Celeste had hoped a pregnancy would bring her and Alex closer together, but it hadn’t. They knew so much about each other when they were living in Krabi all those years ago. How well could she say she knew Alex now? And when was the last time he genuinely asked her about her career aspirations? She couldn’t just blame him, though. Before pregnancy she had spent more time in the office than at home. When they were together they had attended a whirlwind of parties fuelled with alcohol and one-upmanship. People they knew referred to them as the Mid-Level’s power couple. The couple ‘everyone wants to be,’ Jinny had once said, but what good was that if their marriage was falling to pieces and both of them had failed to notice. After looking at his account for another couple of minutes she logged out and minimized the screen just like she had found it.
She was about to shut down the computer when her eyes were drawn back to the folder labelled Miscellaneous on his desktop. It was odd. Alex was the sort who labelled things as they were. Photos were stored in Photos, finances would be stored in Finances. Why would Alex need a folder of miscellaneous items? She felt a knot tighten in her stomach as she moved the cursor towards the folder. Her fingers stuck to the mouse as she slightly lifted her index finger to double click. Inside the folder were three more folders labelled High Stock, Low Stock and Ultimate Stock. More trading stuff? She clicked on the folder called High Stock. It contained a couple of spread-sheets detailing accounts and property transactions. She was bored now.
Lifting her bowl of now cold porridge, she stuck her spoon in it. Her appetite had returned. She put her hand on the mouse and directed the cursor towards the start button to switch the machine off. But her gaze caught the orange post-it note again. Why had Kealana given her this password? She must have wanted Celeste to know something – something that was on Alex’s computer.
It didn’t make sense for Kealana to break Alex’s trust for nothing. The only reason she could think of was that there was something on his computer which would drive a wedge between them. She was certain that that’s what Kealana had wanted from the start, because she didn’t think Celeste was good enough. But if Kealana wanted to break them up, wouldn’t it have been easier to poison Alex’s mind against her and not the other way around? Alex believed everything Kealana said, whereas Celeste couldn’t stand the woman. It just didn’t make sense.
She let go of the mouse and put her bowl down. Kealana had watched her every move since day one. Was it because Kealana didn’t like her? Or was Kealana looking out for her? And if Kealana was looking out for her then there was something on Alex’s computer she wanted her to find. She felt a mild pain in her abdomen and rubbed her belly until it subsided.
With this in mind she had to take a better look. ‘It’ll be like ripping off a plaster,’ Celeste said to the watching silver Buddha before she moved the cursor over the folder labelled Low Stock.
52
Barnet, North London
Celeste took the glass of water Elaine offered her with trembling hands. She took a sip. Her mouth was dry and she felt sick to the stomach. This was what Elaine had wanted. The unravelling had started.
‘It’s a terrible thing to find out your husband’s been keeping secrets from you.’
Celeste held on to her bumblebee pendant, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. She looked at the clock. There wasn’t long now. The gentle tick of the second hand jarred in her ears. ‘You need to understand what was in those folders so you understand my state of mind at that point. That picture of me.’
Elaine took the photograph from the desk and passed it to Celeste.
She examined it and ran her fingers over her face. ‘I lost everything.’
Elaine nodded. ‘Is that what made you pick up the knife? Was it because of what you found in those folders?’
Celeste took a deep breath.
‘Is that what made you try and take your own life?’
‘Sometimes I think back to that week I was left alone at home, seven months pregnant, without a job. No real friends. Just Ruby and Kealana for company and I wonder if Alex had set it up that way. I was so helpless.’ Celeste shook her head. ‘Would it have been better to have stayed in the dark? Ignorance is bliss and all that crap.’
‘Sometimes we bury our heads in the sand. We don’t want to face reality, and there is a reason for that. It’s because we feel we can’t cope with the truth. We’re afraid of reality. It does sound like Alex was isolating you from the real world and trying to induce a sort of learned helplessness on you so that you would be scared to do anything that went against him.’
‘I spent a large part of my life living a lie. I can’t stop thinking about that.’
