fully aware of the straws I was clutching at. ‘Body positivity?’
‘I’m positive I don’t want anything to do with his body,’ she replied. ‘Geek appreciation? Like body positivity but for nerds.’
‘Maybe he’s a gamer?’ I said. ‘That would be great.’
‘Yeah, if that game is pontoon with your grandma,’ Mir said. ‘We saw him walk past the other day with a flip-phone.’
‘How about a travel blogger?’ Bri ventured. ‘Long-distance, far-away-from-here travel?’
‘We’re not losing this bet, so we’d better come up with something,’ I told them, setting my shoulders. ‘What makes Sam aspirational and relatable?’
‘He’s certainly winning the ‘Don’t Give a Fuck Olympics’, so that’s something,’ Miranda replied.
‘It’s the rest of the historians out there I feel sorry for,’ I said. ‘They can’t all look like this.’
‘He really leaned into the stereotype,’ Brian said, pressing his hands against his face as he stared at a photo of Samuel posing next to a Christmas tree while the family dog beside him licked its own bum. ‘He’s more like a historical artefact than a historian. All we need to do is take a half a dozen photos of him and tag them #ICantEven. It’ll be a million hits overnight.’
Miranda’s eyes lit up in agreement.
‘We only use our powers for good, remember?’ I replied, pinching the coin pendant on my favourite necklace tightly between my thumb and forefinger. ‘Content always takes the high road and that doesn’t sound very high.’
‘You’re high,’ Brian said, screengrabbing the shots of Sam from his girlfriend’s Facebook page. I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but each photo looked worse than the last. ‘Bet’s off, right? There’s nothing we can do with this man, Annie.’
But I couldn’t call off the bet. That would mean admitting defeat. Yes, I liked the sound of a month’s free rent, but I liked the idea of rubbing Charlie Wilder’s nose in our victory forever more even better.
‘There’s always something we can do,’ I argued. ‘All right, so he probably isn’t going to be everyone’s must-watch YouTuber by Monday morning, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an audience for what he does. And don’t worry about the girlfriend, they’ve broken up.’
Brian let out a sad ‘pfft’.
‘Can’t imagine why it didn’t work out. Is the man bun on purpose?’
‘I think not.’ I searched for the right words to describe Sam’s aesthetic. ‘He’s definitely a fixie short of a full hipster.’
‘What’s his message?’ Mir stuck out her tongue as she delved into The Lord Lieutenants of Ireland with renewed commitment. ‘What does he want people to know?’ I flicked through my own Instagram feed and pondered the question. What did I want people to know about me? My Instagram feed was full of pictures of me, Mir and Brian, my favourite views and a few carefully framed flat lays displaying my prized possessions, colour-coordinated, of course. That was the version of me I put out there.
‘We need to find out,’ I told them. ‘Everyone wants something and we can help him get it.’
‘So how do we lure him into social media?’ Brian asked. ‘What does he want?’
A bed, a proper pair of pyjamas, a sense of humour and some social graces.
‘I think he needs a friend,’ I said.
‘I would have said a haircut and a good meal,’ Miranda sighed. ‘But a friend might be a good start.’
‘Shall we go and talk to him then?’ I closed my laptop with a happy click. ‘Maybe we could all go for dinner. Isn’t it two for ten pounds at the King’s Head on a Friday?’
Brian and Miranda both looked at me.
‘We?’ Brian replied. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘From what you’ve told us, I think this is going to take a gentler touch,’ Mir agreed. ‘One at a time. Me and Bri would only overwhelm him.’
‘Just so you know, I hate you both,’ I grumbled as they gathered their things and retreated to their desks.
‘We believe in you, Annie!’ Miranda cheered while simultaneously ripping into a packet of Quavers. ‘You can do this.’
‘Bet you she can’t,’ Brian whispered loudly, a puckish smile on his face. ‘Twenty quid says he tells her to do one again.’
‘You’re on.’ Mir mimed shaking hands across the office. ‘Money’s as good as mine.’
‘Have you already forgotten how we got into this mess in the first place?’ I groaned. ‘It’s like you’ve literally learned nothing.’
‘If I win the twenty quid, I’ll buy you dinner,’ she called after me.
‘Fine,’ I said, rubbing my grumbling stomach. ‘The bet stands.’
‘That’s my girl,’ Mir said with a grin. ‘Go get him, tiger.’
‘Knock knock.’
Just as I’d hoped and fully expected, Dr Page was hard at work behind his desk, all traces of his campout vanished.
‘Did you unlock the door again?’ he asked.
‘Hello, Sam,’ I said, slipping the key back in my pocket and ignoring the question. ‘I brought you something.’
‘No one calls me Sam.’ His hair was back up in its man bun but his beard was running free and wild. He wore jeans at least four sizes too big for him and if I ever found out where he was getting all those awful shirts, I would have them in The Hague on crimes against humanity faster than you could say ‘Nehru collar’. Thankfully, I had no way of knowing whether or not he was still wearing the Bart Simpson boxers.
‘I like Sam,’ I said. ‘It’s a good name. Solid. Friendly. Who wouldn’t like a Sam?’
‘No one calls me Sam,’ he said again. ‘They call me Samuel or Dr Page. Or in your case, that man down the hallway who is considering a restraining order.’
‘I was in the coffee shop, trying to justify buying pastries and I thought, I wonder if Sam fancies a croissant.’ I took a seat before he could ask me to leave and placed a small, white cardboard box and huge, steaming cardboard coffee cup in front of him. ‘I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to try the almond croissants yet but they are amazing. Life-changing, in fact. You can’t have one every day because you’ll get diabetes and die, but oh my god, what a way to go.’
I pushed the box towards him but he didn’t move.
‘Go on,’ I kept pushing it with the tip of my finger until it was butting right up against his keyboard. ‘You know you want to.’
‘I’m allergic
