The Flatshare(36)

‘Nine months?’ Wow. That is a very long time. You can grow a whole baby in that time. Not that I am, obviously, because otherwise this tea dress would not fit.

Unsettled, I apply blusher a bit too vigorously and end up looking sunburnt. Ugh. I’ll have to start again.

*

Martin from PR may be a pain in the arse, but the man can put on a woodwork-themed party. We’re in a pub in Shoreditch with exposed beams looming low above us; there are piles of logs as centrepieces on every table, and the bar is decorated with pine branches.

I look around, ostensibly trying to find Katherin, but really trying to locate the Norwegian author who hasn’t seen a human being in six months. I check the corners, where I suspect he will be cowering.

Rachel drags me to the bar to find out once and for all if the drinks are free. They are for the first hour, apparently – we curse ourselves for arriving twenty minutes late and order gin and tonics. Rachel befriends the bartender by talking about football, which actually works a surprising amount of the time, despite being the most unoriginal topic to assume a man would be interested in.

We obviously drink very quickly, that being the only reasonable reaction to a one-hour window for free drinks, so when Katherin arrives I give her an especially effusive hug. She looks pleased.

‘This is a bit decadent,’ she says. ‘Will this man’s book pay for this?’ She is no doubt thinking of her previous royalty cheques.

‘Oh, no,’ Rachel says airily, gesturing for a top-up from her new best friend and now fellow Arsenal fan (Rachel supports West Ham). ‘Not likely. But you have to do this sort of thing occasionally otherwise everyone will just self-publish.’

‘Shhh,’ I hiss. I don’t want Katherin getting any ideas.

Several gin and tonics later, Rachel and the bartender are more than friendly, and other people are really having trouble getting served. To my surprise, Katherin is in her element. Right now she’s laughing at something our head of PR has said, which I know is an act, because the head of PR is literally never funny.

These events are perfect for people-watching. I swivel on my bar stool to get a better view of the room. There are indeed quite a lot of handsome Nordic men about. I consider the possibility of taking myself out into the room until someone obligingly introduces me to one of them, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

‘Kind of like watching ants, isn’t it?’ says someone from beside me. I turn; there’s a smartly dressed business type leaning against the bar to my left. He smiles ruefully at me. His light-brown hair is buzzed short, the same length as his stubble, and his eyes are a cute blue-grey with crinkles at the edges. ‘That sounded a lot worse out loud than in my head.’

I look back at the crowd. ‘I know what you mean,’ I say. ‘They all look so . . . busy. And purposeful.’

‘Except him,’ the man says, nodding to a guy in the opposite corner, who has just been abandoned by the young woman he was talking to.

‘He’s a lost ant,’ I agree. ‘What do you reckon – is he our Norwegian hermit?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the man says, giving him an appraising look. ‘Not good-looking enough, I don’t think.’

‘Why, have you seen the author photo?’ I ask.

‘Yep. Handsome guy. Dashing, some might say.’

I narrow my eyes at him. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the author.’

He smiles, and the crinkles in the corners of his eyes lengthen into tiny crow’s feet. ‘Guilty.’

‘You’re very well dressed for a hermit,’ I say, a little accusingly. I feel misled. He doesn’t even have a Norwegian accent, damn it.

‘If you’d read this,’ he says, waving one of the samplers that was available on our way in, ‘then you’d know that before I chose to live alone in Nordmarka, I was an investment banker in Oslo. I last wore this suit on the day I resigned.’

‘Really? What made you do it?’

He opens the sampler and begins to read. ‘Tired of the corporate toil, Ken had a revelation after a weekend spent hiking with an old school friend who now made his living in woodwork. Ken had always loved to use his hands’ – and now the look he gives me is definitely flirtatious – ‘and when he went back to his old friend’s workshop, he felt suddenly at home. It was clear within moments that he was an extraordinarily skilled woodworker.’

‘If only we always had a pre-written biography for meeting new people,’ I say, raising an eyebrow. ‘Makes it so much easier to brag.’

‘Give me yours, then,’ he says, snapping the sampler closed with a smile.

‘My bio? Hmm. Let me see. Tiffy Moore escaped the smallness of her village upbringing for the great adventure that is London as soon as she could. There, she found the life she had always wanted: overpriced coffee, squalid accommodation, and an extraordinary lack of graduate jobs that didn’t involve spreadsheets.’

Ken laughs. ‘You’re good. Are you in PR too?’

‘Editorial,’ I tell him. ‘If I was in PR, I’d have to be out there with the ants.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re not,’ he says. ‘I prefer to be away from the crowd, but I don’t think I could have resisted saying hello to the beautiful woman in the Lewis Carroll dress.’