Free It's Raining Men by Milly Johnson Page A

favourite shorts.
    ‘Anyway, this is just a quick one,’ Lara went on. ‘I’ll be at yours for about eight tomorrow evening. Okay with you? It’ll be nice to have a catch-up.’
    ‘Yes, lovely,’ said May, battling the tremor in her voice. ‘I can’t wait.’
    But she could wait. The last thing on her mind at the moment was going away on this trip. And a catch-up would be very one-sided because, if her worst fears were realized, there was no way she
was going to tell her friends all about this mess.
    ‘Me neither,’ said Lara.
    ‘Great,’ said May. ‘Have to flee – got a meeting in ten.’
    ‘Yep, me too. See ya tomorrow.’
    Lara stuffed her own sandwich into her mouth and washed it down with a coffee that had gone lukewarm. Everything in her day went at eighty miles an hour. Would she be able to handle a slow pace
for a week and a half? She had an inkling that the holiday would be cut short after two days as all three of them were too addicted to their desks. And, feeling as insecure as she did at the
moment, maybe that wouldn’t be too much of a bad thing.

Chapter 14
    May didn’t have a meeting in ten, but she wasn’t in the mood for small talk. She forced numbers and calculations of gross and net margins into her head in an effort
to stop the questions and theories which were demanding to be heard. She batted them away with all her might, and added up, filled in spreadsheets and let plans of setting up Mr Terry’s
wholefood restaurant in Clapham take over her brain.
    Her PA knocked on her office door and then bobbed her head in.
    ‘Night, May.’
    May glanced at the clock. It had somehow become seven o’clock. The last time she had looked at it, it had been three. Michael would be on his way over to her flat, expecting to share the
Marks & Spencer’s meal for two which awaited them in her fridge.
    ‘Night, Berenice. See you tomorrow, lovely.’
    ‘You work too hard,’ said Berenice, a bright and pretty girl in her early twenties – ambitious but good-hearted with it.
    ‘It’s seven o’clock and you’re still here too,’ countered May.
    ‘Yeah, but I’ve been sitting reading a magazine since six. I’m meeting friends for a meal. It wasn’t worth me going home and I don’t feel like shopping – have
you seen the weather?’
    May looked through the window and saw the rain lashing the glass. She had a sudden urge to open the window and let it fall on her face, saturate her, flood her mind and wash away every last
memory of that man
.
    ‘Have a nice time,’ said May. ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘Some Malaysian place,’ said Berenice. ‘Seventeen of us for my friend’s twenty-first. See you in the morning. I’ll be early, but not so sure about bright.’
And with that she gave a little wave and closed the door.
    Twenty-one seemed a million years behind her yet it was only twelve. Twelve years ago she finished her Business, Management and Leadership degree at Exeter and it had felt as though the world
was her oyster. Too bad she’d harvested an oyster in a month with no R in it.
    May gulped down the massive lump of emotion clogging up her throat as she put on her coat and switched off the office light. For the five-minute walk to the Tube she played a game with herself,
working down the alphabet and naming a film star for every letter, anything to avoid thinking about the scene that would soon be played out at home. On the Tube she tried not to look at the couple
opposite her who were holding hands and whispering to each other. The woman had shiny brown hair and love was making her chestnut-coloured eyes shine. Just as May’s had been shining until
that morning’s trip to Clapham. It was her own fault. She should never have let herself fall for a married man – it was hubris, karma, kismet.
    She wished she had never struggled to put up her stupid umbrella in the flash storm last November. She wished she had told the man who stopped to help her put it up to piss off