Now You Know

by Nora Valters

  But I don’t move. I have to know more about this supposed email. “When was that email sent?”

  She purses her lips at me, but when she realises I really want an answer and won’t be going anywhere until I get one, she squints at her screen.

  “About fifteen minutes ago. Soon after we came out of the CozMoz meeting.”

  “I went to the toilet straight after,” I exclaim, as if I’ve solved the mystery. “I wasn’t anywhere near my laptop to write it.”

  She shakes her head sadly at me as if I’m still trying to weasel my way out of it. “Did you take your phone to the toilet?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have your work emails on your phone, yes?”

  “Er, yes…” She’s got me there.

  She shrugs and opens up her hands. “Well, there you go.”

  Yes, I could’ve written an email while sat on the loo having a wee. But I flipping well didn’t.

  “And it’s definitely from me? From my email address?”

  Madeline tilts her head and raises her eyebrows, as if to say: do you think I’m stupid? Of course it’s from your bloody email address.

  But I persist, “Can you check? Please?”

  She looks at her screen, clicks twice, and says, “Yep. Definitely sent from you.”

  I can see by the look on my MD’s face that she’s bored of this conversation now, and if I push it any more, I’m likely to be frogmarched out of the building by the security guard on the ground floor.

  So I stand and leave her office. Inexplicably – and automatically – I say, “Thank you,” on the way out and reprimand myself because that somehow suggests I’m guilty.

  I fly back to my desk, curse as I have to unlock my screen and my laptop takes the longest few seconds to load up. I open my emails, clicking straight into Sent Items and scroll through the top few emails.

  There’s no email there to Madeline. I order the emails by name, and I see the last email I sent to Madeline was on Friday – and it’s now Tuesday.

  I click into my Deleted Items folder, in case it’s in there. It isn’t. Could it have been permanently deleted out of there? Why though?

  “You’re kidding me,” I exclaim and sense my team’s ears perking up.

  “Something up?” Finn asks.

  “All fine.”

  He nods.

  But everything is NOT fine. There is no email. What is Madeline going on about?

  I deliberately work late. I’ve stewed all day over this non-existent bitchy email and realised I have to see it to believe it. Everyone on my team has already left for the night. It’s not unusual for me to be the last person to leave.

  One of the website designers sticks his head around to our area and confirms I’m about to be the last person in the office. I say goodnight and listen as the door shuts, and there’s complete silence. I count to ten, put on my coat and grab my bag, then wander around the office, shouting, “Hello? Anyone still here?” and looking in all the meeting rooms, just to double-check.

  When there’s no reply and I’m confident I’m alone, I stand in front of Madeline’s office. I spend a moment geeing myself up because snooping and being sneaky is absolutely not my usual modus operandi.

  My legs want to turn and hurry away, but I force them through my boss’ door. I have to know about this email. I’m not a liar. I have never sent spiteful, rude emails about other members of staff. I’m offended that Madeline even entertains the idea that I did. But her word is law in this organisation, and if she says I sent that email, then I did – and no one, not even HR, will believe otherwise.

  I don’t turn the light on in case someone on the street below should see, somehow know this is her office and that she’s already left, and then go and tell her. I creep towards her desk and past her chair and marvel that this is the first time in four years that I’ve ever been on this side of it. My heart pounds, and I take a mental note of exactly where the mouse is before I shake it to see if Madeline’s office laptop is still on.

  It is – she hasn’t powered it down. The lock screen pops up, and I type in Madeline’s password that she so casually told me on Friday: Whittaker123.

  I open her emails and look in her Inbox. As I see emails from clients, colleagues, HR and personal contacts, I feel as if I’m violating an unspoken rule – you don’t look in other people’s emails! – and guilt hits me.

  But I have to find this email I was meant to have sent.

