Freya North - Fen

The courier raised his eyebrows. At her language, at her turned back, at her neat bottom; at the fact that she was working in a room with the lights on and the blind down on a particularly fine April day. At the fact that she worked here now. But Fen didn’t notice. Not just because she had her back to him. She had lifted the lid off the box and was already enthralled by its contents.

‘Blimey,’ she murmured. The box had revealed an original catalogue to the Picasso–Matisse exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Matt left her to it, hearing her mutter, ‘But that was 1945, what’s it doing in 1956? Matisse was already dead,’ as he shut the Archive door.

Fen was blazing through 1956 when the phone in the Archive rang. She scrambled up from 1942, 1958 and 1979 (all found in the 1956 box – despite it being the only box without a question mark on the label, for goodness’ sake), and grabbed the receiver.

‘Barnard Castle?’ she asked hopefully.

‘It’s Otter. Ed and I are ready for our lunch. Come to our room in five minutes. Next to Acquisitions.’

My God, lunchtime already.

Only Otter isn’t in the room. Just the overfamiliar courier.

‘Oh,’ says Fen, ‘still lost?’

‘Hullo,’ says the courier, ‘again.’

She makes to leave. ‘Are you looking for someone?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘Otter and Ed.’

‘I’m Matt,’ he says.

Fen nods somewhat cursorily at him.

As she made to leave a second time, Otter came in.

‘Fen!’ he greeted her. ‘Meet Ed.’

Fen was starting to feel a little exasperated and she glanced from Otter to the Man With Two Names. ‘Who?’ she shrugged. ‘Which? What ?’ Otter looked worryingly nonplussed at Fen’s confusion. But the courier came to her rescue.

‘I’m Matt,’ the courier persists, ‘I edit Art Matters . Hence “Ed”. Although I hasten to add that it is only Otter who calls me Ed.’

‘You’re not a courier?’ Fen asks, frowning first and then blushing, much to Otter’s delight and Matt’s surprise.

‘No,’ confirms Matt generously, ‘just an editor. Sorry to disappoint you. Hullo.’ He held out his hand which Fen took. They shook hands just a little gingerly.

‘Hullo, Matt, then.’

‘Thyu.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Matthew. I edit Art Matters and anything else you want to know you can ask over lunch. I’m starving.’

‘Hangover?’ Otter said not so much presumptuously as from experience.

‘Worse than,’ Matt groaned and hoped that Otter wouldn’t pry or comment.

Otter, however, was now near-obsessed with his self-crowned role as matchmaker. ‘Matthew Holden is a modest sod,’ he said as the three of them walked along John Islip Street to the sandwich shop, ‘he’s twenty-nine, he is a brilliant editor – if a quite dastardly cad. He’s relatively solvent and comes with car and mortgage.’

Fen backtracked and ground to a halt as she did so: ‘As in Henry?’

‘Henry Moore-gage?’ Otter quipped.

‘ Holden ,’ Fen stressed, staring at Matt.

Please please please! Please let it be so! I’ll cook and clean and perform base acts for him. I’ll marry him and bear him an heir. But please please please!

‘Any relation?’ she said, with hastily employed nonchalance.

‘Father,’ Matt confirmed without fanfare, ‘late.’

‘How fantastic!’ Fen said, wincing as she did so. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m sorry for your loss. But I’m a huge Julius Fetherstone fan, you see, and your father was such a wonderful patron.’

‘I applied under a pseudonym,’ Matt said almost defensively, ‘and anyway, most of his Fetherstones were already bequeathed to national art institutions.’

Fen touched Matt’s arm. He felt firm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’

Matt reassured her by laying his hand fleetingly between her shoulder-blades.

Otter noticed the physical contact with satisfaction.

‘Did you say “most”?’ Fen asks, as they take their sandwiches into the little gardens opposite the Trust. ‘Did you say most the Fetherstones were bequeathed?’

Matt nods because he has a mouthful of pastrami and ciabatta.

‘Can I marry you?’ Fen asks, all wide-eyed and winsome.

‘OK,’ he confirms through a muffle of bread and sausage.

Otter is delighted with their exchange.

‘It’s not an April Fool,’ Fen stresses, glancing at Matt’s profile and liking it so much she has to cast her eyes away, alighting on his legs instead; feeling suddenly a little light between hers.

Oh God. Not on my first day at work. Not a colleague. Not after so long without. Not after landing my dream job after so long doing mind-numbingly boring placements. So he has great cheekbones, milk-chocolate-coloured eyes and funky this-way-and-that sandy hair. So what. OK, so he’s not too tall, not too beefy but fit. Big deal. And he has good teeth and a gorgeous smile. Well la-di-bloody-da.

So, he’s charming and handsome and he’s Henry Holden’s son.

I am not going to have a flirtation, let alone a fling, with a colleague.

So says your right palm, Fen. What can you read on your left?

Egg-mayonnaise sandwiches never tasted so good. For Fen McCabe, Christmas has come early.

Pastrami on ciabatta is a taste sensation today. Matthew Holden has just appointed the role of rebound to the archivist. No one else need apply.

‘A good day at the office, darling?’ Abi jested when Fen took a seat at Snips, the hairdressers, between her and Gemma.

‘Save any art for the nation?’ Gemma asked her.

Even with her hair sopping wet and the stylist’s clips parting it into strange configurations whilst he snipped, Fen looked quite elated.

‘I met a man called Matt,’ she said with a blush that neither Abi nor Gemma had seen for many many months.

‘Please not a frigging statue,’ Abi groaned, wanting to lean forward to clasp her head in her hands but finding her hair tugged back by her irritated stylist.

‘No no,’ Fen breezed, ‘but he is Henry Holden’s son.’

‘So he’s as good as a bloody statue,’ Gemma concurred, ‘God, you’re mercenary!’

‘Probably just your average office flirtation,’ said Fen.

‘Yeah right,’ Abi snorted, from experience, ‘you just try and stop it there!’

Matt hardly gave Fen a moment’s thought when he returned home. His ex-girlfriend was still there. Looking very comfortable. She’d cooked him supper. Some for Jake too, but Jake didn’t show. Matt didn’t have the heart to send her home. Or was it that he didn’t have the nerve? He let her sleep in his bed. Again. He felt somewhat defeated by it all. Exhausted. She entwined her limbs around his and gave his ear lobes sweet little kisses, his chest too; she tried her best to arouse his flaccid cock.

‘I have a headache,’ Matt said, turning away from her but staying awake for hours.

James Caulfield was woken by his lurcher, Barry, and, in turn, woke the labrador, Beryl, over whom he tripped on his way to the bathroom. He had a leisurely pee and then yawned at length, hanging on to the basin and staring vaguely at the mirror until the fog of reverie lifted and his reflection gawped back.

‘Christ,’ he groaned, stretching his chin to analyse bristle length, ‘reckon I can go another day?’ His dogs did not answer, merely observed him before glancing away in the approximate direction of the kitchen and their breakfast.

‘What’s today?’ James asked, this time not expecting an answer from his canine companions. ‘Thursday, I do believe. That means Mrs Brakespeare and as she’s rather short-sighted, the razor can wait until tomorrow.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully, sprayed a long blast of deodorant under each armpit and went downstairs in his T-shirt and boxer shorts to feed the dogs. He stood over them, hands on hips, as he always did, while they slurped down their food before staring at him imploringly as if they could eat the same again. ‘Come on, out you go.’ He opened the arched oak door and the dogs bounded out into the morning.