10

~ All to-do lists should contain the instructions ‘have a cup of tea'.

I spent the weekend doing as much research as I could about Malvern Property Search. When I focused my mind on a task I could get a lot done, and by the time Wednesday rolled around I felt confident that I was more than up to the challenge of finding perfect homes for extremely fussy, busy or wealthy people.

Obviously, there was more to it than that, but from the case studies on their website that seemed to be the gist.

Jim didn't mention the interview again, but on Tuesday night, as he was dropping me off after a long day (Terry had told me quite a sad story about losing his brother; I'd had to pretend I'd cleaned the oven to make up for the time I'd spent patting Terry's hand and trying not to cry), he said, ‘If you want to leave at lunchtime I'll cover the afternoon jobs.'

‘You don't need to …' I began.

‘No, it's fine. It's just a quick whizz around Adam Doherty's and he's still away so there won't be much to do.' He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Was that a hint of a smile? ‘Wouldn't want you to go to this interview soaked from head to foot.'

‘ Thank you,' I said. Then I turned, so he'd know I meant it, and said, ‘Really, thanks. I appreciate that.'

Jim shrugged. ‘If the oven spontaneously catches fire, I'll text you for an electrician.' He paused. ‘Unless you know any firemen?'

I laughed more than I needed to in acknowledgement of his attempt at a joke.

But it was kind of him. And he even dropped me at the station. That, I surmised, was how keen he was to see me gainfully employed elsewhere.

Malvern Property Finders was located in a warehouse development in Worcester and the modern arrangement of creamy roses in reception telegraphed to visitors that it was a high-end operation, all glass and leather and a deferential hush. In an effort to counteract my habitual lateness I'd arrived way too early, and had had to spend forty minutes (and three espressos) in a nearby coffee shop; I could barely sign the visitors pass, my nerves were jangling so much.

But as soon as she walked in, I recognised Olivia Collins. She'd been at the launch party for the first release of the St Anselm's apartments. I was good with faces and names when they were combined with a handy name badge, and her horn-rimmed glasses and jet-black bob stuck in my mind. Olivia was also the only one who made a point of flushing every loo and checking out the drain rate on the showers, something I thought was a bit pernickety at the time, but now considered, knowing what I knew about Adam Doherty's shower, quite astute.

‘Oh my god, it's you !' she exclaimed, pointing at me with delight as if we were old mates. ‘Great to see you again!'

She ushered me into an elegant office with a view of the river and, after yet more coffee, the interview commenced.

Well, I say interview. We chatted non-stop for fifty-five minutes about local restaurants, heat pumps, the best place to source tiles, sourdough, the Hereford bypass, that sort of thing. As a result – thank god – there was no time for the usual ‘tell me about a terrible mistake you made and how you rectified it' awkwardness so I had zero qualms about skimming over the entire sacking incident at my previous job. She didn't ask; I didn't tell.

At five to five, Olivia (‘Oh, call me Liv.') abruptly said, ‘Yikes, I haven't even mentioned the job, have I? So . It's a maternity cover, starting sooner than planned, unfortunately, poor Cordelia, so six months officially, but who knows, maybe longer. You'd be covering Cordy's client list, which is mainly relocators from London, some senior Forces personnel, nothing complicated. Is there anything you'd like to ask me about the role?'

I nodded. I'd prepared a few questions – commission, legalities, exclusivity, etcetera – but to honest, I was too wired on coffee to process Liv's answers. She seemed fine with my nodding, though. And then we were standing by the door and saying our goodbyes.

‘Gosh, that flew by!' she said, and gave me a big hug. The weird thing was, the hug didn't seem weird. The interview had gone that well.

‘I don't want to get ahead of myself,' Liv confided with a smile, ‘but you would be a perfect fit for our team. I need to discuss with the directors, and they'll probably want you to pop back in for a chat but …' She hunched up her shoulders and made a thrilled ‘squee' face. ‘Are you free early next week?'

‘Yes!' I said, without thinking. ‘Yes, I am!'

