Dev shook Tom’s hand and kissed Rachel on both cheeks before sweeping out of the bar.
‘Blimey,’ Rachel said, staring after him.
Tom shrug-smiled awkwardly. ‘I know. Stupidly handsome, isn’t he?’ He gestured at his grey marl sweatshirt and soft blue jeans. ‘I feel like a hobo now.’
‘Oh, rubbish,’ Rachel said. ‘To be honest, he reminds me a bit of a Ken doll: pristine, but best left in his box. You’d mess him up if you played with him too much.’
Tom sniggered at this, and brightened. He opened the file Dev had placed on the table, which Rachel now saw was embossed with the Esteem PR logo.Snazzy.
Inside was the paperwork Dev had promised, and Rachel marvelled at the photographs of his clients as she and Tom began to leaf through them. It appeared that, for most of these people, taking part in a photo shoot without styling, make-up or the promise of retouching would be a new and different experience.
They finished their drinks as they discussed Dev’s brief notes on the celebrities.
‘Zack Lanson …’ Tom muttered. ‘Fashion and lifestyle vlogger. Famous for virtual tours of his wardrobe. Made a video calledHow to Wear a White T-Shirtthat went viral. I mean,what?It says here his heroes are the folk artists and singer-songwriters he listened to growing up. Dear God, he has venues booked for his own musical performances in the spring and summer …’
‘Oh, fair play to him,’ Rachel said easily. ‘He could be amazing for all we know.’
Tom shook his head and chuckled. ‘Call me a doubting Thomas, but I can’t see it … He’ll take a good photo all stripped back, though, and that’s what counts. This whole thing is a great opportunity to get my work out there. And the more gigs like this I get, the less time I’ll have to spend graphic designing. We had a client this week who wanted his whole website redone in various shades of red. It made me want to cry.’
Rachel laughed and winced in sympathy. ‘I’m pleased for you. And now I’m past the point of being able to chicken out, I can see that helping with the copy is going to be fun.’
‘Excellent,’ Tom said, beaming.
‘Another?’ Rachel asked, pointing to his empty glass. ‘My round. Or is it home time?’
‘No more beer for me, I’m afraid.’ Tom shook his head and looked at his watch, then the floor. ‘I’m meeting someone in Camden at half one, so I’d better think about heading up there soon. I guess I’ll see you sometime next week?’
‘Ah. Sure.’
At a loss for anything else to do, Rachel retrieved her coat from the corner she’d stuffed it into, put it on and hung her handbag on her shoulder.
‘Mind if I take the list of celebs who’ve said they’re in? I’ll leave you with the photos and notes – just thought I’d do some extra research of my own.’
‘No problem,’ Tom said, handing it to her.
‘Great. Well. I’ll see you soon, then.’
She considered kissing him on the cheek but decided against it, instead raising her right hand in a feeble goodbye wave. Why wouldn’t he look her in the eye? And what was that clean, pleasant, lemony smell? Was he wearingaftershave?
A short while later, squeezed against the doors of a packed Piccadilly line train, Rachel wondered who Tom was meeting. It must be a woman, she reasoned. Had he met someone new? Someone he was reluctant to introduce to his friends?
That thought bothered her. It wasn’t like Tom to be cagey – but he clearly hadn’t wanted to discuss this date, whoever it was with.
After five more minutes of poking at her bruised feelings, Rachel concluded that she was hurt. She considered Tom a close friend; she trusted him implicitly. He knew things about her that she’d barely shared with anyone, and it was galling to think that, by contrast, he felt the need to hide things from her.
Stop thinking about it, she instructed herself.You have far bigger problems right now.
The only trouble was, she didn’t want to think about those either.
8
Anna was gone by the time Rachel got back to the flat. She was off for a movie and dinner with Will and would be back sometime tomorrow, so Rachel had the place to herself.
While she never resented Anna’s spending time alone with her boyfriend, Rachel could have done with some company this evening. If she dwelled too much on the events of the past few days, she knew she’d start spiralling. She needed something to do.
Rachel thought about what usually calmed her when she was hovering near a nervo: housework, gardening, attempting something creative in the kitchen. She needed simple activities she could do methodically – the sort that yielded pleasing results and required just enough attention to distract her.
Rachel turned up the volume on a Carole King playlist, plodded to her bedroom and inspected the contents of her laundry hamper. She shoved a dark load in the washer-dryer, then ran warm water and Woolite into the kitchen sink so she could hand-wash the delicates she’d been ignoring since Christmas.