The Office Party

Part 8

My sadness turns back to anger and back again into sadness, to the point where I mostly feel both at the same time. Sometimes I'm more angry, sometimes I'm more sad. When I walk past the receptionist on my way in and out of the building, I quite often feel angry. (The receptionist at least has the grace to look embarrassed whenever she sees me.) At home, or sitting outside with Michelle, it's usually sadness.

At the end of that week, I wonder about asking Michelle if I can go with her to visit Toby – just so I can be around a friendly face. It's too late notice, I know, so I don't. Instead I tell my housemate all about it over tea on Friday night. She knows I'm gay, so it's just a matter of telling her there's an awkward situation in the air at work. She's good at listening, my housemate, which helps – and then she says she's had a tough week in her job too. We agree that's a good enough excuse for the two of us to go out for a drink, so after tea I take her to the pub where Lizzie works. We sit at the bar and drink too much and talk rubbish with Lizzie in between her serving other people, until my housemate and I have trouble standing up and Lizzie has to suggest we go home.

The next day, even though I'm hungover, I take the train from our town into the centre of the nearby city. I do a museum I've always been meaning to look round, and take advantage of the better shopping – mostly looking, but a bit of buying too. (Final tally: a cute top; two books, one of which I need for the qualification work are putting me through; a sweet but utterly unnecessary pair of shoes.) That cheers me up. That sort of shopping always cheers me up.

At one point, mid-afternoon, I find myself wandering down a backstreet, thinking it might be a short-cut, and pause for a second to sort my bags out. My handbag, which had been threatening to slide off my shoulder for a while, finally slips down my arm. I shove it back up onto my shoulder and change hands with my shopping. Looking about me, I notice I've stopped a little way down from a bar on the other side, which has a rainbow flag prominently displayed outside. I'm not a huge frequenter of gay bars – there's only one in the town where we live and work, and it's crap. Even the ones around when I was a student weren't great. But by now my feet are beginning to hurt and my hangover is still mildly there, and I have a strong craving for caffeine. I wander over the road, push into the bar, and go up to the counter. The place is deserted, apart from a well-built lad with very stylish hair, his toned body obvious through a tight black vest under an open checked shirt. He's leaning on the counter to read the paper. He stands up straight when he sees me and moves behind the bar. He smiles at me.

I rest my bags against the legs of a stool and slide myself onto it, enjoying the break it gives my feet. 'Hi. Do you do coffee?'

'Yep. Anything special?'

'Ooh, no. Just normal white, please. Two sugars.'

'Coming up, honey.'

I look around while he fiddles with the machine. I am actually the only person in. 'Bit quiet today?'

'Always is, this time on a Saturday.' He glances at his watch. 'Hmm, mind you, there'll be a few in soon, I 'spect. Lunchtime drinkers.'

'Lunchtime? It's almost three o'clock, man.'

'That's lunchtime to most of the Saturday crowd in here, honey.' He puts my coffee in front of me on the bar and takes my money. 'They're the same crowd as Friday night, mostly, see? It's always a good night.' He looks at me a little more carefully. 'You should come down sometime. If, you know...if you're, you know, so inclined, as it were...' He trails off with a shy but knowing grin.

I grin back. 'Yes, I am,' I say. 'That way inclined, I mean.' I blow over the mug quickly. 'But I live too far out to get in normally. And I never even knew this place was here.' I sip coffee and feel the warmth and comfort spread though me. I say too much. 'And anyway, there's this thing with someone at work at the moment...' I stop myself. Not time to become a relationship-woes bore, Fiona. Not to strangers.