Hygge and Kisses Read online

  This, she thought ruefully, was surely evidence of her quarter-life crisis, further proof that her outwardly grown-up life was just a charade. Eight months into their relationship, she and Ben were (at his insistence) still hiding their relationship from their colleagues, sending each other secret messages like teenagers and ignoring each other around the office. She often wondered whether Ben enjoyed the power it afforded him, whether he got a thrill from being able to flirt with other women in front of her, knowing she was powerless to react.

  Tess Daly turn you down, did she? She tapped out, lips pursed. Dating Ben sometimes felt like playing a game of poker, where every move they made was designed to call the other’s bluff. Bo had never particularly enjoyed card games, least of all poker. Her opponents always seemed to be able to see right through her poker-face, just like Ben could, no doubt, see right through this attempt to play it cool. She took a sip of tea and waited for Ben’s response.

  Tess has got nothing on you. You were my first choice.

  Her shoulders sagged slightly, and she put her hands to her keyboard. Who was she trying to kid? They both knew how this would end, and she had work to be getting on with.

  Okay. Where and when? She typed.

  *

  Ben Wilkinson had joined Aspect ten months earlier, appearing in the office on a grey day in January, the first day back after the Christmas break. Bo had, as usual, spent that Christmas at her parents’ house, a detached property on an estate full of similar, expensively maintained houses on the outskirts of a prosperous commuter town in Buckinghamshire.

  Going home for Christmas as an adult was a mixed experience for Bo, a slightly jarring collision of her current life and her past. She slept in what had been her childhood bedroom, but which had long since been redecorated as a guestroom, to her mother’s taste. The walls that had been covered in music posters throughout Bo’s teenage years had been repainted a delicate primrose yellow, and the duvet cover and matching scatter cushions were a lavender paisley.

  Since leaving home, Bo had come to appreciate the affluent comfort of her parents’ house which, as a child, she had always taken for granted: the comfortable furniture, the spacious rooms, and the well-stocked fridge. There was an undeniable pleasure in returning, albeit briefly, to a lifestyle devoid of responsibility, where all her meals were provided and she had nothing to think about other than which Christmas movie to watch on TV. But the price that had to be paid for that return to carefree indolence was the simultaneous regression to the family dynamics of her youth, whereby her parents tended towards being overly anxious about her, and in return she assumed the demeanour of a sulky adolescent.

  That Christmas, Bo had been more than usually evasive in response to her parents’ enquiries about whether she was ‘seeing anyone special’, being unwilling to disclose that most of her recent dates had come via Tinder. She was quite certain that they would be horrified, and convinced that she would end up being groomed by a predatory online psychopath, the likes of which they had read about in the newspapers. It was quite possible they would not let her return to London until she had promised never to use the app again.

  In truth, Bo had been reluctant to try Tinder but set up a profile under the influence of a bottle of wine and her flatmate Kirsten, who had reassured her that it was perfectly normal for millennials to use dating apps, and that she had nothing to lose by giving it a try. Her scandalised shock at the lewd images and crass propositions which popped up on her phone with alarming regularity had soon worn off, and once Bo had perfected the art of swiftly deleting unwanted matches, she threw herself into the Tinder dating scene with gusto.

  After six months of frenetic swiping, messaging and dating, however, Bo became disillusioned. She had been on numerous dates, but none had led to any relationship lasting longer than a few weeks. She was increasingly plagued by the sense that there was simply too much choice out there, too many single people her age in London, and that even if she liked a man she had matched with, the chances were that he was keeping his options open lest he get a better offer. She began to tire of the Tinder mindset, in which people were as disposable as the free newspapers which were thrust into her hand on the steps of Oxford Circus tube station every evening. She had switched off the app while she was at home for Christmas, and felt a blissful relief to be free of its incessant demands for attention.

  Bo had returned to work on a particularly grim, sleety day just after New Year, a few pounds heavier, a bank balance at the brink of her overdraft limit, and bracing herself for the onset of January blues. She had just begun a half-hearted attempt to sort through the towering stack of paperwork in her in-tray when Matt, the company’s accounts director, appeared at her desk.

