Follow My Lead Episode 02
Follow My Lead
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- 3. Follow My Lead Episode 03
- 4. Follow My Lead Episode 04
- 5. Follow My Lead Episode 05
“Same time next week?”
Hugging her sports bag and yoga mat to her, Lydia waved goodbye to the three women as they funnelled into the little restaurant.
“Sure we can’t persuade you to stay?” Julia asked, glancing back.
Lydia grimaced. She was tempted.
“I’d love to, but I really can’t. I have a deadline.”
Working on the busy features desk of a newspaper had not become any less demanding in recent months.
Still, at least she felt loose and relaxed after their yoga session; that would help her concentration.
The four women met every week at the smart fitness studio.
In fact, it was how she’d come to know them.
They’d all joined the class at about the same time, and had quickly bonded, grimacing back-row co-conspirators as they got to grips with the postures.
For the other three, their changing-room gossips had quickly evolved into post-class coffees, which had gradually become more leisurely, and now ran to a bistro lunch.
Unlike them, Lydia always had to rush back to the office.
Now, though, like many people, she worked from home, and that allowed a little more flexibility, so recently she’d begun to join them occasionally.
Not today, though. Today she had to get back to the table in the corner of her sitting-room that now served as her work space.
In publishing, a deadline was a deadline.
With a last wave to them through the window, she hitched her holdall into the crook of her elbow and set out along the bustling street.
Stepping this way and that, agile in her trainers, she wove her way through a throng of pedestrians streaming out of the railway station.
Traffic rumbled past, with buses and black cabs outnumbering other vehicles.
She loved the city with all its noise and hustle. It always made her feel so alive.
That thought reminded her of her goddaughter, Danielle, who had turned her back on all of this.
How could she do that? It was a question Lydia often came back to, because she just couldn’t conceive of it herself.
Still, the girl was plainly happy in her new life.
It had obviously been the right choice for her, even though the idea of it made Lydia shudder.
A poster outside a small private gallery across the road caught her eye.
She’d read about this exhibition and had been meaning to visit, but time had slipped away from her, and now today was its last day before it closed.
She glanced at her watch. She just had time, and she’d still make that deadline.
With a quick glance left and right, she darted across the road.
The gallery director recognised her and greeted her effusively.
“Lydia, my dear. I’d almost given up on you!”
“Sorry, Anthony. Can you believe I nearly forgot?”
They shared a comical grimace.
“Oh, don’t talk to me about forgetting things. My memory gets worse by the day.”
He stretched his arm towards a little Perspex box.
“Programme?”
With the booklet in her hand, she wandered round the paintings displayed.
The reviews she’d read had been full of praise for the artist, calling the colourful works “scintillating” and “mesmerising”.
Yet as she moved from each one to the next with an appraising eye, she found them too garish and amateurish for her own taste, so she didn’t linger.
Anthony was surprised when she turned to leave after only 10 minutes.
“I have a deadline,” she excused herself.
“It’s an interesting collection,” she told him, a hand sweeping vaguely around the room.
“An artist with a promising future?” Anthony asked.
“Oh, indeed,” she said, pulling the door open.
Though perhaps that future wouldn’t be in the art world, she thought with a wry smile.
She knew art was a very individual taste, though, so maybe she was the odd one out.
For the artist’s sake, she hoped so.
She headed for home, keeping her head down as she passed her favourite fashion stores, determined not to be distracted.