by Celia Walden
CHAPTER 26
ALEX
‘Don’t. Just don’t.’
‘Hey,’ chided Alex, parking a sleeping Katie in her buggy by the table. ‘I’m not here to say I told you so. I’m not even going to ask what happened tonight. I’m just here to tell you what I tried to the other day.’
Pulling up a chair, she took in Nicole’s vacant eyes, the silt of mascara that had accumulated in the fine lines beneath, and her bare mouth. She’d never seen her without lipstick before, and there was something indecent about the nakedness of her face. ‘If we – you – get this right, you never ever have to see Jamie again. He’s gone; out of the picture.’
Low-ceilinged and sticky-walled, it wasn’t the sort of pub you brought a baby to – especially not past nine o’clock at night. But when Alex saw Nicole’s name flash up on her phone she guessed what had happened. ‘I can be in Victoria in half an hour. Find a pub and sit tight.’ Just over thirty minutes later, in she’d walked, ramming the pram into ankles and ignoring disapproving looks until she spotted Nicole sitting, two vodka tonics in, in the corner.
‘Look at me. Jamie’s good at this stuff – he specialises in screwing people over, remember? I’d have thought that was pretty clear by now. But please, please don’t feel stupid.’
Nicole threw her a watery smile. ‘Hard not to feel stupid when you’ve just ended your marriage for someone who doesn’t give a damn.’
Alex thought about this. ‘I actually don’t think it’s that. Jamie probably does give a damn. You two wouldn’t have lasted this long if he didn’t. He just …’
‘Gives more of a damn about Maya?’
‘I did try and tell you that.’
Elbows on the table, Nicole gripped her face in her hands. ‘And I knew! I knew there was something wrong when I saw them in the restaurant. The way she was just talking and he was listening, when it should have been the other way around.’
Alex shrugged. ‘I don’t think he ever had any intention of leaving her.’
Nicole stared. ‘Then why … ? What kind of a sick fuck does something like that?’
Another shrug. ‘You’re better placed to answer that than me. Maybe the whole restaurant thing was sort of foreplay to him? A turn on? From what you told me, Jamie’s, well … a sick fuck.’
Nicole made a noise, part sob part bleat, and Alex thought it best to press on.
‘But what turns him on isn’t just sick – it’s illegal, isn’t it?’
Nicole looked up blearily from her vodka and tonic, uncomprehending at first, then weary. ‘I told you …’
But Alex silenced her with a finger. ‘Let me finish. If what just happened tells us anything, it’s that you’ve got one hell of a blind spot where Jamie’s concerned. And I get that your relationship is “complicated”, as you put it, but if what you told me that night at my flat really happened between you …’
‘It was just once, and …’
Alex sat back forcefully in her chair, arms crossed. ‘Do you hear yourself? Just once is one too many times. So why protect him? Especially when you now know what kind of a man he is, and what he’s capable of?’ Alex leaned forward across the table. ‘When you know that he has it in him.’
Nicole blinked. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘It’s not about what I want. It’s about doing what you should have done months ago to protect other women from men like Jamie. And yes –’ this was going to be the tricky bit ‘– it would mean a bit of exposure for you. People would find out what Jamie did to you; well, HR would. But they would never have to know about what came before.’
Nicole was shaking her head. ‘No, no. That can’t happen. You see, I told Ben tonight that I was seeing someone else. If I then come out and accuse my boss of … no, I can’t have Ben hearing that stuff.’
‘He won’t even find out about it. Do you know how sealed up complaints of that nature are? The moment you make them you’re a victim: protected. And that’s as it should be. So even if Ben did somehow hear about it, he’d never in a million years think you’d had a consensual relationship with him.’ She hadn’t meant it to sound snide, but Nicole gave a dry laugh. ‘Look, I don’t care about what you did any more. We were all taken in by him – seduced and then scammed – weren’t we?’ Alex gave a small smile of encouragement. ‘But this will finish him off, no question.’