‘The life you lived in your past makes you the person that you are today. Don’t overthink it. Sometimes it is best not overthink things.’
‘And what makes you an expert?’
Elaine winced.
Celeste dropped her head. It wasn’t right to be angry at Elaine. She was only trying to help. She looked at the clock again. She had to continue. Time was running out.
‘What I found out about Alex was horrific. It ruined me. I realised that I didn’t know this man who I’d lived with for years. When I met him I was a strong woman, determined to succeed in my career. Yet he managed to somehow manipulate me. When I clicked on that folder, Low Stock, it was the beginning of the end for me and for my unborn child, but I didn’t see any of that coming.’
53
5th August 2012
Mid-Levels, Central and Western District, Hong Kong
The Low Stock folder contained eight further folders, neatly numbered. Alex was so methodical, so controlled, so different from Celeste’s ad hoc ways he had once loved. Once when he was looking at some of her latest designs and passing comment, back in the early days of their relationship, he had confessed that part of the attraction was the lack of organization in her life.
‘You just want to organize me, don’t you?’ she had teased and he had mock scowled, playfully telling her he would never. Yet how much she had changed under Alex’s influence? Her guarded conversations with Maryanne, her designs neatly ordered by season. At first he had nagged her to keep her clothes tidy as well. He couldn’t fathom how, even with a maid, her wardrobe was always in a mess and she enjoyed him commenting on her chaotic ways. But when was the last time he had pleaded with her for order? She couldn’t remember.
She clicked on the first folder, expecting to find boring accounts like High Stock had contained. But the folder contained just a word document. It had a photograph of a woman with all her details. It looked like a job application. Her name was Suzan Blythe. She was twenty-five and worked as an administrator at Global West. She scanned the rest of the document looking for anything out of place. Nothing. She tried the next three folders. They were all the same. She drummed her fingers on the table as she opened folder five. This contained the details of a Julie Christie, but this folder was different. It didn’t just contain a word document. It also contained airline tickets – business class tickets from London to Hong Kong and a credit card statement showing meals out in the upmarket Wagyu Steakhouse just around the corner from their apartment. Finally there was a pale yellow pdf receipt from an expensive boutique showing a twelve thousand Hong Kong Dollar spend.
Who were these women and why would Alex have all their details, their CVs? An unnerving thought hit her. Could they be professional escorts or prostitutes? They didn’t look like prostitutes. But what did a prostitute look like? Were these women that Alex had slept with? Women he had paid to sleep with? Is that what escort services did these days – sent resumes for their clients to choose?
It could all be innocent, she reasoned, applicants for a job post at Renshaw. But the details on the forms didn’t say why they wanted a job. It was all very basic – not like job resumes she had seen before. And the women were good looking, but not of a type. One was blond, another brunette, one with glasses, two looked Asian.
The receipt and the airline tic
ket bothered her. She looked at the receipt again. It was dated a couple of years ago. A year or so after they had moved into their apartment in the Mid-Levels. Alex had started to travel quite a bit by then, returning with expensive gifts. The twelve thousand dollar receipt must have been a gift for her around that time – perhaps a handbag or piece of jewellery. She clicked on folder number six. Inside was a folder called Bear. Bull or Bear. She remembered the saying, it had something to do with Bill. She could almost hear Bill call out to Alex, ‘Are you Bull or Bear today?’ She opened the Bear folder and clicked on the jpeg within it.
As she expected there was another picture of a woman, but this time no bio although the face was familiar. She couldn’t place her, but there was definitely something about her beach blond hair that made her memorable. Celeste cocked her head to one side and then to the other as she studied the picture. The woman was older than the other girls. Underneath the picture the name Rachel Blake was typed out.
Blake.
She knew that name. Celeste put her in her late twenties. She wore a provocative black dress with a plunging neckline, which made her look sexy, if a little desperate. She tried to place her face but she just couldn’t.
Celeste came out of Rachel’s file. ‘Bull or Bear,’ she said out loud. She had asked Bill once what it meant. ‘It’s to do with the financial markets,’ Bill had said. ‘Bull is good. Bear is bad,’ Alex had said with a grin. She had ignored them. At the time she wasn’t interested in financial trends, but now she considered if there was a subtext to the joking around.
