Page 62 of Snowed In with You

Lucy closed the door and shrugged off her coat, taking a moment to breathe in the muffled quiet of the room. She kicked off her trainers and sat cross-legged on the biggest of the three sofas, opening her laptop so she looked busy. There was a new campaign brief from Titan that she needed to get working on, but it wasn’t due until early next week, so she could just sit here and read it while she drank her coffee, letting the noise in her head subside. Her stomach was fluttering at the prospect of seeing Nate again; no doubt someone would tell him she was up here when he arrived, and they’d have a chance to talk. Things between them hadn’t exactly been clear the last time they’d seen each other, but they could work that out.

‘Hello, Lucy,’ said Sasha, bursting into the room with Olly in tow. ‘We need to talk.’

Lucy looked at them both, alarm bells going off in her head. Sasha was all business, a woman with things on her mind. Had Nate told her what happened between them? Lucy mentally cleared her desk and did an audit of what was on her laptop that shouldn’t be. A few sad poems, a best man’s speech she wrote for Jonno a couple of years ago, an abandoned young adult novel about a pair of crime-busting twins. Nothing that would get her into trouble if they took it away and put her on extended leave.

Her work phone, however, was a whole other matter. She’d never bothered having a personal one, and her iCloud photo storage was a festival of explicit pictures that she and Anthony had swapped. Nothing with her face in, obviously, but that didn’t mean she wanted the agency IT department swapping close-ups of her labia. It was in her coat pocket, so she’d have to pretend she’d left it at home and give it a clean-up before she gave it back.

‘How are you?’ said Sasha, sitting sideways on the sofa next to Lucy so their knees were almost touching. Olly dragged a beanbag over and fell backwards into it with a huff of compacting polystyrene.

‘I’m fine,’ said Lucy warily. ‘Happy to be back.’

‘We’re happy to have you back,’ said Sasha with the briefest of smiles. In that moment it felt genuine, but maybe that was just something you said to soften the blow of Look, I think it’s best for everyone if you leave quietly. Lucy said nothing, waiting for Sasha to make her next move. If there was about to be an awkward conversation, there was no reason for Lucy to make it easy for her.

‘Look,’ Sasha began, wiping her hands on her designer jeans in a way that suggested they were potentially sweaty. ‘You’re probably wondering why I turned up on Sunday, and left with Nate.’ It was the first time Lucy had ever seen Sasha look mildly uncomfortable and out of her depth, and Lucy debated how much to let her suffer. On balance and in the interests of getting this conversation over and done with, maybe not very much.

‘No,’ said Lucy, holding her gaze. ‘I’m not wondering. It made perfect sense, actually.’

‘Right,’ said Sasha, colour flushing her cheeks. ‘So . . .?’

‘Look, let’s make this easier,’ said Lucy. ‘I know about—’ She glanced at Olly, unsure whether saying the words out loud would be a huge bombshell.

‘It’s fine,’ said Sasha quietly. ‘There’s nothing Olly doesn’t know.’

Poor Olly, thought Lucy. Who needs to shoulder that emotional baggage?

‘Fine. I know about the . . . relationship. Between you and Nate.’ In reality she didn’t know anything much at all, but Sasha was nodding and taking deep breaths, so she’d clearly hit the mark.

‘Right,’ said Sasha, her eyes darting in all directions, so Lucy could practically see her brain whirring at one hundred miles an hour. ‘Does Nate know that you know?’

‘No,’ Lucy replied, almost too quickly.

‘Can I ask how you found out?’ She glanced at Olly, like maybe he was the culprit. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head vehemently.

‘By accident,’ said Lucy. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Does anyone else—?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘Not from me.’

‘Not even Jonno?’

‘No,’ said Lucy emphatically, remembering how close she’d come to messaging him the gossip whilst on the toilet in a Zermatt hotel room.

‘Well,’ said Sasha, looking relieved. ‘Let’s—’

‘But I just want to say that it’s unethical. To be part of a close-knit team like ours and have someone in the team with a hotline to the boss.’

‘We never talk about work stuff,’ said Sasha defensively. ‘And Nate didn’t ask to be on the Titan team, it was Fran who poached him from Pukka Paws.’

Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘He could have said no.’

‘It was a brilliant opportunity,’ said Sasha, as Olly followed the discussion intently. ‘A chance for him to work with really good people. And a promotion too, obviously. Nate earned it in his own right; I had nothing to do with it.’

‘I’m not saying you did,’ said Lucy coolly.

‘And at that point I already knew I was in line for the Exec team, so there was hardly any crossover. Nate kept his head down, which he was used to anyway. He’d been doing it for years.’

Lucy realised what Sasha was saying – that her relationship with Nate had been going on since before he started working in London, so presumably going back to his time in Paris. Or before that, even. Somehow it felt worse that she’d smoothed a career path for her toyboy, rather than a whirlwind romance after he started, maybe off the back of a late night in the office and a shared taxi home. That kind of thing happened all the time in their industry, but the longevity of Sasha and Nate’s relationship felt more underhand, somehow.