A Day at the Office Read online

  A Day At The Office

  Matt Dunn

  Copyright © Matt Dunn 2013

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Matt Dunn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  From the Author

  Chapter 1

  Sophie Jones clutched her Oyster card tightly in one hand, adjusting her scarf with the other as she made her way automatically along Devonshire Road and towards Harrow-On-The-Hill tube station. She'd made the forty-minute journey to and from her office so often now she felt she could almost do it with her eyes shut, and Sophie had actually tried that once, thanks to one-too-many cocktails with the girls after work one day, until a loud honking from the number 340 bus had warned her she'd strayed off the pavement by mistake.

  She sighed to herself as she walked, her breath forming clouds in the crisp February morning air, and contemplated another day at the office. So far, her job as a marketing assistant wasn't quite living up to the lofty ambitions she'd set herself back when she'd graduated. And while she wasn't naive enough to believe a 2:2 in Business Studies meant it was only a matter of time before she'd be declaring herself 'out' from behind a pile of money on Dragon's Den, back then, she'd truly believed that if she worked hard enough, anything was possible.

  Sophie smiled wryly as she strode into the station. Perhaps she simply hadn't worked hard enough. Still, she reminded herself as she swiped her way through the barrier, she was only twenty-eight. The world was still her oyster. She even had the card to prove it.

  It wasn't just her career that was getting her down. Since moving to London, she'd been lonely. Not because of a lack of friends – her colleagues in the office were pleasant enough, and her new boss Julie was, well, if not a friend, at least she was friendly – but because of the lack of a boyfriend. The relationship with Darren, her college sweetheart (whom she'd abandoned when she'd moved from Eastbourne to Harrow) had been okay, but not what she'd wanted, and while she might not have known what it actually was she'd wanted, Sophie had been pretty sure she didn't want Darren and the traditional stay-at-home-and-be-a-housewife plans he'd had for her.

  Which was why two years ago, and more than a little surprised to have landed the first job she'd applied for, she'd handed him the keys to their shared bed-sit just off the sea-front, upped sticks from the sticks, and rented a room in a flat-share here on Devonshire Road. Harrow had sounded exotic to her – well, more exotic than the Costa Geriatrica, as her friends referred to Eastbourne – and it was London, and multicultural, and on the tube, and full of young people, and next to Harrow-On-The-Hill, the home of Harrow School, and therefore (Sophie had assumed) a little bit posh.

  In reality, it was a little noisier than she'd have liked, and quite a way from the centre of the city, plus her part of Harrow was a bit less salubrious than even the Eastbourne street where she and Darren had lived. And although the recent opening of the twenty-four-hour Tesco Metro on Pinner Road had injected a whole new level of joy into her life, especially the excitement of not knowing what delights would be waiting for her to choose from in the 'reduced' section when she called in on her way home every night, there were times she missed the gentility of the seaside. More worryingly, Sophie realised as she joined the crowds of commuters on the platform - most of whom seemed to be whispering hurriedly into their mobile phones before the Underground journey cut them off from the outside world, or staring fixedly at the 'arrivals' board in the hope this might somehow speed up the appearance of the next tube - there were even times she missed Darren.

  Her train arrived, and – more concerned with finding a gap than minding one - Sophie squeezed herself on board. Even this near to the beginning of the line the tube was packed, and her chances of getting a seat were pretty poor at the best of times, but today for some reason her carriage seemed fuller than normal. With a loud 'excuse me,' followed by a sarcastic 'thank you' when nobody moved, she pushed in between young Asian woman typing a text message on her phone quicker than Sophie could speak and a grey-suited man carrying a huge bouquet of roses, and wedged herself against the window. She glared crossly through the stems, trying not to prick herself on the rose thorns, wondering what kind of idiot carried a huge bunch of flowers on the tube during the morning rush-hour (and more importantly, what he'd done wrong to have needed to buy such an extravagant bouquet) until she realised with a start what was going on. Today was Valentine's Day.

  She picked up a discarded copy of Metro and checked the date, then peered up and down the carriage. Every third or fourth seat seemed to be occupied by someone carrying flowers, from single red roses to huge bunches of... Well, she didn't know what they were called, but they were beautiful, and Sophie supposed she should be grateful that for a change the train smelled of something else than sweaty armpits and garlic breath. Other people were clasping gift-wrapped or heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, and she briefly allowed herself to imagine how it would feel to receive such a gift when she got to the office until the reality of her situation hit her, and she swallowed so hard the sound made the woman next to her look up from her phone. The only thing the postman had brought this morning was her credit card statement, and while that had made Sophie's heart skip a beat, that was simply because her January sales shopping spree had pushed the balance scarily close to her credit limit.

  Sophie almost wanted to cry. A city of some seven million people, and not one of them had sent her a Valentine's card. Not even Nathan Field, the dreamy guy who ran the technical support desk at her office, though Sophie knew she shouldn't be surprised. London was full of prettier girls than her. Girls who probably wouldn't make a fool of themselves in front of him like she had.

