The Out of Office Girl

  The Out of Office Girl

  NICOLA DOHERTY

  Copyright © 2012 Nicola Doherty

  The right of Nicola Doherty to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 8686 4

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Nicola grew up in Monkstown, Co. Dublin. After studying English at Trinity College, Dublin and at Oxford, she worked in book publishing, ending up working on celebrity books before leaving to pursue a freelance and writing career. She lives in London.

  From London . . .

  Alice Roberts is having a rubbish summer. She’s terrified of her boss, her career is stalling, and she’s just been dumped - by text message. But things are about to change

  to Italy

  When her boss Olivia is taken ill, Alice is sent on the work trip of a lifetime: to a villa in Sicily, to edit the autobiography of Hollywood bad boy Luther Carson. But it’s not all yachts, nightclubs and Camparis. Luther’s arrogant agent Sam wants him to ditch the book. Luther himself is gorgeous, charming and impossible to read. There only seems to be one way to get his attention, and it definitely involves mixing business with pleasure. Alice is out of the office, and into deep trouble . . .

  . . . with love

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To my parents

  and to all the Alices out there

  ONE

  I’m lying on my bed, watching Luther undress. I’ve seen this so many times but it never fails to mesmerise me. First the T-shirt slips off, white against his tanned skin, leaving his dark brown hair even more messed up than before. The expression in his brown eyes is hard to read – he looks passionate, intense, vulnerable. His hands drop towards his jeans. Slowly, he starts to undo his belt . . .

  My phone is ringing. I answer it reluctantly, my eyes still on the screen.

  ‘Hi Alice!’ It’s Erica. ‘I know it’s last minute but we’re meeting some people in the Dove. Want to come? Or are you out somewhere? I hear voices.’

  ‘No, no.’ I find the remote and press pause. ‘I’d love to but I’m working.’ I instantly regret saying this, because I know what Erica’s going to say.

  ‘Oh, come on. You’re always taking work home. You should be more assertive. Work–life balance.’

  Oh God. I love my sister but I can’t deal with her tonight.

  ‘I will. Listen, I’m sorry about tonight, but next time definitely.’

  ‘You should. You don’t want to sit sulking at home, you know,’ are her parting words.

  That’s where she’s wrong. Sit sulking at home is exactly what I want to do right now, that and veg out in front of Luther Carson films (which counts as work) and eat Pringles and drink white wine and generally avoid thinking about the fact that after two months together, Simon doesn’t care about me enough to break up with me officially.

  Although I know I shouldn’t have, I’ve saved all my text messages from Simon. It’s like a mini history of our eight-week relationship. There’s the first one he ever sent – ‘Hi Alice, great to meet you last night. Drink next week? Simon x’. It reads like a really precious memory of a golden age when he still liked me. They continue nicely for a while – ‘Thanks for a great night. See you v soon S xx’. But over the past few weeks, the ‘x’s started to disappear and the texts became more casual and infrequent, saying things like ‘Running late sorry’ or ‘Not sure. Will let you know next week.’

  ‘It’s constructive dismissal,’ Erica said when I first told her what was happening. ‘He hasn’t actually fired you, but he’s changed the terms of your employment so that your previous job – the relationship – no longer exists.’

  It’s good to have an employment lawyer as a sister, I suppose, but sometimes Erica can be a bit too businesslike. The very last text from Simon says: ‘Sorry can’t do Weds. Will call to rearrange.’

  That was over a week ago. At first I tried not to worry about it, reminding myself that he’s very busy at work (he’s just been promoted). But deep down I knew he was losing interest. Yesterday I swallowed my pride and sent him a quick, friendly text just to give it one last chance. That was over – I check my phone – twenty-eight hours ago, and he hasn’t replied. I still can’t quite believe it. How can you dump someone after you’ve been together for two months, not even via phone or text or email but via silence?

  My flatmate Martin must be back now, because I can hear the football in the room next door. Martin’s favourite activities are watching European Cup football at top volume – he actually records them and watches his favourites over and over during the summer – and cooking weird meals, like pasta bake with salami and avocado, that take hours and take over the entire kitchen. He drives me crazy, actually, but I really like my other flatmate Ciara. She’s very easy-going: she always has a bottle of wine in the fridge and she didn’t say anything when I woke everyone up with the smoke alarm by making toast at 3 a.m. She’d just broken up with her boyfriend when I first moved in, so she was a bit depressed, but she seems much better now.

  Someone must have scored a goal; I hear roaring and cheering. My room was originally the dining room, and the wall dividing it from the living room is actually a pair of doors with rectangular glass panes. It means you can hear everything next door, and vice versa. When I moved in, I bought some thick white textured paper from Paperchase and took some cardboard boxes home from work, and filled up all the squares with white textured card. It took me an entire weekend. It’s not Elle Decoration, but it doesn’t look too bad. Simon hated it – he thought it was tacky and studenty. Is that why he went off me? Does he think I’m too studenty to be his girlfriend? Come to think of it, he never actually referred to me as his girlfriend, though I introduced him as my boyfriend last time we met some of my friends . . .