She was about to click out of the folder when her breath caught. Of course she had seen Rachel before. She had heard the name Blake as well. Alicia had told her about Rachel Blake, a friend she had been occasionally meeting. She thought back to that cold and miserable day in London when she had fought with Alicia because she had been sleeping with Bill. That was the day she had been to The Emerald Rooms with Angela.
Whilst Angela had been powdering her nose, Celeste had been accosted by a drunken and unruly woman – a woman who claimed to be sleeping with William. William was Bill. Voracious, philandering, yet fucking attractive, Bill, using different forms of his name! And Rachel Blake was the unsuspecting victim. It was ironic that Alicia had been friends with Rachel. It was possible that they were sleeping with Bill at the same time. It was positively disgusting.
Celeste put her head in her hands and laughed. This was all about Bill. Alex was keeping records of the women Bill had slept with. It was ridiculous and childish, but at least it exonerated her husband. How foolish she was to think Alex had been screwing around. The Alex she had committed to for life was not a cheater, anything but that. His mother had been her saviour in that respect.
But why would Bill want to keep details of the women he slept with? Was it just a trophy thing? Celeste shook her head. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t her problem. Poor Angela!
As Celeste’s heart rate returned to normal she decided she had done enough prying for one day. It was late morning already. She rubbed her belly. ‘Everything is going to be fine,’ she reassured her unborn child. ‘You are going to be the most loved child, ever.’
She instinctively clicked on the sub-folder labelled Notes in the Bear file and wondered if Alicia would be featured here or perhaps there would be a Bull folder for her. Thinking of Alicia now made her realize just how much she missed her friend. She felt alone looking through these sordid files. She wanted a partner for her crime – If Alicia was in on it they would laugh at how pathetic Bill was, but she could hardly call her now.
54
5th August 2012
Mid-Levels, Central and Western District, Hong Kong
The Notes sub-folder within the Bear file contained intimate pictures of Rachel, some out and about, some in what looked like an office with a large desk. Celeste had never been inside Bill’s office, but it was well decorated. She skimmed passed these pictures. There were streams of saved conversations between RB and WH – Rachel Blake and William Harris. She scanned their first recorded conversation.
RB: Say you love me
WH: You know I do.
RB: Feeling lonely. Why do you always have to travel so much?
WH: I have to earn a living.
RB: :(
WH: :( :( I miss you.
This wasn’t the Bill Celeste knew. Smiley faces were for teenagers and young lovers, not Bill. How did he find the time to do all this? He had a business to run, a wife to love and two adorable children. There were streams of conversation that looked like it had been automatically saved from an instant messaging service. They talked about where they would meet for lunch or what they were watching on television in their separate homes. No mention of Angela or the kids anywhere. No wonder Rachel was in a state that day. She must have only just found out about Angela. She wanted to feel sorry for her, but Rachel shouldn’t have been so naïve. Didn’t she question why her boyfriend was away so much? Or had she known that Bill was married? Perhaps she had been given the same sob story Alex had given her about how evil Angela really was.
Scrolling through, Celeste passed the next half hour reading their conversations. They made her laugh, but mostly she cringed. It was like reading the script of a badly written play, yet she couldn’t drag herself away. It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do. It was fascinating reading the words of two people who were having an affair. She continued to scan the conversations. Bill had taken Rachel to Paris and it looked like they even shared a flat in London. How had he managed to conceal this without Angela knowing? Or was Angela just burying her head in the sand?
Celeste looked at her watch. It was nearly lunchtime. She was about to close the document when a familiar name jumped out at her further down the page she was on.
RB: How’s Cross?
WH: That subject is taboo. Let’s leave it there.
