Payday

by Celia Walden

‘I know, I know, but listen.’ Nicole ducked to take another drag on her e-cigarette. ‘I’m not going to report him. End of.’

  ‘Good.’

  Both Nicole and Alex turned to look at Jill. Judging by her very different tone – clear and pragmatic now – she’d moved into damage limitation mode.

  ‘I mean, as Nicole says, I get why reporting him isn’t necessarily going to help.’

  ‘Not going to help the company either, is it?’

  Drunk or not, Jill seemed to have decided that she’d had enough of being spoken to like that.

  ‘That’s not the point. Whatever’s going on with Jamie, the bullying and belittling and now this: it all ends here. I don’t care if he’s a partner. There will not be harassment of any kind in my company. I’ll … I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Because that’s really going to make my life easier?’

  ‘Well, it would make him stop.’ Jill put down her glass with a clatter.

  ‘He’d stop and then he’d find a way to make me pay, wouldn’t he?’ Nicole shook her head. ‘I couldn’t sit there in meetings with him after that. I’d have to leave. Then there’s you – the position you’d be left in, now that you know. Because if you don’t report him, you could be accused of covering stuff up.’ Jill hadn’t thought of that. ‘Then again, for all I know you’ve been covering up for Jamie for years.’

  In a matter of minutes the conversation had turned from sisterly to antagonistic. Jamie had left the premises and somehow he was still causing trouble.

  ‘Hey,’ Alex cut in. ‘Maybe there’s another way of stopping this – of stopping him.’

  Nicole and Jill stared at her, the same thought in both of their eyes: but you’re no longer a part of this.

  ‘I could have let this go, if he’d done what he promised and got me another job.’

  ‘Oh, Jamie’ll say whatever he needs to in the moment,’ Nicole spat out, not caring if she sounded bitter – she was bitter. ‘And he doesn’t care who’s made to pay for his mistakes so long as it’s not him. Because in the end, women are either convenient to Jamie or expendable.’

  ‘But we can’t just let him get away with it? He lied to you, to Jill, to me.’

  Faced with these bombshells about her one-time protégé, Jill looked shaken. As the most senior of the three, she would know that it was up to her to try and make this right, and Nicole saw her window: ‘If Jamie was trying to do that with Khalvashi, what’s to say he hasn’t with other clients?’

  Jill nodded in agreement. And when the barman announced that it was ‘time to drink up now’, she did something surprising.

  ‘I’m going to give you this,’ Jill told the lad, handing him a folded fifty-pound note. ‘And in exchange I want you to give us one last bottle of rosé – and another hour.’

  Only when the pub doors had been locked and a fresh bottle of wine brought over did Jill turn back to Alex.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What I’m saying,’ Alex resumed, encouraged by the two women’s attention, ‘is that he needs to be put back in his box. He needs to pay.’

  ‘And how are we supposed to do that?’ Bored with the subterfuge, Nicole was now openly vaping away.

  ‘Well, you’re right that you and I can’t go down the formal channels. Me because I’d lose an unfair dismissal suit in a heartbeat – he’s sewn that up nicely – and you because …’

  ‘Ian would be dredged up if I made a complaint? Because as much as we’ve been told to shout these men’s names from the rooftops, as much as we’ve been told we’ve got the power, nobody much cares if Me Too-ing turns us into professional lepers afterwards, do they?’

  ‘Right.’ Alex paused, clearly enjoying the second she held them both there. ‘Well, I say we find another way. Because there are different kinds of power – and maybe ours is—’

  ‘Please don’t say “soft power”,’ groaned Nicole. ‘I hate that expression.’

  ‘Me too.’ This was Jill now. ‘Like that’s the best women can do.’

  ‘You’re missing the point. I’m talking about bringing Jamie down in a way that could never be traced back to us, a way he’d manage on his own if he weren’t always being covered for and protected.’

  From the corner of her eye Nicole saw Jill blink twice in quick succession, taking this as a dig at her.

  ‘All I’m talking about is giving him a little push. Not so much soft power …’

  ‘As stealth power.’ Beneath the sneer, Nicole was serious.

