shrugged.
‘Didn’t say. Life terrors, I guess. We’re scared of all sorts of things that won’t kill us, aren’t we? The things we live our lives around avoiding. Then we realise when we get to the end that what we should’ve been afraid of was a life lived by avoiding things.’
‘Fear of fear itself,’ Daniel said, wiping breadcrumbs out of his beard.
Anna thought about this. What was she scared of? Being alone? Not really. It was her natural state, given that she’d been single almost all of her adult life. She was scared of never being in love, she supposed. Hang on, no – that wasn’t fear, exactly. More disappointment, or sadness. So what was the fear she was living around? Hah. As if she didn’t know the answer.
It was the fear of ever being that girl again.
She thought of the email that had dropped into her inbox a week ago, which had coated her in a sheen of unseasonal sweat as soon as she saw it.
‘Some fears are justified,’ Anna said, ‘like my fear of heights.’
‘Or my fear of bald cats,’ Daniel said.
‘How is that rational?’ Michelle said.
‘Cats keep all their secrets in their fur. Don’t trust one with nothing to lose.’
‘Or my fear of going to my school reunion next Thursday,’ Anna said.
‘What?’ Michelle said. ‘That does NOT count. You have to go!’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘To say, screw you all, look at me now. You didn’t break me. You could slay the demon forever, this way. Wouldn’t that feel good?’
‘I don’t care what they think of me now,’ Anna said, with feeling.
‘Actually going proves it.’
‘No it doesn’t. It looks like I’m arsed.’
‘Not true. And look, if he’s there …’
‘He won’t be,’ Anna cut in, feeling a little breathless at the thought. ‘No way would he go. It would be a million miles beneath him.’
‘Then there’s even less reason to avoid it. Do you ever want to be Arnold, wondering what life would’ve been like if you’d not wasted time being scared? This school show, the Glee thing where they were vile. You’ve never seen them since that day, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then it’s a loose end. An unfaced thing. That’s why it’s still got a hold over you.’
‘Great Crom!’ Daniel said, sitting up, looking in the direction of the restaurant’s picture windows.
Anna and Michelle turned in their seats to see a thirty-something man hooting with laughter. His trousers and pants were at half mast, while he looked over his shoulder at people beyond.
‘He’s flashing us!’ Anna said.
‘That’s the king and the privy council,’ Daniel agreed.
They stared some more and saw the lights of a crowd in the distance, the firefly blink of camera phones going off.
‘I think he’s mooning his mates and we’re getting the nasty by-product,’ Michelle said.
The man lost his balance and staggered forwards, landing with a soft but significant thud against the glass.
‘Woah, woah, woah!’ Michelle was fast on her feet and over to him, rapping her knuckles against the glass. ‘These windows cost five grand, mate! Five grand!’
A moment of slapstick comedy followed as a pissed man with his chap hanging out realised that there was a woman on the other side of the window. He screamed and ran away, trying to pull his jeans up as he went.
Anna and Daniel, weakened by alcohol, were left senseless with laughter.
Michelle returned, flopping down on the sofa and clicking at a fresh cigarette with her lighter.
‘Tell these fuckers what you think of them, Anna. Seriously. Show them you’re not scared and they didn’t get the better of you. Why not? If you avoid them, you’re wasting time being scared of nothing. Don’t let fear win.’
‘I don’t think I can,’ Anna said, laughter subsiding. ‘I really don’t think I can.’
‘And that’s exactly why you have to do it.’
In the merciful hush of the empty office, James was nasally assaulted by the sticky, urinary smell of lager spill.
The odour was rising from the detritus of last night’s riotous session of beer pong. The cleaner had started fighting back against the mess generated by freewheeling urban hipster creatives, tacitly making it clear what was within her jurisdiction. Alcoholic games popularised by North American college students clearly fell outside.
Just as soon as James felt irritated about her work-to-rule, the emotion was superseded by guilt. Office manager Harris got stuck into arguing with the cleaner whenever their paths crossed and James didn’t know how he could do it. She’s your mum’s age, wears saggy leggings and dusts your desk for a living. All you should do is mumble thanks and leave her a Lindt reindeer and twenty quid at Christmas, or you’re an utter bastard. Mind you, on all the evidence, Harris was an utter bastard.
For about the last six months at Parlez, James had really wished someone would come in and shout at his colleagues. Not him, obviously. Someone else.
When he’d first arrived here – a multi-channel digital partner offering bespoke, dynamic strategies to bring your brand to life – he thought he’d found some kind of Valhalla in EC1. It was the kind of place careers advisors would’ve told sixteen-year-olds didn’t exist.
Music blared above a din of chatter, trendily dressed acquaintances drifted in and out, colleagues had spontaneous notions that they needed to try Navy strength Gimlets and did runs to the local shops.
Work got done, somewhere, in all the bouts of watching YouTube clips of skateboarding kittens in bow-ties, playing Subbuteo and discussing that new American sci-fi crime drama everyone was illegally downloading.
Then, all of a sudden, like flipping a switch, the enlivening chaos became sweet torture to James. The conversation was inane, the music distracting, the flotsam of fashionable passers-through an infuriating interruption. And he’d finally accepted the immutable law that lunchtime drinking = teatime headache. Sometimes it was all James could do not to get to his feet and bellow ‘Look, don’t you all have jobs or homes to go to? Because this is a PLACE OF WORK.’
He felt like a teenager whose parents had left him to run the house to teach him a lesson, and he well and truly wanted them back from holiday, shooing out the louts and getting the dinner on.
He thought he’d kept his feelings masked but lately, Harris – the man who put the party into party whip – had started to needle him, with that school bully’s antennae for a drift in loyalty. When Ramona, the punky Scottish girl with pink hair and a belly-button ring who wore midriff tops year-round, was squeezing Harris’s shoulders and making him shriek, he caught James wincing.
‘Stop, stop, you’re making James hate us!’ he called out. ‘You hate us really, don’t you? Admit it. You. Hate. Us.’
James didn’t want to sound homophobic, but working with Harris, he thought the stereotype of the bitchy queen had possibly become a stereotype for a reason.
And the humdrum petty annoyances of office life were still there, whether they were in a basement in Shoreditch with table football or not. The fridge door was cluttered with magnets holding ‘Can You PLEASE …’