I'd been an office drone at Reid Associates, a mid-sized law firm in a mid-sized London skyscraper, for a couple of years when Elly Morgan first appeared at my desk. She was fresh out of university and arrived, a bit wide-eyed, to mumble that she'd been told to shadow me. I replied that I wasn't sure what our line manager thought she'd be shadowing -- most of our job amounted to filing and emailing the most unimportant of clients. There was little to learn from a girl like me. We weren't even paralegals!
My objections were justified. Elly, who was short and a touch chubby with unprofessionally messy short brown hair, freckles around her nose, and a pretty Scottish accent, seemed perfectly bright and I didn't anticipate her being an issue around the office -- she figured out a lot of our IT systems on her own which was a relief. Sensing, however, that she was far too timid to last long in such a boisterous environment, I invited her to join the rest of us for the far-too-regular lunchtime drink in the city. And the board wondered why we so rarely hit our targets...
The drink, or "corporate piss-up" as some called it, usually went down at the Red Snail, a Tudor pub just up the road from Blackfriars Bridge. It was the sort of London establishment where a round of pints cost more than many people's mortgages -- so the normal sort. There were about thirty of us, from partners to droids, and all mixed like we weren't divided by fourteen floors of glass and prefabricated plastic. All except Elly -- amid tedious conversation with Brian or Daniel or one of the other jumped-up Tory pricks in Ted Baker suits who constituted the wildlife in this part of the world, I noticed her. She sat silently at the end of a crowded table staring, almost unblinking, at her half-pint of lemonade and the paper straw penetrating it. Excusing myself, I joined Elly -- perching unsteadily on the edge of the booth, I asked how she was doing.
"I'm fine," she mumbled in reply. I didn't believe her -- it was obvious that this wasn't her scene in any way, shape, or form -- but I didn't push the issue. Social awkwardness doesn't improve upon being called out.
Nonetheless, I kept a close eye on Elly throughout the next few days -- she turned up on time to the minute every morning that week and, as far as I could tell, didn't say a word to anyone if she absolutely didn't have to. Some people, I supposed, are just like that -- cute as she might have been, I pushed her from my mind and never again did we interact beyond the occasional "did you see that email?" or "could you action this for me?"
Then came the Stockholm trip.
Reid Associates had a big deal representing a Swedish renewable energy firm -- they wanted our services negotiating some contract with the European Union which you don't need to know about because you don't care and neither did I. But it was a big undertaking for a company like ours. Reid Associates gathered a few partners and assembled a small army of administrative staff to support them while they spent three works working out of Sweden. I was the lucky one put in charge of the group -- but I didn't get any say in who constituted it. If I had then Elly, who I thought too inexperienced, wouldn't have been coming -- but she'd impressed with her productivity and flawless output to the point where after just a few months she was already being fought over to work on additional cases. The lads liked a pretty girl who didn't talk back nor make mistakes.
So it was that we gathered at Heathrow and, after trooping along wet winter tarmac, were aboard a budget flight to Stockholm. The flight was two hours and, perhaps inevitably, Elly and I were seated together. She said very little, plugging her headphones in the moment the safety demonstration wrapped up, but before we'd even started taxiing her hand happened to brush mine -- I realised then that she was sweating profusely. It clicked that she was afraid of flying and, going by the grey look on her face, it was no light fear. She was in terror. I wanted to help her, somehow, but didn't have a clue how to without seeming overbearing -- so I just read my book and, every now and then throughout the flight, glanced at Elly as discreetly as I could to check she wasn't losing her mind.
Then, as we descended through black clouds, the plane started shaking -- badly. I didn't mind turbulence -- it was nothing compared to my flight two years earlier to Trinidad when, for some reason, we skirted the edge of Hurricane Riley -- but Elly clearly did. Her eyes were clenched shut, her fists squeezing so hard her knuckles turned white, and I thought I even heard whimpers escaping her tightly shuttered lips. Without even really thinking about it, I reached over and took hold of the nearer fist -- Elly looked at me with big brown eyes, just for a moment, as I assured her it'd all be okay and the lights flickered and a stewardess tripped on a spilled bag and Elly's fist relaxed to take my hand. She pretty much crushed it as we completed our descent but, then, the clouds cleared and there was the winter paradise of snowy Stockholm stretched out below like a great model city. We landed, taxied to the terminal, and, as the seatbelt signs switched off and people hurried to unload their bags from the overhead compartments, I nudged my neighbour.
"Hey, Elly?"
"Yeah?" she replied, quiet as a mouse.
"Can I have my hand back, now?" She looked down -- she was still clinging to me. Quick as a flash, as if I was poisonous, she withdrew and apologised profusely while I just laughed and stood up to get my case.
We took a train from the airport into the city centre and shivered through the Stockholm winter and sludgy ice to find our mid-range hotel -- the plan was to set up camp, go out for dinner together, then get to bed early for an equally early rise. Business waits for nobody and, I had to remind a couple of the guys, this wasn't a holiday. We queued patiently at the front desk as the overworked receptionist pointed everyone in turn to their rooms until it was just Elly and I left. And then...
"So that's Room 522 on the fifth floor," he said, typing away. "It's a double -- is that okay?"
"One bed?" asked Elly, sharply. I felt the air leave my body. For God's sake...
"That's right," he replied, with the blankest of stares. It looked like Elly wanted to protest -- but her shyness always reigned and so she said nothing. Though I didn't really mind, clearly she did, so I spoke up for her.
"We're not a couple, though."
"You're both female," he said. "What's the problem?"
"Are you serious right now? Surely you can move us to two singles? Or she can have the double and I'll have a single?" I realised, too late, that I had come with a platoon of lawyers and was trying to negotiate a deal myself.
"I'm sorry," the man replied, shrugging, "we're fully booked. You'd have to go to another hotel."
"Oh, come on..." I muttered, knowing I'd be paying for it. "You know Stockholm's expensive, right?"
"Yes, miss, yes I do." I felt a series of taps on my arm.
"Come on, Grace," mumbled Elly. "Please don't make a scene."
"I'm not making a scene, mate, I..." I looked back at the man behind the desk and, in an instant, knew there was no chance of anything changing. "Forget it." I took the keycard and we walked together to the elevator.
Once inside, as the elevator whirred and whisked us up to the fifth floor, I sighed again.
"It's like being in a fanfiction." Elly's lips tightened a bit -- suppressing a laugh? "Sharing a hotel bed? I'm half-expecting Harry Styles to show up."
"I hope not," muttered Elly as the doors opened. We spent some time navigating the pristine catacombs that were this hotel's corridors before finding Room 522. It was a tiny suite. Our idea of a double bed and the Swedish idea of a double bed were clearly not the same thing -- and there was certainly no room for one of us to sleep on the floor.
"Well," I sighed, "I guess we'll have to make it work. For three frigging weeks."
