How chic! And what a cheat! Hmmm, yes - all I need now is my umbrella and I’ll look just perfect for pounding the wet London streets.Jen is sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing her laptop, or rather her webcam, and has her back to Rob. Regardless, she continues to talk to him, to talk AT him, regaling him with her boring stories about who she’s been talking to on webcam. A smile creeps onto my face as I notice that Rob is dozing off and I take great delight in speaking really loud and making them both jump,
“OK! I’m off out for a while.”
Jen doesn’t bother to look up, but Rob’s eyes pop open and he looks at me, imploringly,
“Where you going?”
“Oh,” I shrug, a feeble attempt at nonchalant, “dunno really. Couple of friends I need to call on.”
I notice him look me up and down, hopefully taking in the whole Parisienne babe look that I’m certain that I’ve mastered. He rubs his eyes, and pulls himself to sit upright in the armchair,
“Oh, well. I think I might go with you. I mean, I’ll walk with you. I should be cracking on home anyway.”
“OK, whatever you like.”
He gets to his feet, smoothing his t-shirt down over his torso with the flat of his hands and I can’t help but stare. Jen spins around to stare at us,
“You’re both going?”
“Looks like it!” I breeze, turning toward my front door and opening it. I hear Rob squeak, almost apologetically,
“Yeah, gotta go.”
She shouts at us as we close the front door behind us,
“Yeah! Don’t worry about me! Stuck here on my own! Thank god I’ve got my SECRET STASH UNDER THE BED! Some friends YOU are!”
My arm is twitching with desperation and desire to link into Rob’s as we
huddle beneath my brolly together and splash through the orange, oily puddles.
So I clutch the cold metal handle of the umbrella tightly with both hands, just to keep them under control.
*
Ade felt bad. But he’d made his decision and he had to break the news sooner rather than later. It wasn’t fair to keep it dragging on and with Christmas looming he knew that he had to bite the bullet now or wait for another 3 or 4 weeks! He’d been thrown a lifeline with the prospects of being the first Sophie Dilemma date and was already planning how to win Sophie over during the date. He had to give it his best shot and had every intention of making it all up to her. He’d decided that she was the one that he wanted and she was worth pulling out all the stops for. So he’d set himself the task of calling it off with Tam tonight. It was lousy that he’d only agreed to date Tamsin as a link to Sophie, but to publicly date Sophie at the same time, was pushing it - even by his standards.
The office was empty. It was a rare occasion that he was the last out, but he’d been working hard on his tactics to win Sophie - it was only a couple of weeks until the filmed ‘date’ and he wanted it to be perfect. The small clock at the bottom right-hand corner of his screen displayed 19.38 and he hit the ’shut down’ button and watched it disappear, along with his days work. Unhooking his Northern Rock jacket from the peg by the water cooler he slid his arms in and zipped up - it looked shit out there tonight and Tamsin’s house was a good 15 minutes away...
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty Two
