‘What’s up with you, tonight?’ I ask, rattled, my engagement fantasy thoroughly fraying at the edges.
‘Nothing,’ Paul replies curtly, finally meeting my gaze, his expression listless. ‘I just… I don’t know. What are you ordering?’
He looks down at his menu. ‘I think I’ll have a pizza, although the pasta dishes do look good,’ he says.
‘Great,’ I comment weakly as I peruse the menu, but none of the dishes particularly jump out.
I take another sip of wine and look back up at Paul.
‘Can you please tell me what’s wrong?’ I implore him.
Paul glances up from his menu. He looks irritable, fraught almost. I don’t often see that look in his eyes. He looks even more despondent than he gets when Manchester United lose, which is extremely despondent. He even looks more downbeat than when he found out that the last company he worked for was going into administration, meaning he and all his colleagues would be laid off. He definitely doesn’t look like a man who’s about to pop the question. He looks like a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Suddenly, I forget about my engagement fantasy and start to feel really nervous. Has something happened? Has Paul been fired? Is he unwell?
‘What is it, Paul? Is it work? Are you okay?’ I ask anxiously.
Paul’s always had a bit of an issue with his boss, Simon. He often refers to him as ‘that self-satisfied prick’, which is kind of understandable to be honest. I’ve met Simon a few times at drinks events hosted by the company and I have to admit, I’ve never exactly warmed to him. He’s forty-five but still talks about his Eton days like they were yesterday. He loves rugby – watching, these days, not playing – and he has floppy foppish blond hair and a penchant for pinstripe shirts and chinos. He also has an annoying tendency to be incredibly overfamiliar. He gives everyone nicknames, although the nicknames tend to vary according to his mood. He’s referred to Paul as everything from Paulo and Paulina (which he, naturally, despises) to The Paulinator (a lame twist on The Terminator) and McCartney (in reference to Paul McCartney, who neither Paul nor Simon are fans of). He also has a lax attitude to personal boundaries and doesn’t think twice about calling Paul in the evenings or during the weekend if something’s happened that he believes is an ‘emergency’ (spoiler: these incidents are never actual emergencies).
Simon’s been scoring contracts with multinational corporations recently and Paul’s not been particularly happy about it. The high-paying contracts haven’t been reflected in Paul’s salary and yet his workload has become far more intense and far less creative. Paul insists the clients he’s now working for don’t represent the agency’s original vision, of being a ‘forward-thinking, dynamic, cutting-edge design consultancy’, which aimed to represent ‘innovative, sustainable, game-changing brands’. Instead, Paul insists the company has become ‘nothing more than a cash cow’. Those are his exact words from one of his rants last week, when he ended up bringing work back from the office and burning the midnight oil, while complaining about how pissed off he was to be ‘losing sleep so Simon can buy a yacht to seduce poor unsuspecting girls off the coast of Marbella’. I get that it’s frustrating for him to not be working on the innovative, edgy, exciting projects he usually prefers, but the market is tough. My company’s been in the same boat too. We take on work for the highest-paying clients these days, not necessarily pursuing the cases we find the most interesting, but I don’t let it get to me. I’m just grateful that my and Paul’s companies are doing well. I’m thankful we’re in work.
But suddenly, I get it. Paul must have finally had enough of Simon and told him as much. He must have snapped. That’s why he’s so spaced out and weird. That’s it.
‘Did you confront Simon?’ I ask.
‘What?’ Paul looks surprised.
‘About all the contracts. Did you confront him?’
‘No.’ Paul shakes his head.
‘What is it then? Did you quit?’ I ask, secretly hoping he hasn’t.
I know Paul doesn’t exactly love his job, but we have a mortgage to pay. We were lucky enough to get a run-down terraced house in south London for a bargain price and even though it’s been quite an effort to do it up, it’s our first real home and I really don’t want to default on our mortgage payments and lose it.
‘Huh?’ Paul looks taken aback. ‘How did you know?’.
My heart sinks.
‘It was just a guess,’ I murmur. ‘So, you really quit?’
The butterflies that were in my stomach earlier because I was excited are now beating their wings because I’m just plain nervous and uneasy.
‘I, err…’ Paul fixes me with a serious look.
He looks as nervous and uncomfortable as I feel. He takes a swig of his beer and before he has a chance to answer, our waiter comes back.
‘Ready to order?’ he asks.
I order a margherita with olives, even though I couldn’t be less fussed about food right now. Paul always used to take the piss out of me for loving margheritas, claiming they were the most ‘basic’ of pizzas, but you can’t go wrong with a margherita. Paul orders a repulsive-sounding pizza with garlic and egg and anchovies, which doesn’t exactly bode well for the epic engagement kiss I’d envisaged on London Bridge. Although to be fair, nothing about this evening is boding well for that.
We hand our menus back to the waiter and he heads to the kitchen.
I eagerly take another sip of wine.
‘Paul, what’s going on?’ I ask, urging him to elaborate, while desperately hoping this whole thing is some kind of wind-up.
Paul may not be the biggest fan of his job, but he’s not usually an impulsive person. He wouldn’t just quit, out of the blue like that. Sure, he talks about it, but don’t we all? I’ve had moments when I’m drowning in work and I’ve sworn I’m going to throw the towel in and pursue my long-lost childhood passion for pottery. I’ve day-dreamed about starting my own quirky business, selling handmade ceramics at Greenwich market, but that kind of thing is just a fantasy. It’s not like I’m ever going to actually do it. The daydream is a pressure valve, providing a nice little escape during hard times. Paul muses about stuff like that too sometimes, but he’s been working in graphic design for eleven years now. He’s always been steady and reliable, seeing projects through even when they’re tough. He’s not the kind of person who’d just wake up one day and quit their job.
Paul reaches for his pint and downs a third of it. He places the glass back on the table with a thud and wipes a moustache of foam from his upper lip, before fixing me with a foreboding look that has me hungrily taking another sip of my drink too. My stomach lurches. I can tell from the intensity in his eyes that I’m not going to like whatever it is he’s about to tell me.
‘I quit. I finally quit,’ he states firmly. ‘I’m not going back.’
‘But why? What do you mean you’re not going back? What about your notice period?’ I ask, curious, even though talking about his notice period sounds a little pedantic and trite.
I mean, what’s a two-month notice period in the grand scheme of things? Why am I concerned about that when my boyfriend is clearly having some kind of meltdown?