When Darryl had returned with fresh popcorn, Bryony had been very clingy and had insisted they held hands throughout the rest of the film, which had creeped him out far more than the other thing she’d done to him.
As soon as the film ended, Darryl had leapt up and insisted on leaving. While they were waiting with a big group of people for the lift down to the foyer, he’d overheard one of the ushers, a pretty young girl with a cloud of Afro hair, talking excitedly about how she was meeting a casting director for a drink. From her conversation with another usher, it was clear she was an actress, didn’t know the man she was meeting, and was prepared to flirt quite hard to get on his radar.
Darryl barely noticed what Bryony was saying as they rode down in the lift. When they emerged from the IMAX, Bryony stopped and turned to him.
‘Let’s go and have a drink, or walk together along the river,’ she said.
‘I better go, I have to get the train home,’ he said.
‘Oh. We could go back to my place,’ she said. Her eyes shone hungrily.
‘Sorry, I have to get home, to feed Grendel…’
‘Oh,’ she said, barely able to hide her disappointment. ‘I’ll see you at work though? We’ve got the conference tomorrow. It’ll get us out of the office. Should be fun.’
‘Yeah. See you then.’
Bryony leaned in to give him a hug, but he gave her a nod and moved off towards the underpass, leaving her standing under the coloured lights coming from the IMAX.
* * *
The next morning all the employees of the company Darryl and Bryony worked for were attending the annual staff conference. It was a big corporation, so lots of money had been spent on hiring the auditorium of the Royal Festival Hall. The staff from Darryl’s building had first been bussed over to the South Bank.
Darryl avoided Bryony, walking past the seat she’d saved him on the coach. When they arrived at the Royal Festival Hall, he darted off the coach through the side door, then hung around in the toilets, only going through to the auditorium when the address was about to begin.
He found the dark wooden splendour of the 3,000 seat auditorium, with its high ceiling insulated and studded with lights, captivating. Almost three thousand employees from the twelve London offices of the Genesis corporation had convened to hear a series of presentations and an address from one of the CEOs.
Darryl sat on the end of a long row, next to a group of men and women he didn’t know from another floor in his building. At lunchtime, he avoided the huge cafeteria and took a sandwich outside and ate it looking out over the river.
He realised he’d made a big mistake going on the date with Bryony. She was interested in him. She’d watch his every move. He had to nip things in the bud.
When it came to the afternoon address, Bryony wasn’t having any of it. Back in the auditorium, she appeared out of nowhere and dashed to fill the seat next to him before he had a chance to move.
The lights went down and then the CEO, a tall bald man, started to speak.
‘Hey. You okay?’ whispered Bryony.
Her large thigh pressed against his, despite him trying to angle himself away from her.
‘Fine,’ he nodded, looking ahead.
The CEO droned on, under the misapprehension that their low-level employees actually gave a shit about quarterly results and write-downs. He talked of how every family in the UK used one of their products, and how the company had made an impact on renewable energy. As he droned on through the long list of company achievements, Darryl resisted the urge to stand up and announce at least three families had had their young daughters stuffed unceremoniously into a Genesis branded dumpster. He stifled a girlish giggle which had crawled up his throat.
‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Bryony. She reached out and put her hand on his.
‘No reason,’ he said, pulling his hand away.
‘Did he say something funny?’
‘No,’ said Darryl. She was annoying him now, making him angry as she pawed at his arm and pressed herself against him.
‘Why were you laughing?’ she said coyly. ‘I want you to tell me. I want to laugh too.’
He turned to her. ‘You really want to know?’
‘I do,’ she grinned.
‘Really?’
‘Yes!’
He leaned into her ear. ‘I was thinking fucking you might be a challenge. I’d probably have to roll you in flour… In fact, you disgust me. Last night was a mistake.’
The auditorium then erupted in applause as the CEO took his bow. The audience rose to their feet, and Darryl joined them clapping enthusiastically. He glanced down at Bryony and she looked destroyed, staring out in front, almost in a trance. The applause went on, and she stood unsteadily and pushed past him, tripping as she fought her way out along the row of people, knocking some of them back into their seats.
He followed her progress as she reached the end of the row and started down the steps. People looked after her, pulling faces, and he wondered if there would be consequences.
He pushed it to the back of his mind and focused on the young girl he was going to pursue next. The out-of-work actress he’d friended online.
Chapter Sixty
Beth Rose was in her second year of studying at the Drama Centre in West London. Ever since she was a little girl growing up in Suffolk, she had wanted to be an actress, and she’d decided if that didn’t pan out, she was certainly going to be famous. Beth had long dark hair, large brown eyes and a tall, slim, almost gangly body. But she was beautiful, with a clumsiness which endeared her to her friends and peers. Beth stayed with her aunt during term time, exchanging the bedroom she shared with two sisters in a small seaside town for a large bedroom at the top of a town house in Central London. Aunt Marie had been married three times, but was childless, by choice, she always said.
‘You’re so much more interesting now you’re an adult,’ Marie had told her when she arrived eighteen months previously to start her Drama course. Marie’s third marriage had been to an investment banker, and as part of her divorce settlement she now lived in Tyburn Road, in a gorgeous house in an exclusive row of terraces on New Oxford Street.
On Thursday evening, Beth was relaxing upstairs in her bedroom after a long day at school, painting her fingernails Peacock Green. Aunt Marie was downstairs watching Poldark, again.
The horny cow, Beth chuckled to herself. She was studying her nails, admiring her handiwork, when her phone pinged. She blew on them and picked it up, carefully swiping the screen. She saw she had a Facebook friend request from a casting director called Robert Baker. She quickly accepted, for fear that he’d done it by mistake. She hurriedly blew on her nails again, and then googled him.