Piper spent Monday morning at work trying to come up with a name for the girl band. Another memo had been sent with a list of equally terrible names and a link to an audio file of the girl’s demo. Piper had listened to it with headphones and had been surprised by how much she liked it – it was catchy and fresh and they all had great voices that worked well together. She hated to think of them being saddled with a name like ‘Sugar or Spice’ for their entire career.

She googled ‘girl band names’ and ended up falling down a girl band YouTube hole. She was interrupted by John tapping her on the shoulder. She pulled her ear buds out and smiled up at him.

‘Sorry.’

‘Is this work?’

‘Sort of.’ She grinned. ‘I was trying to find a name, but I got a bit carried away.’

‘I did the same last night,’ John said. ‘Although I watched sixties girl group videos not…’ He gestured at Piper’s computer screen.

‘B*witched,’ she said.

‘What about something like… Curves?’ he said. ‘Or Figure Eight? Hourglass?’

‘God,’ Piper said, before she could stop herself. ‘I don’t know that—’

‘No,’ John said, pushing his glasses up on his head and immediately putting them back on again. ‘Maybe not. Keep trying, eh?’

‘Will do.’

---

‘So shall we just go to The Chancellors?’ Piper said, as she and Lee left the building at the end of the day.

He’d waited for her in reception, sitting on the sofa, flicking through the latest issue of Q on the coffee table. It was the same one Matt had been reading. At the thought of Matt, Piper wondered if he’d ended things with Becks yet or if he was going to let it drag on even longer. He didn’t have the best track record with ending relationships, preferring to let his partners get fed up of him rather than take any action himself.

‘Nah,’ Lee said. ‘I thought we could go to The Dove, have you been there?’

Piper shook her head. ‘Haven’t even heard of it. Where is it?’

‘Just along the river. It’s about ten minutes’ walk.’

‘Cool,’ Piper said.

It was a nice evening, sunny, but with a cool breeze off the river. Piper had spent the day stuck at her desk, working on the still-unnamed girl band’s contract without even a break for lunch, so she was glad to get outside.

---

‘Do you live near here?’ Lee asked, as they started to walk.

Piper shook her head. ‘Stoke Newington. Bit of a pain of a commute, but I love it there. How about you?’

‘Enfield,’ he said. ‘Used to live in Vauxhall, but I split up with my girlfriend and moved back with my parents for a bit to save some money.’

‘That sounds sensible,’ Piper said.

‘Are your parents in London?’ Lee asked.

Piper looked out over the river, and bit the inside of her cheek. At least she was going to get it out of the way.

‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re dead.’

‘Woah,’ Lee said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. That’s awful. Was it cancer or…?’

Piper was always surprised when someone asked her outright how they’d died. People sometimes hinted around it, asking if they’d been ill or if it had been sudden, whether they’d died close together or how old she’d been when she’d lost them. But it was rare for someone to both ask and guess a cause.

‘No,’ she said, as they passed under the bridge. ‘They were in an accident. On holiday. Dad died instantly and Mum the following week in hospital.’

‘Fuck,’ Lee said. ‘That’s brutal!’

‘Yeah,’ Piper said. ‘It was.’

‘How old were you?’

They were passing a row of houses that Piper loved and she was annoyed knowing that in future, whenever she walked along this strip of river, she’d remember this conversation. Until now, she’d always tried to work out who lived in such perfect homes in a perfect position, but not any more. Next time she knew she’d hear Lee saying ‘That’s brutal!’ She should probably leave. Make an excuse and go home. But she assumed they were almost there and she didn’t want to be rude, since they worked together. Plus now she wanted a drink.

‘We could go to the The Blue Anchor?’ Piper suggested, seeing the pub’s distinctive bright blue picnic benches up ahead. They went there with work quite often, for lunch sometimes, or drinks after.

‘Gets too busy,’ Lee said. ‘The Dove’s quieter. You’ll like it. There’s a terrace overlooking the river.’

They were literally passing The Blue Anchor’s terrace overlooking the river and half the benches were empty, not too busy at all. But fine. They passed The Rutland Arms, which she’d also been to with work. And once with Matt for the Sunday roast when he’d insisted on a weekend walk along the river, but lost interest after about twenty minutes.

They passed Furnival Gardens, where she and Matt had stood and watched a man standing on top of one of the canal boats (that were apparently moored but frequently simply looked wedged in the not particularly pleasant-smelling black mud), crafting folding chairs from piles of wood. He sawed and sanded and hammered and varnished, all while wearing cut-off jeans and a loose black vest, his long golden hair tied up in a messy bun. She and Matt had been transfixed and Matt still talked about him sometimes. The one that got away. Slowly. Sitting on a hand-made chair on top of a canal boat.

‘It’s just here,’ Lee said, pointing vaguely.

It was no wonder Piper hadn’t been aware of it before. The pub was tucked away like a secret, down a narrow lane behind the gardens. Lee opened the door and Piper followed him inside. It was similar to The Chancellors – the pub she went to with Matt whenever he met her from work. Dark and cosy, not at all a gastro pub. An old man sat at the small table just behind the door, a pint on the table in front of him, a sad-looking dog on the floor at his feet.

Three steps led to a second level just next to the bar and Lee headed up there, Piper following. The pub was a maze of small, interconnected rooms, almost all of them empty. Lee rejected one where a woman sat nervously in the corner, holding her handbag on her knee, and then eventually chose one with a partial view of the river and a fireplace in the opposite corner. The fire wasn’t lit. So much for the terrace.

‘Drink?’ Lee asked.

‘Gin and tonic please.’

