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She cuts me off, and I can tell by the tone of her voice that she’s taken against me as much as I have her. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but would I be right in thinking that you would like to leave a number for Mr Wells to contact you on?’
Snotty cow. Yes, I might have been rambling a little, but there’s no need to be rude. Swallowing the words that I’d like to say to her, I put on my most grateful tone instead.
‘Thank you, yes please.’
‘Remind me of your name?’
‘Charlotte, Charlotte Jenkins, although he knows me as Charley—’
‘Charley it is,’ she interrupts again. ‘And the number?’
I reel it off, she reads it back and assures me she’ll pass it on, before the line goes dead.
I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get on with mundane tasks like laundry and cleaning the flat, but the reality is that I’m completely focused on my phone. I check it repeatedly to make sure it’s not on silent and that it has plenty of charge. I even check for missed calls every so often, even though it’s never out of my sight for a moment. Nothing comes. Even though I’m growing increasingly impatient and frustrated, I’m also trying to be rational. He’s probably got back-to-back meetings, maybe an evening engagement. He’ll be waiting until he’s got a good hour free so we can catch up properly.
After a week of checking my phone every morning, every lunch break and being glued to it every evening, it’s starting to dawn on me that he’s not going to call. When it finally does ring, I jump out of my skin and nearly drop it in my excitement, but it turns out to be Mads, not Ed.
‘He hasn’t called!’ I wail. ‘I don’t understand it. Why give me his number and then ghost me?’
‘Hmm,’ she replies, after I’ve filled her in on all the details. ‘I’d want to hear it from the horse’s mouth if it were me. Try and bypass the PA if you can.’
‘How am I going to do that?’
‘You could try calling at lunchtime – maybe she goes out then? You said he often works late in the evenings, so you could try after hours. Or you could go old school and write him a letter – you have the company address after all.’
I follow her advice and try at about seven that evening, but of course there’s nobody manning the switchboard so I just get a generic message telling me the company office hours. I also try at lunchtime, and she’s obviously not there because she doesn’t answer, but neither does he and the call goes to her voicemail. There seems no point in leaving a message that she will only delete, so in the end I take Mads’ advice and write to him.
Dear Ed,
I’m so sorry that I ran off. I was spooked by the cameras and I didn’t know what else to do. Thanks for leaving your phone number, but would you believe I broke my phone? I’d love to hear from you and maybe meet up for a coffee if you have time. My phone number is below.
Love
Charley xx
I add my number, address it to him care of his company and take it to work with me. In return for a contribution to the staff biscuit fund Rachel franks it for me and agrees to send it out with the rest of the practice mail.
* * *
Another week passes and I hear nothing. He must have got the letter by now. I’ve harangued Rachel several times and she’s assured me each time that she definitely franked it and she definitely posted it. Despite her penchant for gossip, she is efficient so I do believe her, but why hasn’t Ed got in touch?
In the end, I can bear it no more and I decide to run the gauntlet of the PA again. My hands are actually shaking as I dial the number and ask to be put through. I’m greeted by the same PA; I would recognise that voice anywhere.
‘I’m really sorry to bother you,’ I tell her, with my heart in my mouth. ‘My name is Charlotte Jenkins, and I rang a couple of weeks ago and left a message for Ed, I mean, Mr Wells? I haven’t heard back from him and I just wanted to check whether you’d managed to pass on the message?’
‘I did pass it on,’ she tells me, and her voice is pure ice. ‘Mr Wells has asked me not to put you through. I’d appreciate if you would stop calling now. Goodbye.’
The line goes dead. The bitch has hung up on me!
23
Months have gone by, and Mads and I have forensically picked over every possible reason for Ed blocking me. Some of them were more plausible than others, and some were downright ludicrous, such as him mistaking me for someone else. How many Charleys did he meet in Antigua, for goodness’ sake? In the end, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that he obviously saw me as nothing more than a holiday romance in the end, despite his protestations to the contrary. He probably got home, had a bit of a roasting from his friends and family for signing up toMarried Before We Metin the first place, and decided to lick his wounds and pick up his old life as if none of it, including me, had ever happened. Mads is less forgiving, but I just can’t bring myself to believe that he would give me his number and then block me without a good reason. I don’t tell her, but there’s a tiny part of me hanging on to an even tinier hope that he might still get in touch, even if it’s just to explain.
I’m scrolling through Facebook on my lunch break one day when I spot a notification. Someone has sent me a friend request. I feel a brief, idiotic surge of hope that this might be him, and eagerly press to see who it is.
It’s not Ed.
It’s Josh.