/>   OK, that’s it. I’m going to stop torturing myself by thinking of all the things I might or might not have done wrong with Simon. I settle back on to my duvet and pour myself another glass of wine. It was a bit of a last-minute request from my boss but I’m very happy to watch Fever again. I think it’s up there with Footloose and Dirty Dancing, though some would say it’s a shameless nineties rip-off of both. We’re publishing Luther’s autobiography, and Olivia wants me to pick a still from Fever to use in the picture section of the book. Which isn’t exactly a hardship. I make a note of the time on the LCD, writing ‘L topless’ beside it and a star.

  Soon the all-too-brief bedroom scene is over. There’s a scene with Jimmy and Donna’s family, where they make it clear that they hate him. The headmaster from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off plays the father. Now Jimmy is trying to persuade Donna to leave her uptight Harvard fiancé and run off to New York with him. They start arguing about it, and then he stops and just asks her to dance with him instead. They don’t say anything while they dance, but when the dance is over she tells him she’ll go with him.

  I love this scene. It sounds crazy, but when I watch it, I don’t feel that Luther is acting – I feel that he is living it, and means it. He really wants to persuade her to trust him and stay with him, not by arguing with her but by showing her what they mean to each other. It’s so romantic. What a pity that life isn’t a teen dance movie, and that real men don’t do things like this. Instead, they dump you via the silent treatment.

  Maybe I’ll have a therapeutic DVD marathon this weekend. I own about thirty DVDs, mostly black-and-white romantic films, or dance or teen movies. I’ve got all the classics: The Breakfast Club, Footloose, Dirty Dancing (obviously), Girls Just Want to Have Fun . . . then I have a few randoms: Coyote Ugly, Heathers, Point Break (Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves in wetsuits), The Last Legionnaire (not my kind of film, but Luther is brilliant in it) and my favourite, Working Girl. I also have All About Eve, To Have and Have Not (I love, love, love Lauren Bacall), Spellbound and Brief Encounter (though, in my current state, that one might push me over the edge). Then there’s an Audrey Hepburn box set Erica gave me – my favourite is Roman Holiday. My friends all take the piss out of me for how much I adore these films. But when real life and relationships are the way they are, who can blame me?

  I can hear my ringtone again over the music. I press pause and scrabble around on my duvet and my bedside table, and finally locate my phone under the bed. I still always have that slight hope that it’s going to be Simon with some explanation – death in the family, doubts about our relationship, even a dead pet would do – but of course it isn’t. Missed call: Olivia. Oh God. Why is my boss calling me at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night?

  It’s not that I’m scared of Olivia exactly. But she’s unpredictable. Most of the time she’s great, but occasionally she can go berserk over something completely unexpected. I call her back right away but there’s no answer so I just leave a message. I hope there isn’t some catastrophe at work and that I haven’t done anything wrong – again.

  On my screen, Jimmy is paused with his arms around Donna, looking down at her as if he never wants to let her go. Donna is played by Jennifer Kramer, who was a big star at the time but has never really been heard of since. Oh, Luther, I think. How I wish I were on that dance floor with you right now, far away from my life. But that’s not going to happen, so I finish watching the film, write up my notes for Olivia, and go to sleep.

  TWO

  As I rattle in to work on the Tube the next day, I can’t stop chewing over the whole Simon thing, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. He seemed so keen in the beginning, taking my number the night we met and texting me the very next day. I couldn’t believe it when he kept calling me – secretly I thought he was out of my league. He’s got a fairly hectic lifestyle: he’s a marketing manager for a big drinks company that sponsors lots of events, and he does some freelance journalism on the side. He also was, is, gorgeous – very tall, taller than me for once, with dark curly hair and dark blue eyes. And he’s smart, and good company, and most of the time we had a lot to talk about – he reads a lot of interesting books and we used to discuss his freelance writing and all the high-profile events he organises. So what changed? What did I do?