RB: L
Celeste frowned. Why was Bill talking about her boutique? Well not so much her boutique, but Mr Harris…’
‘Fuck!’ Celeste said, jumping to her feet, her heart pounding in her chest. ‘You have got to be kidding me!’ She paced Alex’s study, occasionally looking back at the computer screen. ‘No way,’ she said again. The Harris she had conversed with at Cross was from South Africa. He had the accent. But that was all that it was – an accent, and she more than anybody knew just how good Bill had been at accents. How he could switch from his normal voice to that of Popeye or Frank Spencer without so much as a stutter, and his Somerset farmer’s accent had her fooled the first time she had met him. As the discovery slowly sank in she realized just how stupid she had been. How could she not have seen it before? Bill or William Harris, the elusive Mr Harris, had bought Maryanne out and facilitated the whole Hong Kong store.
Bill had never been involved with retail for as long as she had known him. He was in carbon credits and vineyards! There was no way Bill would have gone into retail like this, which was why she had never linked their surnames. ‘Harris is a common name,’ Alex had said when she mentioned it once before, and she had dropped it. And Harris was a common surname.
Yet this conversation was on Alex’s computer. He must have known. And if he had known, then surely he was in on it as well. It made sense now why Alex seemed to know exactly what was happening at Cross, sometimes even before she did. Even Angela had known confidential information when they had met in London. Why had Alex not said anything to her? Why had Bill bought Cross in the first place? It had to have something to do with Alex. Just seconds ago she had ben laughing at Rachel and Angela’s naivety. How could she when she hadn’t even seen what was under her own nose.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She tried Alex’s number, but there was no answer. She didn’t leave a message. How dare Bill buy Cross and not tell her, all this time! The brand had not failed. Her designs had been so successful in Hong Kong, yet they closed the store. Bill had engineered all of it. She was sure of it. He hadn’t even the decency to g
ive her any notice of the closure. It was sick. She clenched her phone in her hand. ‘Lying bastard!’ she screamed.
Alex had to have known about this. She had asked him if he knew who this Harris was and he had lied to her face, without so much as flinching. What else was he keeping from her? She sat back down at the computer and rolled her shoulders back. She had seen a Finance folder somewhere on the computer. She needed to look inside it. A niggle in the back of her mind told her that Cross had nothing to do with Bill and everything to do with Alex. But Alex loved her. He wouldn’t do something like this. Had his need to organize and control her life been that intense? He could have set Bill up with a company to purchase the shares in Cross. It wasn’t rocket science. Even she could figure that one out. Had Alex really set up the whole thing?
When she started back at Cross after her trip around the world Cross was on it’s knees. She herself had given Alex the information he needed to enable Bill to wrangle a good deal out of Maryanne. She remembered Maryanne saying that Harris knew exactly where to look, despite their creative accounting. Of course he did. She had given them all the information they needed.
When Cross had been failing, an investor came in and saved the company, opening a store in Hong Kong in a global recession. It didn’t make financial sense. Yet she never questioned it, happy that things were going her way. She never stopped, even for once second, to see how much of a coincidence it was. Wasn’t it Alex who said that there were no such things as coincidences? Alex had to be behind it, yet she needed proof. She couldn’t believe the kind and generous Alex she married would do this. This wasn’t her Alex. Not her Alex at all.
55
5th August 2012
Mid-Levels, Central and Western District, Hong Kong
Celeste clicked out of the folder. She rubbed her tired eyes as a feeling of loss engulfed her. How many late nights had she put in at Cross – and why had she even bothered? Had Maryanne known? It wasn’t as if she could ask her now. Is that why she hadn’t come to their wedding? Sometimes I think it was better to go under than to sell to that man, Maryanne had said when Celeste had pressed her about the sale of the shares. Is that why she had given her the necklace? Whenever you feel weak and you do not know which path your life is taking, wear this pendant. It will guide you. And remember, if a bumblebee ever feels under attack it has a nice sting in its tail. She had stupidly thought Maryanne was worried about the closure of Cross Hong Kong, when all along Maryanne was concerned about Bill. And if Bill was involved, then so was Alex. He had to be. He definitely knew about it. It was on his computer. Why hadn’t Maryanne just told her about her deceiving husband outright?
Poison in the Water Page 21