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I watch as she rearranges the entire thing in less than a minute. And she’s right… it does look better.
“How do you even see this stuff?”
Claire shrugs nonchalantly, though I catch the tiny smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Years of sitting through terrible presentations. I’ll make you some better graphics, maybe do some sketches.”
“Remind me why you work in marketing and not some kind of presentation emergency services?”
She laughs. “Next slide please.”
“Alright Prof Whitty.”
For the next half hour she works through the deck with me, trimming sentences, changing layouts and occasionally making noises of deep personal offence whenever I use too many bullet points. By the time we’re finished, the presentation looks sharper and significantly less likely to send the board to sleep.
“Thank you,” I say gratefully. “Seriously, Claire.”
“Any time.” She looks back at the slides. “Who checked the numbers?”
“I did, I even borrowed one of James’s calculators.”
She reaches for her phone. “Do you want me to ask Alicia? She’s been begging me for gossip about you for weeks so maybe she’ll take this instead.”
“Really? You don’t think she’d mind?”
Claire waves a hand. “I’m sure she won’t, Alicia’s the best.”
She looks at the clock on the counter, and jumps. “Crap, I need to start getting ready.”
“We’ve got ages,” I tell her.
“No we don’t,” she retorts. “I need you to check my outfit.”
We’re going for lunch with my parents. We told the pair of them we were dating just after we told Sam and Kath. They were thrilled obviously. Today is our first outing to see them as “a couple”, something which Claire seems incredibly on edge about.
I’ve already told her multiple times that it’s not really “meet the parents” if you’ve known them since you were five. But she doesn’t seem to believe me. I remind her of it again as she drags me to the bedroom to survey her dress choices.
“That’s exactly why there’s pressure,” she argues, shimmying into a fourth subtly different dress. “So many of their memories of me are as your sister’s slightly feral little friend. Now, I’m the girlfriend. There’s been a status shift. A promotion. It’s high-stakes diplomacy.”
“Claire.” I sit on the edge of the bed. “They already like you.”
“That’s what makes it worse!” she wails from the wardrobe. “I’ve got something to lose now.”
We set off just over an hour later, in a dress that has been deemed “meet the parents again” appropriate. She looks beautiful, the navy colour bringing out the blue of her eyes. I’ve told her she looks incredible, and she smiled, before deciding she needed to change her earrings.
On the bus Claire starts listing, with remarkable accuracy and detail, every embarrassing thing she’s ever done in front of my parents.
“There was that time I got spaghetti sauce all over my white top at your sister’s birthday dinner,” she says, counting off on her fingers. “The time when I lost one of my milk teeth and bled all over the carpet. The time when me and Kath left that packet of oranges under the sofa and they went moldy and stained the carpet. Come to think of it, I should’ve brought them a new carpet instead of wine.”
The list continues as we get off the bus and start walking. Then Claire freezes, putting out a hand to stop me.
“I’ve just realised that they’ve heard me cry about so many boyfriends over the years. This is awful. They’ve probably kept a list of all the unsuitable men I’ve dated.”
“You were a kid.” I grab her hand, pulling her along the street. “These things are fine.”
Claire lets out a long breath, then looks at me with anxious eyes. “I just want them to like me as your girlfriend. That’s different.”
I reach out and lace our fingers together, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “They already liked you when you were a little chaos goblin who wouldn’t stop talking about Twilight. They’ve loved you ever since, and seen you at all Kath’s birthday parties. I promise they were excited when I told them we were together.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ve upgraded from chaos goblin to… what? Domestic nuisance?”
