href="#litres_trial_promo">Chapter 14
Alex
The weight Donnelly was putting on was definitely starting to show; his paunch was forced to rest on top of the boardroom table, his straining lower shirt buttons pointing to the ceiling. He looked as though at any minute he was going to start stroking his stomach like a Bond villain with a cat. The new graduate trainee to Alex’s left was enthusiastically taking notes; Alex had stopped bringing a notepad and pen to this sort of meeting after his first six months. He tilted his head to see what he’d missed whilst distracted by Donnelly’s chub. Attention to detail, Newbie had jotted down. Asking the right questions. Adding value to your day was underlined neatly. The thing that would add most value to his day, Alex thought, was not having this pointless team meeting scheduled for a Friday afternoon.
After a few more motivational mantras, Donnelly released them back to their desks for the final twenty minutes of the working week. Alex shook his mouse to wake up his PC and had to hurriedly smother his office-inappropriate smile at seeing he’d received an email from Lila.
It was only a couple of lines asking him if he fancied spaghetti bolognaise for dinner or if he had other plans. Like he’d have other plans! Seeing Lila was, no exaggeration, the very highlight of his week. Just getting to eat a meal she’d put together, sit with her in companionable silence as they watched a DVD. Being madly in love with someone made the mundane magic.
Then, as usual, his flatmate, Rory, came straight to the front of his mind, putting a bullet in the brain of Alex's enthusiasm. “Hey, Lils,” Alex typed, with a sigh. “Spag bol sounds great! Thank you! What are you and Rory up to this weekend?”
Nadia
Nadia was almost certain the police were coming for her. It made it difficult to relax.
She made herself yet another cup of tea, but that just made her jittery, so most of it went down the sink. She tried to distract herself with a little Facebook stalking, but – for some reason – other people’s lives weren’t as fascinating as they usually seemed. Television was a lost cause since daytime TV made her want to poke her eyes out with a fork, so she ended up just sitting and fretting for hours. By the time Holly got home from work, Nadia was in a right state and had been waiting in the hallway for twenty minutes.
“I’m having second thoughts,” she admitted, without preamble, before Holly had even got fully through the flat door.
Holly arched an eyebrow at her as she kicked off her shoes. “Bit late for that, hun, the stuff’s in the post.”
“I know. I know. But, I was thinking, maybe we can call Royal Mail, or the sorting office, and get them to, sort of, pull it?” she said, hopefully.
Holly’s eyebrow arched higher. “Pull it?”
Nadia waved her hand vaguely. “Yeah. You know, take it out of the system and… return it to sender.”
“’Fraid it doesn’t work like that,” Holly said, moving past her flatmate towards her bedroom. “Don’t worry about it; everything’s going to be fine.”
“But… I’ve lied,” Nadia said, miserably. “On an official document. I could get in some serious trouble over this. Things are bad enough already. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Calm down,” Holly instructed, as she attempted to tame her heat-frizzed hair with a brush and pull it up and away from her flushed face and neck. She'd had a long, hot journey home on the stuffy Tube. “People lie on these things all the time. Besides, I wouldn’t even say you’ve lied, per se.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what would you call it, then?”
Holly considered her response. “You were just a little bit pre-emptive,” she said finally, scooping up an armful of dirty clothes from the hamper in the corner of her bedroom and moving past Nadia into the hallway again.
“Pre-emptive?” Nadia echoed, as she trailed Holly to the kitchen. “How’s that? And stop it with that! I know very well that you only ever do laundry when you’re putting off doing something else.” Holly shot her a guilty expression as she shoved her load into the washing-machine drum. “Seriously, Hol, I am freaking out here.”
“You don’t need to be!” Holly reasserted, standing straight and slamming the drum door shut. “It’s not like you told them you’d been happily married for ten years and are pregnant with your sixth child. That would have been a lie.”
“And so just saying that I have a boyfriend is… pre-emptive?” Nadia asked, doubtfully.
“Yup. Anticipatory. A little ahead of yourself.” Holly smiled helpfully.
“More like way ahead of myself.”
“Hey, it’s Friday night! If you want a boyfriend so badly, let’s hit the High Street and find you some idiot in a rugby shirt with a popped collar that you can change for the better.”
Nadia sighed. "I've added some stuff to the Netflix list I thought you might like. We could crack on with some of that."
Holly shot her a disparaging look. "I was thinking more along the lines of something where we break up the love affair that is your arse and our couch. Come on. We're going out."
"Ah, Hols, you know I'm broke!" Nadia sighed, flopping dramatically onto said couch. The Home Office had taken away her working visa