  ‘And it wouldn’t be hard,’ Jill murmured, ‘given how reckless he’s got.’

  ‘No, no – it would be easy.’ Alex leaned forward. ‘The things I’ve seen. The things I know. Just think of what we’ve all found out tonight? I’m betting that if we start digging, Jamie’ll turn out to be so far from the person everyone thinks he is it’s not even funny.’

  For a moment Nicole feared Alex might have gone too far – lost Jill, at least. But after a small hesitation, her boss asked: ‘And these things you saw while working with him – you think they can help us?’

  Of all the unforeseen events that night – the wine, the nervous flit of Jamie’s eyes as he took in the scene at their table, and the revelations of these two women Nicole had only ever exchanged professional words with before tonight – that ‘us’ was somehow the most pleasing. Nothing bonded, she thought wryly, quite like hate.

  ‘Between the three of us there must be so much that we can use.’ Alex paused, bit her lip. ‘It’s just a question of working out where Jamie’s weak spots are.’

  For a moment, all three women sipped their wine. Then Nicole inhaled sharply.

  ‘The D-list,’ she said to Jill.

  Jamie’s ‘D-list’ was an inside joke with senior management at BWL. A compilation of every structural flaw and weakness that might make a property less sellable, including a detailed prediction of everything likely to go wrong moving forward, the document was basically an anti-sales pitch – to be expunged from the office hard drive the moment the deeds were exchanged.

  More than once Nicole had heard Jill pull him up on the cynicism of this document in private company meetings: ‘Just knowing it’s there makes me jittery,’ she’d said. And Nicole secretly felt the same. But Jamie had always laughed off her concerns. As a reminder of what not to make the client aware of unless legally obligated to, the D-list was a crucial part of his selling process. ‘And if no one but me is ever going to see it,’ he’d protested, ‘where’s the problem?’

  Jill held Nicole’s gaze. ‘You mean …’

  ‘I mean, what if Jamie’s D-list were to be made public in some way. That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?’

  Jill chewed at the inside of her mouth. ‘Ye-es. But to us, as well as him.’

  Nicole had to admit she had a point: ‘True.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex interjected, ‘but the “D-list” is … ?’

  As a PA, Alex wouldn’t have been privy to the kind of meetings Jamie’s dodgy dossier had come up in, Nicole realised, and the young woman’s eyes widened as she explained it to her.

  ‘But there might be other ways we could … well, give Jamie a bit of a warning?’ Jill pushed on.

  ‘Or even a full-scale wake-up call.’ Alex’s cheeks were flushed. ‘Because otherwise men just get away with it, don’t they – all of it? And every time that happens, they know that they can push things further the next.’

  Fleetingly, Nicole wondered how deeply Alex’s dislike of men was rooted. Had it consolidated over years, like hers, or been prompted by something far worse than both Hayden and Jamie’s treatment of her?

  ‘So it’s just a question of finding the right opportunity to catch Jamie out and show him up,’ Alex concluded. ‘Really we’d be doing him a favour.’

  ‘We’d be doing women a favour,’ cut in Nicole, inviting them, with an upward swing of her glass, to toast the man who had for too long behaved with impunity: ‘To Jamie.’

  Alex raised hers: ‘To putting a
not-so-good man down.’

  CHAPTER 7

  JILL

  5 AUGUST

  KILBURN POLICE STATION

  ‘You say Mr Lawrence was very highly thought of.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By his clients and colleagues?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘More than just popular, he was something of a celebrity in your world – the property world.’

  It was more of a statement than a question, and unsure whether she was required to add anything, Jill just nodded.

  ‘He won awards, got write-ups in industry mags.’ Flicking through his file, the detective inspector found what he wanted, gesturing to a cutting in front of him. Even upside-down, Jill recognised the portrait taken of her colleague in a BWL conference room the previous year. He had complained about it at the time, claiming the harsh lighting had made his face look ‘like a Spitting Image puppet’.

  ‘Jamie was a very good broker. He has –’ she swallowed ‘– he had a way with people, which is a big part of the job. He brought in a lot of high-profile clients; got us noticed.’

