’ I say.

‘Call yourself a company director, Abby?’ teases Heidi. ‘You haven’t even validificated our swipe cards.’

I don’t know what I expected of Heidi when she returned to work the week after telling me about her MS, but it wasn’t this. There are no tears, no dramas. One week on, Heidi is just the same old Heidi.

‘I feel totally normal,’ she tells Priya and me in the Ladies on Friday lunchtime. ‘Honestly, I’ve no symptoms at all at the moment. Plus, I’m relieved to have told people. You’ve all been so much more supportive than I imagined.’

‘You must have had low expectations,’ I point out, and she laughs.

It’s clear that neither Priya nor I can make out whether this is a front; whether, deep down, Heidi is tortured and hiding it well. At the moment, everybody else seems more tortured than she is – constantly glancing at her to check she’s okay and being ultra-cautious that we don’t say the wrong thing.

Although nothing has happened this week – nothing at all – I feel the need to take the team out for a drink. So at five on the dot, I prise them from their computers and order them to the swanky new hotel that’s opened close to the office.

I spend half an hour finishing up, dealing with emails as I wolf down the crisps and ploughman’s sandwich I forgot to eat for lunch, before chucking its packaging in the bin and noting its depressing contents: crisp packets, chocolate wrappers and enough triangular sandwich cartons to create a detailed plastic replica of the pyramid at the Louvre.

When I return to my emails, I notice one landed this morning from Tom.

I shut down my computer and head to the toilets to attack my appearance, only to discover the mirror dominated by three girls from the solicitors’ office upstairs. They appear to have transformed this grim, grey space into Champneys, such is the volume of make-up, hair and skin products scattered above the sinks.

I squeeze into a gap next to the hand-dryer, causing it to erupt into a noise comparable to a Cape Canaveral launch, while emitting but a whisper of cold air on my shoulder.

I examine myself critically, then the girls next to me, with their curling tongs, flawless make-up and eyelashes that look like something that’s crawled out of a tarantula house.

It hasn’t been a good week for me, lookswise. If I’m honest, it hasn’t been a good year. My hair has received as much attention as my waistline since I started the business – and it’s been so long since my roots were highlighted that if I’m not careful I’ll soon look like a Fab Ice Lolly.

I sheepishly pull out my powder compact and dab it over the shine on my nose. But as the girl at the other end of the mirror starts waxing her knees, I realise that my efforts are woefully inadequate. So I sprint back to my desk to open what Matt refers to as my ‘Mystery Drawer’.

‘This,’ I told him once, ‘contains the most important equipment in the office.’ I open it and remove my Velcro rollers, hairdryer and styling spray, before getting to work.

Half an hour later, as I cross the road outside the office, I hear someone calling my name.

‘Hey – wait!’

Oh God. It must be the bloody Building Services Manager! On a Friday night, for heaven’s sake. There’s no way I’m discussing my failure to ‘validificate’ the swipe cards now. I steam across the road as fast as I can without obviously breaking into a gallop, and head single-mindedly to my destination.

‘Wait!’

I quicken my step to the front of the hotel, where I spin through the revolving doors so fast that one slaps me on the arse as I exit. Then I stumble across the lobby, determined to get to the bar around the corner, before he can catch me. My footsteps quicken and, courtesy of a lackadaisical porter pushing a rail of coats and some perilously slippery floortiles, I somehow manage to outrun him.

‘Abby!’ he cries, before I dart round the corner and confirm to my satisfaction that I’ve given him the slip. When I’m certain the coast is clear, I straighten up. I’m striding coolly across the lobby towards the bar to meet my colleagues, when I feel a gentle tug on my hair.

I spin round and am confronted, not by the Building Services Manager, but by Tom. In a suit.

It’s a sight that seems wrong in some ways and yet . . . unbelievably right. I’ve only ever seen him either in his biking jacket or running gear – the latter with his muscles on show. In a suit, he had the potential to look stiff and uncomfortable, yet he looks anything but. The grey-blue hues of its fabric make his eyes appear deeper and darker, and his crisp white collar cuts cleanly against the tanned skin of his neck.

‘Oh. It’s you.’ My face flushes. He really isn’t my type at all, yet he’s so excessively good-looking that again I’m self-conscious in his presence.

‘What a greeting,’ he smiles. ‘I know you’re about to hand over a thousand pounds to me, but I hadn’t thought I deserved that.’

‘I thought you were our Building Services Manager,’ I explain.

‘Okay,’ he says. A hint of a smile, but no more, appears on his lips. It’s very disconcerting, as if he constantly finds something amusing about me. ‘I was trying to alert you to this.’

He holds out his hand and presents me with a Velcro roller, tangled up with so many split ends you’d think it had been used to perm a Collie.

I try not to faint. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘It was stuck on your back. I’ve chased you halfway up Dale Street to tell you.’

My cheeks suddenly feel as though they’ve been blow-torched.

‘Oh! You didn’t need to do that,’ I whoop.

‘As it happens, I was on my way here anyway.’

I glance at my roller. ‘Well, how strange,’ I say as casually as possible. ‘How on earth did that get there? I don’t even use the things.’

I whip it from his hand and stuff it into my bag so decisively that two other rollers – ones I’d cleverly decided to bring in case my fringe flops – leap out and ping on the floor like two oversized jumping beans. ‘What I mean is, I don’t . . . um, normally use them.’

I bend down to retrieve them and a pain slices through my brow as he does the exact same thing and we bang heads.

‘God, sorry,’ I mutter.

He rubs his head, frowning. ‘It’s okay. Listen, it’s probably a good thing I literally bumped into you. I forgot to give you my address.’

My heart starts racing. ‘What did you want to give me your address for?’

‘The cheque,’ he replies.

‘Oh. Of course.’ I root in my bag for a business card and pen, which he takes from me and starts writing. He’s about to hand it back, when he examines the card.

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten your business was web design. I know a company looking to redesign its website at the moment.’

‘Yours?’

‘No, a contact’s. A firm of accountants. I can email you the details.’

‘That’d be nice. Thanks.’ I catch his eye briefly and smile, but find myself unable to hold his gaze for even a polite amount of time.

‘
There
you are!’ says a voice out of nowhere as I look up at its owner.

You know those French actresses with big eyes, tiny fragile limbs and bee-stung lips? Well, the woman who has just linked arms with Tom would make one of those look like the Honey Monster.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she grins, tightening her grip on him. ‘I’m Geraldine.’ The accent is a soft Lancastrian one, making it clear she
isn’t
French.

‘This is Abby,’ Tom tells her. ‘She’s joined the running club.’

‘Have you?’ Geraldine’s smile widens.

‘But now she’s left,’ he adds. ‘Unless you’ve had a change of heart?’

I laugh. ‘Er, no.’

‘Oh, you should join again,’ says Geraldine enthusiastically. ‘It’d be
brill
to have another girl in the gang.’

Oh God. She’s one of them. I might have known. ‘It wasn’t really my thing . . .’

‘You’d get into it,’ she insists, truly believing this. ‘Oh, change your mind – go on. We’re desperate for more members for the Ten K women’s team. And there’s a half-marathon coming up if you’re feeling really ambitious.’