I floated out of the office and into the street outside. That literally couldn't have gone better. Happiness was bubbling out of me: I needed to tell someone.

But who could I tell? I probably shouldn't tell Mum, not until there was a definite job offer. I nearly called Cleo, but then remembered it wouldn't go down that well, considering her staff shortages.

Mitch. I was calling him before I even had time to think.

‘Hey, Robyn!' He picked up on the second ring, and I started burbling straight away.

‘Thank you so much – I owe you a drink! I've just met with Liv Collins and I don't want to jinx anything but I think it went really, really well!' Should I say it? Why not? ‘I think she's going to offer me the job!'

‘That's so great, I knew you two would get on. They're a good bunch of people.'

‘Aren't they? And it turns out that—'

‘Sorry to interrupt, but where are you now?'

‘Worcester.'

‘Well, as it happens I am also in Worcester,' he said. ‘Why don't you tell me about it over that drink? Unless you're in a rush to get home?'

I closed my eyes and smiled. The perfect job. A spontaneous drink with the man I really fancied. This was one of the best days ever. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so light, so weightless.

‘No,' I said. ‘I'm in no rush.'

Mitch was seated in the restaurant's prime spot with a view of the river, a chilly lager in front of him and his laptop open on the table. When I walked in he was on the phone to someone, but when he saw me he waved me over and ended the call almost immediately.

I let the waiter guide me to his table, mainly to have the pleasure of everyone seeing me joining the man in the suit who looked like he might be an actor or a footballer.

‘Robyn!' He kissed me on both cheeks, letting his hands rest lightly on my arms and giving me a chance to smell the cologne on his warm skin. I privately thanked the date gods that our chance meeting had occurred on the day I was dressed for an interview, and not fresh from scrubbing someone's toilet.

I slipped into the chair opposite his and accepted the enormous wine list offered by the waiter. I'd decided on the way that I'd have a large glass of wine – no, two, I was celebrating – then move onto mineral water. I needed to leave by seven: there was a train I could catch that would get me home in a reasonable time.

I ignored the small matter of the taxi from the station. I was about to get a new job after all. Plenty of money for taxis in the pipeline.

Mitch waved away the wine list. ‘No need for that. I think we know what we're having, eh, Robyn?'

‘Do we?'

‘Bottle of champagne!' said Mitch, signalling to the waiter.

There was something a bit thrilling and sophisticated about the way he just did that. The last date I'd been on – a Tinder mistake – had ended shortly after my date had argued with the barman about whether I needed a single or double gin and tonic, and then demanded a receipt.

Mitch ordered some nuts and olives to go with the champagne, and I relaxed back into my seat, admiring the pair of swans gliding down the river outside. Swans, seriously. Could you wish for a more magnificent omen for a romantic night? The last traces of tension from my day vanished as a silver wine cooler arrived, and the sommelier solemnly filled our glasses.

Mitch wished me luck for my new job, then raised his glass to mine.

‘Here's to you, Robyn,' he said, holding my gaze as we took our first sip, and my heart shimmered in my chest. I could see our reflections in the window, and we looked like the kind of attractive, successful young people I always envied as I hurried past restaurants on my way home to my messy flat.

Mitch chatted about the meeting he'd just come from, and I savoured the delicious sensation of bubbles firing alcohol directly into my bloodstream. It was a proposal for a complex of serviced apartments, complete with cinema, health suite and restaurants, built in the grounds of an old hospital. It sounded amazing: the properties were aimed at affluent retirees who'd sustained their social lives, and he'd already signed up key influencers to lead the design direction, including a couple of famous semi-retired musicians and a gnarly old thespian I'd met and mistaken for Sir Ian McKellen (it wasn't Sir Ian McKellen).

‘And will this happen after you've finished Lark Manor?' I asked.

‘We'll be running both projects simultaneously. I like to keep lots of plates spinning. You know me, I work best when the pressure's on!'

I nodded. I worked best under pressure too, but it didn't mean I enjoyed it. There wasn't usually another option. ‘And how's that going? Has the planning department got back to you yet?'