  ‘Only it wasn’t all good publicity, was it? In fact, over the past two months there were a few very negative bits of press involving Mr Lawrence: a wrangle with conservationists over a protected property that was destroyed, and a couple of mentions in property gossip blogs about professional mishaps that must have been embarrassing for the company.’

  Jill glanced at the empty plastic cup on the table, willing someone to refill it with water.

  ‘Mishaps we’ve had corroborated by employees we’ve spoken to, who told us –’ more sifting through his file ‘– yes here it is, that Mr Lawrence had “been different” over the past few months, “distracted” and “behaving oddly”.’ That he’d been “messing up repeatedly”.’ One of your colleagues even describes him as “flailing”.’

  ‘It’s true that he wasn’t himself.’ Jill’s voice sounded oddly high-pitched. ‘Sorry. I’m … we’re all reeling.’

  ‘Of course. Take your time.’ A pause. ‘Then we have the more serious internal allegation that we’ve just been made aware of.’

  Again, Jill just nodded. The room smelt of Ajax and her need for water was now so all-consuming that when the DI opened his mouth to speak again, she was forced to lip-read: ‘How well do you know Nicole Harper, Mrs Barnes, and Alex Fuller?’

  CHAPTER 8

  JILL

  TWO AND A HALF MONTHS EARLIER

  ‘You’re going to have to try and move yourself over a bit.’ Jill felt something twang in her lower back as she wedged her husband’s sun-lounger into the last rung. ‘There. That’s as far as it’ll go. Any better?’

  It had been such a good idea – a late lunch on Lady J’s roof-deck. Stan’s, surprisingly. And when he’d called her at the office to check on her hangover and suggest she come home early, Jill had immediately shut down her computer and jumped in a cab.

  For almost a year everything in their lives had revolved around the three military Ps – proper planning and preparation – and aside from the odd properly planned and over-prepared dinner, they’d scarcely left Blomfield Road. In all that time, neither had even considered crossing the road to tend to the canalside garden they’d taken so much pride in over the years, much less climbing aboard their narrowboat.

  Lady J was robust. With her engine drained for winter, she could sit there quite happily for months. But left to its own devices, the garden had turned into a tangle of weeds, curling protectively over and around the cans, cartons and fast-food wrappers Little Venice tourists had thrown over the railings. And once they’d established that climbing up onto Lady J’s roof-deck was way too ambitious for Stan, they’d been forced to settle for a spot of gardening and a canalside picnic instead.

  It was all going so well until Jill tore open the mackerel pâté, prompting her husband to throw up right there on the baking concrete. Along with the nausea, the Prostap injections had given Stan a heightened sensitivity to smells – which Jill knew, but had somehow overlooked in her excitement at being ‘back to normal’. And the incident had left her feeling both guilty and unfairly angry at her husband for reminding them why the simple joys of their past life were no longer permitted.

  Settled at last on his chair, a smear of factor 50 across his hairline, Stan had now nodded off, leaving Jill to enjoy the view they’d revelled in every summer for just over two decades. Closing her eyes for a moment, she tried to lose herself in the anaesthetising heat of the sun, but snippets of the previous night kept floating back to her – phrases Jill couldn’t quite believe she’d uttered herself.

  That she should have said as much as she did about Jamie, been so indiscreet, was baffling to her. Yes, she’d been blindsided by Nicole and Alex’s revelations, but Jill didn’t do indiscretion. That wasn’t who she was. She wasn’t a big drinker, either, and yet last night she’d had this unquenchable thirst – as though actively seeking to find herself in an altered state that would allow her to listen, say and agree to things she wouldn’t normally. And Jill couldn’t deny that it had felt good – right up until she’d climbed into bed and been hit by the weight of the responsibility she now bore these two women. Would it all be a mirage come morning? With everything that had been said unspoken, and all she’d heard forgotten?

  Remembering Jamie’s face mid-speech now, however – the faint alcoholic bloom of his cheeks and showman-like expansiveness of his gestures – something hardened inside Jill, just as it had last night, when the feelings she’d been trying to avoid naming for months, if she was being honest with herself, had condensed into loathing.

