Katy Regan - The One Before The One

‘I tend to have that effect on women,’ he says, sitting down at his desk.

There are bits of pastie all down his tie but even that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to take away from his breathtaking attractiveness. In fact, it seems to add to it, which I find exhilarating and demoralising all at the same time. The less he tries, and he never does, the more delectable he seems to become.

I lean back on my chair, assuming an air of nonchalance. It’s something I’ve perfected after nearly a year of sitting opposite someone who it’s all I can do not to strip naked and eat.

‘So how was your weekend?’ I say.

‘Oh, you know … missed you,’ he mouths, chucking a pen in front of me.

‘Shut up, Delaney!’

‘I did!’ he says, clutching at his chest with mock hurt. ‘Anyway, pick up that pen, will you? I want to see your pants.’

I chuck the pen back at him

‘What about you?’ he says. ‘Good weekend Steeley? Or are you keeping it a secret?’

But then there’s the familiar ‘dong’ as his computer sparks into action. I wait for him to carry on the conversation but he’s too busy squinting at his screen.

‘Caroline still topping the sales targets,’ he reads, in a South African accent, mocking our boss’s email. ‘You bitch.’ He shakes his head. ‘You total spawny cow.’

I’m about to respond with some devastatingly witty comeback when a familiar figure looms over our desks.

‘What’s that I hear, Mr Delaney? Spawny cow?’

Janine Cross. Our boss. At least five foot ten of South African sinewy muscle and balls. I speak metaphorically, of course, although it wouldn’t surprise me if, tucked into those skintight Joseph trousers, she does, actually, have a pair of iron balls.

‘Do I detect a smidgen of jealousy?’

‘Um …’ Toby can’t speak. More due to food bulging from his mouth than anything else.

‘Or just a healthy competitive streak?’

‘Oh, just the, er, streak,’ says Toby.

Janine shakes her head at him then smiles at me. ‘So, you got Morrisons? Well done. Very well done, in fact. Just Schumacher to get in the bag now, Caroline, but I have no doubt you’ll crack it. If you carry on like this you’ll definitely be in the running for Sales Person of the Year.’ She taps Toby on the shoulder. ‘Look and learn, Toby, and don’t think I’ve not noticed that you were late twice last week and haven’t reached your target for three weeks running.’ Then she strides off on her racehorse limbs towards a slightly scared-looking marketing team.

Toby’s shaking his head at me.

‘You’re such a lick-arse, Steele.’

I am about to reply when a high-pitched ‘Eeek! Eeek!', unmistakable as the sound from the shower scene in Psycho, interrupts us.

‘What the hell’s that?’ exclaims Toby.

‘What?’

‘That noise like the shower scene from Psycho.’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Toby looks around him. ‘Well, it’s not coming from me.’ The noise continues, grows louder, more urgent.

‘I didn’t say it was coming from you.’

‘So where is it coming from, then?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘It’s coming from you, Steele!’ Toby slides back on his chair, pointing at my bag.

I pick up my bag and open it, look inside.

‘Have you got a rape alarm in there? That’d be typical of you.’

‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

‘A bomb, then?’

‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘I don’t know!’ I hold up the bag a metre away from me. ‘But I’m not looking – you can.’ And I walk over and thrust it onto his desk.

‘Oh, nice. So I get the bomb-in-a-bag,’ says Toby, shaking it up to his ear. He opens it. ‘Jesus, there’s like a whole ecosystem in here.’

He rummages a little and then, a smirk spreading across his handsome face, lifts out my mobile phone, the ‘Eek! Eek!’ becoming ear-splitting as he does. He stands up and hands it to me. LEXI is flashing in silver.

‘Hello?’

‘Hiya!’ says the Yorkshire voice on the end of the line. ‘What d’ya reck to what I’ve done with your ringtone? It’s awesome, isn’t it?’

‘So how long is she staying?’

Toby is highly amused but trying not to show it. Shona is sitting on her desk, biting hard on her pencil, trying to come up with a solution, because this is what Shona does in every problematic situation.

For some reason, Toby seems to have orchestrated a ‘crisis’ meeting and skidded over next to me on his office chair, which is causing all manner of problems, mainly in the pelvic region, since I can smell him: a clean, just-had-a-shower smell, but made purely of pheromones and mixed with something reminiscent of fresh, sugary bakery goods. Something delectable. Something flutters between my legs.

‘The whole summer,’ I say, pretending to look conscientiously at my emails, when really I’m picturing Toby, in bed, naked, and me, burrowing my head in his chest hair.

‘What, like July and August?’

‘That’s the whole summer, isn’t it?’

Toby sucks air between his teeth. ‘Oh, Steeley,’ he says, squeezing my shoulders. The something fluttering between my legs is positively flapping now. ‘Sharing your space with a whole other person? How are you coping?’

‘Not very well, actually. There’s stuff all over my flat.’

‘Oh no. Not stuff. In flat?’

‘Piss off!’ I nudge him in the side.

Shona groans. Poor Shona. She’s worked with Toby and I nearly a year now and the constant sexual tension by proxy must be beginning to wear thin.

‘And what about her not leaving the cushions lined up symmetrically? Leaving the tap dripping? Spoiling your one-woman efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef?’

I slap him over the head as he twinkles his swimming-pool-blue eyes at me.

‘You’re so rude! And this morning she dyed her hair in my bathroom – purple dye all over my brand new Italian bathroom.’

Toby bursts out laughing. ‘Fuck, I’m surprised you made it into work.’

‘How old is she?’ asks Shona

‘Seventeen.’

Toby almost falls off his chair.

‘Seventeen?’ Health and Safety Heather swings around and sighs dramatically, but we all ignore her since she does this several times a day. ‘You didn’t tell me you had a seventeen-year-old sister!’

‘Half-sister,’ I correct.

‘That is so cool,’ says Shona. ‘I would have killed my three brothers for a sister when I was a kid.’

Toby and I frown. Shona often saying things that make people frown.

Toby put his feet up on my desk. ‘So what’s she like? Is she a—’

‘Delaney!’

‘God, Delaney,’ agrees Shona.

‘What?’ he says, wide-eyed at the injustice of it all. ‘A student, was all I was going to say. Thanks a lot, you two.’ He stabs at a ball of Blu-Tack with his pen ‘What do you two take me for? I’m a responsible, married man.’

‘Well, since you’re such a fan of responsibility, maybe you’d like to volunteer as a fire marshal? Eh? Clever clogs. Whaddya think about that?’

Our ‘crisis meeting’ – obviously just an opportunity for Toby to laugh at me – is suddenly cut short by Heather, playfully hitting Toby across the head with her Fire Safety manual.

‘Fifty quid for the first three takers and an hour with me, to show you the ropes.’

‘That, H, is a very hard offer to refuse,’ says Toby, as Heather swings back and forth on her court shoes, clearly delighted by her opening gambit. ‘But I think I’m going to decline, on this occasion. It’s more Caroline’s sort of thing, isn’t it, Caroline?’ And then he smiles in a way that makes me want to punch and snog him all at the same time.