At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

and he said that, so far, it was working a treat. We talked about how he was ordering himself a curry, and how he’d be setting up the first season of Game of Thrones, ready to watch once the delivery man arrived.

It was fifteen minutes before he signed off with his usual ‘Ta-ra, Bab’ and then he was gone.

I sat back in my chair, seeing that all of the other calls were being handled at the moment, and I looked out of the window again. The light outside was turning from dusk to darkness and I caught sight of my reflection in the glass. My hair was no longer holding the delicate beachy wave, which I’d attempted with great success this morning when Joel had left, after watching a YouTube tutorial on ten different uses for flat irons. It had now fallen both flat and frizzy, which I didn’t even think was possible. I grabbed one of the decade-old bobbles from beside my monitor and twisted my unruly locks into a topknot.

I saw Ned in the reflection of the window as he made his way over, coming back in from a meeting with Barry.

‘If you’re quite done admiring yourself, Barry’s got a favour to ask,’ he said when he reached his cubicle and leaned one elbow nonchalantly on the partition between our desks. Barry was the single least inspiring person I’d ever encountered. Even the resigned timbre of his voice was enough to sap the enthusiasm from any conversation. And yet, he was such a good counsellor that he’d started as a volunteer and worked his way up to manager over the eight years he’d been here.

‘Admiring wouldn’t be the right word,’ I replied. ‘Loathing would be a good alternative, berating maybe.’

‘What do I keep telling you? You need to leave Joel behind. He’s no good for you,’ he said with an air of I told you so about him.

‘I know.’ I sighed. ‘Now what is it that Barry wants me to do?’

‘That new volunteer, Caleb, he’s stuck in traffic and will be a tad late. Do you mind covering until he arrives?’

‘Fine. Anything to take my mind off how much of a tit I am.’ I sent a smile his way.

He glanced around to check that no one was paying us any attention and whispered, ‘I got some mince on my lunch break. You up for spag bol and a marathon of Cold Case Files?’

‘Sounds like perfection,’ I whispered back before turning to the screen and readjusting my headset. Ned eyeballed Beryl, the volunteer opposite me, and slid back into his cubicle as if he’d just successfully pulled off a covert op.

Ned and I had got along well ever since I started here five years ago. He’d been here a little longer than me and was one of the others who were paid for their time here. We sat in the far back corner, a coveted spot that we’d earned from years of consistently moving along a desk when someone left until we finally got our chosen seats. He was in his forties, although I didn’t know where exactly as he was always very vague on the subject. He was shorter than average with a longer than average neck, which I am sure is trying to make up for the deficit in leg length. He has large brown eyes and his hair is short, dark and unremarkable. He is, in almost every way, very plain. But he possesses that thing that some people have, that glimmer of something that shines out and puts a glow over everything else. I know that a lot of the women in the office fancy him but he’s always just been good old platonic Ned to me.

Ned and his wife had separated several years ago and I think that she’d messed him around for much longer than any decent woman should have. He lived alone in a huge Victorian detached house on one of the most sought-after suburban roads in town and I think that he was just as lonely as I was. When I’d started at the helpline, I’d been living in a shitty little flat above a kebab shop on a road that, let’s just say was in a less desirable postcode. Joel and I had moved in there together a year after leaving university and three weeks after moving in, there was a drive-by shooting at the end of the road, but luckily the only victim had been the driver’s side door of a Peugeot 206.

Joel and I lived crammed together in the tiny little hovel for years, before our relationship fell apart and he left to go back home and live with his parents. I’d struggled to keep up the payments alone, not that Joel had contributed much towards rent when he lived there anyway, and the air inside the flat always smelled like three-day-old doner meat and mint yogurt, which after surprisingly little time of living there, had put me off kebabs for life.

Ned and I had quickly become good friends after I’d had an emotional breakdown in the toilets at work, during a particularly bitchy phone call from my landlady, and Ned had heard me crying from the hallway. He’d taken me out for a cheer-up Chinese and asked me if I wanted to move in with him as a lodger. It made sense – he had that huge empty house and I hated my horrid little flat. He only wanted half the amount of rent that I was already paying and he said it would be nice to have someone around to watch true crime documentaries with in the evenings and that having someone else there would make him feel less guilty about putting the heating on.

I waited out the month in my flat and moved in with Ned within the fortnight, leaving the kebab-scented sofa behind.

Twenty minutes into my overtime and Caleb still hadn’t shown. Ned wasn’t done for another hour, so I was in no