He headed to the bar, while Piper sat down, sliding a cardboard beer mat towards herself. This place actually reminded her of a pub at home she and her friends had all tumbled into one night. She couldn’t remember where they’d been, just that they were giddy and laughing, the boys shouting and shoving each other, the girls outwardly calmer, but clutching each other, bright-eyed and over-excited.

There’d been three men in the pub who, faced with six teenagers clearly too young to drink, had all just stared at them blankly until they turned and left. They’d talked about it for ages, making it more and more dramatic in the retelling until it even included a needle scratching across a record, silencing the music that hadn’t, in reality, been playing (song choice had wavered for a while – they’d started with ‘something Elvis’ and finally settled on Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’, which Robbie claimed was suitably creepy in the setting and everyone else just thought was hilarious). Someone added a barman cleaning a pint glass with a tea towel who’d tried to communicate just with his eyes that if they’d stayed they’d be in danger, someone else a dog standing slowly, teeth bared, hackles raised. More often than not, they couldn’t get the words out for laughing.

Lee came back with the drinks and sat down opposite Piper, smiling. He suddenly seemed nervous and while Piper hadn’t been nervous as they’d walked to the pub, butterflies now started to flutter in her belly. It wasn’t Lee. It was just the entire concept of a date. It had been a while.

---

An hour later and Piper wished she’d left it even longer. Lee was sort of… shifty. Whenever anyone came near the room, he flinched and moved his chair incrementally until he had his back to the doorway. Plus they really didn’t have anything in common. They talked about work, tried another topic that went nowhere, then went back to talking about work over and over. And he really didn’t have anything good to say about his job. His colleagues were useless, he claimed he never got the same opportunities that were handed to literally everyone else and he didn’t even know what Piper’s job was, asking her how things were in Accounts when she actually worked in Legal.

‘I think I need to head back,’ Piper said, when he inexplicably suggested getting a third drink.

‘Yeah?’ Lee said. ‘I’ll walk you to the Tube.’

Piper had already wondered if there was a way to get out of that, but she hadn’t come up with anything. Still, it was only another ten minutes. They left the pub and headed up the lane around the back of the gardens. They’d only taken a couple of steps when Lee slid one hand down Piper’s arm and used it to turn her towards him. He stepped up close, pressing her back against the wall, and leaned in for a kiss.

‘Um…’ Piper said.

‘Oh god!’ he said, stepping back. ‘Sorry. I just thought—’

‘It’s okay,’ Piper said. ‘I just… I really need to get back. It takes an hour and that’s if I don’t miss the bus, so…’

‘Yeah,’ Lee said. He wasn’t meeting her eyes but then again he had spent quite a lot of the last hour looking at her cleavage. ‘Sorry. Let’s go.’

The walk to the Tube took place mostly in silence. Piper asked him a couple of questions about how long he planned to stay home with his parents, where he thought he’d live when he’d saved up enough, but she mainly got just one word answers. By the time they hit King Street, she’d given up altogether. It was only when they got to the station that Piper realised they were both getting the same line. And it was only when they were seated on the Tube that they realised they were both going to Finsbury Park. They tried to make awkward conversation as far as Earl’s Court, but then gave up and took out their phones. Piper read a book while Lee played some game with red and blue dots that made him mutter ‘fuxache’ under his breath every few minutes.

They got off the Tube at Finsbury Park, walked to the bus stop, and were finally able to go their separate ways. Piper couldn’t even read on the bus, she just rested her head on the window and stared out at the world.

---

‘How did it go?’ Matt called from the sofa, as soon as Piper was through the front door.

‘Awful,’ she said, kicking off her shoes and shrugging off her coat. ‘I somehow managed to arrange the world’s most drawn-out bad date.’

She told him about it as she poured herself a glass of wine and sat on the sofa next to him, pulling her feet up underneath her.

‘What are we watching?’

‘Documentary about Tom Petty,’ he said.

Piper stood up again and fetched her laptop from her bag. She might as well get another blog post drafted and ready.

Matt nudged her thigh with his foot. ‘You look delish, by the way. No wonder Boring Colleague tried to snog you in a hedge.’

Piper snorted. ‘That was weird. There was no way he could’ve thought I was up for it.’

‘Probably thought he might as well get a quick fumble out of it,’ Matt said, without looking up. ‘You know, so the evening wasn’t a total write-off.’

‘Lovely. How romantic.’

‘Men are pigs.’

‘Sing it, sister.’

Piper had almost finished the blog post – about the shoes she’d been wearing that day along with some musings on walking while fat – when Matt uncurled himself from the sofa and then stopped, saying ‘Pass us your phone.’

‘Why?’

‘Just give it here.’

‘You’re not thinking of messaging Rob, are you? Or Lee?’ But she was already handing it over.

‘Course not. What do you take me for?’ He snapped a photo and handed the phone back to her. ‘Look how great you look.’

Piper was rolling her eyes before the phone was even back in her hand, but she stopped when she saw it.

‘Wow.’

‘Right? I quite fancy pushing you into a hedge myself.’

‘Shut up,’ she muttered, turning up the brightness so she could see the photo better. She was leaning back on the sofa, her laptop balanced on one thigh, her other leg bent at the knee, foot on the edge of the cushion. She was staring into the phone – at Matt – with a ‘what now?’ expression. She looked tired, but determined. She looked big and soft and comfortable. She looked in the photo exactly how she looked in her own head and always struggled to capture in photos.

‘You should take all my photos,’ she said, immediately clicking through to Instagram.

‘No way,’ Matt said, heading for the bathroom. ‘I’m no one’s Instagram bitch.’

Piper uploaded the photo, added a couple of filters just to even out the colour and captioned it ‘My happy place is on the sofa with bae (my laptop)’.