‘I see that, but …’ Nicole’s eyes had fixed on something at table level, and Alex took it for alcohol-induced wooziness before remembering the state of both sets of knuckles now, where another bleaching session had burned through the thin skin. ‘Your hands!’ Nicole slurred. ‘Alex, your eczema. You need to go to the doctor – that’s bad.’
‘Like I said –’ Alex pulled her shirt sleeve down as far as it would go ‘– looks worse than it is. Nicole, I need you to focus.’
‘I am.’
‘Good. So listen: you’re pretty exposed already, aren’t you? I mean, if I know about you and Jamie, then other people might?’
Nicole inhaled sharply, then nodded.
‘OK. And you can’t realistically be thinking that after what happened tonight you can carry on at BWL, looking Jamie in the face every day, sitting across from him in meetings, clinking glasses at the Christmas party? And when he starts another affair, which he will, probably has already, right under your nose – let’s say with that girl, Sophia …’
‘He won’t,’ said Nicole quietly. ‘From what I hear she won’t be having much more to do with him.’
Alex raised an eyebrow.
‘He took her out … and did something, came on too strong. Anyway, it freaked her out. And maybe …’ She trailed off, tried again. ‘Maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe he gets a kick out of pushing things. But Alex: I’m not leaving. Not when I’ve put everything, years, into getting where I am. Not when I deserve to make partner at BWL. I’m not going to let him take away everything I have left.’
Two young men standing at the bar threw Nicole a glance before turning back, too quickly, to their pints. And Alex watched this woman who was on the cusp of going from male fantasy to ghost digest the perilousness of her position in life. Alex had nothing to lose with age – she had always been invisible. And for all the pain this had caused her in her teens, she was grateful that she would never have to experience the kind of loss Nicole was facing now. A loss that, beneath her disgust at the notion of a woman’s ‘last good years’, she’d be all too aware of.
‘They’ll be needing to find another partner,’ Alex went on. ‘To replace Jamie, I mean.’
Nicole stared at her. ‘Right. And then what, they give me Jamie’s job? What about the police? What if he gets arrested and I have to give evidence or something?’
‘I promise you’ll be protected. No way are BWL going to want the whole thing made public, or the police involved. Only you can decide if you want that. They don’t legally have to, remember? Not unless you want to press charges – which you won’t. And whether you decide to call it what it was, or something less explicit – assault, maybe – Jamie will be booted out, which he should have been long ago for reasons a lot of people are already aware of. But the real reasons for his ‘exit’ will be kept hush-hush. Trust me, it’s not only perfect but the right thing to do.’
When Alex was done explaining the rest, Nicole simply nodded: ‘I need to lie down.’
Nicole was silent as Alex escorted her out of the pub and helped her into a waiting Uber. But after the door had been slammed shut and Alex had turned her attention to Katie, tucking the blanket a little closer around her twitching body in the cooling night air, she heard the whine of the window coming down behind her.
‘After this we’re done,’ Nicole called out. ‘You have to promise me that. No more plots, no more plans. Done.’
Alex was glad that a single brisk nod was enough to assuage the panic in the other woman’s eyes. She might never understand Nicole, but she had grown fond of her, she realised. And she wouldn’t have wan
ted to tell her an outright lie.
CHAPTER 27
JILL
‘What do you mean you can’t tell me? How are you not able to tell me?’
Well before Jamie’s muffled outrage had permeated the glass walls of his office, Jill knew that something was up. Like birds on a wire, the row of junior surveyors were twisting left and right in the long line of desk space they occupied opposite the lifts, swapping information with nods of certitude and peeps of disbelief. It was a scene she’d witnessed before, but only ever the morning after big office bashes.
