Here’s Looking At You. Mhairi McFarlane

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       4

      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      Just as soon as James felt irritated about her work-to-rule, the emotion was superseded by guilt.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 …’ snippy notes. The plastic milk bottles had owners’ names marker-penned on them. People actually got arsey about others using ‘their’ mug. James felt like putting a note up of his own: ‘If you have a special cup, check your age. You may be protected by child labour laws.’

      James told himself to enjoy the rare interregnum of quiet before they all arrived. The sense of calm lasted as long as it took for his laptop wallpaper to flash up.

      He knew it was slightly appalling to have a scrolling album of photos of your beautiful wife on a device you took to work. He’d mixed the odd one of the cat in there but really, he wasn’t fooling anyone. It was life bragging, plain and simple.

      And when that wife left you, it was a carousel of hubris, mockery and pain. James could change it, but he hadn’t told anyone they’d separated and didn’t want to alert suspicion.

      He’d turn away for a conversation, turn back, and there would be another perfect Eva Kodak moment. White sunglasses and a ponytail with children’s hair slides at Glastonbury, in front of a Winnebago. Platinum curls and a slash of vermillion lipstick, her white teeth nipping a lobster tail on a birthday date at J Sheekey.

      Rumpled bed-head, perched on a windowsill in the Park Hyatt Tokyo at sunrise, in American Apparel vest and pants, recreating Lost in Translation. Classic Eva – raving vanity played as knowing joke.

      And of course, the ‘just engaged’ photo with James. A blisteringly hot day, Fortnum’s picnic at the Serpentine and, buried in the hamper, a Love Hearts candy ring saying Be Mine in a tiny blue Tiffany gift box (she chose the real article later).

      Eva was wearing a halo of Heidi plaits, and they squeezed into the frame together, flushed with champagne and triumph. James gazed at his grinning face next to her and thought what a stupid, hopeful idiot he looked.

      There was that sensation, as if the soft tissue in his chest and throat had suddenly hardened, the same one he’d had when she’d sat him down and said things weren’t working for her and she needed some space and maybe they’d rushed into it.

      He sighed, checking he had all his tablets of Apple hardware of varying size about him. He was probably worth about three and a half grand to a mugger.

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