Lindsey Kelk - One in a Million

‘In it for you?’ Charlie looked completely nonplussed. ‘I don’t know. When you lose, you buy me a pizza?’

‘Or, when we win, we get a month’s free rent?’ Miranda suggested. ‘Since you’re so certain we can’t do it.’

‘A month’s rent and a pizza,’ I added. I wasn’t about to turn down food.

‘Agreed,’ Charlie said, holding out a hand to shake on the deal. ‘And when you lose, I get pizza and you have to do a month of social media for Wilder.’

‘Hang on a minute, I’m the bloody landlord here, what’s in this for me?’ Martin yelped. ‘Who’s going to pay their rent if they win? I didn’t sign up to free rent.’

‘Keep your knickers on,’ Charlie said with confidence, never once taking his eyes off me. ‘They won’t. And you can have some of the pizza.’

I narrowed my eyes and glared back.

‘I’m not sharing it with you though,’ he said to me.

‘Ten thousand followers in thirty days?’ I replied. ‘Easy.’

‘Fifty,’ he countered.

‘Fifteen.’

Charlie stared me out for as long as his contact lenses would allow.

‘Thirty.’

‘Twenty,’ I said. ‘We’ll get twenty thousand.’

’Annie,’ Mir whispered. ‘Are you sure you’re sure?’

‘Positive,’ I replied, even though underneath the table, my legs were shaking.

‘Done,’ Charlie declared. ‘And I know you’d never do anything so underhanded, but for clarity’s sake: no bots, no promoted posts and no paid-for followers.’

‘As if I would,’ I agreed, blood thumping through my veins. Either I was very excited or I was having a stroke, I really couldn’t tell.

‘Now we get to pick the victim.’ Martin clapped Charlie on the back and the pair of them turned their attention to the world outside our table. The Ginnel’s coffee shop, cleverly named ‘Coffee Shop’, was packed. Everyone was hungover after last night’s game and stuffing themselves with tepid sausage sandwiches and floppy bacon butties. None of them looked as though they’d be a special treat to work with.

‘What about Jeremiah, my graphic designer?’ Charlie suggested, pointing at a small, angular man who was lining up sugar cubes along the counter and arranging them by size. ‘He’s … interesting.’

‘No one from your office,’ I said. ‘It has to be someone who is an actual tenant but no one who works for you. That’s cheating.’

‘Fine, no one from Wilder.’ He sulked and looked back out over the unsuspecting contenders. ‘Carl, the bloke on the ground floor who makes those weird cartoon things?’

‘Oh, the gorgeous Welsh artist guy?’ Miranda said, mooning at the dark-haired man in the corner. ‘Amazing pick.’

‘No, not him,’ Martin insisted, a flash of jealousy in his eyes. ‘Who else?’

‘I haven’t got all day for this,’ Mir said with an agitated sigh. ’We’re doing it with the next person who walks through the front door. Agreed?’

Everyone sat up a bit straighter. Miranda could be pretty intense when she wanted to be.

Charlie and I locked eyes for a moment, each daring the other to protest.

‘Fine with me,’ I said.

‘Fine with me,’ he echoed.

We all turned to stare at the door.

I reached for Miranda’s hand underneath the table but instead I got Martin’s thigh.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered, wiping my palm on my jeans.

‘Never apologize,’ he insisted as the door flew open.

All four of us sucked in our breath at the same time.

It was Dave the Postman.

‘Oh, bloody hell,’ I grumbled, breathing out. ‘Get out the way, Dave.’

‘I think Dave could have a fascinating YouTube channel,’ Charlie reasoned. His brown eyes were laughing. ‘The Life and Loves of a London Postie. I might watch that. I bet he gets up to all sorts.’

Just as I was about to reply, Dave held the door open to let someone in. A strangely tall, skinny someone with an enormous beard and long blond hair, wearing baggy jeans and a grey T-shirt with a faded blue Jansport rucksack on his back. He paused next to our table as he passed, old-fashioned flip-phone in one hand, thermos in the other, then pushed his wire-framed glasses up his nose and kept on walking.

I opened my mouth then shut it again.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy,’ Charlie said, crossing his hands behind his head and leaning his chair back on two legs. ‘Game on, ladies. May the best man win.’

The room at the end of the hallway on the first floor had been empty for as long as we had been at The Ginnel. It was a tiny, awkward sort of space with a glass front and only one small, square window to the outside slightly above head height. It was too little to be a meeting room and too dark to be an office and, so far, no one who had been to look around had been interested in setting up shop.

Until today.

The first things I noticed as I approached the working home of my newest client were the panels of white paper that had been sticky-taped to the glass wall, effectively closing out the rest of his co-workers and pretty much defeating the object of being in a co-working space in the first place. The second was the sign on the door. It was a nameplate that appeared to have been pilfered from a 1970s polytechnic. Everyone else had identical signs in the same, slightly retro serif font but Dr S. E. Page MPhil PhD had got ahead of the game and glued a narrow blackboard with block white lettering onto the door himself.

Charlie and Martin had been positively joyous when our subject selected himself but what could they know from one look? There was no reason to think, just because he wasn’t some kind of Adonis he wouldn’t be interesting. For all they knew he could be an amazing photographer or he might have a dancing dog or any number of incredible, Instagram-worthy skills. He already had more letters after his name than anyone I’d ever met and my sister knew some truly insufferable academic types who seemed to have been put on this earth solely to rack up qualifications.

‘There could be any number of reasons he’s covered up the windows,’ I told myself, tracing the edges of the white paper through the glass. ‘This space would make a decent dark room. Or he could be super light-sensitive.’

Inside the office, I heard papers rustling. I knocked, stepped back and waited.

The rustling stopped but he made no attempt to answer the door.

‘Or he’s an actual serial killer,’ I suggested to myself. ‘Making himself a nice skin suit for the autumn.’

I knocked again. Louder.

Still nothing.

‘Once more for luck,’ I said under my breath, rapping as hard as I could for as long as I could.

My hand was still mid-air when the door opened. The tall, skinny man had tied back his long hair in a man bun. His beard was still enormous, and not in a cool, hipster way and though it was huge, it completely failed to disguise the annoyance on his face.

‘Dr Page?’ I enquired with a forced, friendly smile.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, looking me up and down.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘At least, it wasn’t the last time I checked.’

‘Right, you can go away then?’

He phrased it as a question but it definitely felt more like an instruction.

‘I’m sorry, I’m Annie,’ I said quickly before he could close the door again. ‘We’re office neighbours. I work upstairs? I came to say hello, welcome you to the building.’

He pushed his smudged spectacles up his nose with a long, slender finger.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Hello.’

And then he slammed the door so hard, I felt it rattle my fillings.

‘Bugger,’ I whispered, the door a fraction of an inch from my nose.

There was the slightest of chances this was going to be more difficult than I had hoped.