  I try not to read any subject lines and skim through the senders of today’s emails to find my name. Not there. She’s probably filed the email somewhere. She has a lot of folders, and to look through them all would take hours. I find one called ‘People’ and guess it might be HR related so click in that. It has about fifty subfolders. I notice one called ‘Rick’, the name of the creative director who mysteriously resigned, but can’t see my name. I click into the ‘PR’ folder and see emails from me, but mostly about recruitment and performance reviews.

  Finding this email among thousands is proving harder than I thought. I decide to look in Sent Items in case she forwarded it to someone – maybe the outsourced HR woman – but no joy. Then I search for my name, and thousands of emails come up. I scroll through, but there’s no email there that I haven’t sent.

  So I search for ‘bitch’ but only find a couple that I’ve sent moaning that a journalist was a ‘bit of a bitch’ at an event. What other words might I have used in the email? I try ‘doing my head in’ which is a favourite phrase of mine, but only one email pops up from three years ago where I was moaning about a nightmare client, who we ended up firing. I check in the Deleted folder, but nothing to be found.

  Frustrated, I slap the desk. I spot the printer in the corner – Madeline has her own while the rest of the office, all two hundred-odd people, share just two others. There are a few sheets of paper on top. Perhaps she printed it out?

  I sift through the sheets of paper. Not there.

  “Argh!” I shout out loud. “Where is this sodding email?”

  I go through Madeline’s Inbox a second time. But the email is definitely not there. Has she deleted it entirely from her system? Did she make it up?

  Something is seriously wrong here.

  Leaving the mouse precisely where I found it, I exit Madeline’s office, leaving the door ajar, just how she likes it. Movement catches my eye, and every hair on my arm stands on end – there’s someone else in the office. I look up.

  A few metres away is the graphic designer. He stares straight at me, and we eyeball each other. My heart thuds in my chest. I’ve just been caught coming out of Madeline’s office, looking guilty as hell.

  “Just popping a doc on the boss’ desk,” I say quickly and plaster on my thickest smile. It does nothing to help my cause: I still look – and now sound – guilty as hell.

  “Yeah, sure, cool,” he replies and shrugs. Then, as if he feels the need to explain his presence in the office, he adds, “Was having a drink over the road, and an idea for a client just like – ping – came to me, and I have to get it down before I forget it.”

  His voice slurs, and I expect he’s had more than one drink. “Great idea,” I say cheerily as I head towards him. His desk is right by the door to the car park. “Sometimes my best ideas come to me when I least expect them.”

  He hmms, but isn’t paying me any attention. He intently focuses on sitting and on turning on his computer. He puts his satchel bag on his desk, and it clinks.

  He winces and glances at me. It’s obvious he’s got a few bottles of beer in there. And alcohol is only allowed in MBW on Fridays. I pretend not to notice.

  “See youuu,” I singsong as I pass him, and he half-heartedly waves at me.

  He’s drunk. And, by the sounds of it, about to get even more plastered. He hopefully won’t even remember seeing me exiting Madeline’s office, let alone tell her in the morning. I let out a very long breath. Whew, close call.

  I hurry to my car. It’s the only one left
in the car park, and I walk round to the passenger side to see BITCH scratched in tall letters. With that, the porn, and the bitchy email, I realise I haven’t made any progress on finding out who sent those texts and the lingerie last night.

  I sigh. What a day. I can’t wait to get home to talk to Akshay about it. Yes, he was a bit off with me this morning, but I’m certain that will have passed. We’re a unit, a team, soon to be married. He’ll help me work this out.

  9

  I drive home with my mind working on overdrive and the guilt of prying in Madeline’s emails churning in my gut. It was necessary, I keep reminding myself, but that doesn’t placate my conscience, which tut-tuts disapprovingly in my head. And all it did was throw up more questions.

  I see Akshay’s car parked up outside our house. I find a space up the road and pull my hood up to run through the pouring rain to the front door.

