The Perfect Widow. A.M. Castle

in the post, but it hasn’t come.’

      The mail was sorted elsewhere and delivered by various spotty youths with red trolleys. I did my best not to be aware of their presence in the building, just as Jen had shown me. Now it seemed as if Patrick, for all his years in the firm, was equally ignorant of the workings of the post room.

      ‘Um.’ I looked frantically under my desk, and then wondered why I was doing it. There was nothing there, except my box of tampons, and though I might be discombobulated by his presence, the scent of his clean shirt and the slight citrus waft of his aftershave, I wasn’t far gone enough to get those out. ‘I’m so sorry, no,’ I said, my eyes pleading. Had I let him down in some way? Was it my fault? I felt as though the world might easily come to an end.

      ‘Don’t upset yourself, darling,’ he said with a wink. ‘I’ll get them on the phone. Bang a few heads.’

      My eyes opened wider and now I knew I wasn’t imagining it. A current ran between us for an electric moment. I loved his voice. His gaze. I basked in the way he looked at me, as though we were equals, as though we were seeing each other for the first time. As though I was really worth the time of day. But then he was off again, and that was that. He sauntered away with me watching every step, wishing I could call him back but with not a thing to say for myself. Then I subsided, a tulip deprived of water.

      God, I was hopeless. I cursed myself. Other girls would have known what to do, would have quipped back at him, would have stretched that moment like bubble gum. They would have had him snapping back to their desks time and time again. But no, not me.

      I kept up my façade but underneath, depression rolled over me like a sea fog.

      If I hadn’t filled my non-working hours with my quest to get on (I was now taking evening classes in French), my life would have been totally empty. The continuing squeeze on the business meant a freeze on promotions, or so they’d told me. So I was still stuck at my desk, likely to take root in the marble.

      It was clear, now, that Patrick would never make a move of his own accord. He knew who I was, vaguely, but didn’t care nearly enough. Yes, he gave me that twice-daily twinkle, when it suited him, but what was that worth? He’d done the same to Jen, until she’d left. Then he’d moved his twinkling on to me. It was just a reflex – the kind of low-level acknowledgement that a cocksure man with everything on his side felt he owed to subordinate but attractive women. ‘Hi, I’m busy and successful, you’re lowly and unimportant, but if we had world enough and time, I’d probably give you one.’

      I’d thought about it, of course I had, in the long lonely hours of my empty nights, and had come up with every possible answer as to why he’d started speaking to me, only to stop again. A few times now, he’d sought me out. It meant something, didn’t it? It had to. Sometimes, in my fevered daydreams, it was the gateway to a wild romance. But then, in my nightmares, I decided it meant nothing at all, except an interest in getting his hands on his post. I could easily drive myself mad, seesawing between the two. I needed to get out of the theoretical realm, gain some concrete knowledge of the man.

      Maybe he didn’t repeat his visit to my prettily polished counter because he wasn’t after a receptionist. He probably had his sights on higher things, a personal assistant, even a fellow account executive. His colleagues weren’t so fussy. They flocked to me. Lounged around, telling me jokes, reporting on the weather outside, as if I didn’t have floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass right in front of me giving me better minute-by-minute coverage of the elements than most TV weather girls had. Some did that general boasting men indulge in, every story coming back to their terrific prowess in football or DIY and therefore, by implication, between the sheets. My smile was a fixture, as shiny as the firm’s nameplate on the door, but it meant nothing. I didn’t dislike these lads, but they were puppies, frolicking at my feet.

      Picture an old-fashioned musical – a girl on the desk with shiny blonde hair, and a knot of admirers around her dressed in black and white, showing off frantically with their dazzling leaps and spins. Then the hero saunters past, in grey suit, magenta tie, winks briefly at the girl, and the admirers freeze in mid-dance. She sighs and leans her head on her hand, tracking him with her eyes.

      I was that girl and the lads were the cardboard cut-outs prancing around me. I indulged them, while feeling twinges of annoyance at their elbows wrecking the patina of my counter. Their attempts at flirtation didn’t even bore me, I just watched them like someone parked in front of a screen, letting the images flick across my irises, not taking anything in. Yet any one of these boys would have done me fine as a boyfriend, husband.

      Who was I kidding? They were all way, way above me. If they could have seen how I’d been brought up, they’d be running for the hills, no question. But my indifference was as powerful as catnip. Cracking me became their game. I gave them the shortest shrift I could, while remaining polite and cheery. It didn’t do my status any harm for Patrick to see me as hugely popular, though I had to be very careful that he didn’t get a whisper that I was the office bike. But act too cool, and maybe he’d be scared to approach me properly himself. I didn’t want to give the impression that I’d freeze him off. On the contrary, I felt like Vesuvius, primed and ready, in the strange stillness that came before an eruption powerful enough to obliterate a thousand Pompeiis.

      And, all the time, I had to conceal my passion. I knew my eyes caressed him as he sauntered through the marble hall to the lifts and back. I tried to stop myself. When he flicked his smile in my direction, I had to make sure I wasn’t already gawping at him as though he was a juicy steak and I was a big cat waiting to pounce. It was hard. And it wasn’t getting any easier.

      The worst days were those when he was on his phone while he breezed past, hunched into the call in that way he had. Phones were smaller back then – didn’t some wag make the joke that until you started getting porn on the internet, phones were getting tinier and tinier? Once filth was only a download away, the screens magically started growing again.

      Well, Patrick’s then was a titchy thing, the latest must-have gizmo, and when he was schmoozing a client, I could have been invisible. If it was one of those days when I’d planned my appearance down to the last eyelash, had on the carefully laundered, lovingly ironed blouse that had seemed to elicit more of a response when I’d worn it last week, I’d be gutted if he didn’t even look my way. To some extent, it made me admire him more. Look at the way he gave his all to his work! Mind you, for all I knew, he could have been chatting to his bookmaker, his mum or even, banish the thought, a girlfriend.

      I told myself he was just a really hard-working guy, but I couldn’t shut myself off entirely from the possibility that Patrick, unlike me, had a life outside these glossy walls, that yes, he did have a girl or even a fiancée waiting somewhere in the wings, a significant other that he did all the fun things with.

      I was hazy about what these might be, never having had what you might describe as a sunny life thus far, but I’d read my share of romances, hadn’t I? And I’d walked around my hometown, seeing the happy couples, like a child, nose pressed up against the sweetshop window. Strolling in parks, boating on lakes, feeding each other spaghetti. That sort of thing. Though if it applied to other people, I found it a little revolting. It reminded me of my mother, throwing herself all over the latest scumbag. But the idea that it might, one day – one day soon – be me and Patrick mooning around, hand in hand, brought a smile to my face. And that’s how he caught me, one day.

      ‘Hey, gorgeous? Hope you’re thinking about me?’ He sauntered past, that wink perfectly timed to flip down over his blue, blue eye just at the end of his jaunty line. I was so startled that I sat up, bolt upright, like a total idiot, and lost the misty, smiling gaze that had finally tempted him into speech again, so long after those cursory enquiries about his post. Thank God I just managed not to spill my coffee. That would have killed all my attempts at insouciance stone dead. As it was, the sound of his heels faded away and all I could hear was the blood pounding in my head. If he’d turned around, he’d have seen me looking poleaxed, nothing like the girl of his dreams after all.

      That episode convinced me that I had to get a grip, somehow. Give up. Get him out of my system. Or change something. At the moment, I might as