And then – I’m not proud to admit it, but it was like my fingers were possessed – I couldn’t stop myself from stalking him. It wasn’t easy, because I didn’t know his last name. But how many Seths could there be in London, working in advertising sales? As it turned out, there were loads. I spent ages looking for companies that sold online advertising and were based near Old Street, where he’d mentioned he worked, and trawled their websites clicking the ‘Our Team’ button over and over again, until I found him. Seth Davidson.
I looked at his LinkedIn profile, but I couldn’t see much on there because I didn’t have an account of my own, and I wasn’t going to create one in case he somehow knew I’d looked. Plus, that seemed a bit too stalkerish, even for me. I found his Twitter feed, but that was full of technical work stuff and retweets of motivational sayings – although funnily enough, ‘Fuck ’em and forget ’em’ wasn’t one of them. I found him on Facebook but his profile was locked down tight.
Next I found him on Instagram. There was nothing there to torture myself with: no pictures of him with a girlfriend or a wife. Just innocuous photos of him at a rugby match with friends, throwing a tennis ball for a dog, opening a bottle of expensive red wine.
And then there was a photo of a chocolate cake, crowded with candles, Seth’s face blurry in the background as their flames danced with the force of his breath. The post said: ‘Spoiled rotten by my mum on my thirty-fifth birthday.’
Hold on. His thirty-fifth birthday? The image had been posted two months before. His birthday shouldn’t have been until late October or early November.
He wasn’t a Scorpio at all.
Ten
Wise decisions made now will bear fruit in the future. The subtle energies in play today may not appear to be placing your dreams within your grasp, but be sure the universe holds the key to your desires.
Somehow, I muddled through the next morning, feeling sick with disappointment. I tried to tell myself that I was stupid to get so worked up over what had been nothing more than a one-night hook-up. But I couldn’t help it. I felt wounded, angry with myself and with Seth, and ashamed that I’d let myself expect it to become something more. I’d have to go back to the drawing board, I determined, try to take comfort from the fact that I’d had the best sex of my life and move on to the next star sign.
Robbie had the morning off, so at least I didn’t have to deal with his well-meaning curiosity. I worked alone, as I had for the months before he’d joined, glad to have the kitchen to myself, able to play music loudly through my headphones and not have to talk to anyone or pretend I was okay when I wasn’t.
But there was no fooling my kitchen. Like the cranky old campervan I’d bought a few years back when I was travelling around Europe, it seemed to sense my moods and play up if my mind was in a state of anything other than zen calm. The oven, which normally had to be set at least ten degrees higher than its temperature dial claimed to be, put on a power surge and almost burned the breakfast muffins. The food mixer blew a fuse when I was halfway through blending a vat of spring vegetable soup, so I had to pretend it was supposed to be chunky, and hastily amend the description on the chalkboard in the bar. My knives, which weren’t due to be sharpened for another two weeks, all seemed to have gone dull overnight, and the blade of one of them slipped on a sweet potato and cut my thumb.
So, all in all, I was massively relieved when the lunchtime rush was over and it was time to take my break and go to the gym. There, at least, I could lose myself, burn off some of my misery, sweat out the creeping sense of shame I felt and reset my mind ready for the evening.
I cleared everything away, wiped the surfaces, told the kitchen to have a good long think about what it had done and decide it was better than this, quickly changed into my workout kit and headed out through the bar.
It was quiet, almost empty, as was usual in the afternoons. The dominoes players had