Perhaps because she had never, even as a young woman, been the subject of gossip herself, Jill didn’t object to it as much as Paul and Jamie. In fact she’d always secretly enjoyed it. A few shrill assertions elevated themselves above the collected twittering – ‘Amy says he’s always been a complete perv with her, even grabbed her arse once’; ‘Sorry, total bollocks – don’t believe a word!’ – and she made a mental note to find out from Kellie which of the novelty-sock-or-tie-wearing brokers had been misbehaving.
That turned out not to be necessary. As she neared her office, she heard Jamie’s raised voice and established at a glance that it was indeed both Ross and Jayne from HR seated opposite him.
‘They’ve been in there nearly an hour,’ Kellie whispered. ‘Paul’s been trying to get hold of you. They’re saying someone’s accused him of harassment.’
Jill pulled her phone from her bag: four missed calls. She’d forgotten to unmute it when she’d left the hospital that morning. Her mind went back to Nicole’s crimson lips, bitter and thin: ‘I’m not going to report him. End of.’ Only, if she hadn’t, it looked like someone else had.
‘Damn it.’ Then, aware of the hush and the faces turned towards her: ‘Cancel my calls, will you? Where’s Paul now?’
‘In his office.’
‘Christ almighty.’ Paul didn’t move from his position at the window when he heard her come in, but stood there with his back to Jill, staring down at the ugly grey tangle of Hammersmith flyover beneath. ‘This is a mess and a half.’
‘Yup. Sorry. Phone was switched off.’
‘What do you know?’
‘Nothing. First I’ve heard.’
He turned. ‘They’re suspending him – effective immediately. He’s being told now.’
Jill could only nod.
Plonking himself back in his chair, Paul stared into the mid-distance. ‘This is bad Jill, really bad. The words HR are using … We need to distance ourselves and the company from this. Pronto.’
Whatever Jill had expected, it wasn’t this. Paul had always supported Jamie, defended him.
‘I thought you and Jamie …’
‘Me and Jamie what? Go for the odd pint together? Play the odd game of golf? Well, I’m not getting dragged into his tawdry mess, I’ll tell you that for nothing. Do you realise how toxic these kinds of allegations are?’
‘I’m aware.’
‘The papers get a hold of this and suddenly they’re using that word “endemic”, talking about a “culture of harassment” and passing BWL off as some kind of “old boys’ club”. It’s all right for you, Jill, you’re a woman.’
In any other circumstance, she would have laughed at this statement. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘I’m the only other old boy in the partnership, aren’t I?’
Jill didn’t have time to marvel at how egocentric fear can make people, how quickly that instinct of pure self-protection kicked in, expunging every prior loyalty.
‘Even if I don’t get drawn in on that level,’ he went on, ‘if this gets out, who’s going to want to do business with us? I can’t afford to take a hit right now. Not with the divorce all set to clean me out.’
‘Do we know who the woman is?’
Paul stared at her. ‘It’s Nicole Harper. I thought you knew.’
She tried to swallow. ‘No. I … right.’
‘But Jamie doesn’t know that. HR are holding the specifics back until he’s safely off the premises, at which point they’ll put the allegations to him, I suppose. But for the moment only you and I are to know there has been a complaint.’
‘People already know – Kellie and others. I heard them on the way in.’
‘Shit.’
Was this her fault? Her fault for not reporting the harassment Nicole had told her about – harassment that had led to assault?
‘At the moment it’s clearly a case of her word against his. But we do know she doesn’t want to press charges, which is … helpful – from our perspective, I mean.’
They fell into a sombre silence.
‘Were HR able to share anything else?’ she said eventually.
‘Until they’ve fully investigated the claims, they can’t tell us much more. But Ross did say that there’s often a pattern of behaviour in these instances, where after one woman makes an allegation …’
‘Jesus.’
‘So we’ve got that to look forward to.’
Paul picked at a dry patch on his scalp. ‘I mean this is someone we’ve both known, trusted and worked with for years! You …’ He pointed at her, and then realising how accusatory it looked, let his hand fall to the desk. ‘Well, you know him better than I do. You two were friends, proper friends. And I know he likes the ladies, but … Jamie’s not the kind of man who does this, is he?’
