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Elaine looks sorry for me; Monty stares at me like I’ve lost the plot, and so does Louis.
‘Anyway,’ I barrel on. ‘We spent some time together, and … I liked him. But I said I wasn’t interested in anything serious because I wanted to focus on the internship, and I didn’t want to be that girl who was dating the boss’s son. I thought people would … say stuff like Tasha did. That all the work I’d done this summer wouldn’t mean anything.’
‘This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,’ Elaine gushes.
‘It’s tragic,’ Izzy says – not unkindly. I think she means in the Romeo and Juliet sense. She looks genuinely sorry for me, not scathing.
‘I don’t know what the big deal would’ve been,’ Louis adds. ‘You could’ve had a great summer sneaking around to hook up with him!’
Elaine swats at him, so viciously he almost spills his tea. ‘No! Louis! Didn’t you read the emails? It wasn’t justsex.’
‘Yeah, we can’t all have a string of dates andhook-ups that don’t mean anything,’ Dylan scoffs, grinning across at him.
‘They liked each other!’ Elaine goes on, impassioned. Her cheeks flush, eyes shining. ‘They had real feelings for each other! Anna was clearly heartbroken over the whole thing! She cried over him! You should’ve heard the way she talked about him!’
‘So?’ Monty says, nudging me. ‘Did you tell him?’
‘Tell him what?’
He rolls his eyes.
And then Elaine says, ‘That you’re in love with him.’
Lloyd finds me at the top of The Mall at Buckingham Palace, near an entrance to St James’s Park. It’s bucketing down with rain, a welcome respite from the stifling summer heat. Raindrops thunder against the ground and ricochet off the top of my umbrella, which is barely holding up in the downpour. The weather has driven away anybody who harboured ideas of a lazy summer picnic sprawled on the grass in the park or reading a book under the shade of a tree, but a walking group of tourists strides past me, led by a man with a neon orange flag sticking out of his rucksack and talking into a microphone.
The relative lack of people mean it’s easy to spot Lloyd arriving.
His trainers splash through puddles, his jeans damp; the hood of his raincoat is pulled up over his head and his hands are buried tightly into his pockets.A couple of rogue curls have been caught in the rain and are plastered, wet, against his forehead. He reaches up as if to push his hood down as he approaches me, but seems to think better of it and turns the gesture into a wave instead.
‘Hey,’ I say, when he’s near enough.
‘Hi. I got your text. Thanks for …’ He gestures vaguely – between us, around us. Then, he jabs a thumb towards the park. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’
I nod, and we fall in step near each other, arm’s length apart. It’s close enough to talk without feeling like we’re intruding on one another’s space. There are thick, purplish clouds overhead; the park stretches out in front of us, so far that I can’t see the other side of it.
I texted Lloyd last night, asking him to meet me here.I think we both have some things to say that are better said in person, I told him.
His reply was short, simple. Straight to the point.
I think you’re right.
It was too exhausting to even contemplate looking at the other messages that were waiting on my phone after the emails leaked. Lloyd had sent alot. He left some voicemails, too, but I didn’t have the energy to listen to them.
It’s nothing he can’t tell me in person today, anyway. This is the conversation we never got to have last night. One that, I think, we should’ve had a long time ago.
‘How’re you doing?’ Lloyd asks after a minute. ‘After … yesterday.’
‘Better, I think. I heard Tasha got fired over it.’
‘Yeah. I knew she didn’t like you, but bloody hell, that was … Who does something like that?’
‘What do you mean? How’d you know that?’
Lloyd pulls a face, shrugging one shoulder. ‘Just some of the things she said sometimes. I talked to all the interns when I was around the office. She said she thought you were really up yourself.’
I can’t help but snort at that. Tasha’s resting face was looking down her nose at people.
‘I kind of got the impression she was all talk. That she hadn’t really been doing much, and not doing a stellar job at the stuff shediddo,’ he adds.
