‘Yeah. I imagine they’re a bit of a shitter,’ he said, stashing clean and dry items in their correct cupboards and drawers. ‘The thing to remember, though, is that they’re truly awful.’
Rachel scoffed, then turned to face him as the cold tap ran into the sink, flushing away what remained of the scummy washing-up water. ‘They are,’ she said. ‘But she looks incredible in them.’
‘Does she?’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘She doesn’t do anything for me.’
He poured them the final two glasses of wine from the third – or was it the fourth? – bottle. Either way, Rachel knew she was going to feel fuzzy in the morning.
She looked up to see Tom holding his drink in his fingertips, tilted just so like Jessica’s Angeljuice bottle. He was smirking mock-seductively in a bad impression of her pout. They both burst out laughing.
‘Seriously, Rach,’ he said. ‘If, on any level, you are torturing yourself with these images,stop. You have no reason to compare yourself to this woman, or to any other, for that matter. Thereisno comparison. You’re one on your own.’
Rachel laughed again as they made their way to the sitting room.
‘I guess that’s one way of putting it,’ she said.
3
Rachel received a text from Greg at 5.58 a.m. the next morning.
She didn’t read it at 5.58 a.m., of course; she picked it up at 7.23, having pressed the snooze button on her alarm twice and just as it was dawning on her that she was really quite hung-over, and there was now a 99.9% probability she’d be late for their cauliflower meeting.
She sat up in bed and groaned as she clicked to open the message, which her phone’s home screen informed her was eighty-five minutes old. What on earth could Greg have wanted before 6 a.m.? If this was an early-morning missive about vegetables, she feared she might actually strangle him.
The text, when Rachel read it, was short and to the point. Very un-Greg, though typically shouty and insistent.
Greg:Call me AS SOON as you’re up. Need to tell you something IMPORTANT!
Just as Rachel was asking herself if she could face calling him before she’d had a shower, her mobile began to vibrate in her hand. She considered ignoring it, then reasoned that, for all his melodramatic tendencies, this was the first time Greg had ever tried to contact her so early.
Maybe he had a good excuse. If not, she could tell him to calm the hell down – as well as take the opportunity to confess that she’d never make it to the coffee shop by nine.
‘Hello …?’ she said. She wondered if he’d be able to tell from her voice that she was still in her pyjamas.
‘Oh, thank God,’ Greg sighed. ‘FINALLY. What the hell have you been doing? Why didn’t you call me back?’
‘I, er … um. Ha. I only just read your message.’
Rachel’s brain was too wine-fogged for fabricating excuses. Now that she’d opened her mouth to speak, she discovered it was dry and sticky – as if her tongue had been coated in desiccated coconut.
‘You’re stillin bed?!’ Greg bellowed, so loud that Rachel flinched and moved the phone away from her ear. ‘This is a DISASTER! Get up, get to the office and make sure youlook presentable. This. Is. Not. A. Drill!’
‘Greg,whatis going on?’
Rachel was heading to the bathroom now. She clamped the phone between her right ear and shoulder, then ran the cold tap until the water was freezing. As she filled a glass, Greg said, ‘That better not be the sound of you pissing!’
‘Of course it isn’t! I’m just getting a drink! Now, kindly tell me what it is that you needed to talk to me about at SIX IN THE SODDING MORNING.’
Rachel generally avoided yelling at Greg, but this morning’s hangover had robbed her of patience with his histrionics. The idea that he thought she would urinate within his earshot was also horrifying – though, annoyingly, it underlined the fact that she was in dire need of a wee. She perched on the edge of the bathtub.
‘The agency is being taken over,’ Greg said, deliberately pausing for effect.
‘What?!’
Rachel was stunned, which was precisely the effect he’d been hoping for. Her shock echoed off the sage-green metro-tiled walls.
‘Apparently it was confirmed last night. I found out very early this morning, from a source who’s asked not to be named.’
Rachel rolled her eyes at this, but decided to say nothing. She chugged a mouthful of water, crossed her legs and waited for him to carry on.