Peony Place. Jules Wake

romcoms. They were high but not super high, and made from supple, polished black leather. As sexy shoes, went they were workmanlike but expensive. I think shoes say a lot about you. I wanted people to know that I, Claire Harrison, had got where I was through hard work and intelligence but I still had class and style. Shoes have nuances and with this pair, I’d nailed it. Just like the meeting I was headed to. I’d worked all weekend to get this presentation to within an inch of perfection.

      Mentally, I ticked off my list. Presentation done. Boardroom booked. Team briefed. The truth was, I’d been working for weeks on this meeting and had clocked up many a sleepless night. Reorganising the audit team was a huge responsibility and I was just praying I’d got it right and wasn’t creating an opening for a couple of redundancies. My promotion to partner depended on this and surely by now I’d jumped through enough hoops. Unfortunately, they just kept piling more on my plate, as if to test at what point I’d give in. They’d have a long wait.

      On the personal front, I’d texted my sister an ambiguous ‘maybe’ in response to repeated pleas to help her this weekend, booked a long-overdue dental appointment and seriously considered phoning the doctor to arrange a smear test. All in all, my to-do list was nicely full of ticks and just as I was congratulating myself, everything came to a sudden halt. With a start, I slapped a hand over the top of my coffee cup and stopped abruptly because an older woman with a dandelion clock of white hair wearing a sunshine-yellow tracksuit, Day-glo pink trainers, and a silver lamé messenger bag slung across her chest darted out of the lane on the right, cutting across the main path only to disappear down the opposite track. Thankfully, despite slopping wildly, my coffee stayed put and hadn’t dripped all over my brand-new kingfisher-blue suit, worn with a crisp white shirt designed to say I’m chic, stylish and extremely competent. Or at least that’s what I hoped it said to my bosses. Phew no spillage. Near disaster averted.

      Unfortunately, even as I was congratulating myself, it seemed the woman’s sudden appearance had startled several wood pigeons pecking desultorily on the grass verge and with a cacophony of outraged squawks and a flurry of feathers, they clumsily took flight, heedless of the commuters hell-bent on reaching the station for the seven-twenty train.

      The man in front of me stopped dead and then, in order to avoid the pigeons, the stupid idiot took a step back doing a Matrix-style back-bend manoeuvre, sending the tails of his fine wool suit flying. In some sort of slow-motion panic, I registered this as he tried to dodge one of the birds, adding a twist at the last minute that brought him face to face with me, or rather, coffee cup to coffee cup.

      The refillable cups collided, a spout of brown liquid shooting up into the air. And what goes up must come down. We both glanced up with quick, horrified fascination and then there was no time to dodge the inevitable downflow of hot, wet coffee.

      The splash hit my beautiful white shirt dead centre, right above my cleavage, liquid seeping through and puddling in between my boobs. Brown stains blossomed with inexorable progress, bleeding out over my chest across the front of my white shirt. Shit. Shit. Shit. I did not need this today of all days.

      ‘Oh my God!’ I cried and glared up at him. ‘You idiot.’ Why the hell hadn’t he had the presence of mind to hang on to his bloody coffee?

      He was trying to stroke the coffee away from his own white shirt, completely oblivious to what he’d done, and then he glanced up at me, his eyes zeroing in on my damp chest.

      ‘Idiot? Me? Why weren’t you looking where you were going?’

      ‘Me?’ I asked, now rummaging one handed in my shoulder bag. I had some travel tissues in there somewhere.

      ‘You went into the back of me. In a car, it would be your fault.’

      What? He had to be flipping joking. ‘You reversed into me. Look at the state of my shirt.’ I let out a ‘Grrr’ noise out of sheer frustration. My shirt was absolutely ruined. And why was he glaring at me as if this was my fault.

       Wow, he has unusual eyes, a kind of golden green.

       Who cares about his effing eyes, Claire? What is the matter with you?

      Given the circumstances, that was a completely inappropriate observation. Since when did I go around checking out men’s eyes? I gave up on that sort of thing a long time ago. A girl can only suffer so many disappointments. My career was enough for me; besides, lots of men couldn’t hack it. Couldn’t handle that I was more successful than them.

      ‘Shit. I’ve got a meeting with the board in an hour’s time. Look what you’ve done.’ I glanced down at my coffee-stained shirt.

      He pulled a hanky out of his pocket and began rubbing ineffectually at his chest, which made me bite back a quick smile of amusement. Couldn’t he see that his shirt, like mine, was toast? ‘And I’ve got a meeting with the Vice President of Commercial Banking in an hour’s time,’ he snapped back, those unusual eyes flashing with fury.

      ‘And I’m presenting to the CEO who is coming up from London,’ I retorted as I shook out a tissue to mop up the worst of the liquid, now cooling and pooling with an uncomfortable tickle between my breasts.

      ‘Good for him. Are you attempting to play my-job-is-bigger-than-yours? Because I can assure you, my meeting is pretty important.’

      ‘Just like a man to assume his meeting must be more important than a woman’s.’

       Oh God, I’ve been down this road so many times.

      ‘Not at all.’ His eyes narrowed as he said a touch snootily, ‘I’m just observing that my meeting is very important and that I’m now going to be on the backfoot if I go in looking like this.’ With surprisingly expressive hands, he flicked them downward to make his point.

      ‘I’ve been preparing for this meeting for weeks,’ I snapped back, my heart starting to thud with the realisation that this really was a disaster. This meeting was supposed to show the big wigs that I was the ultimate professional, totally in control, and knew exactly what I was doing. The swan gliding without effort and not the puddle duck swimming for her life.

      For a brief moment, we both stood examining ourselves and each other, surveying the damage, horribly aware of the curious looks of the other commuters and then we both carried on our pre-programmed trajectory towards the station, mopping ourselves as we went. He with a large hanky and me with a succession of tissues.

      I winced as we fell into step together. At least I’d got off lightly. Only my shirt was ruined, perhaps thanks to the small shelf of my boobs – useful for once – which had taken the brunt of the coffee downpour. Unfortunately for him, there was a stain right down his crotch. That stain wouldn’t be coming out any time soon. That really was a disaster.

      ‘Where do you work?’ I asked.

      ‘What?’ he asked shortly with an angry glance my way, as if to ask what the hell did that have to do with anything.

      ‘Where do you work?’ I asked again, even more irritated. I was trying to be helpful.

      ‘Beechwood Harrington,’ he snapped out.

      ‘No,’ I said a little more gently. ‘I meant the location. Is there a shop near where you work, like an M&S or something?’ I nodded to his trousers. ‘You could buy an emergency…’ My voice trailed off as he looked down and his eyes widened in horror. He muttered an epithet under his breath.

      ‘This is a six-hundred-pound Armani,’ he snarled. ‘Marks & Spencer doesn’t cut it in my line of work.’ He checked his watch and I could see him doing the same rapid calculation I’d just done. Was there time to go home and change?

      ‘It’s better than nothing,’ I returned. ‘I was trying to help. Find a solution. Have you got time to go back home and change? Or you could phone someone?’

      ‘Phone someone?’ He didn’t need to look quite so incredulous.

      ‘Yes, like in your office. I’m going to phone my PA – she comes in later than me