  ‘Bo, I’d like to introduce you to our new senior account manager, Ben.’ Bo had looked up to see a young man smiling at her, his hand outstretched to shake hers. He wore the unofficial uniform of the men in the office – a collared shirt open at the neck and smart trousers – but she couldn’t help noticing that his shirt looked beautifully tailored and the watch on his wrist discreetly expensive.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Bo,’ he said, his confident manner and well-spoken voice instantly conveying to Bo an expensive education. (She had encountered enough men of his type at university to recognise a public schoolboy when she met one.)

  Bo felt a flutter in her stomach as she shook Ben’s hand, and the words ‘he’s nice’ flashed through her mind as she noted his green eyes, dark wavy hair, and the toned but slim physique which spoke of summer weekends spent playing tennis and cricket. They exchanged pleasantries across the top of Bo’s filing tray for a couple of minutes, until Matt had steered Ben away to continue his tour of the office. Bo sat down and gazed vacantly at her computer screen for a few moments, with a wad of buff-coloured folders still clutched between her hands. She couldn’t help smiling to herself, suddenly feeling as if January might not be such a bad month after all.

  Over the next few weeks, the winter gloom had been considerably lessened by Bo’s burgeoning flirtation with Ben. The way his eyes followed her across the office let her know that he was attracted to her, and she seemed to find herself in the kitchen at the same time as him with uncanny frequency, but his attentiveness stayed on the right side of acceptable office etiquette. (Bo had experienced the wrong side of acceptable the previous year, in the form of a rather forlorn-looking member of the tech team who had taken to following her into the lift at lunchtime every day, only giving up once he had been given a formal warning by HR).

  Ben began calling her by the nickname ‘Blu-ray’ when she had explained that Bo was short for Boughay, a family name which her mother had been keen to perpetuate for another generation. In truth, Bo had never been keen on ‘Blu-ray’, but she tolerated it in the hope that his use of a nickname suggested a certain intimacy between them. (She tried not to dwell on the fact that, in her experience, ex-public schoolboys rarely addressed anyone in their social circle by their actual name.)

  Through their chats in the kitchen, Bo learned that Ben’s background was similar to hers: a solidly middle-class upbringing in the Home Counties followed by a degree at one of the respected universities. His fondness for nicknames notwithstanding, Ben seemed a good match in terms of both their temperaments and their aspirations. He was humorous and urbane and soon Bo had pretty much made up her mind that Ben Wilkinson was what her mother would term ‘perfect boyfriend material’.

  Bo was in no doubt that Ben was attracted to her. The only hitch was that he seemed to be taking his time to do anything about it. He continued to flirt with her throughout January in the office kitchen or waiting for the lift, or in chatty messages over the intranet in which they shared conspiratorially gossipy exchanges about their colleagues. But by the end of the month, Bo was beginning to wonder if Ben was ever going to make a move.

  ‘But why hasn’t he asked me out?’ she wailed to her flatmate Kirsten as January turned to February. Kirsten was a level-headed girl whom Bo
had known since university when they had adjoining rooms in their residence hall.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him out?’ Kirsten had riposted with a shrug, ‘This isn’t the 1950s, you know.’ A wrinkle formed between Bo’s brows. She knew Kirsten had a point, but the fact remained that she didn’t want to have to ask Ben out. She had done enough to signal her interest and, in her opinion, it was up to him to do the rest.

  ‘You’re so English,’ Kirsten chastised her. Kirsten was half-Danish on her mother’s side and, although she had been born and raised in Godalming, had inherited her mother’s tendency towards plain-speaking. ‘Why does he have to do the asking? Whatever happened to gender equality?’ Kirsten flicked her brown hair away from her face and gave Bo a challenging look over the rims of her metal-framed glasses. Bo’s shoulders sagged.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she murmured sheepishly, knowing full well that – traitor to her gender though it might make her – she would never, ever, ask Ben Wilkinson out.

