Commissioning Editor, London: 7

I have spent a long while thinking about it. That night. It’s been repeated once since then. I’d get into the office and ponder both of those nights for a while, whilst I logged onto my PC and it chugged through whatever the IT people had done to hinder its progress to readiness. I have spent a long while debating the correct or incorrect decision. Dorothy would be in before me, wordlessly looking up at me and then looking back down again at her keyboard and then her screen. The office is tense. Frank is tense and often looks serious, at least before lunch. More and more he sneaks off alone and comes back a little unsteady, hanging his sports coat on the back of his chair with a sigh. I feel for Frank. But I thought that Frank was my friend and actually all we do is know each other’s name and share a drink.

Bettina continues to be efficient, Marcus and Beatrice are continuing their office affair. On Tuesday I found a hairclip in my in-tray. We haven’t been out for a drink for a while but there was talk earlier in the week about a drink on Friday. It’s Wednesday, after lunch. Frank is holding his head up with his left hand as he makes notes on a proposal with his right, his antique fountain pen an object of lust. Hardly anyone here has a decent pen, which is damn shame considering we’re a publisher. A few people write their to-do lists with those nasty blue and black biro pens we order in, packs of 50 standing forlorn in the stationary section of the office. I am thinking about heading out for a cigarette but after fingering the pack in my pocket I stop.    There’s not much point because it’s so cold outside and I don’t really want a cigarette anyway. It’s left over from the time Dorothy stayed over, at mine.  A heady haze of drinks in a cocktail place, then onto a wine bar tucked off Charing Cross Road, sitting at the bar and trailing a finger over the list together, deciding on a Merlot for her and a Pinot Grigot for me. We stumbled out and into a World News for a box of matches and some Malboro Reds. I opened the pack, pocketed the cellophane and flipped the top. I hit the bottom after tilting it 25 degrees from the vertical and got two out. One for her. She let it dangle from her lips, a little loose, her red lipstick smudging the filter. I got the matches and had to drag her a little way down into a doorway to get out of the wind. There was a light rain starting up, a London drizzle. The lights of cars making their way down towards Leicester Square blurred. The match flared up, a cheap chemical match head. I quickly lit hers and she took a deep drag. I put mine to my lips and to my surprise she pressed her lit cigarette to mine. I inhaled and made eye contact and felt myself literally want to grab her and take her there. We got out of the doorway and I linked arms with her.
                “Mine?”
                “Thass rather presumptious,” she said, laughing as she finished and silent as she took another deep drag. I walked on, she walked on with me and it was complicit, decided. The Tube was just about still running as we made our way across the concourse, down the escalators, onto the platform, all the tiles slightly grubby and damp, the flecks of rain on our coats like early morning dew. I didn’t want the night to end but it did, and we lay there, and we had to go to sleep and wake up and head into work together like some naughty editorial assistants after the work Christmas drinks. I ate a McDonalds breakfast in anonymity at the local branch, just after 10 am. I savoured the hash brown. I’m waiting for drinks on Friday as I tap out an email slowly, savouring the press of my fingers on the keys, the tactile feedback sometimes unexpectedly close to something pleasant. I’ve forgotten what I was typing and I get up and head to the kitchen to make a coffee. Bettina is in there.
                “Hi,” she says.
                “Hello,” I say back. “All is well I hope?”
                “Things are okay, yeah,” she says. “Listen, about the textbook thing. Do you think we should ask them to standardise the UK amount across the lists then?”
                “Well, I know they’ve cut them for a few books and not others but –“ I reached over to the kettle and hit the ‘on’ switch – “that’s really using a sledgehammer to crack a … problem … that’s not a … nut. Thing. When you think about it.” I stopped talking and after two seconds looked at her. She was holding her mug of tea with her right hand, her left hand spread on it for warmth. She said nothing but raised one eyebrow. Finally, the pause becoming uncomfortably long, she spoke.
                “Are you getting enough sleep, ____?”
                “I think so.”
                “That’s good. Well, see you.” She left and the kettle clicked off, having boiled. The day wasn’t going well. I took the coffee back to my desk and worked out how many working hours it was until drinks on Friday. Dorothy wasn’t at her desk. My hard drive was whirring and grinding and I noticed that Frank had a New York Yankees baseball cap on back to front. I have no words for that kind of thing. I went out for a cigarette and on the way I realised that Dorothy had left for the day and I felt sad.