It Could Be You: Part 1. Bella Osborne
annoyed her that morning, did he feature in her lottery fantasy life? She added an extra item to the list. It was only a laugh after all.
Get new hot boyfriend who doesn’t nag or wear button-up pyjamas
‘Regan?’ asked Nigel, their manager, who was standing at the front, his expression one of knotted puzzlement. Alex gave Regan a nudge and knocked her pen from her hand, making her jolt upright.
‘Er, yes. Sorry. I was concentrating on my notes,’ she said, reaching down and scrabbling on the floor for her wayward pen. Alex kicked it and it disappeared. She glared at him.
‘How many queries do we get relating to errors in discounting?’ Nigel repeated.
‘Um,’ she scratched her head, ‘Alex?’ She looked pleadingly at him.
He grinned. ‘Regan is the data guru on this.’
Thanks for nothing, she thought. She’d definitely get him back later. ‘A couple a week. Maybe.’ She didn’t really record them like she was supposed to, so it was a complete guess.
‘When I last checked the figures, they were much higher than that,’ said Nigel.
Regan wondered if that was the column on the end that she added lots of ticks to at the end of the week. ‘It’s quite variable,’ she said. ‘Peaks and troughs.’ Nigel nodded and she relaxed. She needed to pay more attention, but it was hard when meetings were this boring.
Back at their desks, Alex was still tittering about Regan’s questioning in the meeting. Regan started plotting her revenge. It needed to be something hilarious. She zoned out trying to come up with a suitable penance for Alex while she did some data input. When he went off to a meeting she put a sticky note over the sensor of his mouse so it wouldn’t work and flipped his login screen upside down. They were only temporary measures, but they would at least put him off the scent that she was planning something bigger.
Regan paperclipped her lottery ticket to the wish list she’d drawn up.
‘Predictable,’ said Alex, returning to his desk and flipping his screen back. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, nodding at the lottery ticket.
‘I’m not giving Jarvis any additional excuses to moan about me spending money. And if I win it’s probably safer here.’ She stopped short of adding that replacing Jarvis was an item on her wish list.
Alex made a grab for it. ‘Do the numbers mean something?’
‘Nope. It’s a lucky dip. Statistics show you’re likely to win more money with a lucky dip.’
Alex looked momentarily impressed. He pulled out his phone and took a snap of the ticket. ‘Hey,’ she said snatching it back. ‘What are you doing that for?’
‘So I’ll know if you’re lying when you ring me on Monday and tell me you’re on a beach in Barbados.’
‘As long as you don’t buy a ticket with the same numbers. I don’t want to share with you.’ She put the ticket and wish list safely in her desk drawer and locked it.
Alex stuck his tongue out at her. ‘Remember we’ve got a director’s visit tomorrow. Don’t be late.’
Regan pulled an unimpressed face. She didn’t like anyone telling her what to do and just because Alex was slightly older and squarer than her still did not give him that right.
‘Ah yes, it’s your big opportunity to impress,’ said Regan. Alex had been chosen to meet the visiting director and she hadn’t. Not that she was bothered – she wasn’t. But Alex was clearly making plans to improve his career prospects.
‘He’s meeting everyone,’ said Alex, breaking eye contact and chucking his stuff into his desk drawer.
‘Yeah, but you’re special.’ He glared at her. She did her best solemn Confucius impression. ‘Just remember the higher the monkey goes up the tree, the more it shows its bum.’ He took a swipe at her and she ran for the door.
Regan was still plotting her revenge on Alex as she walked through the market place en route to her car, which she had parked in the cheapest car park possible. The market traders were packing up for the day and she was astonished by the amount of waste she saw as the grocery stallholder piled up the veg he couldn’t sell next to the bins. He caught her staring at the racks of tomatoes a little past their best.
‘Help yourself, love,’ he called to her. She thanked him but declined. Jarvis would not be impressed if she took home a crate of dodgy tomatoes, but it did seem like a terrible waste.
As soon as she opened the front door she could hear Jarvis tutting. He’d beaten her home. She went to check her watch and for the umpteenth time that day cursed that she’d left home without it. She didn’t know exactly what time it was, but she guessed he must have left work earlier than usual, probably just so he could beat her home and have something to moan about. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for some grovelling.
‘Hiya, you’re home early. I need to get straight on with the tidying,’ called Regan, scooting through the flat. She met Jarvis in the kitchen already shaking his head.
‘Regan, you promised you’d not leave my apartment in a state. And what did I come home to?’ It irritated her that he always managed to highlight that it was his place.
‘I was going to tidy up before you got back, but you’re early.’ She was trying to keep her cool, but the condescending look on his face was seriously annoying. ‘I’ll do it now.’
‘But it’s too late. I couldn’t bear it a moment longer, so I’ve tidied up your mess.’
This was the bit where he expected her to thank him. She wasn’t going to. ‘You didn’t have to. You could have come home at your usual time and there wouldn’t have been a mess.’
‘We both know that was never going to happen.’
‘Er, yes it was. Because I’m home now and that would have given me …’ she looked at her bare wrist again, ‘… shitting hell …’ she checked the kitchen clock, ‘… twenty-three minutes. I could easily have tidied up in twenty-three minutes, but as you chose to do it, I don’t need to. So we’re all good.’ She responded to his confused expression with a cheesy grin and went to have a shower. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand living with Jarvis and his endless irritating lectures. In the initial flush of a new relationship she’d ignored his quirks, but now they just seemed to grate on her.
Next morning, the sound of a car horn made Regan stir. She opened one eye. Jarvis wasn’t in bed. She stretched out and was dropping off again when a stab of conscience made her turn over and check the time. She blinked at the clock. ‘Shittity shittington!’ That couldn’t be right. She was seriously late for work and shitting Jarvis must have known and left her to her fate. Regan scrambled out of bed, keen not to repeat the carpet burn of yesterday. It would be another day without a morning shower, she thought, grabbing up her clothes from their floordrobe and dashing for the bathroom, tripping over Jarvis’s precious rug in the process. Bloody thing.
Despite her lateness, Regan never missed getting a coffee. It was the only breakfast she had, and she justified her coffee purchase because it was also a commitment she had made to Kevin. And, more importantly, she couldn’t face a day of terminal tedium at work without a decent shot of caffeine. She flew into the little coffee shop and found Penny was already on the case. Within minutes Regan had swiped her card, grabbed her tray of coffees and was heading for the sugar sachets.
‘New process,’ said Penny. ‘No more sugar in little packets because some buggers keep nicking them. There’s a sugar dispenser on the side.’
Regan was thrown by the new process. Trust Alex to have sodding sugar in his. She wrenched off the lid of his cup, tipped some in and quickly replaced the lid.
Kevin was outside, his hair and beard wet as they often were in