  She blushed at the memory of her first week at work, when she'd been having email issues, and hadn't been able to believe her eyes when someone who looked like that guy from the Diet Coke adverts had come to fix them, and there and then she'd decided to invent some technical problem at least once a week. When he'd told her she had problems with her Outlook, she'd bitten her bottom lip suggestively – and Sophie hadn't known what had come over her – and told him that wasn't the case from where she was sitting, and for a second or two, she'd thought they were having a 'moment'. Trouble was, the moment had passed, and the feeling evidently hadn't been mutual, as he'd simply mumbled something innuendo-free about needing to re-boot her system, and Sophie had felt like curling up and hiding under her desk. From that day forward she'd been too embarrassed to ask for technical support again, relying instead on the well-thumbed (and appropriately-titled, Sophie often thought) copy of 'Windows for Dummies' she kept in her desk drawer. Still, she reminded herself, it hadn't been a complete disaster. At least now she could add 'familiarity with Microsoft' to her CV. Even though getting familiar with Nathan was what she'd really wanted.

  She turned and stared out of the window, trying to ignore the carriage's loved-up air, knowing it was her own fault she was single. It had been her decision to finish with Darren, and since then she'd justified her lack of a love-life b
y telling herself her career came first. Trouble was, she hadn't been doing so well at that either, and after what had felt like a very long couple of years, Sophie feared her behaviour was becoming desperate, sometimes tailing good-looking guys round the supermarket to check whether the contents of their shopping baskets included meals-for-one like hers did, or practising signing emails with the surnames of men she barely knew simply to see how it looked, and keeping a bottle of Chardonnay permanently in her fridge for 'emotional emergencies', which turned out to mean most nights when she came home alone. The other day, she'd even considered getting a kitten.

  It wasn't that she didn't get her fair share of offers. She wasn't unattractive, and had even been told she looked a bit like Kate Winslet, though the person who'd said that had then proceeded to say he hated Titanic, which had taken a bit of the gloss off the compliment, and not only because Titanic was one of Sophie's favourite films. No, she was just being picky, and besides, it would have to be someone pretty special to divert her from the path of world domination she'd hoped the move to London would set her off on. And while she'd perhaps only gone a couple of steps along that path, Sophie loved where she worked, at a software company in trendy Soho, with her own business cards with her name on them – and not a hand-written-in-black-Biro addition either. And although she still didn't quite understand what the software did or how it did it, she knew she was working at the cutting edge, for a dot com, and a search engine too. 'Just like Google!' her dad would boast proudly in front of his friends from the golf club on the occasional weekends she went home to visit her parents, and Sophie would smile and nod, even though exactly how Seek Software was like Google she wasn't sure.

  Still, the office was near the bright lights of the West End, and (more importantly to Sophie) the shops along the not inconsiderable length of Oxford Street, which were where most of her salary went in an attempt to keep up with the oh-so-trendy girls she'd eye enviously in the pubs and bars she walked past on her way home. And while she might have preferred to live in Clerkenwell, or Islington, or even Stoke Newington – any of the London areas that regularly appeared in the Sunday supplements as the latest latest place to be - Harrow was still London. And that, after all, was the only thing that really mattered.

  In actual fact, she'd chosen it at random - the advert on Gumtree had sounded appealing, Meg, the girl she shared with (though hardly ever saw) was nice enough, and most importantly, it was cheap. But as far as Sophie was concerned, moving to anywhere in London would have been a step up. Just to be within even a clanking, stop-start, packed-like-sardines-tube-journey's reach of the centre of the capital – the centre of the world, in Sophie's eyes - made even a miserable commute like hers worth it, and even though she'd swapped the sea, the beach, a pier, and the magnificent beauty of the South Downs for, well, a school and a hill, Sophie swore the only time she'd go anywhere near Beachy Head again would be to throw herself off it.

  Her train stopped at Baker Street, and by some miracle, a nearby seat became vacant. Sophie fought her way single-mindedly towards it, and was just about to claim it triumphantly when she noticed a pregnant woman about to do the same. With a sigh, Sophie stood aside, and the woman sat down gratefully. This, she reflected as the tube rattled on, summed up her life since moving here. The attempted flirt with Nathan had been summarily ignored – or not even noticed. The promotion she'd been hoping for had been thwarted by her new boss Julie's arrival in the office just before Christmas. Even the Gucci handbag she'd wanted in the Selfridges sale had been snatched, literally before her very eyes, by a Chinese girl with very sharp elbows. On top of all that, she suddenly realised, and for the first time since she'd dumped Darren, the usual unsigned Valentine's card in an envelope bearing an 'Eastbourne' postmark had failed to materialise through her letter box earlier.

  For the second time that morning, Sophie felt her lip trembling, and tried to prevent the tears coming by conjuring up a brief daydream about Nathan appearing at her desk later with a huge box of chocolates, then decided there was probably more chance of Leonardo DiCaprio getting on at the next stop. She sniffed loudly, and a fat man clutching a bunch of lilies that had seen better days caught her eye from the other side of the carriage.

  'Cheer up, love,' he said, grinning at her. 'It might never happen.'

