‘What do you think?’

‘It’s a little … out of proportion.’

‘I draw what I see in here.’ He tapped his smooth, ivory forehead.

‘I don’t think even our very own Steve Reeves is quite that well developed.’

Now his face really lit up, and he clasped his hands in front of his chest. ‘Oh I do like Steve Reeves. They’re showing his film in Blackpool this weekend. Shall we go?’

This sounded too much like a date, and I threw my cigarette end through the chainlink fence and walked on.

‘Sorry,’ he called after me. ‘I didn’t mean …’

I kept walking.

‘My name’s Stephen!’ he shouted after me. ‘What’s yours?’

I didn’t reply.

02

There is a NEW BOY at work this week who has already caused quite a stir of excitement in the advertorials department. At least Anna and I are excited, and that counts as the entire department. The rest of them get in at eight o’clock in the morning, keep their heads bent over their computers all day, don’t take lunch breaks, don’t take coffee breaks, don’t get social calls even on their mobiles, in fact don’t have mobiles, so Anna and I barely regard them as human and certainly don’t socialise with them. When we leave in the evening, they are still at their desks – in fact I am beginning to wonder if they exist at all outside the office, or have just been put there to test us. If that is the case, I suspect we have failed.

The New Boy arrived yesterday. Anna and I have not yet decided if we officially fancy him or not. He is quite good looking in a rather nerdy way, that is to say he wears glasses, but quite stylish glasses, although I haven’t got close enough yet to find out who they are by, if they are ‘by’ anyone at all. He wears a suit, which probably means that he is an accountant, and although we have always said that accountants are against the rules we are both prepared to change the rules if necessary. Again, I am not sure who the suit is by, which is one of the reasons I have not yet mentioned New Boy to Jonathan, because the first thing he will want to know before he pronounces judgement is about the labels.

NB walked through the office yesterday wearing his suit (charcoal with a very faint stripe, not sure if it’s stylish or just conservative) and a sky-blue shirt with a pink tie, which I think is very gay but Anna says that if wearing a pink tie is gay then her father is gay. His hair is short and neat and looks freshly barbered, which again is a good sign because I could never really love someone who did not get their hair cut at least once a fortnight, preferably weekly. Anna likes him too, which could mean the end of a beautiful friendship but we both agree that would be a small price to pay if it means one of us gets a husband out of it.