Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

S ince their night out, Kiera and Clodagh had stayed in touch from time to time by text. Kiera felt less affected by their misunderstanding. Clodagh was beginning to feel like she might become a good friend. Charlie loved her, which helped. This was how they came to be lunching together in the hospital canteen again.

“So let me get this right,” said Clodagh, putting down her knife and fork. “She dumped you, rendered you effectively homeless, moved in a new girlfriend and then vanished into the night never to be heard from again.”

“Well, yes. When you put it like that it does sound rather extreme,” said Kiera, thoughtfully pushing round a blob of mashed potato on her plate.

“It sounds extremely selfish. I mean, we all know relationships don’t always work out, but there are ways you can leave a relationship without shitting on everyone else in the process.” Clodagh picked her knife and fork back up and continued to deconstruct the vegetarian lasagne that was her lunch. “Ok, so, how’s the swiping? ”

“Ah yes. Well, there’s this woman called Abi and we’ve bonded over the books we’re reading. It’s really nice,” Kiera told her.

“Ooh, look at you, you’re hopeful. When are you meeting her?”

“Oh, she’s super busy with work for a week or two, but we’re going to get something in the diary for later on in the month,” said Kiera.

“Nice work. Have you checked all the acronyms on her profile?” Kiera looked at Clodagh and blushed. “Sorry, too soon?”

“Maybe a bit. But no, we’re ok.” Kiera gave Clodagh a shy smile.

“I’m glad,” said Clodagh. “I think friends is a good place for us to be.”

“Me too,” said Kiera. Her phone pinged with a notification, and she checked it quickly.

“I’m bored…” Abi had typed, adding a winky emoji then a kiss emoji. This was new. Kiera pocketed her phone, planning to respond later.

“You’ve gone red,” said Clodagh, talking through a full mouth.

“Have not.”

“Oh my God, you’re sexting!” she said, having swallowed her mouthful.

“Am not.” Kiera took a sip from her drink. “Yet.”

“Knew it!” said Clodagh, a note of triumph in her voice.

“Well, I think that might be where this is going.” She offered her phone to Clodagh. “Look.”

“‘I’m bored’ in the middle of the day,” said Clodagh, delighted. “A total classic. What she means is she’s on her sofa in her pants and wants a thrill. ”

“Now there’s an image I wasn’t expecting,” said Kiera, going red again, and giving up trying to ignore her propensity to blush.

“What have you got on this afternoon?”

“Oh, a boring meeting.”

“Perfect opportunity for some fun,” said Clodagh.

“I hope you don’t do that sort of thing when you’re working,” said Kiera, disapprovingly.

“Well not when I’m with patients, of course not! But boring meetings are another matter.”

“How is it that you’ve done all this stuff, and I’m completely clueless?” asked Kiera, half joking, half serious.

“Because you’re a little innocent flower and you live on a sparkly cloud. I’m sure we can change that, though.” They both laughed.

The meeting was predictably boring. It was scheduled to run for two and a half hours, and Kiera knew that after the first half hour it wasn’t going to get any better. She tentatively took her phone out and checked her emails. No one seemed to notice. In fact, everyone else appeared to be looking at either a laptop screen or a phone themselves.

“Not as bored as me,” typed Kiera in response to Abi’s text. Three dots appeared straight away.

“Doubt it. What you up to?”

“I’m in a boring meeting with about twenty other bored people talking about boring things.”

“Oh, I bet you’re being all important and high-powered. Mmm.”

Kiera smiled to herself, although when she looked around the room, she couldn’t picture anyone really being described as important or high-powered, least of all her. She could go along with it, though .

“Yes, that’s me! So, what are you doing that’s so boring?”

“Nothing, really. Just chilling on the sofa, eating custard creams and wondering what you’re up to.”

Kiera almost asked her if she was wearing nothing more than pants.

“Custard creams, huh? Very retro. I’m more of a bourbon girl, myself,” typed Kiera, wondering if she was in fact drifting into a Victoria Wood sketch rather than a flirty text exchange.

“Classy. Send me a pic of you in that room.”

“Now?”

“Go on, bet you can do it without anyone noticing.”

Kiera struggled with her phone, trying to take a picture of herself without looking like she was taking a picture of herself and also without it being angled directly up her nose. She’d never met Abi, and she’d not done this before, but she was fairly certain that up-nostril pics were out.

