‘Thank you, I think.’ She looks wary, but I’m hopeful that I’ve got through to her.
‘No problem. Now, why don’t you go to the loo, sort yourself out, and then make that cup of tea. When you’re sorted, I’ll tell you all about a massive cock-up I made about six weeks after I started.’
She doesn’t need telling twice, bolting from the room and barely stopping to put her notepad on her desk. I follow her out and settle myself back in my chair. If I’m not going to dump Emily in it, which was only ever going to be a last resort anyway, I need to think of a different way to explain the Champagne problem and get Annabel to sign off my slightly bizarre expenses. On the plus side, I’m mightily relieved to have got to the bottom of the problem. I’ve still got what it takes to do this job after all.
‘Is everything all right?’ Annabel’s voice comes from behind me. ‘I just saw Emily in the corridor, and she looked like she’d been crying.’
‘Did she? Maybe she had some bad news over the weekend or something,’ I say, keeping my voice completely nonchalant.
‘Perhaps I should have a word with her. What do you think?’
‘I’d leave it, if I were you. I’m sure she’ll tell you in her own time if there’s anything you need to know. By the way, can I have a chat when you’ve got a moment? I had a couple of interesting moments during the Toby Roberts gig, and I need to talk you through the expenses.’
‘Give me five minutes,’ she tells me.
Perfect. Just enough time to send an email to Emily to tell her what I’ve said, so we can keep our stories straight.
19
As I’m waiting on the platform at Parsons Green Tube station, I automatically unlock my phone and start scrolling through the property websites. Di, Kate, Maudie and I had a night out last night which was enormous fun, even though I had to be careful how much I drank, knowing that I had to be up early to get to Sevenoaks. Opinions were divided about whether I was doing the right thing looking at flats that were ‘so far away’, but when I showed them the alternatives, they understood.
I’m still not convinced I’m doing the right thing myself; although I’ve widened my search to include towns within half an hour of London, and I now have lots of financially viable options, I don’t know anything about any of these places, which makes me hesitant. Perhaps I should just wait until I’ve seen the flat in Sevenoaks and decide after that. I close the websites and, after a quick check of social media, log into the app store to see if there’s anything interesting to distract me and pass the time while I’m travelling. I’m not normally one for playing games on my phone, as I’m not really into that sort of thing, but I could happily while away some time if they have Scrabble or Tetris. I looked up the journey from Sevenoaks to Uckfield, and it’s going to take ages because I have to come back into London and get a different train back out, so I definitely need something to keep me occupied.
Most of the games don’t look remotely suitable and I can’t find Scrabble anywhere. I’m despondently scrolling through when something catches my eye. Nutsy the Squirrel is £2.99, has thousands of five-star reviews, and nearly thirty million downloads. This must be the game that Dad was talking about when I first got home. Thirty million people can’t all be idiots, so I pay the money and download the game. I launch it as soon as I’ve boarded the Tube, and it’s surprisingly entertaining. The first level is pretty simple; you have to guide Nutsy round his ‘world’, finding nuts on the ground. When you’ve gathered ten nuts, you have to find a suitable place to hide them. Once you’ve hidden a hundred nuts, the season changes to winter and you have to guide him around in the snow and find all the places where the nuts are hidden to stop him starving. It’s harder than it sounds, because all the hiding places are covered over with snow, so you spend quite a lot of time digging in the wrong places, which uses precious energy. I’m afraid poor Nutsy has starved to death twice by the time I reach Charing Cross.
I’m surprised to find that the train to Sevenoaks is absolutely packed, and it takes me a while to find a vacant seat. A bit of eavesdropping on my fellow passengers reveals that there’s some sort of festival in Hastings this weekend, so that’s presumably where they’re all going. I settle back into the game, but I’m not doing particularly well to begin with. I’ve sadly murdered another Nutsy by the time we reach Waterloo East, where another load of festival-goers board the train. However, by the time we reach London Bridge, I’ve hit the heady heights of level two. This is like level one, only you have fifteen sets of nuts to bury and then find, and there are other squirrels also looking for them, so you have to chase them away, which unsurprisingly uses energy and means you have to balance digging up the nuts with chasing away the competition very carefully. I’m so absorbed in the game that it takes me a while to notice that the man sitting next to me is watching me.