  Instead, Bo did the next best thing and went clothes shopping. She spent a pleasurable Saturday afternoon trawling the shops for a new outfit to wear to work which would look both professional and yet irresistibly seductive at the same time. One snugly fitting cream sweater and a pair of high-heeled boots later, Bo felt ready to up her game in the flirtation stakes and call Ben’s bluff. In poker terms, she was ready to play her royal flush.

  Whether it was the sweater or the heels that did it, Bo’s strategy worked, and at five-to-six one Friday evening in February, she had just placed her empty mug in the dishwasher when Ben sauntered into the kitchen, a half-empty bottle of beer dangling from one hand.

  ‘Evening, Blu-ray,’ he had grinned, and Bo immediately spotted his relaxed, unguarded manner.

  ‘Evening, Ben. You’ve started early,’ Bo replied with a smile, glancing at the bottle.

  ‘I’m celebrating,’ Ben grinned. ‘I landed a new account today.’ Ben beamed and, for a split second, Bo glimpsed a little boy brimming with pride.

  ‘That’s great news. Well done, you!’ she answered, before wondering whether her words had made her sound like a proud mother rather than an impressed potential-girlfriend. But she didn’t have time to dwell on the question. With one seamless movement Ben placed his bottle on the worktop and stepped across the cramped kitchen, cornering her in front of the microwave.

  ‘You’re looking particularly fit today, Blu-ray,’ he leered, and Bo smiled demurely whilst inwardly congratulating herself on her choice of ensemble. ‘What would you do if I kissed you?’ he asked, pinning her against the Formica worktop.

  She tilted her head coquettishly and replied, ‘I’d kiss you back.’ Finally, Bo thought, as she allowed Ben’s arm to circle her waist and pull her towards him.

  Bo still got a fluttery feeling in her stomach as she remembered the illicit thrill of that first kiss in the kitchen, the scent of his aftershave and the faint taste of Sol on his breath. It was every bit as enjoyable as she had hoped, and made even more thrilling by the knowledge that they could be discovered at any moment by their co-workers. They had gone out for impromptu drinks to celebrate Ben’s new account, crossing Oxford Street to disappear into the crowds and rickshaws thronging the narrow streets of Soho. Drinks led to a late-night meal in Chinatown, followed by a giggly journey on the tube back to Clapham and an energetic if somewhat drunken night at Ben’s flat.

  The following morning, however, when Bo was putting her previous day’s clothes back on, Ben had said, ‘Best to keep this quiet, at work, don’t you think?’ and she had felt it would be churlish to disagree. As she sat chewing the limp slice of buttered toast Ben had made for her, she wondered whether she had been naïve to assume that what had happened would automatically take their entente into the clear-cut realm of ‘relationship.’

  During the tube ride back to north London, Bo had sat in a trance-like state, obsessively analysing the events of the previous night (at least, what she could remember of them) and trying to work out what Ben’s comment over breakfast had meant. Perhaps he was keen to protect their privacy in the early stages of their relationship, reluctant to face the intrusive curiosity of their colleagues while they were still getting to know each other. But by the time her tube train rattled to a halt at Holloway Road station, Bo was riven with doubt, convinced that she had misread the situation and that Ben wanted to keep their assignation a secret not because he wanted to allow the relationship to develop in private, but because, as far as he was concerned, it had been a one-off.

  Any glow of triumphant happiness that Bo had felt when she stumbled into Ben’s flat at one o’clock that morning had well and truly worn off by the time she unlocked the front door of her flat.

  ‘Good morning,’ Kirsten said, stepping out of the bathroom in her dressing gown just as Bo arrived home. ‘New clothes did the trick, then?’ she grinned. Bo checked her reflection in the hall mirror. Her eyes were smudged with the remains of yesterday’s make-up, her cheeks were deathly pale, and wayward frizz had sprung up around her hairline.

  ‘I guess so,’ she answered half-heartedly, belatedly trying to smooth her hair back into position.

  For the rest of the day, Bo could not settle to anything. She performed her usual chores, going to the supermarket, tidying her bedroom and changing her bedding. She climbed into bed, checked her phone for the umpteenth time, in case she had missed a message from Ben, and stared out of the window.

