One Thing Leads to Another. Jamie Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ as pie!’ she told him triumphantly. ‘You told me who you worked for and there aren’t any other film companies with that name.’

      This time they exchanged numbers and addresses properly. ‘Actually, I’ve just moved in,’ he told her, ‘last weekend, and you’re the first person I’ve given my new address to.’

      ‘I’m honoured,’ she replied, laughing. ‘Invite me to supper and I can be the first person to see it too.’

      ‘OK,’ Flin said, ‘as soon as we’ve made it respectable, you’re on.’

      In the meantime, she told him, she was going to put an invite to her party in the post immediately. ‘And you must promise me you’ll come,’ she insisted once more.

      ‘I promise,’ he assured her, leaning back in his chair and smiling. What an encouraging start to the competition. He needed this excitement in his life and was fantasizing as to where it might lead when Tiffany put her head round his cubicle.

      ‘Daydreaming again, Flin?’

      ‘Hm? Yes, well, something funny’s happened. I was just thinking about it.’

      ‘Oh yeah? Let’s hear it.’

      Flin told her. ‘What d’you think?’ he asked.

      ‘Play your cards right – who knows? Sounds to me like she’s making a hit on you though.’

      ‘You reckon?’

      ‘Yeah, I reckon. Anyway, keep me posted.’

      Flin liked Tiffany. She’d only recently come over from Australia, but already he considered her his best friend in the department. He got on well with the others, but they all seemed a bit neurotic, especially his boss Martina, who, Flin had once been told, even put her shrink on expenses. There was no side to Tiffany though – or at least none that he’d seen. And they gossiped about everything: Flin told her all about his friends and the various dramas in his life, and she told him about hers.

      It was good to be in their house at last and now with Poppy suddenly reappearing things seemed to be looking up. He had a good feeling about it – almost as though fate was lending a hand: new house, new girlfriend; it simply had to happen. Living with his sister had been very restricting. Both Sam and her boyfriend Will were very easy-going about Flin staying, and he adored his older sister, but however welcoming she and Will might be, Flin was conscious that it was their house and that he was nothing more than a guest there. And now he’d moved in with Jessica and Geordie, his oldest friends – it was going to be such fun, just like the old days when they were living near each other at home and spending all their time together. And so much better than his last house. He’d had a lucky escape there: the lease had originally been for a year, but when Eddie had decided to get married, they’d all agreed to move out after six months. It had been such a relief. Flin liked Eddie a lot, but his friend Bomber – well, just thinking about him made him wince. Putting Bomber immediately out of his mind, Flin punched in Geordie’s mobile number.

      With only four or five miles to go, Geordie knew it might take him another hour to get home. It was nearly four o’clock and he could not understand why narrowing the M4 from three lanes to two should, at this time of day, cause the traffic to grind to a standstill. Each time this happened, he felt an overwhelming sense of frustration descend upon him. It was such a waste of his life. He had begun the journey in Manchester and from thirty miles north of Birmingham to thirty miles on its other side the motorway had been one huge contraflow. Those sixty miles had taken him the best part of three hours; the whole journey, so far, six hours. Ridiculous. He whacked his hand on the steering wheel. In the car next to him was a man in a light grey suit picking his nose, blankly devoid of emotion.

      Geordie was not a great fan of London. He knew this was largely because he was still comparatively new to the place, but everyone seemed so rude. He hated being shouted at by overly aggressive cabbies, carved up by monstrous buses and jostled and accosted on the streets; he liked to be able to walk in a straight line along the pavement. Right now, in the throes of yet another hold-up on the roads, he was feeling particularly disgruntled. London may have been voted the coolest city in the world, but this did little to sway Geordie – he preferred a country pub to a London bar any day.

      None the less, most of his friends seemed to live there, and although there was so much about the capital that he disliked, he knew he was basically quite happy and that it was too early to move out. That could wait, although he did have some sense of a grand plan: he would continue to work in London for another year or two, obtain some crucial experience in the IT industry, and then get the hell out into a business of his own. Working for Burt Kwang at FDU might be boring, but Geordie knew he had to put up with it: give his presentations, visit clients, learn about the industry and not let Burt’s indifference to him get him down. It was a case of going through the motions until the right opportunity appeared. In the meantime, he had the new house to think about. He needed to borrow some tools from his father to make the shelves and get the place painted. And he needed to sign up to a new tennis club now that the rugby season was over. He might be tall and fairly thin at the moment, but too much sitting about in his car without exercise would soon change that. Anyway, he liked feeling healthy.

      After successfully blocking out an aggressive-looking BMW from cutting in ahead of him, Geordie flicked back a lock of his drooping blond mop and then looked in his mirror. At least he was ahead of the massive queue behind him. He glanced down at his phone, and was wondering whether he should call someone when it rang.

      ‘Guess what?’ said Flin in muffled tones from the hands-free microphone.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I’ve bumped into a gorgeous old friend from home and she’s invited me to her place for the weekend.’

      ‘Bastard! How’d you manage that?’

      Flin told the story of his encounter for the second time.

      ‘Bastard!’ Geordie said again. ‘I knew you’d be first off the mark. And we’ve only been in the house half a week.’

      ‘Well, yes, obviously the pressure’s really on for you now.’

      ‘This better not stop you from helping out with painting the house.’

      ‘Course not, but if you think I’m going to turn down a weekend in the country because you want me to do DIY, think again.’

      Flin’s upbeat mood did nothing to improve Geordie’s. What was wrong with him? Why this lean patch? If anything, it used to be the other way round: he was constantly going out with someone while Flin less frequently did. This was because Flin was nearly always chasing after people who were completely unobtainable. Whenever Geordie pointed this out, Flin would invariably reply, ‘But I’m in love, and I can’t help how I feel.’ It had been the same at school, Geordie remembered. Flin had been madly in love with a girl in the year above who simply wasn’t interested. Meanwhile, Kate Rodgers had been desperate for him. Flin had forever had plenty of girls after him: after all, he was a popular person, always had been. Geordie felt ever so slightly jealous of his oldest friend’s easy charm and ability to be liked by just about everyone. Even when they’d been little, Flin had been that little bit more popular than him, and nothing had changed since. Still, it had been great coming back from travelling into an even wider circle of friends, and for that he largely had Flin to thank.

      Geordie had never really thought about being in love. He supposed he had been; certainly he’d told previous СКАЧАТЬ