‘Can I help you?’ I ask, slightly more aggressively than I mean to. To be fair, I am a little frustrated as another Nutsy has just starved to death.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude,’ he replies, removing his earbuds. ‘I was just watching the game. What’s it called?’
I study him for a moment, trying to work out if this is some sort of chat-up line. He’s a good-looking guy, but I’m in no mood to have some creep hitting on me. He doesn’t look like a creep, though. I imagine him to be in his late thirties; he’s dressed in a slightly crumpled, light-blue shirt with dark-blue trousers underneath and black shoes and his face is open and honest-looking. I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.
‘Nutsy the Squirrel,’ I tell him.
‘I’ve heard of that. Is it any good?’
‘You’re asking the wrong person, I’m afraid. I’m not really into playing games on my phone. I just downloaded it because I’m going to be spending a lot of time on trains today, and I thought it would keep me entertained.’
‘And is it?’
‘Yes. It’s just hard enough to make you think, but not so impossible that you give up.’
‘Hm. Thank you. Maybe I’ll give it a try.’ He re-inserts his earbuds and settles back into his seat and, although we get off at the same station, he grabs what looks like an overnight bag from the rack and bounds off the train ahead of me. Not a chat-up line then, thank goodness.
Miranda, the agent, is waiting for me outside Toby’s studio. She’s brisk and to the point, explaining all the benefits of the flat as she walks me through a passageway that leads to the car park where I nearly bought the van last week. According to her, the flats above this parade of shops are in high demand because they’re close to the station and the commuter trains to London. I don’t dare point out that they can’t be in that high demand because this one has been on the market for at least a week. Properly desirable properties in London sometimes go within minutes of being listed. People will commit to them without even seeing them because of the location.
‘This flat is a little different from the others,’ she explains as we approach the back door of Toby’s studio. ‘Most of them are accessed by walking up communal staircases, with two flats opposite each other at the top of each staircase. This flat was altered by a previous landlord, so it has an extra access point just inside the rear door of the unit here, which is currently a photographic studio. It’s up to you to decide which entrance you prefer. I’ll take you in via the studio entrance.’
She unlocks the rear door of Toby’s studio and uses another key to open a door on the left that I’d never noticed before. It has a small sign on it that reads ‘Private’, presumably to prevent people from the studio from trying to open it.
‘The landlord is the owner of the studio,’ Miranda continues to explain. ‘He has keys to the back door we’ve just come in through, but not the flat. The tenant also has a key to the back door and the flat, but can’t access the studio. I’ll show you the entrance via the communal staircase as well before we leave.’
She leads me up the stairs into the flat. Whatever I thought I was prepared for, it wasn’t this. I’m trying not to let my mouth drop open as I wander around. There’s a spacious living room, which is flooded with natural light. The kitchen is modern with sleek units, an electric fan oven and, joy of joys, an induction hob. The main bedroom is also bright and airy, and there’s an en-suite with a power shower.
‘The landlord used to live here himself,’ Miranda tells me. ‘So he spared no expense on the fit and finish. For example, the mirror in here is heated so that it doesn’t mist up when you have a shower. It’s attention to detail like that which really makes this property special.’
I can’t get terribly excited about a heated mirror, but she does have a point. This flat is beautifully kitted out. All the windows have evidently been re-glazed fairly recently, and Miranda assures me that it won’t cost much to heat as it’s well-insulated. It’s way better than most of the places I’ve seen advertised in London and, crucially, I can just afford it on my salary. I’ve done my research and checked the train ticket prices so I could factor those in, and it’s doable. However, I’m nervous about taking the first flat I see in a town I know nothing about.