Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [54]
‘It’s only lunch,’ Fred repeated loudly, his eyes bulging with outrage. ‘To discuss work.’
It was only lunch, Katherine acknowledged. ‘OK.’ She sighed.
Fred lumbered triumphantly back to his goldfish-bowl office. ‘You’re in, son,’ he said to Joe’s anxious face. ‘Don’t forget to come back and tell us all about it.’
The phone on his desk buzzed. ‘The Geetex boys have arrived,’ he said.
Joe’s elation helped him deliver a dazzling presentation to the Geetex deputation. So powerful was his oration that they almost began to believe in the tampons themselves.
‘I reckon it’s in the bag,’ Myles said, as he watched the entranced Geetex men take their leave.
Usually, after a pitch that had gone well, the team went for a lengthy, boozy lunch. However, that day Joe declined to join them. But he urged them to go with his blessing, after first checking which restaurant they were planning to descend on. He intended to take Katherine somewhere far away from it.
In the meantime Katherine had spent the morning knee-deep in accruals. She’d switched her head off from Joe Roth completely. Not for her the spurious excuse about having to go to the bank/stationer’s/chemist, followed by a frantic dash to Oxford Street to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste, new lipstick, extra foundation, body spray, sheer stockings, high heels and a new suit with a short skirt in honour of the impromptu breaking of bread.
She refused to let herself get excited. Years of practice ensured that fighting back anticipation wasn’t even an effort.
Of course, work was a great help. The exquisitely ordered world of figures, where there were no loose ends. If it balanced you knew you were right; there was simply no room for doubt. And if it didn’t balance you went back into it until you found where you’d made your mistake, and then you fixed it.
Katherine considered the double-entry system of bookkeeping to be one of the great achievements of mankind, on a par with the invention of the wheel. She wished the world was run along the same principles. Debits on the left, credits on the right, so that you always knew where you stood. Beautiful.
At one o’clock, Joe sheepishly materialized by her desk, his earlier rush of euphoria dissolved by the embarrassment at having pulled rank on her.
‘Oh, right, the Noritaki discussion lunch,’ she said ungraciously, keeping him hovering awkwardly while she finished a calculation. It could have waited, but why should it?
As she switched off her calculator she found she was dying to go to the loo, but felt too embarrassed to tell him. Perhaps she could go to the ladies’ at the restaurant. But why shouldn’t she go now? After all, he was nothing to her. In the dim and distant past, when she had fancied someone, it had been a different matter. Any bodily functions would have to be dismissed and denied, written out of the picture. But not with Joe Roth. ‘I must go to the ladies’ first,’ she said, brazen as could be. She deliberately left her handbag on her desk so that he needn’t flatter himself that she was going to brush her hair and put on lipstick for him.
20
The restaurant he took her to was within walking distance. Katherine thanked God. The thought of being trapped with him in a taxi made her feel like she was suffocating. Although walking wasn’t pleasant either. She felt awkward and couldn’t look at him. And they both kept going at different speeds, trying to second-guess the other’s natural velocity. Because Joe was very tall, Katherine decided he probably walked at high speed. She didn’t want to be found lacking, so she began by racing along. Then she realized she was probably going too fast, so she slowed down dramatically. Meanwhile, he’d noticed her decrease in speed and, angry with himself, deduced he’d been forcing her to keep up with his long legs, so he ground almost to a halt. Then Katherine noticed how deliberately slowly