I walk into the office, the freshly hoovered soft carpet beneath my Converse trainers. Someone has tidied all the papers on my desk into a neat pile. Everyone in the open-plan office notices me walk in and immediately looks more preoccupied with their work. This still weirds me out. I feel so out of control in my personal life, and yet, in this office people are somehow intimidated by me. Having any sort of influence or power at work is still a huge novelty. I pause. What is that music blasting through the speakers? I have it, it’s R. Kelly’s ‘Ignition’.
I walk over to Judy, a junior subeditor who is wiggling in her seat and bopping her head to the music.
‘Judy – R. Kelly is a sexual abuser. Can you turn it off, immediately please?’
Judy stares at me blankly, and turns the volume right down, but not totally off.
I go and sit at my desk, kicking off my shoes. Bloody office politics.
‘Here are some packages, Ol,’ our receptionist Colin says, chipper as usual, dropping a heavy pile of parcels onto my desk. ‘Feels like clothes inside.’ He presses down on it with his thumb.
‘Yeah. Thanks Colin,’ I say, not looking up from my desk.
‘Not excited about your new garms?’ he says, sitting down on a swivel chair and crossing his legs.
‘No. I ordered them from this American website, they took months to arrive, and … well, now I don’t even need them any more.’
I’d ordered them for Jacob’s brother’s wedding, months ago when we were still together. These clothes arriving is just another sad reminder of everything that’s changed.
‘Fair enough. Hey, wanna know something depressing?’
‘Not really.’ Read the room, Colin.
‘It’s not proper depressing – more like, funny-depressing.’
‘All right, go on.’
‘I’ve just downloaded this app that tells you how many books you could have written if you calculate all the tweets you’ve written over the years. I’ve tweeted 5,000 times,’ he tells me. ‘So that’s 700,000 characters. So that’s definitely like two books.’
‘Why would you do that?’
Colin gets out his phone and goes onto my Twitter page.
‘Wow—’
‘No. Stop.’
‘You’ve tweeted 52,000 times. So, you could have written, like, fifteen books by now,’ he says, deadpan.
I want to whack my head on the desk. I imagine blood going everywhere, splashing onto Colin.
‘Can I make you a tea? Also, this new eye cream got delivered today for you all to test out.’ He hands me a gold cardboard box. ‘You do look a bit tired my love.’
‘Cheers,’ I say, blankly. ‘And yes, two sugars please.’
I’m seeing Bea, Isla and Cec tonight. Maybe I’ll take a few boxes of freebies from the office for them; they always seem to love free beauty bits and bobs. I can’t wait to see them. I feel like a shell of my usual self. I guess I haven’t fully processed the break-up yet. I need some perspective from my mates.
Suddenly my eyes fill with tears. I’d given myself a good talking-to in the mirror this morning. I’ve done my crying, enough’s enough. But clearly the well’s not empty just yet. I take myself off to the best place to have a shameless cry: the .dot toilets. They are the newest and fanciest part of the whole office. I take a box of tissues with me and try to cry quietly on the seat of the loo. Twenty minutes later, there’s a tap on the glazed glass door.
‘Ol? Ol … it’s Colin.’
‘Oh, for god’s sake, Colin – not now.’
‘Sorry love, it’s just … your tea is cold and Gill has said she needs you for a meeting.’
‘Oh crap.’ I look at my phone. Yes, it’s 10 a.m. already, time for our weekly features meeting.
‘Can I come in?’
‘How do you know I’m not doing a poo?’ Colin and I have this type of oversharing relationship. We’ve become quite close friends over the years; he often plays a role in cheering me up or lightening the mood and I have been there to listen to his terrible dates with awful men.
He laughs gently. ‘Oh babe, I could hear you crying from outside.’
‘OK.’ I sniff. I let Colin in and he wraps me up in a big hug.
‘Are you OK? Is it Gill? Is she being horrible?’
‘No … no. It’s … me and Jacob. We have … well, I have … ended things.’ I sniff.
‘Oh no. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Is it … OK?’
‘No, not really.’ I wipe my nose. ‘I mean, I just can’t stop crying. I’ve been coming in these loos for a sob every day since it happened; can’t believe no one’s noticed yet.’
‘Do you wanna talk about it?’
‘Maybe soon. Not feeling up to it right now.’
‘I get it. Don’t worry. Shall I tell Gill you’ve got something else on? I’m sure she’ll understand.’
‘Actually, that would be great, yes please. Thank you. I just need a bit more time in here, getting myself together.’
‘Of course.’ Colin squeezes my hand and gives a sympathetic smile.
Grief can knock you sideways. I miss Jacob so much. I feel almost sick at how much I could do with a hug from him right now. I’m constantly trying to fight back tears. I can’t imagine anyone ever loving me in the same way. Or seeing me naked, for that matter.
After another thirty minutes, sobbing and squeezing out tears, I look in the bathroom mirror and blot away at my face with toilet roll, removing any signs of dampness. Then I apply more kohl liner around my eyes. Since the break-up I’ve felt so worried that we’ve made the wrong choice by ending it. I guess this is being human: we can never be 100 per cent sure about any decision we make.
Jacob moved out ‘officially’ only recently, after living in his brother Sam’s spare room for a month. The idea was that we’d try living apart at first as some sort of ‘break’. But it sounded a lot like a break-up from the start. It’s been the shittiest time of my entire life. I am stewing in it, sitting in the negativity and depression like a big squishy chair that I can’t get out of. Every meal I cook reminds me of him. Everything on TV. Even replacing the loo roll or making the bed in the morning. Everything. I wish I could just delete everything and start again, like picking a brand-new player in a video game.
I leg it out of the office at 5.30 on the dot, itching to get to tonight’s dinner. I desperately need to feel the safety net of my best pals, who will allow me to rant and shout and cry and snot bubble. That’ll make me feel better. They have always stood up for me. Once, back in the day when you could still smoke inside, they all tapped ash on my ex-boyfriend Billy’s head on the dance floor. He was a horrible, verbally abusive arsehole. All the ash just piled up in his hair while he danced. I bet it stank for days.
I’m sweating slightly on the Tube on the way to our usual dinner place, Jono’s, a family-run Italian restaurant in Clerkenwell. We stumbled across it one drunken night years ago at uni, and it quickly became our go-to. We always have the same table, a big corner booth looking onto the street. The atmosphere is warm, busy and friendly. We love Jono, the owner, who is always there with a massive smile on his face. He knows us so well now after a decade of the same orders: spaghetti alle vongole (Bea), risotto ai gamberi (Cecily), gnocchi (Isla) and capricciosa pizza (me). We have had countless heart-to-hearts inside, plus countless arguments, countless tears and laughing fits. There are so many trendy new hipster restaurants opening all the time in London, but Jono’s will always have our heart. If I’m ever late I know the girls will have ordered my drink (a glass of Fatalone, large), and it will be waiting for me when I get there. The others are never late. Compared to my friends, I guess I do feel a bit … behind. I think it’s a metaphor for my life.