Imogen closed her desk drawer and sighed for about the two hundredth time that week. She was alone in the office – Marcia was out for a ‘blue sky meeting’ with Tarquin, whatever that was. It probably involved a big old nosh-up and several bottles of plonk. Tarquin was on the brink of a second audition with EastEnders and Marcia had gone off with a book on cockney rhyming slang and a leather jacket catalogue.
Imogen’s sighs were deep and huffy, often accompanied by an unhappy shrug of the shoulders. Thoughts of her aborted lunch with Richard – even after six weeks – were driving her crazy.
She felt so ashamed about running out on him like that. She was mortified she’d fled after he’d kissed her. But she’d had to. The man, the kiss… She had to run, and run for her life. She’d wrestled with it for weeks, but the truth was – and the truth really, really hurt – she was in love with Richard.
Damn, damn, damn – this was not supposed to happen. She had been in love once before and it had been catastrophic.
When she told people she didn’t date actors it wasn’t strictly true. When she was nineteen, and working at her first agency, she careered from her sensible path of finding a ‘great man’ and embarked on a passionate, whirlwind two-month love affair with an actor called Sebastian. Yes, ‘The Blip’. He was twenty-five. He was long-haired and ambitious. Wildly romantic. Impoverished and poetic. All the clichés. She’d fallen hard, she thought he had too, and she didn’t doubt he loved her (‘You’re the one for me, Immy,’ he always said, while brushing his hair from his eyes), but there was a problem. She wasn’t the only one. Sebastian was enjoying a rather large ‘overlap’ with a ballerina who was away training in St Petersburg. A woman he called ‘incredibly special’ and didn’t want to give up, no matter how hard Imogen begged. He’d had to choose, eventually, and he hadn’t chosen Imogen. She’d been devastated. Absolutely devastated. She’d cried for five months, she’d sworn she’d never fall in love again. She wouldn’t let herself. And she never told anyone about Sebastian.
Sebastian was the reason Imogen had done a one hundred and eighty degree turn and gone for a completely different type of man. Businessmen, city types, the Good on Paper men who could love her and make perfect husbands, but not hurt her. They couldn’t be further from the starving artiste in the garret, the act-or who pretended she was the only one. They were the safe choice who would ultimately disappoint her. Until Richard.
Richard was right, wasn’t he? She was the common denominator, but not in the way he’d meant. It wasn’t that she’d turned all her ex-men into disappointments; they were disappointments right from the start because she knew she was never going to fall in love with them. That’s why she picked them. None of them were ever going to be amazing.
Now Richard had come along and turned everything on its head. Her plan of safe smooth sailing with a man she couldn’t love had been chucked over the side of the boat. With Richard, she was on uncharted waters, but all the same she knew how it would go. She would love him and he would leave her. The fact that he lived in New York made it even more probable.
She couldn’t put herself into someone’s hands like that again. When she was dropped she knew it would be unbearable. With Sebastian it took her for ever to get over the hurt. She’d only been nineteen then, think how much harder she’d fall, how much harder she’d hurt now. Better to not see Richard again. Better to put him out of her mind. Keep well away. She could do this. She could resist. There. No Men. No Richard. Done. It was easy.
That’s what she’d decided and she was determined to stick to it, however much she huffed, and however much it went round and round in her head like knickers in a washing machine. She’d ignored Richard’s texts and calls until they petered to nothing and she felt empty and sad. She valiantly tried to erase him from her mind. On several occasions, especially after a few drinks, she had to sit on her hands to stop herself from calling him.
Imogen sighed again and stared blankly at her computer screen.
There was a clatter and a shuffle. Marcia was back, Tarquin ambling into the office behind her. They were both clearly three sheets to the wind. Marcia was doing that over-exaggerated shushing thing, a stubby finger to her lips. Their neighbouring office was an acupuncture treatment room – Marcia had been told off by them before, for loud screeching when someone was having their chakras or something done.
Once the pair of them were in, and the door was closed, the finger went down and the volume went up.
‘Tarqy, darling,’ she boomed, ‘be careful now. Keep a safe distance from Imogen – she’s put a hex on all men.’
Imogen, ignoring her, walked over to the tiny sink they had, and started pouring two large glasses of water. They looked in dire need of them.
‘You’re both drunk,’ she accused, taking on that old classic role of Superior Sober Person. ‘Did you get all the EastEnders stuff done?’
‘We’re Mitchells; you don’t mess wiv no Mitchells,’ growled Tarquin, showing his perfect, upper-class teeth and advancing towards Imogen in what he probably thought was a menacing manner. She shoved a glass of water into his hand.
‘Good, great.’ She nodded. ‘Well, it’s in the bag, certainly.’
