You Had Me at Hello Read Online Free PDF Page B

on Friday and a cousin of hers is interested. She says he’s a bit of a chang monster and she doesn’t trust him. So you’re front runner but you’re going to have to be quick.’
    â€˜Chang monster?’
    â€˜You know. Coke. Dickhead’s dust.’
    â€˜Right.’
    I think it through. I was really looking for something longer term than a fixed six months. Six months with option of renewal, I’d thought. But this might be a way to live the dream while I look for something more realistic.
    â€˜Yeah, sure.’
    â€˜Great! Meet you by Afflecks at half five?’
    â€˜See you there.’
    As I walk back into the press room, I realise why I’ve dragged my feet in moving out of the house, however uncomfortable it is. My decision to leave Rhys is about to turn from words into action, become real. Splitting equity, dividing up our worldly goods, coming-home-at-night-to-empty-rooms-and-a-big-yawning-maw-of-an-empty-future real. Part of me, a shrill, cowardly part, wants to scream: ‘Wait! Stop! I didn’t mean it! I want to get off!’ Motion sickness kicking in.
    Yet I remember the text I got from Rhys a few days ago, saying, in what sounded as much like sorrow as anger: ‘I hope you’re looking for places because the end of living together like this can’t come fast enough for me.’
    I flip my notebook open and wonder if I want another cow-shit coffee.
    Zoe enters and hovers, giving off a static buzz of nerves.
    â€˜Feel free to go and get something to eat. You can leave your things here if you like,’ I say.
    â€˜Thanks.’ She puts her coat and bag down, and places her notebook on the table carefully.
    â€˜Unless you fancy going to the pub for lunch?’ I continue, not sure where this magnanimity is coming from. Trying to atone for what I’ve done to Rhys, possibly. There will never be enough entries in the good deeds column of the Great Ledger of Life to offset that one.
    â€˜That would be great!’
    â€˜Give me five minutes and I’ll show you why The Castle has earned the accolade of “pub nearest court”.’
    Zoe nods and sits down to transcribe her copy, longhand. I glance over while I’m typing. I knew it – her shorthand’s so perfectly formed you could photocopy it for textbook examples.
    Gretton saunters in, squinting from me to Zoe and back again.
    â€˜What’s this, Bring Your Daughter To Work Day?’
    Zoe looks up, startled.
    â€˜Welcome to the family,’ I say to Zoe. ‘Think of Gretton as the uncle who’d make you play horsey.’

6
    I apologise to Zoe for not drinking alcohol when we get to the pub. I feel like I’m letting the profession down in moments like these. At every paper you always hear tales of great mythical beasts of olden times who could drink enough to sink battleships and still hit deadline, get up at first light the next day and do it all again. They’re legend, usually because they died in their fifties.
    â€˜It’s soporific in court at the best of times, what with the heating and the droning on. If I hit the bottle I’d probably end up snoring,’ I say.
    â€˜Oh, it’s OK, I’m a lightweight anyway,’ Zoe says. ‘I’ll have a Diet Coke as well.’
    We scan the laminated menus on the bar, hearts sinking. The Castle’s menus have clearly been written by marketing managers who think they are conversant in the foreign language of ‘funny’. We try merely pointing at our selected lunch items to save our dignity. No dice with the morose barman.
    â€˜I’ve got astigmatism,’ he says, as if I should know this.
    â€˜Oh,’ I reply, flustered, trying for the last route out. ‘Then we’ll both have the Ploughman’s.’
    â€˜Naked, Piggy or Extra Pickly?’
    Dammit.
‘Piggy,’ I mumble, defeated. ‘Naked for her.’
    â€˜You want that as a melt?’