Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine(3)

“She’s mental,” he said.

“Well, we know she’s mental,” Janey said, “that was never in doubt. The question is, what did she do this time?”

Billy snorted. “You know she won those tickets and asked me to go to that stupid gig with her?”

Janey smiled. “Bob’s annual raffle of crap client freebies. First prize, two free tickets. Second prize, four free tickets . . .”

Billy sighed. “Exactly. Total embarrassment of a Thursday night out—a charity gig in a pub, starring the marketing team of our biggest client, plus various cringeworthy party pieces from all their friends and family? And, to make it worse, with her?”

Everyone laughed. I couldn’t disagree with his assessment; it was hardly a Gatsby-esque night of glamour and excess.

“There was one band in the first half—Johnnie something and the Pilgrim Pioneers—who weren’t actually that bad,” he said. “They mostly played their own stuff, some covers too, classic oldies.”

“I know him—Johnnie Lomond!” Bernadette said. “He was in the same year as my big brother. Came to our house for a party one night when Mum and Dad were in Tenerife, him and some of my brother’s other mates from Sixth Year. Ended up blocking the bathroom sink, if I remember right . . .”

I turned away, not wishing to hear about his youthful indiscretions.

“Anyway,” said Billy—he did not like being interrupted, I’d noticed—“she absolutely hated that band. She just sat there frozen; didn’t move, didn’t clap, anything. Soon as they finished, she said she needed to go home. So she didn’t even make it to the interval, and I had to sit there on my own for the rest of the gig, like, literally, Billy No-Mates.”

“That’s a shame, Billy; I know you were wanting to take her for a drink afterward, maybe go dancing,” Loretta said, nudging him.

“You’re so funny, Loretta. No, she was off like a shot. She’d have been tucked up in bed with a cup of cocoa and a copy of Reader’s Digest before the band had even finished their set.”

“Oh,” said Janey, “I don’t see her as a Reader’s Digest reader, somehow. It’d be something much weirder, much more random. Angling Times? What Caravan?”

“Horse and Hound,” said Billy firmly, “and she’s got a subscription.” They all sniggered.

I laughed myself at that one, actually.



I hadn’t been expecting it to happen last night, not at all. It hit me all the harder because of that. I’m someone who likes to plan things properly, prepare in advance and be organized. This came out of nowhere; it felt like a slap in the face, a punch to the gut, a burning.

I’d asked Billy to come to the concert with me, mainly because he was the youngest person in the office; for that reason, I assumed he’d enjoy the music. I heard the others teasing him about it when they thought I was out at lunch. I knew nothing about the concert, hadn’t heard of any of the bands. I was going out of a sense of duty; I’d won the tickets in the charity raffle, and I knew people would ask about it in the office.

I had been drinking sour white wine, warm and tainted by the plastic glasses the pub made us drink from. What savages they must think us! Billy had insisted on buying it, to thank me for inviting him. There was no question of it being a date. The very notion was ridiculous.

The lights went down. Billy hadn’t wanted to watch the other acts, but I was adamant. You never know if you’ll be bearing witness as a new star emerges, never know who’s going to walk onto the stage and set it alight. And then he did. I stared at him. He was light and heat. He blazed. Everything he came into contact with would be changed. I sat forward on my seat, edged closer. At last. I’d found him.



Now that fate had unfurled my future, I simply had to find out more about him; the singer, the answer. Before I tackled the horror that was the month-end accounts, I thought I’d have a quick look at a few sites—Argos, John Lewis—to see how much a computer would cost. I suppose I could have come into the office during the weekend and used one, but there was a high risk that someone else would be around and ask what I was doing. It’s not like I’d be breaking any rules, but it’s no one else’s business, and I wouldn’t want to have to explain to Bob how I’d been working weekends and yet still hadn’t managed to make a dent in the huge pile of invoices waiting to be processed. Plus, I could do other things at home at the same time, like cook a trial menu for our first dinner together. Mummy told me, years ago, that men go absolutely crazy for sausage rolls. The way to a man’s heart, she said, is a homemade sausage roll, hot, flaky pastry, good quality meat. I haven’t cooked anything except pasta for years. I’ve never made a sausage roll. I don’t suppose it’s terribly difficult, though. It’s only pastry and mechanically recovered meat.

I switched on the machine and entered my password, but the whole screen froze. I turned the computer off and on again, and this time it didn’t even get as far as the password prompt. Annoying. I went to see Loretta, the office manager. She has overinflated ideas of her own administrative abilities, and in her spare time makes hideous jewelry, which she then sells to idiots. I told her my computer wasn’t working, and that I hadn’t been able to get hold of Danny in IT.

“Danny left, Eleanor,” she said, not looking up from her screen. “There’s a new guy now. Raymond Gibbons? He started last month?” She said this as though I should have known. Still not looking up, she wrote his full name and telephone extension on a Post-it note and handed it to me.