  I let myself in. The house is quiet and dark, but Akshay’s car keys are on the sideboard near the front door. Strange he hasn’t turned any lights on – he usually always switches the front porch light on if he gets in before me.

  “Babe, are you home? I’ve had the most bizarre day! OMG, I need to talk it through with you.”

  I wrangle with my damp coat, hang it on a hook and pull off my sodden shoes. Why isn’t he answering me? I listen for the shower but can’t hear anything. Maybe he’s gone for a walk. But in this rain? Doubtful.

  But I sense his presence. At least, I hope it’s his presence.

  “Akshay?” I try again, more tentatively this time.

  There’s a faint glow coming from the lounge, so I head there. The light is from the telly, which is on, but seems to be paused with a fuzzy image on the screen that I can’t make out.

  Akshay is sat bolt upright on the sofa, staring into space. He’s still in his suit. Odd. He likes to preserve his workwear and is very particular about getting changed as soon as he gets in. The suit is crumpled and his shirt creased. His face is ashen, and his hair, normally so neatly gelled, is chaotic, sticking out at all angles as if he’s run his fingers through it or grabbed and twisted at it.

  I move nearer to him. “Are you okay?”

  But he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t even acknowledge my presence.

  My heart leaps up my throat. He’s not moving or blinking.

  “Akshay!”

  But his chest faintly rises and falls, and the horror that I was looking at a dead body subsides. I wave my hand in front of his face to break his trance.

  “Babe?” I say softly and gently sit on the sofa next to him.

  He finally turns his head to look at me. It takes a long time, as if he’s been sat in that same spot for hours and all his muscles have locked into place. I can almost hear the creaking.

  His haunted, red-rimmed eyes pierce my soul as he looks at me, as if I’m the harbinger of doom and he’s resigned to his fate. I see trails of now-dry tears on his cheeks. He’s been crying? Oh no. Has one of his family had an accident or… worse?

  “What’s happened? Talk to me.” I reach for him.

  But his harsh voice stops me short and cuts me in two. “How could you?”

  He chokes on the words, and tears stream down his face.

  Akshay upset is awful, and I would do absolutely anything to comfort him, but I’m puzzled by his words. “How could I do what?”

  He gestures to his lap, and I see a small plastic tub on his knee, the kind that takeaway food comes in. It’s full of what look like scraps of paper and handwritten notes. I stare at the tub and then at him, attempting to make sense of it.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  He looks at me with undisguised contempt for so long that I want to shrink into myself and away from his severe gaze. I don’t though. I hold his eye contact. This is not how Akshay usually behaves, and it’s clear something is very off.

  Eventually, he says, “I didn’t go into work today.”

  Oh, crap. There’s a problem with his job? He’s worked at that place for twelve years. Has he been made redundant? What does that bundle of notes have to do with it?

  He continues, “I pretended to leave this morning, then headed back here after you left. I searched the house top to bottom. I had to see if the letters that guy mentioned on text yesterday existed. I couldn’t find them. But then I thought to look outside. And I discovered this tub. You hid it pretty well out there, didn’t you, Lauren. But I found it.”

  There’s now no mistake. This is about the dirty texts from yesterday. I reel from the revelation that he deceived me about going to work, but that’s not a priority right now. I point at the things in his lap. “I’ve never seen that stuff before in my life.”

  “I read the letters. They’re all dated over the two months I’ve been away.”

  “What letters?”

  Akshay picks one off his lap and reads it out loud. “‘Sexy Lauren, missing you today. Us both being at work sucks. But so happy I can drop this off at yours so you can see it the moment you get through the door. I hope your work event went well. Can’t wait to see you tomorrow night. I also can’t wait for the time we’ll be together. I know you’re waiting for A to get home from New York to do it, but I wish it could happen now. I want to scream our relationship from the rooftops. All my love.’” He flaps the note in my face. “That was dated on October tenth. I checked back through our messages, and you had a work event that night. The following night, a Friday, you told me you were knackered and having an early night. But you weren’t, were you? You were seeing him.”

