Free Jemima J. by Jane Green Page B

she’s ever met. Ends with telling them she thought they were different, as if guilt, somehow, will make them come back, and then finally she slams the phone down.
    Then she goes out and repeats the whole scenario with someone new.
    Ben is perceptive enough to realize the sort of woman Sam is. A “bunny boiler” is how he would describe her to his friends, and they would all groan in recognition.
    But because Ben’s a nice guy masquerading as a bastard, Ben let her down gently by asking for her number after they kissed and promising he would call. This was perhaps not exactly the right thing to do because Sam wrote down her home number, her work number, and her mobile number. At this very moment Sam is doing what thousands of women in her position have done. She is watching the phone at work and willing him to call. Every now and then she picks it up to check it’s still working, and she has been hovering by the phone all day, leaping on it should it dare to ring.
    But Ben won’t call, not least because girlfriends are not exactly a priority at the moment. The type of women Ben goes for are high-maintenance. They require picking up, being paid for, presents. Ben, at this very moment in time, has neither the funds nor the inclination to think about high-maintenance women in anything other than an abstract way.
    So while he fancies Geraldine, he knows that right now she’d never give him a chance, and quite frankly that’s okay with Ben. It’s enough that she brightens up his days at work. He’s happy not to take it further.
    Ben is far too busy thinking about his career to think about women. Sure, if someone uncomplicated came along who would be willing to fit in with Ben’s life, and just see him occasionally, i.e., on the occasions when he’s not working, working p. 63 out, or seeing his friends, then great. But Ben hasn’t met this woman yet.
    So Jemima’s having a bad day, and Ben’s interviewing a local woman whose thirteen-year-old son has just stabbed a schoolteacher. Normally he wouldn’t, as the deputy news editor, be writing the stories himself, but this is the Kilburn Herald after all, and everyone has to muck in.
    Jemima has spent all day hoping for a glimpse of Ben, and each time footsteps come her way she turns, but it would appear that Ben is out of the office. She has spent the day making phone calls. She has discovered the best way of drying your nail polish quickly (dip the nails into a bowl of icy cold water), the best way of keeping lettuce fresh (put the lettuce into a bowl of iced water, add a slice of lemon and put it in the fridge) and the best way of storing tinned foods in the cupboard (buying plastic shelves, £5.99). Jemima is bored. Bored, fat, and unhappy. Not a good combination, I think we all agree.
    So it is a welcome relief when her phone distracts her with an internal ring.
     
    “It’s me,” says Geraldine, which is ridiculous really because she knows full well that her extension number is flashing on my telephone. “Do you want to meet me in the cafeteria for a cup of tea?”
    Anything to break the monotony of this work, the pain of Ben not wanting me. Of course I want a cup of tea, just to get away from this desk, from this miserable bloody office.
    “Have you lost weight?” is the first thing Geraldine says to me as I walk over to her by the hot water machine, pouring the water over the teabags in two plastic cups.
    For the first time today I perk up. I don’t know, I haven’t weighed myself for the last few weeks, I haven’t even thought about it.
    “Your face definitely looks slimmer,” says Geraldine, picking up the cups and carrying them to the table.
     
    p. 64 Jemima could kiss Geraldine, because Geraldine is right, she has lost weight. She hasn’t thought about her weight for two weeks, because she actually started to have fun. She discovered the Internet and in Geraldine and Ben she found two people who seem to be real friends, and the minute she