Page 25 of Little Miss Fortune

‘Do you want to grab drinks with Alexandra and me after work?’ Toby Lewis whispers, waving the crew away.

His breath sends another shiver down my spine. I suspect it’s because of how traumatic it was to see John here that my nervous system is on edge.

‘Isn’t that supposed to be a date? Why would I be there?’

‘The date is on Sunday. We are just grabbing some drinks after work. See?’ He lifts his phone up with a last message from her.

Alexandra Judgement (The Club): Ask Fuko if she wants to come! Leon might come as well.

Alexandra Judgement (The Club)? Yabai. Don’t know if that should go into my report about Toby Lewis’s behaviour. Normally, I would’ve rejected the invite, but seeing John again... I agree to go with a curt nod.

The rest of the day is just online meetings that Steven recommended I attend for an introduction to the partners. Recommending that you do tasks when you are paid to do them is a strange choice of words, but that is Steven for you. He talks at length about Toby’s impressive marketing research delivery plan that Steven thinks he is severely underpaid for and hints that I might want to shadow him for that period. I would’ve preferred being Toby-free for a minute—I hate being a target for someone to mess with.

The Spread Eagle, the pub, is not too stuffed, pun intended. It is a Monday after all. Toby asks for my order—cider on tap—and gets himself an Asahi. On tap? Since when was Asahi on tap at a pub called the Spread Eagle? Everything is coming up Japan.

‘So, how does it feel working with your ex on a project?’ The first question Toby asks.

I think for a second and then say, ‘It feels like if someone proposed in public and then you said no, but then you also have to take the same transport back in awkward silence.’

‘You take the Northern Line back?’

‘Yeah, why?’

He kneels on one knee. ‘There is a question I’ve been meaning to ask you—’

‘Get the fuck off this floor right now, or I will scream.’ I pull him up.

My reaction was satisfactory enough for him, so he listens to my command and sits back in the booth with me, asking me a barrage of questions that I ignore.

Sashka joins us shortly. She orders a Hugo spritz, which, shockingly, the Spread Eagle does not have, so she has to settle on an Aperol.

‘Congratulations on your first event-free workday, Fuko.’ Sashka tilts her glass.

‘Well...’ I lower my voice.

‘Oh, I would be very interested to hear if you truly thought it was uneventful.’ Toby creates a bridge with his hands and rests his chin on it.

‘What? What does that mean?’ Sashka sips on her cocktail.

I sigh. ‘John is contracted to work with SIMPO.’

‘Big Dick John? You’re joking!’ Sashka’s voice rises above the level of concealment.

‘Big Dick John?’ Toby grimaces at either the name or the visual. ‘Is it, like, metaphorical or literal?’

‘Both,’ we say in unison, and Sashka turns to me. ‘How was he today? After, you know...’

‘What?’ Toby keeps snapping his head between us like a member of the audience at Wimbledon.

With my reluctance to answer, I gesture for Sashka to explain our breakup after his elaborate and psychotic way of professing his undying love.

Toby looks at me in horror.

‘And then—’ She lifts her finger like a teacher who’s trying to convince her students that Shakespeare is cool.

‘What the fuck do you mean and then?’ Toby asks.

‘And then he stole her script, went to Amsterdam with her film crew, won an award for it, and wrote a series of defamatory blog posts about her that got published in their uni’s newspaper column.’