I'd already started spending my new salary on imaginary curtains for my future apartment, as well as a huge sofa that I'd seen online. I didn't mind waiting a few months to build up my savings to pay for it, but it would be nice to be able to tell Mum where I'd be for Christmas.

I could invite Mum and Dad for Christmas, I thought, adding a proper dining table to my mental shopping list. And proper cutlery. I really wanted to be the kind of person who had a proper canteen of matching cutlery, not just a random selection of unrelated forks and teaspoons nicked from cafes.

‘We've got outline permission which is a good start. A couple of issues to iron out with the architect but that's par for the course.' Mitch pushed the silver bowl of cashews towards me. ‘Have you had some of these? They're incredible.'

‘Is there anything I can do yet? Is there an interior designer attached? Can you commission mood boards yet? Or advance marketing?'

I didn't want to press Mitch too hard but how else was I going to learn if not by asking questions? It wasn't just impatience about my own flat; I genuinely wanted to be a part of the development process. One day soon, everyone who'd laughed at me in Marsh he'd taken off his jacket, my hair was slowly falling out of its casual bun. ‘Tell me more.'

So I told him a few more stories, about the television series I'd been in, and the Christmas ads that had got Mum more mince pies than she knew what to do with. (And which Dad found ‘disappointing'.)

The evening started to speed up after that. I don't know how, but time seemed to compress in a blur of eye contact and laughter and some outrageous flirting. The second bottle of champagne might have had something to do with it.

I insisted on paying for the second bottle. Mum drilled it into me as a teenager: always go halves on dates so men don't think you owe them anything. I assumed she must have read that in Just Seventeen or whatever teenagers had for advice before Google because, as far as I knew, Dad was her first and only boyfriend. She worried constantly about what Cleo and I might get up to as teenagers, although only Cleo ever gave her reason to worry. Still, I felt empowered when the ice bucket was refilled with a fresh bottle of Veuve Clicquot, paid for by me.

I tried not to think about how many hours' cleaning it represented.

The conversation was flowing effortlessly, but still I made an effort to self-edit as I went along. Mitch didn't need to hear about the stress of learning lines that wouldn't stick in my head, or how crushed I felt when I bombed the auditions for drama school. The more I talked, the more I felt myself detaching from my body until I could almost see Robyn the actress, the professional storyteller, the person I thought I'd be now. And I noticed how easily Mitch brought her out, with his encouraging laughs and curiosity and general appreciation. He was the best company – because he made me feel like I was the best company.

He let the waiter refill our glasses, then leaned forward to touch mine, gently, so it barely clinked. ‘Thank you,' he said, ‘for such a great evening. I thought I was just meeting my favourite estate agent for a quick drink, but here I am with a legit celeb!'

‘It's fate,' I agreed. Maybe we would tell our kids this in years to come. If I hadn't had an interview that afternoon and your dad hadn't had a meeting in town …

I'd gone from tipsy to definitely drunk, but Mitch's attention was making me feel much more reckless than the champagne. Somewhere, my inner prefect registered that I was now at least two glasses of wine over my self-imposed limit. I ignored it.

‘So, what I need to know now is …' Mitch checked his watch. ‘Oh. Do you want to guess what time it is?'

No, I didn't. He was going to say it was time to go. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay in this happy bubble for as long as I possibly could.

‘Seven?' I said, hopefully.

‘It's eight o'clock . Time flies when you're having fun, eh?'

I nodded. I hadn't had this much fun in a very, very long time.

‘Listen, do you want to grab something to eat?' Mitch suggested. ‘We might as well stay here – by the time we've left and found somewhere …' He saw me hesitate, and grinned. ‘Go on, live dangerously!'

My heart flipped over. This had turned into a proper date! And when had I last had one of those? Not one as enjoyable as this, anyway. I could always get the late train.

‘Why not?' I said.

He beamed. ‘Fantastic.'

Then he waved the waiter back and we were being shown into the flatteringly lit dining room, with thick white tablecloths and candlelight and very small tables. More wine arrived. My knees were touching Mitch's as soon as we sat down and, before long, my ankle was resting against his and little tingles were running up the inside of my thigh.