  Her bedroom was at the rear of the Victorian terraced house, the lower ground floor of which she and Kirsten rented. A glass-panelled door next to her bed opened onto a rectangle of concrete surrounded by a six-foot high retaining wall. The letting agent had optimistically described this damp, moss-covered area as a ‘walled courtyard garden’ and, when they had first moved in, Bo had attempted to improve it with an arrangement of planted terracotta pots. But her green-fingered efforts had been thwarted by the permanent lack of sunlight that reached the sunken area, and the garden herbs and patio roses had withered and died within weeks. Now the pots remained in their positions, cracked and neglected. They stood as a faintly accusatory reminder to Bo every time she yanked open her blind, that she wasn’t yet enough of a grown-up to be able to take responsibility for anything living.

  Bo’s doubts about Ben intensified as the weekend dragged on, and on Sunday her phone remained stubbornly silent. Instead of feeling elated that she had finally progressed from ‘flirtee’ to ‘girlfriend’, Bo was tortured by the suspicion that she had spent the past six weeks laying the groundwork for a one-night stand.

  By Sunday evening, Bo’s anxiety had morphed into trepidation about how to behave around Ben at work the next day. Should she act like nothing had happened? Or ignore Ben completely? It was almost midnight and Bo had just drifted into a light doze when her phone buzzed and lit up the room with the green glow of an incoming text message. Bo sat bolt upright, instantly wide awake.

  Really enjoyed Friday night, Blu-ray. We should do it again some time. Bo felt her stomach flip with relief. She stared at Ben’s message for a few moments, a smile spreading across her lips.

  I’d like that. Night night, she tapped out. Then she put the phone down, plumped up her pillows and went to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  While she was at university, Bo had dreamed of living and working in London. She had envisaged the kind of cosmopolitan lifestyle in which nights out at the capital’s trendy bars would be de rigueur, and eating at the best restaurants would be a regular occurrence. The reality, however, was that her dining habits in London had hardly changed since her student days in Norwich: on the rare occasions that she could afford to eat out, her options were dictated by a restaurant’s cost and proximity to her flat, rather than by its reputation. In Bo’s mind, being a ‘proper’ grown-up meant being able to order from the a la carte menu rather than the prix fixe, and choosing a bottle of wine that wasn’t prefaced by the word ‘house’, but, for the first five years of her working life, such luxuries had remaine
d, infuriatingly, out of her reach.

  That all changed when she started dating Ben, however. Ben’s best friend was a PR consultant to the restaurant trade, whose job involved ensuring that launch nights for new bars and restaurants were well-attended by a young, attractive clientele. Ben could add his name to the guest list for a seemingly endless succession of launch nights of new food venues across the capital. This was a fact which he had been quick to drop into conversation with Bo early on in their flirtation and, although she knew it might make her shallow, Bo could not help but be impressed.

  For one of their early dates, Ben had taken her to a restaurant launch in Shoreditch. The venue was underground, accessed by an inauspicious flight of stone steps which led into a cavernous space. The walls were covered in industrial concrete and rows of exposed filament lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling on long wires. The menu was so sparsely written that it seemed, to Bo at least, to be virtually unfit for purpose. She stared at the handwritten sheet she had been handed by a youthful, bespectacled waiter, wondering how on earth she could make an informed choice from dishes that included ‘burnt pig’ and ‘beetroot, beetroot and more beetroot’.

  Bo had never been in a restaurant quite like it before, and felt terribly out of place and suburban. Ben, however, seemed to take it all in his stride, asking the waiter to explain the more gnomic-sounding dishes so that Bo had at least a vague notion of what to order. Ben’s confidence and good humour had put her at ease, and with the help of a few cocktails, Bo started to enjoy herself. By the time the main courses arrived she felt relaxed enough to suggest, with a giggle, that Ben should grow a beard and handlebar moustache in order to fit in with the hipster male clientele. Ben had met the suggestion with raised eyebrow and a wry smile, before calling the waiter over to order a second bottle of wine.