Nobody True by James Herbert

revived all those feelings towards her that I’d suppressed since I’d lost out to my sidekick. I admit, I’m a sucker as far as women or girls are concerned. I offered to ring him, or to go and see him personally, tell him face-to-face what a jerk he was being, but Andrea wouldn’t allow it. We collapsed onto the sofa together and she begged me to let her stay, if only for the night.
    She never went back to Oliver. Again, I’m not proud of it, but we made love that very first evening. All those emotions, those frustrated desires, burst out of me like floodwater from a breached dam.
    Oliver didn’t show up at the office for two days, but when he did, he was perfectly calm and reasonable. In truth, he was almost arrogant as far as Andrea’s departure was concerned and I think that hurt her more than anything else. His indifference was a shock for us both, but it helped us overcome the guilt Andrea and I were feeling. He’d had space to think, he told us, and realized he was screwing up Andrea’s life, not to mention his own. He might also be screwing up the business we had all worked so hard for. And he was definitely screwing up his long friendship with me. All that had to change and he knew this might be his last chance.
    From now on the drugs and the booze were out, hard work and sobriety were in. He wasn’t going to ask Andrea to come back to him until she felt she wanted to (to be honest, he didn’t seem to care too much on this point; it was as if the ball was entirely in her court) and I felt it wasn’t the appropriate time to explain how she had already moved in with me. That could come later.
    Things were awkward between us for a few weeks, but Oliver made the effort. I don’t know how he fought—and conquered—his demons, but he managed to. He came off the drugs and the difference in him was quickly apparent. He became my old, true friend once more and although it took a while to get his creative juices flowing again, eventually the magic returned. We became like the team of old, a regular Lennon and McCartney of the advertising game. I don’t know how it came out that Andrea had moved in with me, but it seemed to happen naturally and there was certainly no overt resentment on Ollie’s part. Maybe he had already begun to tire of their relationship before the big upset—never in the past had Oliver been one for long-term relationships—and so he accepted the new situation without apparent rancour. Perverse though it might sound, I thought he was genuinely pleased for me, because I’d never been able to disguise my attraction to Andrea in the past; now, at last, I’d found someone with whom I could settle down. Oh, now and again, I caught him giving me an odd, reflective stare, but I thought it was remorse.
    Everything soon got back to normal and we became frantically busy, pitching for new accounts as well as maintaining those we already had. We employed more staff, creating two new art director/copywriter teams, hiring a couple more secretaries and another account executive, and eventually took over the whole building to allow for our expansion. We were a terrific, young creative hot shop and more than a few advertising awards came our way, either for press and poster campaigns or television commercials.
    Within a year Andrea was pregnant with our child (so left the agency in her seventh month) and we were married—in that order. Time went by and, bar a few downsides not worth mentioning at this point, life was pretty good. Or so I thought.
    Seven years later I was still enjoying my career, was happily married, and had a wonderful daughter called Primrose. (Yeah, I know. Advertising people, eh? In fact, it took only three months to call her Prim—Primrose seemed such a heavy handle for such a squirt, pretty as she was.) I still had OBEs, which I was learning to control more as well as initiate. They remained my secret and continued to fascinate me.
    Little did I know it was those OBEs that would