  Never mind that this was a man she’d known for years, a man who had dined at their house, on more than one sozzled occasion – before Maya and the kids were around – passed out in their guest bedroom, and visited Stan in hospital. Jamie was someone whose faults – weaknesses, she’d thought of them, indulgently – were familiar enough to be amusing. He was someone she’d felt confident she could rely on, should the moment come. Only, when that moment had come, her protégé seemed to have taken every opportunity to ‘push himself forward’, as Alex had put it. And for him to have undermined her and Stan in front of the clients when they both felt so very reduced already, was deplorable.

  Was that what this was about? Some displaced anger at what her life and marriage had become? ‘It’s not easy being a carer,’ the radiotherapy nurse had said last week, giving Jill’s arm a little squeeze. And it wasn’t so much the obviousness of the statement and the empathetic tone that had grated as the dowdiness of that word – a word Jill didn’t want to be connected to. Over the years she had watched motherhood reduce her friends, and when it became apparent that she would never be one, she’d secretly felt thankful. At least she’d be able to forge ahead, uncluttered by some little person’s overwhelming needs. And that’s what she’d done – until now. So no, as it turned out, being a carer wasn’t easy.

  Jill scanned back over the years and saw Jamie in his early thirties, when she and Stan had brought him into their company: just as cocky but skinnier, harder working, and with more hair. That barrow boy aggressiveness had served him well in the Essex-based company he’d come from, and made him stand out from the other candidates who’d applied for the job. But it had also worried Jill at first: was that brashness really going to win over BWL’s high-end clients? And yet they’d taken a chance on Jamie and within days of him starting had understood the extent of his reach. There weren’t many people who could disarm men and charm women. But the real surprise was that Jamie wasn’t just about playing to an audience. He could do the one-on-ones, too. Not just with clients, either, but with his colleagues and underlings – with Paul and with her.

  They’d promoted him quicker and more frequently than anyone in the history of the company, but in that time she’d never noticed his deference towards her eroding. When had that started? When had Jamie gone from looking up to her, to down? Because, now that she thought about it, th
ere had been signs well before Stan was diagnosed: phone calls to Jill that Jamie had somehow intercepted; meetings he’d stepped in and taken ‘because you’ve got bigger fish to fry’; project summations she’d have been sketching out only to find Jamie had written up days in advance. At the time she’d interpreted this as keenness. And when a few clients of hers had started gravitating towards her junior, she hadn’t always minded. But often it had grated.

  There was the pompous Milanese developer who had never quite got over the queasiness of doing business with a woman. ‘I just feel more comfortable with Jamie – like we have more in common,’ he’d finally come out and said, as though it were as acceptable to declare an anatomical preference for the person one wanted to do business with as it was to request tea rather than coffee in a business meeting. And perhaps Jamie hadn’t been quite as appalled on her behalf as he should have been. He’d come back quickly – too quickly? – with ‘Well, whatever it takes to make the sale, right?’ So Jamie was an opportunist and a misogynist. But a predator who would trade in every ounce of loyalty to her and Stan for his own glory?

  ‘Stan?’ Jill knew she should let her husband sleep, but she felt an urgent need for him, and she hadn’t let herself need him in months.

  ‘Mmm …’ Opening one eye and then shutting it again, he murmured, ‘How long have I been out?’

  ‘Long enough to get a little pink.’ She smiled.

  Perching beside Stan on his lounger, Jill rubbed more cream into his temples before turning to gaze out at the packed Prince Regent floating restaurant as it passed.

  ‘You OK, darling?’

  ‘Better than I was this morning. What a good idea this was.’

  Taking his wife’s hand, Stan began to trace the lines of her palm the way he did when she was tired or overworked. ‘How’s the headache?’

  ‘Almost gone.’

  He nodded, patient.

  ‘And everything else?’

  Straightened up and with a bit of colour in his cheeks, he looked like the old Stan – like someone strong enough to confide in. Because they’d never had any secrets, not in thirty-five years. And not telling him about last night was giving her indigestion.