Read Online Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin by David Wailing - Free Book Online

in looks, I once replied. That didn’t go down too well. Fortunately I do, so that took her mind off it – just like that.) But with Becky it was all too easy.
    Or so it seemed. I should have known better. I asked what time she got off for lunch.
    “Um, about half an hour.”
    “Wanna go grab a sandwich somewhere?”
    Can you imagine me asking this at the start of the week, without getting to know her, without all the jokes and flirting? No chance. But now it was a doddle. Got to lay that groundwork or you get nowhere.
    “Er… actually I can’t. I’ve got someone’s leaving drinks to go to.”
    Shit. I got nowhere.
    “Okay, well what about after work? Just down the pub for a quick one?”
    Becky pulled a kind of sad face. “I can’t tonight. We’ve got… I’ve got friends coming round for dinner. Got to cook and everything. Sorry.”
    Game over.
    I said it was no big deal. But my mind was racing. I had to isolate Becky if I was going to make any progress with her. I had to get her out of the office, out of the work environment and away from the safety of her friends. I had to get her and me together. That was the next step. But I’d hit a brick wall.
    To be fair, they sounded like genuine excuses. I can always tell when someone has come up with a lie on the spur of the moment, but I reckoned she was being honest. And I knew she liked me. Of course she did. But it wasn’t enough. That ‘we’ had reminded me that I was chatting up a woman who was engaged to be married.
    “No problem, maybe another time.” I picked up my helmet and smiled. “Have a good weekend.”
    “Bye,” she said softly.
    And I walked out of Asquith and Bream Consolidated for the last time.
    A smarter, more sensitive man than me would have realised at that point he was wasting his time. He would have accepted defeat gracefully, and let the girl get on with her life without pestering her. A less perceptive bloke might have just kept going, bullishly demanding to take her out, not accepting no for an answer. He would have ended up angry and rejected. A more romantic, sweet-talking smoothie would no doubt have resorted to flowers and chocolates, to sending little cards and teddy bears, plucking on her heartstrings. He would have got nowhere with Becky. It would take more than a few cheap trinkets to make her forget her fiancé.
    But I wasn’t any of those men.
    I was a professional. And there was seven grand at stake. So I wasn’t giving up now.
    Phase 8: The element of surprise.
    Friday 11 June 5.31pm.
     
    Hometime.
    People had been coming out of the building in dribs and drabs for a while now. Then a group of girls burst through the doors and down the steps, eager to be away. Half a dozen of them, including Becky. They hit the pavement and headed up towards the main road, chatting animatedly.
    I roared round the corner on my motorbike. Screeched to a halt beside them.
    See those faces! For a second they didn’t know whether to scatter like sheep, or keep walking and ignore me, or stop and stare, or what – it was pretty funny. I pulled my helmet off. I would have been grinning anyway even if that wasn’t part of the plan.
    “John!” Becky smiled, surprised.
    “How’s it going?” I said, directly to her. “Fancy a ride home?”
    The others – including Laura, Nicola and Teri – all came out with that weird half-squeal half-scream noise that doesn’t occur anywhere in nature except in packs of office girls, and possibly hyenas mating.
    “C’mon, I’ll give you a lift.” I reached into the storage box at the rear of the bike and pulled out a spare crash helmet.
    The girls all started pushing Becky towards me. “Go on Becks!” “Go for it, girl!” “Let him give you a ride!” You can imagine the rest. But she resisted, not sure which way to turn.
    I held the bright red helmet out towards her, smiling. She still wasn’t sure. But her eyes flickered over me, over the bike, over the helmet. As if judging distances.