rags on and we’ll go and paint the town.”
It was a tempting offer. I didn’t keep the full range of software at home that we have in the office, and I knew that I couldn’t read the disc I’d copied at the Seagull Project with what I had on my machine. I certainly couldn’t face going into the office this late.
I took a quick shower and blissfully pulled on a pair of clean toffee-colored silk trousers that were my bargain of the year—a tenner in a reject shop. I added a cream camisole and a linen jacket, and half an hour after I got home, I was climbing into the passenger seat of Richard’s hot pink Beetle convertible. I wriggled uncomfortably, then pulled out a handful of scrunched up papers from under me and tossed them on to the rest of the detritus in the back seat.
“This car’s a health hazard,” I grumbled as I kicked Diet Coke cans, old newspapers and cigarette packets aside in a bid to find some floor space for my feet.
“It’s my office,” he replied, as if that was some kind of reason for driving round in a dustbin.
“You leave it sitting around with the top down, and somebody’s going to come along and mistake it for a skip. You’ll come out one morning to find a mattress and a pile of builder’s rubble in it,” I teased him, only half-joking.
Luckily for my eardrums, Richard was having a night off, so we avoided anywhere with live music. We ended up dancing the night away at one of the city’s more intimate clubs. Afterwards, we went for a late Chinese, so it was after three when we finally crawled into bed, hungry for one thing only. And I don’t mean sex.
Chapter 11
I woke around noon to the electronic music of a computer game, and found Richard sitting naked in front of the screen playing Tetris. It’s a game that sounds simple, but isn’t. The object is to build a solid wall out of a random succession of differently shaped colored bricks. Sounds boring, but the game has outsold every other computer game ever invented. Richard, like half the high-powered traders in the City, is addicted to it. Unlike the City superstars, however, Tetris is about Richard’s limit when it comes to computers.
I pried him away from the screen not with the temptations of my body but with the offer of a pub lunch. He got up eagerly and went off to his house to have a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. What I had omitted to mention was that this was to be a working lunch. A couple of weeks ago, I had followed one of Billy Smart’s customers to a pub on the outskirts of Manchester. I wanted to take a look and see what was going on there. But a woman on her own would be both conspicuous and a target for the kind of assholes who think that a woman alone is desperate for their company. What better camouflage in a trendy young people’s fun pub than Richard?
We took my car, partly on environmental health grounds and partly so that Richard could have a drink. It took about twenty minutes to drive out to the pub in Worsley, a large 1950s tavern with a bowling green and a beer garden that ran down to the canal. The car park told me all I needed to know. Every car had its string of posers’ initials—GTI, XR3i, Turbo. I felt like a second-class citizen with a mere SR. Inside was no better. The interior had been completely revamped according to the chapter of the brewery
I was out of luck. The barman who shimmied up to serve us looked more like a cruiserweight. While Richard ordered the drinks, I took a good look around. The pub was busy for a lunchtime. “Plenty of Traceys,” Richard commented as he glanced round.
He wasn’t wrong. The women looked as if collectively they might just scrape together enough neurons for a synapse. The men looked as if they desperately wanted to be taken for readers of
GQ
magazine. One day, I’m going to find a pub where I feel equally comfortable with the staff, the decor, the clientele and the menu. I rate the chances of that as
It was a tempting offer. I didn’t keep the full range of software at home that we have in the office, and I knew that I couldn’t read the disc I’d copied at the Seagull Project with what I had on my machine. I certainly couldn’t face going into the office this late.
I took a quick shower and blissfully pulled on a pair of clean toffee-colored silk trousers that were my bargain of the year—a tenner in a reject shop. I added a cream camisole and a linen jacket, and half an hour after I got home, I was climbing into the passenger seat of Richard’s hot pink Beetle convertible. I wriggled uncomfortably, then pulled out a handful of scrunched up papers from under me and tossed them on to the rest of the detritus in the back seat.
“This car’s a health hazard,” I grumbled as I kicked Diet Coke cans, old newspapers and cigarette packets aside in a bid to find some floor space for my feet.
“It’s my office,” he replied, as if that was some kind of reason for driving round in a dustbin.
“You leave it sitting around with the top down, and somebody’s going to come along and mistake it for a skip. You’ll come out one morning to find a mattress and a pile of builder’s rubble in it,” I teased him, only half-joking.
Luckily for my eardrums, Richard was having a night off, so we avoided anywhere with live music. We ended up dancing the night away at one of the city’s more intimate clubs. Afterwards, we went for a late Chinese, so it was after three when we finally crawled into bed, hungry for one thing only. And I don’t mean sex.
Chapter 11
I woke around noon to the electronic music of a computer game, and found Richard sitting naked in front of the screen playing Tetris. It’s a game that sounds simple, but isn’t. The object is to build a solid wall out of a random succession of differently shaped colored bricks. Sounds boring, but the game has outsold every other computer game ever invented. Richard, like half the high-powered traders in the City, is addicted to it. Unlike the City superstars, however, Tetris is about Richard’s limit when it comes to computers.
I pried him away from the screen not with the temptations of my body but with the offer of a pub lunch. He got up eagerly and went off to his house to have a shower, a shave and a change of clothes. What I had omitted to mention was that this was to be a working lunch. A couple of weeks ago, I had followed one of Billy Smart’s customers to a pub on the outskirts of Manchester. I wanted to take a look and see what was going on there. But a woman on her own would be both conspicuous and a target for the kind of assholes who think that a woman alone is desperate for their company. What better camouflage in a trendy young people’s fun pub than Richard?
We took my car, partly on environmental health grounds and partly so that Richard could have a drink. It took about twenty minutes to drive out to the pub in Worsley, a large 1950s tavern with a bowling green and a beer garden that ran down to the canal. The car park told me all I needed to know. Every car had its string of posers’ initials—GTI, XR3i, Turbo. I felt like a second-class citizen with a mere SR. Inside was no better. The interior had been completely revamped according to the chapter of the brewery
I was out of luck. The barman who shimmied up to serve us looked more like a cruiserweight. While Richard ordered the drinks, I took a good look around. The pub was busy for a lunchtime. “Plenty of Traceys,” Richard commented as he glanced round.
He wasn’t wrong. The women looked as if collectively they might just scrape together enough neurons for a synapse. The men looked as if they desperately wanted to be taken for readers of
GQ
magazine. One day, I’m going to find a pub where I feel equally comfortable with the staff, the decor, the clientele and the menu. I rate the chances of that as
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