And we carried on talking and talking.

It took the waiter a couple of goes to get us to even look at the menus. In the end he more or less shouted at us to order.

What did we talk about? I can't remember, but my throat was sore from chatting, my cheeks ached from smiling into Mitch's face, and I barely touched my fish. The waiter hovered and left, hovered and left, and then eventually just took it away. In hindsight, I should have ordered something more substantial because that Dover sole wasn't soaking up any of the white wine that appeared on the table to go with it.

I know at one point we must have got onto siblings, because I found myself telling Mitch about Cleo.

‘I admire her so much, everything she decides to do, she's amazing at, but she's such a tough act to follow. She always has been. Even when I was on television she was way more popular than me at school. Can you believe that? So I love her, but at the same time if she wasn't my sister I'd probably hate her. You know?'

Mitch nodded. I couldn't remember if he'd told me he had a brother or not. I think he had. He seemed sympathetic anyway.

‘Mum always says she treats us both as individuals in our own right but she doesn't.' Somewhere along the lines, I'd stopped filtering what I was saying; I needed to open my heart to Mitch so he would understand the real me. ‘Cleo's her favourite, she takes after Mum. They're so similar. I suppose I'm like Dad.' I took a sip of wine. ‘That's not a bad thing, by the way. Dad's lovely. He's really good at sugarcraft.'

It took me a couple of goes to say sugarcraft, which made us both giggle.

‘What does she do again, your sister?'

‘She runs a cleaning agency.'

‘A cleaning agency?' Mitch laughed. ‘Sorry, I thought you were going to tell me she worked for the International Monetary Fund or Greenpeace or something.'

‘It's a very successful business,' I said. ‘She employs over fifty cleaners and covers the whole county.'

‘Good for her,' said Mitch. Was he being sarcastic? I couldn't tell.

‘So that's why it's so important for me to find something of my own that I'm good at.' I gazed at him, hypnotised by the sparkles of light in his brown eyes, the darkness of his lashes as he gazed at me. The focus of his attention, the invitation in his smile. His casual dismissal of Cleo, in favour of my own achievements. ‘I'm so excited about Lark Manor. It's the start of everything I really, really want. Um, everything I want to achieve .'

‘It certainly is.' Mitch reached out and took my hand, interlacing his fingers with mine. Something shifted in the atmosphere between us, and the silence took on a charged suggestion that neither of us wanted to break. We gazed at each other, waiting until the moment tipped from ‘should we?' to ‘where?'

The waiter returned with dessert menus, took one look at us and walked off.

When I woke up the next morning it took me a while to work out where I was. Partly because the room was dark, and also because my head was throbbing with a headache so bad I could see colours morphing like a lava lamp behind my eyelids. When I tried to swallow, my tongue clacked against the roof of my mouth.

I closed my eyes again. This wasn't good. The room smelled of starched cotton and air freshener so it definitely wasn't my house. I was under a duvet and when I ran my hands tentatively down my body I encountered nothing by way of underwear.

What? I froze. No. This wasn't good. Not good at all. A stale feeling uncurled at the back of my mind, a familiar shameful guilt, and I pushed it away.

Mitch's face, gorgeous and seductive in the candlelight. A long, delicious moment when the whole world seemed to shrink around us. Then a key on the table, with a stupidly massive key fob that made us both giggle uncontrollably for some reason. Him and me kissing in an old lift, which wobbled when I pushed him against the wall as if we were in a film. His mouth, warm and spicy. A red door. Someone shouting. A different red door. Then nothing more specific.

Nothing? For god's sake, I thought. I deserve to have some decent sexy memories to offset this hangover.

A more urgent thought struck me. Mitch couldn't see me in my morning state. I'd been presentable last night because of the interview but this morning I knew I'd look like a mole with Covid. Was there any way I could sneak out before he woke up? It would mean skipping the excruciating but necessary ‘so …?' conversation which I never enjoyed anyway. I needed my wits about me for that.