After about five minutes of failed attempts, she managed to get one that took in the side of her face along with a strip light above her head. It was as good as she was going to get, especially as one or two colleagues had begun to give her strange looks. Before she could change her mind she hit send and then plopped her phone into her pocket. She should at least try and look as if she was paying attention.

She resolved not to look at her phone again until the meeting was over. Her resolve was weak. Twenty minutes later she slid her phone back out of her pocket for a glance. “Nice specs, very sexy… ??” came the response. It had been sent just three minutes after the photo would have arrived.

“Kiera, can you fill us in on the data for the last quarter?” came a voice from the other end of the table. Kiera’s face w as already bright red from being called sexy, and she now felt she had been caught out by senior manager Rick.

“Er, yes, of course.” They’d clearly missed a slot on the agenda, so she was being called up sooner than she had expected. “So, um, as you can see here, once I have my slide on the screen, there are some figures here.” She frowned as she tried to get herself in order. This was not the face of professionalism that she hoped to present.

Kiera muddled through the presentation and then sat down, studiously ignoring her phone and resolving to be a better human for the rest of the day.

“Kiera,” said Rick from behind her. The meeting was finally over, and she was desperate to get away.

“Oh, hi, yes, how are you?” she said, turning towards him.

“Are you ok?” he asked. He was the manager that always went on about wellbeing in the workplace. “You seemed a little panicked earlier. Everything alright with you?”

Kiera laughed in a way that she hoped sounded confident but probably made her sound even more nervous and panicked than she really was. “Oh yes, sorry about that. I had a terrible night’s sleep last night, and then the slides didn’t work properly to start with. I’m all good.” She tried to give a winning, devil-may-care smile.

“Right you are, then. But remember, my door is always open,” said Rick, his head tilted to one side, his face earnest. Kiera’s smile had become rictus-like as she nodded at him, working out how long she had to stay there before she could run away and think about what she’d done.

“Thanks. Well, must dash,” she said and scarpered.

Later in the evening Kiera settled down on the sofa with a glass of wine. She opened her phone. “Come on then,” she wr ote, “you’ve seen me in my sexy bespectacled glory; it’s your turn…”

She waited nervously, fully expecting nothing to come back. But within a minute or two there was a picture in front of her: Abi’s smiling face and a bare shoulder, not looking at all shy or awkward about sending a photo to a stranger on the internet. This was clearly a thing.

“Nice,” she typed. Then deleted the word. Nice? She needed to do better than that. “Hot,” she typed instead. She had a few mouthfuls of wine while she waited for her inner prude to calm down. Three dots appeared.

“Why thank you. So, tell me about what you like…” wrote Abi.

“Well, I think we’ve established I like bourbons.”

“I wasn’t talking about that kind of thing you like. I mean, what do you *like*?”

Kiera was going to need more wine.

“Tell me what you like first,” she said, buying time.

“Tease,” typed Abi. Three dots. More wine for Kiera. “I like to be wined and dined and passionately kissed. I like being undressed slowly and then teased until I can’t bear it any more…”

The wine had gone entirely to Kiera’s head. She knew she was blushing, but there was no one to see her this time, so it didn’t matter.

“I like the sound of that,” wrote Kiera. And she did. She mused idly about Victorian ladies and their romantic friendships conducted by letter. Was this the modern equivalent?

“Your turn!”

Kiera sighed. She knew she had to write back. Putting these things into words wasn’t something she was used to. The wine helped, though. “I like being pushed up against things and kissed,” she typed, then cringed at herself and delete d again. Instead she plumped for “Confidence is really sexy and I love someone who knows what they want.”

“Oh, I definitely know what I want,” wrote Abi, with a devil emoji for good measure.

Kiera smiled. This was actually beginning to feel like fun. They continued to flirt and exchange messages for the next hour. It was funny and sexy and made Kiera feel good. She liked the safety of being on the other side of an online divide. But she also liked the potential of it, and the sense that this might be the beginning of something.

Mr Chips was restless. It was time for his supper so Kiera got up and sashayed around the kitchen, the radio on in the background. She felt lighter than she had done for a while.

Soon it was time to go to bed, so Kiera made her excuses. “Goodnight, you. I think we should do this in person sometime soon.” She closed her eyes tight once she’d pressed send. By the time she had opened her eyes again, the answer had come back.

“You bet,” said Abi.

Kiera fell asleep with a smile on her face.