“What happened to her?”
“I'll have to let her tell you that.”
“You know Nick I don't know if I am...was...in love with you or not. I found you attractive for sure, but it was only when Tavis told me after she'd left the post-races party how besotted you were with someone you didn't know...and when I saw how beautiful she was.. that I felt a near panic to do something. Jealousy I suppose. Or, if I'm totally honest, something missing from my own life.
“And I guess I instigated things in New York, so don't blame yourself too much.”
“Well, we were equally to blame, rather we were equally 'responsible'. One thing, I wouldn't want to take those few days back. I was happy as anything running from the waves at Coney Island.”
“I have to resign, what I did was unforgivable. And I lied to you.”
“Don't want you to resign, but what we do is up to you really. First thing is we have to draw a line under you and me as love partners whatever happens with me and Alex.
“I'm not going to come running to you if she tells me to piss off - that would be unfair – and you know, I don't know that you and me would last. We've been working together for quite some time now but you have to make an effort for us to truly bond – like you did with the Coney Island trip – you had to think about it and plan it. You'd get bored of doing that.”
“I loved it when I was there.”
“Yes, but we were only there because you had to think what might please me rather than what might please you.”
“I don't think you are so much in love with me that you couldn't continue to be my PA, or number two as you really are - Alex and me, or not. I think it was just an infatuation because you weren't being loved the way you deserve at home coupled with Alex arriving on the scene. We had plenty of time to seduce each other in the past. Why didn't we?”
“And other than being your PA?”
“If you preferred you could move to another position here or you could even move to the New York office. But what I don't want is for you to leave the company and even if you do I want to keep you as a friend.
“The only problem with you staying in your current position is that I have to tell Alex about you sending the texts and our tryst in New York, but, really, as strange as it seems for you who doesn't know her background, I do think she will understand.”
“Probably a better person than me then,” she replied.
“You are both good people, Kath, just different histories.”
“Well, I can't really make a decision until you have spoken to her, can I?”
“Believe me, I think we are going to be OK,” he tried to assure her.
“Fuck, why does life have to be so fucking complicated?” she asked, raising her head to look at the ceiling.
“If it was easy everyone would do it.”
She smiled at him.
“You know Nick, most people would have fired me on the spot after finding out what I had done. Maybe if you did that, then it would make things easier?”
“Easier for who? I'd lose my best worker and good friend and you'd be working for minimum wage in a cake factory.”
“Piss off,” she said, wiping away her tears of shame. “I mean it would make me not like you so much.”
“I knew what you meant, idiot,” he said, squeezing her hand.
She got up and straightened her jacket. “I'm really sorry for what I did. And please tell Alex too.”
“I'm sorry for what I did too. Now, go out and kick arse before our money-grabbing traders start selling our stock again.”
Chapter twenty-nine: Fast-walking on the beach.
She remembered Nick telling her about he had once gone to northern Spain and sat on a hotel balcony in Santander watching troops of people fast-walking the length of the beach, right by the water's edge, up and down, some of them many times. That's what got him into fast walking rather than jogging.
“You burn more calories walking than running - weird, isn't it?” he'd said, adding that the bonus was that you don't throw up or have a heart-attack at the end.
So that morning she went for a fast walk along Cromer beach. The first thing she thought as she set off was that she wished he was with her and the second was that fast-walking along the sea edge had yet to catch on in Britain. She was alone in practising the Spanish method of staying fit and felt more than a little conspicuous.
It was another bright day, the sun just starting to gain strength, but the wind off the sea at time was bracing and seagulls flapped in for scraps from the previous night like dive bombers with their piercing screeches above her head.
She'd had a phobia of birds ever since she was young, maybe six or seven when, with with her dad, a grebe from Central Park had flown into a deli.
In the confined space the bird panicked and flapped against her small head as it was trying to escape. She remembered even now how in her red coat she'd covered herself with her arms and screamed so loudly that her dad, as he later told her, was worried the NYPD would surround the place with guns prepped.
