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From: Alexis Lee
To: Millie Chandler
Subject: wtf
I cannot believe the shit you’ve said. You won’t answer my texts. They’re not even fucking delivering???? Do not contact me anymore, Millie. I mean that.
*
From: Petra Kairys
To: Millie Chandler
Subject: (no subject)
Stuck in meeting but wanted you to know in case you hear from someone else gossiping. Rumour has it Chloe and Owen have broken up. Trying to get more details, but she apparently moved out and went to her parents’ last night. Please don’t panic/internalise. One text broke Maria and me. If it took one email to break off Owen and Chloe’s engagement then you probably did them both a favour. Xxxxxxx
Chapter Six
Tonight, I finish up at Flye later than I think I probablyeverhave, as someone who always scurries out of the door at 5:31 at the very,verylatest. But after Petra’s bombshell of an email about Owen and Chloe actually–oh my God– breaking up, how on earth could I have just gone home and enjoyed a usual Friday night of binge-watching and baking? I feel I’ve hardly breathed since I read it. ‘Don’t panic/internalise,’ she’d said, but how can I not?
I stayed behind, firstly, to wait for Petra to get out of her meeting, which overran, hoping she’d somehow emerge from the boardroom saying, ‘False alarm! I have more info and Owen and Chloe are still together and completely understand your email issue and it turns out you haven’t ruined everyone’s lives and relationships at all! In fact, you’ve only made them stronger!’ But when I landed no such luck, I decided, nervously, resignedly, bloodynauseatedly, that I’d stay to talk to Owen who Petra told me was ‘still in with Michael’ – even if I didn’t want to. Even if I really didn’t know what to say, I knew I had to look him in the eyes, as agonising and as nerve-racking as that is, and .?.?.apologise.Try to put it right.
Now, at six-twenty on the dot, seconds after seeing both Michael and Owen leave, Owen hanging back, outside, for a cigarette maybe, or to talk to someone else, I step through the glass doors of Flye’s exit. I see him. He’s is standing at the edge of the open warehouse. There’s another hour until the early September sun is due to set, but the weather is so gloomy this evening, the sky sagging with thick, indigo cloud, it feels like an atmospheric deeply autumnal night. The car park is mostly barren, the reception area of the square, flat-roofed Flye TV building is darkened now the spotlights are off until morning, and the small scatter of night workers are starting their shifts deep inside the warehouse, the shutter up, the lights inside creating a golden square amid the murk, like a dollhouse.
Owen stands, shadowed. I’d know him anywhere; that lean frame, the angular slope of his shoulders, the assured lift of his chin. And there’s a part of me that wants to keep walking, pretend not to see him, dive into my car, hurtle off into the night. Because what exactly is my plan here? This is Owen. I havefeelingsfor this man. Owen Kalimeris is the only person I’ve ever been in love with. And for two years, I’ve carried what feels like a gazillion painful, disorientated emotions about him around with me in a heavy, confusing balloon, and it has now burst in front of him. In front ofeveryone. Covered us all in its goo. And I’m to pull him to one side, and say what exactly?Because despite practising what I’d say for the last hour, puffing myself up with faux-confidence, in the hope I won’t turn to jelly when I see him, like I always do, I’ve gone .?.?. blank. Like someone’s just rubbed a cloth across my brain and swept it clean.
Sorry.
I guess sorry is a good place to start, right, with someone who has just broken up with their fiancée because of you? (Yes, Petra, I said it:Because. Of. Me.)
‘Ah. Millie,’ Owen says, as I arrive in front of him, and instantly, the sound of his voice, the familiar sound of ‘Millie’ from his mouth, causes a tiny fist to clench around my gut.
‘Hi, Owen.’
‘Staying late?’ he asks. His angular face is half-lit by the warehouse lights, like a mask. He doesn’t quiteappearheartbroken, or furious with me. Maybe itisa rumour; a bit of office gossip gone awry? ‘What happened, then, did you oversleep? Start late this morning, making up the time?’ A twitch of a smile.
‘Ah,’ I say. ‘No, not quite. I needed to um, talk to Petra about something. No over-sleeping over here.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Owen’s wide mouth presses into an impressed arc. ‘Hm. I guess things do change, eh, Mills?’
Mills. Argh.A tiny chink in the armour. The familiarity, the intimacy of knowing he knows how much I like to lie in, of how I look sleepily reaching for the snooze button in my underwear on a Saturday morning for the third time in a row.
A spit of rain dots my forehead. For a beat, neither of us speak.
‘Owen, I’m .?.?. so sorry about the email. I—’
‘I waited for you by your desk earlier,’ he says, one hand slotted in his jeans pocket, one arm dangling casually at his side, holding his phone. ‘I wasn’t here yesterday. I’ve been in Manchester. With work. Cricket.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘Emailed. Tried calling.’
‘It’s off,’ I say quickly. ‘My phone. It’s turned off.’ And I wish I never had to turn it back on, I don’t add. Because I really amdreadingturning it back on.
Owen raises his own phone at his side. He’s wearing all black. A slim-fitted short-sleeved, black T-shirt, straight-legged black jeans, a fraying tear in one of the knees, a peep of tanned skin. He looks healthy. Skin, golden. Limbs, wiry. A runner’s physique. ‘And this,’ he says. ‘I get this. This email. Emails.’
I nod, rigid in the thick, humid air, as rain starts to fall in a haze. And now, I can’t even look at him. Embarrassed doesn’t even come close. Ashamed, is how I feel.Guilty.There he was, in Manchester, directing an entire televised cricket game, living this adult, ‘I’m at the top of my career game and I’m getting married like a real grown-up,’ life, while I was being read my own emails and convulsing around my home as my flat-mate burned incense that smelled like bad shepherd’s pie.
