‘Duty calling?’ he said.
I nodded. ‘I need to get back to the office.’
Simon looked at his watch. ‘Dammit, I didn’t realise the time. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour, followed by another meeting and then a conference call with New York at eight.’
‘Who says bankers don’t know how to have fun?’ I said.
‘You do,’ he replied. ‘Often. And I’ve told you I’m a fund manager, not a banker.’
I smiled. ‘Ah, yes, you shuffle piles of paperclips around. You start off with ten paperclips and after you weave your magic there are ten thousand of them.’
He grinned. He’d tried to explain his job to me once using a paperclip analogy, and I’d never let him live it down.
‘Minus my commission, of course.’ He gave me a playful shove. ‘What are your plans tonight? Suitably rock and roll, I hope, to make up for my lame evening.’
‘Oh, you know, the usual – coke-fuelled orgies and animal sacrifices.’
‘Bit of a quiet one, then.’
Neither of us moved. The idea of walking out and not seeing Simon for another five years pinned me to my seat.
‘I’ve missed you, Frixie.’
I wanted to tell him I’d missed him too, but I was suddenly breathless. ‘Let’s not leave it so long next time,’ I said, lightly.
‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. The firm’s moving me to the London office. I’m back for good.’
*
I don’t remember walking back to my office. My head was full of Simon.He was back in theUK. Permanently. He was single. He missed me.I was going to go crazy if I analysed our whole conversation, the way I did when I was a teenager, even going so far as writing down my thoughts in secret notebooks that I hid behind my Agatha Christies.
I needed a coffee when I got back, if only to shake away any dreamy thoughts about Simon.
God, he had good arms.
The dishwasher was on the blink again, which meant the sink was piled high with dirty mugs – not a single clean one remained. Normally I would have got annoyed by this, but I was in such a buoyant mood that I washed up the whole lot of them. And not once did I mutter under my breath that my colleagues were a bunch of messy bastards.