As she walked, she thought how long she might stay in Cromer. She'd got her room until the next day but after that the hotel was fully booked. If she stayed she'd have to find an alternative. She liked the place and was torn whether to go back to London sooner or later. Her foreboding was that on her return the real Nick would most likely be revealed.
When she got back from her walk she asked at reception whether any rooms had become available for the day after tomorrow but the receptionist apologised and said that unless there was a cancellation nothing would be available. She started to prepare herself for her return.
Nick called Kerry again that morning but she still hadn't any idea when Alex was coming back. “Do you want me to text you when I hear from her?” she suggested.
“That might be a good idea, thanks Kerry. You know...I won't hurt her.”
“You'd better not, Nick, or you'll have me to answer to,” she replied as light-heartedly as possible while still managing to convey the seriousness of the threat.
He smiled. “Don't worry Kerry. After what she has gone through...well, I promise...I will just be honest.
“In one way I feel responsible for her and maybe I've been a bit too eager to encourage her with you. So please that's all I ask.
“She doesn't realise what an amazing person she is.”
“I know, Kerry, believe me, I know.”
He reclined in his chair and wondered whether, like Manarola coming up the hill at Ascot, he'd find enough energy and power to see everything through to the finish.
Alex spent the next day, her last at Cromer, sitting in a deckchair on the beach with a book that she'd seen reviewed in a newspaper's top ten summer reading list, but most of the time she stared at the sea, its hypnotic, therapeutic effects preparing her for what might lay in store back in London.
As the sun cooled, she returned to her hotel to collect her bag and, with the room that had provided her refuge now otherwise occupied, used a toilet cubicle to change into jeans and a warmer top than she'd needed for weeks.
As the train slowed on its approach into Liverpool Street, she noticed the tingling in her stomach and breathed deeply before pressing the switch to open the doors.
She walked to her flat, changing her bag from one side to the other to lighten the increased load, and once inside and she had eaten the ready meal she had picked up at the station, she composed herself and hit the speed dial.
“Hi Kels.”
“You're back?”
“Yes, batteries recharged and ready to face the world.”
Kerry told her that there had been no problems in the office and that they even had been offered to pitch to a new financial website with serious backing. “And, you need to know...” she added, at the end, as delicately as she could, “Nick called.”
Her heart skipped.
“He wanted me to text him when you got home, but I thought I'd better check with you first?”
“Yes, sure, why not?” She paused. “We might get our contract back.”
“It's more than the contract, though, isn't it babe?”
“I guess so.”
“So I'll text him?”
“I'm tired of running.”
She spent the rest of the conversation telling Kerry about Cromer, the hotel, the Victorian architecture, the beach and the theatre at the end of the pier, and in enough detail to delay the time she might have to talk to him.
Kerry told her that Adrian and his new girlfriend were “on a break” and that she and Luke expected to exchange contracts on their new house in a few days.
“I'm so happy for you. Hope the house warming is going to be big and memorable,” Alex said.
“You bet ya.”
“I'll buy you some new pots and pans.”
“Well, Luke will need some stuff for the kitchen,” Kerry giggled.
There followed a moment of silence with neither knowing what to say but both thinking like twins.
“You sure you want me to text him?”
“We need to sort things, not only for me but the business.”
“He didn't actually give me a clue what he was thinking but I do hope he says what you want to hear.” She paused. “And, don't forget, I'm always here.”
“I know you are, the best friend ever...”
When she'd hung up, Alex felt alone and vulnerable again. She checked that her phone was not on mute and wondered whether he would call her that evening. He did, less than half an hour later.
“Alex.”
“Hi Nick.”
“We need to talk, and not on the phone. I'm coming over.”
“You're kidding, it's gone eleven.”
“See you in twenty,” he said before hanging up and without waiting for her reply.