‘I have no idea what kind of a man Jamie is.’ Not so long ago, Jill would have been unable to keep the sadness from her voice. Now she felt like she was talking about a stranger. ‘I haven’t said anything to you but over the past few months Jamie’s behaviour’s been pretty out of order. Things I’d previously ignored have surfaced.’ She thought back to the email. ‘Incompetence. Disloyalty. Then there was the review. And I suspect he’s been pretty frank to you lately regarding his feelings about me. But all that pales. We should have seen it coming, shouldn’t we? Maybe we just didn’t want to.’
But Paul was shaking his head. ‘Nope. Not taking the blame for this. This is what I mean! And we both know that this you don’t come back from. Whether it turns out to be true or not, it doesn’t matter. Shit doesn’t just stick, it stains. We’ve got to get Jamie out of the picture. Gone.’
What would the old Jill do? The Jill who could handle even the worst professional ‘surprises’ in the most rational and efficient way possible. ‘I think we’ve got to push our personal feelings to one side and get on with putting together a statement in case we do need to say something publicly.’
It was as they were on their first draft, both still fervently hoping they’d never have to use it, that the sound of Jamie’s raised voice pulled them both to their feet. There had been one or two audible outbursts since she’d been sitting there in Paul’s office, but this one came from the office floor.
‘Here we go. But listen, I think it’s best that neither of us gets involved here, that we let Ross do his job.’
Too distracted by the very public confrontation now taking place between Jamie and Ross outside on the office floor, Jill could only nod.
The whole scene would have been comedic – the HR director was a good foot and a half smaller than Jamie and a lot rounder – had the situation been any less serious.
‘It’s a simple question. What’s Pete doing here?’
The two men were outside Jamie’s office door, and craning her neck Jill could see that the largest and most benign of BWL’s three regular security guards was hovering a little way off beside Jayne, Ross’s more imposing blonde deputy.
‘Can we please have this conversation inside your office?’
As though to remind him which way his office was, Ross held an arm out, and Jill was surprised that the stab of dislike she felt in that moment wasn’t for Jamie, but their officious HR director. All those years he must have spent watching this handsome, charismatic man lord it about the office. This was his moment. This might even be fun for him.
‘We’ve had a conversation, Ross,’ she heard Jamie counter, ‘and I
’m none the wiser on anything, except that I’m supposed to have assaulted – assaulted – an employee.’
Whatever the HR manager said next prompted a fresh outburst.
‘You can’t wait till I’ve left? You’ve got to do it now? No. Sorry. Anyway, I want my jacket.’
There were over a hundred people on their floor, but apart from the odd ringing phone and whirring photocopier, the place was silent, every neck artificially taut, every eye glued, unseeing, to its screen.
‘You’re seriously not going to let me get my jacket? What do you think I’m going to do in there?’ Jamie looked from Ross to Jayne. ‘Delete all my porn?’
On some murmured command Jill couldn’t hear, Pete moved briskly into Jamie’s office, got down on his knees and disappeared beneath the desk – reappearing seconds later with an electric cable in his hands.
‘Right, that’s it – I’m calling my lawyer. This is … unacceptable.’ There was that pathetically overbearing language again, as though Jamie believed he could save himself or some semblance of dignity with professional formalities. And Jill felt the creeping unease she’d fought off throughout her meeting with Paul earlier reassert itself. Something about this was wrong – and not in the obvious way. No, it was Jamie’s reaction that was wrong. Because as much as she’d started to question how well she knew this man, right now Jamie was genuinely astonished by the claims being made against him.
‘Ashley, can you get me Simon Oliver on the phone? Now. And I don’t care if he’s at lunch or the club. Tell him I need an immediate call-back.’
But his PA’s eyes were fixed on Jamie’s computer as it was carried out of his office.
‘Ashley?’
As the poor girl blinked at him, then Ross, Jill wondered if she might burst into tears.