  It’s true that he’s been a bit distracted lately, and our last date was a disaster. We went to an exhibition he had to go to for work, where he knew a lot of people. Rather than cling to his side, I tried to circulate as much as possible, but I didn’t know enough people and somehow I kept on being circulated back in his direction. Afterwards we walked around Chelsea for ages trying to find somewhere to eat: everywhere was closed or too expensive and we ended up in Pizza Express, which was bad because Simon hates chains. I should never have suggested going for dinner in the first place. He had a cold and seemed a bit off, and I was going on too much about a problem at work. He didn’t want to come home with me because he had an early meeting the next day. In fact . . . he didn’t come home with me after our previous date, either. And the time before, he did come home with me, but—

  Aargh. I’m not going to think about it any more: it’s too depressing. I reach for the copy of Metro wedged behind the man opposite me, smiling apologetically at him, and flip straight to the Guilty Pleasures section. There’s Luther, papped on his way to the airport in Rome where he’s been shooting a remake of Roman Holiday. I happen to know he’s on his way to Sicily, to finish writing his book. He’s older now than in Fever – thirty-three – but I think he looks even better these days, with his brooding dark eyes and spiky brown hair. He’s effortlessly elegant in grey jeans and black cowboy boots, which would make any other man look ridiculously camp. The publicity department will probably clip it, but I put it in my bag just in case.

  The thing that gets me about Simon is that this always seems to happen to me. I go out with someone, he’s super keen at first, and after about two months I get dumped. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong, but the one person who could probably tell me is Simon, and I’m not going to ask him. Imagine if, after a relationship ended, you had to fill in an evaluation form. I would score Simon quite highly on everything except the way he’s ended it. Even if he went off me for some complicated reason that has nothing to do with me, and even if we were only together two months, I deserve more than this silent treatment. I’m beginning to think I should send him a text saying there’s no point getting back in touch – he’s dumped. Though I suppose it might be a bit too late for that.

  It’s early when I get into the office, and there’s nobody there but Poppy. She’s sitting at her desk, holding a hand mirror and placing something carefully on to her eye, mouth half open. If it was anyone else, I would assume they were inserting a contact lens or something, but I know that Poppy is putting on her fake eyelashes. She must have something special on today; she doesn’t normally wear those in the office.

  ‘Morning, darling,’ she says out of the corner of her mouth, waving to me with one crooked finger.

  Before I met her, I would never have believed that people like Poppy could exist, let alone be let loose in offices. Her clothes are mainly vintage or customised or both: often they’re almost costumes. Today’s outfit, a white crochet mini-dress that looks very cute with her brown Afro and long legs, is pretty understated by her usual standards. She has what practically amounts to a dressing-up box under her desk, and she insists that we clock off every Friday at four for tea and cake. I didn’t know what to make of Poppy at first – I was a bit shy of her, in fact, as she has such a big personality. But despite her frothy exterior she is totally down-to-earth, and by now she is a real friend. Unlike Claudine, who is my bête noir – appropriate because she’s French, as she frequently reminds us.

  ‘You look nice,’ I say, hanging up my jacket. ‘Is that dress new?’

  ‘Thanks!’ She sounds pleased. ‘It’s from a charity shop in St John’s Wood. Full of lovely rich ladies’ cast-offs. We should go there some t
ime.’ Poppy is always finding gorgeous things in charity shops – a useful skill when you’re on a salary like ours. She puts down her mirror and turns round to face me.

  ‘How are you? Any word from Mr Dempsey?’

  ‘Nope,’ I say. ‘I think that means it’s over.’ I’m glad no one else is around and that I can just tell her privately now. Somehow the humiliation is as bad, or worse, as the missing-Simon part.

  ‘Oh, that’s rubbish,’ Poppy says sympathetically. ‘I can’t believe he hasn’t even called you, what a bast— what a pity. I’m so sorry.’ It’s nice of her to say that because I don’t think she ever really liked Simon, for some reason.

  ‘Is there any chance he might be unwell or something?’ she asks. ‘Trapped under something heavy? Amnesia?’

  ‘I wish. That’s what I thought at first, but it’s never that, is it?’

  ‘No. They’re never dead, they’re just not calling.’

  Poppy can always make me laugh, even when I don’t feel like it. While I wait for my computer to wake up, I slip out of my ballet flats and put on the slightly less flat shoes I wear for work. Poppy nearly died laughing the first time she saw me do this. In contrast to hers, my desk is pretty boring, just endless piles of proofs and papers. My only decoration is a giant poster of Luther that she and the other girls gave me when we got the book. They meant it as a joke, but I like having it up there to inspire me.

  ‘Are you free for lunch today?’ I ask. I’m suddenly craving a carb-and grease-fest.

  ‘I’d love to, but I’ve got an agent lunch,’ Poppy says. ‘Could do tomorrow, though?’

  Poppy was promoted to editor last month, so she’s doing more grown-up lunches these days. I have to admit, I was jealous at first. We joined around the same time – in fact, she joined a month after me. But she deserves it: she’s incredibly bright, and she works very hard. With her bargain-hunter’s eye, she’s just snapped up a brilliant first novel and everyone is excited about it. Anyway, I hope that if I keep my head down and work hard, I’ll be promoted some time in the next year. I’ve been here long enough; four years is make-or-break time. I want to make editor before I’m twenty-seven; so I still have about six months.