I listened for sounds of breathing but could hear nothing. Slowly I turned my head.

The bed was flat next to me. No head on the pillow. No Mitch. I was alone.

I turned my head back, unable to decide if I was relieved or disappointed.

OK, I thought, trying to take tiny mental steps. It's dark, so it must be early. That's good. I need to get up. I need to stand under the shower. Then get to the station. Then get the first train home, and …

My phone rang on the bedside table. I winced at the shrillness of the ringtone, clattering on my tender ears, and reached out to drop the call. Unfortunately, my finger accidentally touched the answer button.

Oh god.

‘Robyn? Robyn?' A tinny voice came from the phone.

It was Jim.

I really didn't want Jim intruding into this room right now. But there was no point hanging up. He'd only ring back. I reached for the phone, turning my head as little as possible.

‘Hello?' I croaked. Why was he ringing so early? If our 9 a.m. job was cancelled he could just have texted.

‘Good morning. Is there a problem?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, I've been waiting outside your flat for fifteen minutes now and if we don't leave, we're going to be late.'

‘What time is it?'

‘It's five to nine. Are you still in bed?'

‘Oh, you're kidding me.' I moved the phone away from my face so I could see the time. It was two minutes to nine.

I looked over to the window, protected by high-quality hotel blackout curtains.

‘I'm really …' My tongue felt hideous so I sat up, hoping I'd been sensible enough to leave a pint of water by the bed, but the effort of moving made me dry heave. And there was no water. ‘Ueegh.'

‘Are you all right? You sound awful.'

‘I feel awful,' I said. Not a lie. The room was swaying.

‘Do you … do you want me to come up?'

‘No!' I said quickly. ‘I mean, no, it's fine. I'm not feeling great. I must have slept through my alarm.' Which was true. ‘I was up half the night,' I added, for detail. Also not a lie.

‘Sorry to hear that.'

I could picture Jim, sitting outside Molly's Bakehouse in the van, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel until his near-limitless patience finally ran out. For some reason I felt seedy, then I felt annoyed that he was making me feel like that.

‘I'll be fine in an hour or two. I can get dressed and meet you at the next job,' I offered, then mentally kicked myself. That was a classic Robyn move: the worse mess I'd made, the more I overpromised. There was no way I'd be back in Longhampton in an hour. What was I thinking ?

‘Not if you're going to throw up on me, thanks.'

‘It's fine, I'm sure I can be there in an hour.'

I closed my eyes. Shut up, Robyn.

‘No, no, there are rules and regulations about sickness at work. You can't spread germs around clients' homes.' Jim was back on track now. ‘Get a Covid test, then try to rehydrate. Lots of water, small sips, plain toast, take some paracetamol if you're feeling grim. Sleep if you can.'

The more concerned he sounded, the worse I felt. Hearing Jim's voice while naked was plain wrong.

‘OK, well, you stay in bed and I'll check in with you at the end of the day. See how you're feeling. And if you feel worse …' He hesitated, then said, ‘Give me a ring. I can bring you some supplies, if necessary.'

I closed my eyes. I didn't normally have a problem with white lies – I was perfectly happy with alternative truths, if they made a situation easier for everyone – but today I could feel the nasty taste of every untrue word on my tongue.

It's the hangover, I told myself. It's that booze shame people talk about.

‘Right, I need to go. Don't want to be late for the Watsons,' said Jim, and rang off.

I dropped my mobile onto the duvet and allowed myself a brief moment of wallowing. Then I forced myself to get up.

Mitch had left a note on the desk, under a complimentary bottle of water.

‘Sorry to leave early – site visit first thing. Thanks for a great night! Hope head not too sore. Will call! M.'

I stared at it for a long time, trying to process what I felt through my treacly hangover.

Obviously I was thrilled that nearly a year of flirting had now blossomed into something real. We hadn't just got drunk at an office party and ended up in bed (not that I'd done that for a while, I might add). We'd had dinner, and we'd talked . There was a connection there. It was promising.

But bloody hell. My head.