Marcia threw her giant handbag on her desk and plomped down on her chair. The force of it made several papers on her desk waft onto the floor. She left them there. Then she grabbed her Dictaphone and went over to the window where she started whispering manically into it. It was a stream of near unconsciousness but Imogen could make out the odd thing: ‘doof doof’, ‘Prince Albert’ and ‘faaamily’.
Tarquin tried to plonk his bottom on Marcia’s vacated chair but missed and landed on the floor. Instead of trying to get up, he threw both legs in the air and pushed his bum up with his hands like he was attempting a move from BAGA 4.
‘What on earth have you been drinking?’ said Imogen.
‘Two bottles of vino blanco and a round of flaming Sambucas,’ said Marcia, returning to her desk.
‘At lunchtime?’
‘Oh, don’t be such an old killjoy,’ said Marcia, leaning on her desk for balance. ‘You and me used to get hammered all the time, in the good old bad old days. Just because you’re over forty –’ she sneered, doing quotation marks with her fingers ‘– there’s no reason to be so boring.’
Marcia was fifty-eight. Age was definitely just a number to her and the more the number increased the less attention she paid to what society expected of it. If society wanted a demure middle-class lady, they weren’t going to get it.
‘Imogen’s become dull, dull, dull,’ continued Marcia, suddenly sitting on the trunk where they filed contracts. She swung one black opaque leg over so she was astride it, like a child on a Trunki. ‘She’s practically a nun! She’s not having any men.’
Imogen froze at the word ‘nun’. She remembered her silly conversation with Richard, at the lunch. Before it had all gone wrong. Damn it, she should never have gone.
She wished she’d stayed.
‘Not having any men,’ muttered Tarquin, to no one in particular, then added, ‘we had the cheese board. A nice bit of Stilton.’
‘She hates men,’ said Marcia.
Imogen regretted, not for the first time, telling Marcia about Grace and Frankie and the year of being single. Back in February, she and Marcia had spent a very entertaining evening at the Savoy Grill, despite Marcia’s claim she was now highly boring, when she’d enjoyed a glass of wine too many and told Marcia how they’d all sworn off men. Marcia had thumped her own leg in hooting laughter all night long, thinking it the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Her co-agent had got loads of mileage out of it since. If it was the equivalent of an ever-rechargeable electric car, Marcia was constantly zooming up the M6 on it, with Britney Spears in the CD player. Every time anyone vaguely male came into the office Marcia made a cross with her fingers and held them up in front of her mock-disgusted face, each time Imogen went out to meet a male actor, Marcia would hand her an old key she had in her desk ‘to lock her chastity belt with.’
‘I don’t hate men,’ protested Imogen, and not for the first time. ‘I just think I could do without one.’ I know I can do without one, she said to herself. She was right to walk away from Richard, very right. She was safer going it alone.
‘Did you know Tarquin dries his entire body hair with a hairdryer every morning?’ said Marcia, apropos of nothing. She was now doing a silent ‘oops upside your head’ on the trunk.
‘No,’ said Imogen. ‘How interesting.’ What a nice vision, she thought. Tarquin stark naked in his bedroom directing a Remington at his furry bits. Yuk! But, hey, this was good: revolting images of men – good, good. More reason to be off them, she thought. More reason to be off Richard.
Then, against her will, a vision came to her of Richard naked with a hairdryer. Uh-oh – he looked great. Better than great. He looked magnificent. Strong, hairy, resplendent, his gorgeous chest hair oscillating under the hot, hot air of the dryer as he prepared himself for another gorgeous Richard day, a day where he’d be simultaneously rescuing kittens, ending national debt and re-insuring the globe. Damn him! Perhaps she shouldn’t have fled from his office, perhaps she should have let him kiss her for the rest of the day.
Tarquin did an almighty burp, which brought Imogen back to earth with a bump. A boozy, slightly blue cheese, slightly aniseed smell was issuing from his direction. She knew if she lit a match in front of his mouth the whole of Soho would go up in flames. The pair of them were incorrigible. Marcia – now slumped over her desk and snoring – would be useless for the rest of the afternoon and Tarquin was just plain useless full stop. After fifteen minutes and a not inconsiderable effort getting them out of the office and down the stairs – during which a diminutive acupuncturist popped her head out of a door and told them to shut up – Imogen packed them off in a taxi.
She returned to her desk, ready to enjoy another good sigh and shrug, when a text message flashed up on her phone. She picked it up quickly. Richard. Oh my God. Her heart leapt up to her chin. She started shaking.
Hey Imogen, you’re driving me nuts here. I can’t give up on you. I want to see you. Don’t be a berk, come to Ascot with me?
Despite herself, she burst out laughing. He was so funny. He was so great. She had that image of him naked again, saving the world. She didn’t want to be dull and boring and fearful.
Before she could stop herself, Imogen took a deep breath and tapped words into her phone.
Hi, you duffer. I’d love to.