  I shake my head, completely perplexed. Disoriented as if lost at sea and facing a huge incomprehensible storm. Confusion crashes against me in great chaotic waves, and I cling on as Akshay’s accusation flips everything upside down.

  “Listen to me, that’s not mine. I have never seen it before. I have never read it before. I don’t know who is doing this or how they know so much about us, but it’s made up. It’s not real. It’s not what you think it is.”

  But Akshay is not swayed. “I found the USB.”

  “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” I insist, but Akshay isn’t really listening to me. He’s still in a daze.

  “The note said ‘thought you might like to see our home movie from last night at mine’. I plugged the USB into the telly and…”

  He picks up the remote, which is resting on his other knee, and presses play.

  For the second time that day I see porn on a big screen. I look away. “Turn it off!”

  “Watch it,” Akshay growls so emphatically that I look back.

  This isn’t the slickly filmed porn from earlier, this is obviously a video shot on a phone of a man and woman having sex in what looks like a normal bedroom. It’s not clear what’s happening and is a bit dark and blurry, but then the couple change position, and there’s a straight-on glimpse of the woman’s face before it’s obscured again.

  That face is mine.

  My legs turn to jelly and give way. I drop down onto the rug between the sofa and coffee table and cup a hand over my mouth in shock. Akshay rewinds the video, presses play, and pauses it precisely on my face as if he’s been doing this all day.

  “That’s you,” he says very slowly, very deliberately, with zero doubt.

  “That’s not me,” I say, but it comes out so weakly that it sounds like a lie.

  For the second time today I’m denying something that others are convinced I’ve done. I couldn’t find the email that Madeline accused me of sending, but this – this movie – is irrefutable. I’m looking at my own face on the telly. And Akshay is looking at my face attached to a body that is having sex with a man who is most definitely not him.

  Even though it’s not me, it is me.

  “It must be fake. My face edited in somehow,” I say, but it sounds implausible even to my own ears, and I know it’s the truth.

  Akshay explodes off the sofa, his arms in the air, the tub and notes scattering. “You’re having an affair! Ju
st admit it. Stop lying to me. I can’t bear it.”

  “I’m most definitely not having an affair!”

  “Lauren – stop. Just stop.” He points at the telly. “That is you. With another man.”

  “It’s my face, yes, but that isn’t me.”

  He yells and chucks the remote at the telly. The back cracks off, and one battery flies out and hits the coffee table with a clunk. The sound gives me a start.

  “You’re a liar!”

  “I’m telling the truth – you have to believe me. It’s fake. This is all fake.”

  “Shut up. Everything that comes out of your mouth is poison. I loved you so much. I gave you everything I could. I devoted myself to you, and you betrayed me.”

  He lunges towards me on the floor but stops himself short and instead grabs the edges of the coffee table and tips it over onto its side. Magazines, candles, a small vase of flowers, and drink coasters fly everywhere.

  Akshay turns to me, and I scuttle backward out of the way. I’ve never seen him so enraged. He pants heavily, his face is screwed up tight in an ugly, dangerous expression, and a taut vein pulses in his neck.

  He leans over me and shouts in my face, “You’ve shamed me, Lauren. I can never forgive this disloyalty.” He must see the terror on my face, for he pulls away and composes himself.

  His nostrils flare, and he scrunches his mouth. He gestures to me and then to him. “This. Us. It’s done.” In a calmer – but just as vicious – tone, he says, “We’re over. The engagement is off.”

  Thunder booms in my ears, and lightning strikes across my vision. I slump against the sofa.

  “Don’t do this.” I reach out for his hand. “You’re making a mistake.”

  But he yanks his hand away, stomps out of the lounge without a second glance and up the stairs.

  I can’t move.

  My world, my love, my heart shatters. No more engagement? He’s leaving me? This can’t be real. I must be trapped in some kind of nightmare.