Page 3 of Falling for You

It said this:

Looking for PA/receptionist for my consultancy. Call Pam.

That was it. No list of fancy benefits, no promise of a communal fruit bowl or dress-down Fridays (why do employers think this is what everyone wants? Who is spending their free time desperately searching for a place where they can finally wear their wacky tie out in public?).

I rang Pam immediately and found out that she lived in Battersea, where she was running her Relocation Consultancy.

Which basically means that we help find homes, schools and whatever else a client might need when they are being relocated for work.

For three years, it was just me and Pam, sharing a desk in her back room and mindlessly racing from one client meeting to the next to try and get the business off the ground.

But seven years later, we’re in a swanky Moorgate office with a team of six and our own desks.

Along with a pay rise and fancy new job title, but the desks were the biggest deal for everyone.

Nobody wants to share a desk with I’ll-eat-an-orange-on-the-phone-and-leave-the-peel-all-over-the-keyboard Kevin.

I now have my own list of clients and spend a lot of my time going out for lunches, showing them potential houses and schools and trying not to visibly wince when they inevitably turn their nose up at the gargantuan home I’ve shown them because it’s too close to a bin on the street or something equally absurd.

I’m essentially rubbing shoulders with the rich and travelled and helping them to set up their shiny new lives in shiny new London.

I take a deep breath and puff out my chest as we sail past Bank.

Okay, the next stop is mine.

I eye up the people around me, trying to make it clear that I’m going to need to part these bitches like the Red Sea in approximately ninety seconds.

The train growls to a halt and I start to shuffle forwards, the flock of padded shoulders shifting from one foot to the other like claustrophobic pigeons.

‘EXCUSE ME!’ I bellow, in my loudest voice. ‘This is MY STOP!’

Everyone clucks and totters around a bit more, reluctant to get off the train even for a moment in case they aren’t let back on.

But I have to get off, I cannot stay trapped on this train until High Barnet. Pam won’t believe me if I say it’s happened for the third time this year.

‘Excuse me!’ I yell, and bury my face forwards, pushing my way out. I spot people glancing down in alarm as I barrel past their waists towards the light of the open door.

‘Sorry,’ I mutter, heat rolling up my body as a variety of odours hit me in the face. ‘I just need to … Sorry … I …’

I gasp as I pop out onto the platform, as if the carriage has just birthed me, and push myself up to my full height.

‘Right,’ I mutter to myself. ‘Well done me.’

‘Good morning, everyone!’ I sing as I burst into the office. We have part of the third floor of an enormous corporate building. It sounds fancy but really means we have one room, a toilet and a kitchen, and we have to share a lift with lots of serious people in suits.

We were given free rein with the office when we first got in, so Pam handed us all some paintbrushes and told us that she couldn’t afford an interior designer.

My controlling behaviour took over immediately, and I found myself fighting flashing images of all my colleagues going rogue and painting self-portraits or something equally horrendous and ‘fun’.

So, I shepherded them all off to the bathroom as quickly as I could and told them to paint it white.

An hour later they were so bored that they all went to the pub – it worked like a charm.

Pam gave me her credit card and told me to ‘Annie-fy’ it, so I did.

I painted the walls a gorgeous mossy green and used a shimmering silver paint to draw a huge tree that curled over the ceiling.

It was the most fun I’d had in years – holding that paintbrush felt a bit like I was reconnecting back to my energy source.

‘Good morning, Annie.’

I look round at Pam’s voice and, as expected, I see her hunched over her laptop.

Pam has wild blonde hair which grows out instead of down in tight, springy curls.

She’s wearing a loose, oversized shirt which reaches her knees and big, jangly necklaces around her tanned neck.

She built this business from nothing and spends so long craning over her laptop that her back has developed a slight hump and the skin around her eyes is creased from the hours of squinting at the computer screen.

She always has an unlit cigarette in her mouth, ready to smoke.

I’ve spent hours telling her off for smoking inside, though she rarely even smokes them these days. She’s too busy.

‘Morning, Pam,’ I smile, putting my bag down on my desk. ‘How are you?’

‘I need to ask you a favour.’

I used to take offence at Pam’s utter disregard for small talk. When it was just the two of us, I’d bumble in every Monday, excited to talk about our weekends and see if she’s watching the new series of I’m a Celeb … and I’d be met with silence. Or, worse, a look of complete bafflement.

I lean on the desk opposite hers. ‘Sure, what’s up?’

Pam scowls at her computer, clicking her mouse vigorously.

‘This turned up today.’ She kicks a box by her foot and I glance down, my heart turning over. ‘I have no idea where it’s come from, or what it even is.’

I know what it is. I also know where it’s come from, because I ordered it after a particularly jolly night in the pub with Pam where I thought she was so full of spirit and joy that of course she’d want an entire box of Halloween decorations delivered to the office to spruce the place up a bit.

All I’d have to do is ask her, just out of manners really, because she’d definitely say yes.

Except, I went home and ordered it on the company credit card, went to sleep and swiftly forgot all about it. Which also meant, forgetting to ask Pam.

‘Oh,’ I say, trying my best to sound curious as I kneel down to look at the box, ‘it looks like Halloween decorations.’

Oh my God, these are fantastic ! I’d forgotten how brilliant this company were.

I start leafing through the decorations excitedly. There’s cauldron bunting, ghosts that sway off the ceiling and –

‘A talking pumpkin!’ I cry, pulling it out of the box in amazement. ‘Pam! Look at this!’

Pam doesn’t break her eye contact with her laptop.

‘Right,’ I say, taking a deep breath and forcing myself to remain professional and not start laying out all the decorations in height order so I can send them to my mum and we can both fangirl over how great they are. ‘I’ve got you, Pam. I will put this all up around the office for you.’

Pam points her pen at me and I jump. ‘Not that singing pumpkin shit,’ she says. ‘That can go in the bin.’

‘It can’t go in the bin!’ I squeal, holding the pumpkin to my chest like it’s my first-born child. ‘There are two of them! They belong together.’

Pam looks up at me, and I see a smile quiver on her thin lips. ‘Fine. Take them home with you.’

I beam. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, seeing as you ordered it all anyway.’

I feel my face fall and I’m about to gush an apology when I notice Pam smirking at me.

‘You’re the boss,’ I say, doing a fake curtsy. I’m about to turn and walk into the kitchen when I spot Pam’s computer screen, filled with pictures of India.

‘Oh!’ I say. ‘What are you looking at?’

She snaps her browser shut and goes back to her emails. ‘Don’t be nosy.’

‘Was it India? Are you thinking of travelling?’

‘ Rodney is,’ she says pointedly. ‘He’s got this mad idea about us taking a year off and travelling around the world together. He thinks we both work too hard.’

‘You do work too hard.’ I raise my eyebrows at her but she clicks her tongue at me, laughing.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ I call over my shoulder as I walk into the kitchen.

There are six of us who work here now, but for the first hour of the morning it’s usually just me and Pam, and to be honest, that’s when I like it best. I mean, sure, she doesn’t want to engage in any small talk whatsoever and some days she doesn’t even look at me from over her computer, but I quite like it.

It’s always the same, and there is something quite calming about that.

‘Go on, then,’ Pam says. ‘But a normal one, none of your pumpkin shit.’

I laugh, rolling my eyes as I pull our two mugs down from the cupboard.

Like I’d waste my pumpkin spice syrup on Pam. She doesn’t even know who Morticia Addams is.