  Sophie stared back at him. That, she knew, was her biggest fear. And while normally the thought would have depressed her even further, for some reason, surrounded by all these soon-to-be-delivered or gratefully-received declarations of love, of hope, of optimism, she felt strangely energised instead. This year, she resolved there and then, things were going to be different. The world was her oyster, and she was going to grab it by the scruff of the neck, and... She stopped herself, unsure whether oysters had necks. But Nathan Field certainly did, and a very kissable one, she'd noticed, as he'd leant over her desk that day and she'd caught a whiff of an aftershave that had certainly been an intoxicating step or two up from Darren's Lynx body spray.

  The recollection made Sophie's mind up for her. Excitedly, she jumped off the train at Charing Cross, and instead of heading straight for her office, strode purposefully through the station, checked no-one she knew could see her, and ducked into WH Smiths.

  South of the river, Calum Irwin was ironing his shirt, attending to the collar and cuffs last (a tip he'd picked up thanks to his recent subscription to GQ magazine) to ensure he wouldn't end up creasing them as he ironed the rest of it. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be removing his jacket (or any other items of clothing) this evening, so he supposed he could have gotten away with just doing the visible parts like he normally did, but you never knew, which was why he was also wearing a brand new pair of Calvin Klein 'hipster' underpants – a radical departure from his normal ASDA three-pairs-for-£5 briefs. He'd ironed those as well, and while he'd been slightly disappointed to find out he appeared not to have any discernible hips (or at least nothing like the washboard-stomached model in the photograph on the front of the packet) when he'd pulled the still-warm pants on a few minutes earlier, Calum had consoled himself with the fact that at least the branding on the waistband drew the eye away from the spare tyre above it.

  He hung the shirt carefully on the back of a chair, then hunted under his bed for his tallest-heeled pair of shoes, wondering whether he should pick up a pair of insoles on his way to work, or perhaps just wear two pairs of his thickest socks instead. Emma was expecting him to be six foot one, whereas Calum was actually only five ten-and-a-quarter in his stockinged feet.

  He smiled to himself at the phrase. He'd written it on his profile when he'd first joined LondonDate, and had received almost a dozen responses (along with some very interesting photographs) straight away from fetishists who'd misinterpreted his description of his height as some sort of code meaning he liked to wear women's underwear. Responses he'd been too scared to follow up, of course.

  By Valentine's Day had been the goal he'd set himself at Christmas, when, sick at the prospect of another lonely year, Calum had decided to do something about his single status and had signed up for what he'd heard people in the office describe as 'this internet dating lark' – although it hadn't been much of a lark up until he'd heard from Emma, and if anything, the lack of appropriate interest his profile had been getting had made him feel even worse. But today, Calum had a feeling things were about to change.

  He considered ironing a spare shirt to take in to work, but quickly dismissed the idea, partly because he hated ironing, but mainly because his job - telesales executive for a software company in central London - meant he didn't have to leave the office, so as long as he watched what he ate and drank over the course of the day, he'd be unlikely to get in a mess.

  Calum loved his job. He was good at it, too. And it suited him down to the ground – he was great at cold calling, had an excellent rapport with customers, and most importantly, always seemed to know exactly what to say and when to close the deal. It was ironic, he knew, how he was a good salesma
n, yet useless at selling himself, though according to all the courses he'd been on, you had to believe in the product, and maybe the issue was simply that he didn't believe in himself - not in person, at least. In front of people - well, women, to be precise - he felt awkward. Started perspiring. Stammered, even. And certainly didn't demonstrate the confidence he exuded on the phone.

  Which was why he'd believed internet dating would be the answer. He could do everything over email, or 'live chat' – which was even better than the phone, as far as he was concerned, as the women he'd attempt to (live) chat up couldn't hear any nervousness in his voice. And while at some point Calum knew he'd have to meet them and risk turning back into his sweaty, stuttering self, he'd decided he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Besides, he didn't have much choice. Speed dating certainly wasn't for him - he was the kind of person you had to take time to get to know, and three minutes certainly wasn't long enough for that - and at twenty-nine, he'd learned years ago that simply approaching a woman in a bar or a club was asking to be humiliated. No, the more he'd thought about it, the more internet dating had appeared to be the answer. A chance to put himself out there without actually physically having to go out there. And of the hundreds of sites that had come up when he'd typed the words 'internet' and 'dating' into Seek's search engine, LondonDate had appealed over the rest for two simple reasons: Calum lived in London, and he wanted a date.

  He'd logged on as a woman first of all to check out his competition, and what he'd seen had horrified him: The men were all buff model-types, or had the same bronzed surfer-dude look as Brad Pitt (one had even appeared to be Brad Pitt from his profile picture), and what was worse, they'd posted pictures of various body parts – their ripped abs, or even (in a couple of instances) a few inches beneath them - in order to stand out from the crowd. Some had been standing out more than was decent, and Calum had been appalled, but even worse than that had been the descriptions. How could he ever hope to compete with this bunch of bungee-jumping, Ferrari-driving entrepreneurs?