Dry martini, be the death of me

'Ooh, how romantic,' said Sandy, the departmental secretary. 'He
left them for you first thing, the boys sent them up from the
shop.'

Lorna looked down at the dozen red roses and the champagne on her desk,
and groaned inwardly. The gilt-edged gift card had already been opened,
bearing his phone number and the legend 'You left me shaken and
stirred. Drinks tomorrow?'

She was never going to live this one down, it would be all over the
building before tea-break was finished, if it wasn't already. What a
fool she'd been.

'Oh my goodness, how common! said Irene, her stern-faced manager. Can't
men think of anything original any more? Or maybe that's the
point.'

'Christ, Lorna, what was he? Another sympathy shag? You'd better watch
yourself my girl, that's risky behaviour. You never know&;#8230;'
Her voice trailed off as Mr Perkins, the big boss, rounded the corner,
nodded at Irene, and wandered off to his office. Everyone went back to
looking very busy for a moment. Relieved, Lorna took the opportunity to
escape and buried her head in an overdue report for the rest of the
morning.

What the hell had she been thinking, she wondered to herself as she
nursed an evil hangover. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as she
remembered last night's events. She'd gone out for drinks with a couple
of girlfriends, a nice bar just up the road from work that did
fantastic cocktails. The fatal mistake was pitching up to the barman
and asking for a round of dry martinis.

'Shaken, not stirred, I hope.' The man standing to her left gestured at
the martinis. 'The name's Spencer, Robert Spencer, pleased to meet
you,' he said, in a dreadful cod-Scots accent. He was a little lanky,
not quite handsome, with a shock of dirty blonde hair, and an
office-worker suit. He caught her quite off guard. She hadn't laughed
out loud for days.

'I'm Lorna, nice to meet you Robert. Actually, I always have mine
stirred, the other way bruises the gin you know.' He looked a little
crestfallen, so she thought what the hell she didn't have to rebuff
every man in town, and made him drink half her martini to cheer him up.
It worked, and they ordered some more.

'So, Lorna, what do you do for a living?' She pointed at the shop front
across the road. 'I work there, in that stationer's. I'm the manager,'
she lied. She wanted to make the right impression, it seemed like a
good idea at the time. 'Now Robert, it's your turn to tell me all about
what you do.'

'I'm an international playboy and master spy,' he said. 'But sometimes
I work in an insurance office to throw Russian secret agents off the
scent.' He was too good to be true. They traded outrageous stories and
giggled drunkenly at the bar for over an hour, and her neglected
girlfriends got bored and went home. They looked pretty pissed off as
they left, disapproving, even. Looking back, she didn't blame
them.

'Look, my watch is a digital camera.' He leaned in close to her and
took a quick snap of them both. Sure enough, a low-resolution black and
white image of two people who vaguely resembled them appeared on the
screen. 'Did they run that one up for you in a secret underground lab?'
she asked. 'No, it was on special offer at a certain high street
emporium last weekend.'

'The best thing about this watch is that you can put a name and a
number to the picture. I can have your number, can't I Lorna? Those
sweet eyes, half expectant, half pleading. Maybe he said that to all
the girls, maybe he was smoother than she thought. He tapped her name
in, and she started to feel the panic rising. It was all happening a
bit too fast, she wasn't in control. On her own, in a bar with a man
she didn't know, almost pissed out of her brains. Not how a smart girl
operates. She gave him a false phone number.

She made him promise to call her, gave him a goodbye peck, then went
out into the cool night air on her own to sober up a bit and call a
cab. In spite of drinking two pints of water before collapsing onto the
mattress at home, she still woke up feeling weak and nauseous, sick at
the prospect of having to go in to work.

'Right Lorna, my office now.' Irene knew she was hung over, and was
bellowing sadistically in her ear. 'Close the door behind you.' There
was no point closing the doors in their offices anyway, the walls were
so thin, but Lorna humoured her and obeyed the command
sheepishly.

'It has not gone unnoticed that you're drinking too much lately, and
you don't need a lecture I'm sure, but I still have to remind you that
it's dangerous. Never let me see you hung over in here again, ever, do
you hear me?' Her face softened into an almost-smile.

'And you can stop worrying. The team checked him out. Poky little flat
full of spy movies and computer games, genuine civilian job in Croydon.
Fantasist. And the camera's a piece of crap that can't take pictures
good enough to identify you from. We'll just tell him you got a
promotion and you left town.'

'If you pull another stunt like this, all your security privileges will
be revoked and you'll be out on your arse without question. Now get out
of my sight. Oh, and use the Whitehall exit from now on.'

Lorna waited until Irene had gone home, then left work by the shop
front door, just once more for old times' sake, skilfully slipping
unnoticed into the passing crowd.

-------------