Alex looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, her hair and face damaged by the salt of the sea, and quickly showered and applied cream before changing into T-Shirt and leggings. She hurried around the flat, hurling some clothes from the bedroom floor into the wardrobe and collecting cutlery that had been there from before her trip to put in the dishwasher.
The robotic vacuum cleaner that, given time, worked a treat on the wooden floors had barely completed a lap of the living room when she heard the purr of a black cab outside.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, she thought, as she squirted deodoriser. She went back to the bathroom and messed with her still-wet hair before the buzzer went. She readied herself and, without speaking on the intercom, pressed the button to release the front door.
“It's past my bedtime,” she said as she opened the door to her flat.
“Bedtime is meant for resting and you, Alex, never rest. I had a bruise to show for it.”
“Sit down,” she said, gesticulating to the small sofa that she had bought at IKEA.
“No, I don't want to sit down. You gave me time to think and now I want to tell you the results of that thinking which I could have told you before you went....wherever you fucking went. I love you Alex and I want to be with you and if you ever leave me again I will be...totally destroyed.”
She looked at him as hopelessly in love as she could imagine but she needed to know and held back her tears long enough to ask, “So you are not the man the text messages said you are?”
“I know who sent the text messages and for that I need to explain the same way you explained to me about your private detective, although this explanation is not nearly so tragic.”
“Go on,” she said.
“Can I smoke?” he asked pulling a cigarette from the packet and lighting it as she watched him without responding. Now he did sit down.
He was nervous as he took in the nicotine and prepared himself for the make or break confession.
“OK, the text messages came from Katherine and I did sleep with her in New York...”
“You piece of shit...” she shouted at him.
“It was the first time – and last time – that we'd slept together. It was before I slept with you...”
“Oh yeah, what three or four days before?”
“Please listen. I don't know how it happened. She was going through a bad time and both of us were feeling lonely and...well...it happened and it can't be undone. But I love you Alex, like no one before, and I want us to have a future and if you deny me that chance I will...”
“What. Go and find yourself some other tart to play around with?”
He tried to take her hand but she pulled away.
“Nick, did I not tell you what happened and how some evil bastard's dick or prick, or whatever you call it in this stupid country, ended up ruining my life – and, more importantly, that same dick denied a beautiful, wonderful human being the chance of seeing her seventh birthday, going to high school, university, getting married, having kids herself.
“I mean, what part of my daughter being murdered did you not understand?”
“I did not know that when I slept with Katherine.”
“And if you had known you wouldn't have fucked her out of pity for me?”
He looked at her. It was like the maze at Hampton Court with seemingly no way out.
“And she sent her first fucking message when I barely knew you – the night after the first day I'd met you.”
“It was a crush, nothing more. Tavis told her at the party that I had a thing for you – which I did from the very first time I saw your photo and read your background – and she decided to act, however badly. Also – in defence of her - with the knowledge we shared that you were not the person you purported to be.
“None of us at that time knew why you made up a new identity.”
“Get out of my flat,” she said blankly.
He got up and walked towards the door feeling more like a scorned child than one of Britain's most successful bankers.
“You need to think, Alex, you really do.”
“I do think all the fucking time. Don't you see, that's the problem,” she yelled at him.
“And it'll never stop. But you are giving up your life for a past that can't be changed. Do you thing Megan would want this?”
“You know fuck all about Megan, so shut the fuck up and get out of my flat.”
Chapter thirty: Sorting the mess.
They were flying back from a conference in Madrid when Katherine promised Nick she would “sort it”. He didn't ask 'how' because he didn't want to be involved in whatever she had planned.
Two more weeks went by and he had still not heard from her. He was trying hard to get used to the idea of a life post-Alex Anderson.
Alex found it difficult to immerse herself in work even though Suzanne had pointed out the company's increasingly perilous financial position. Kerry was finding it difficult to concentrate on work too, upset with herself over the encouragement she had offered to promote the relationship. Adrian worried about how long the company might last and missed the jokes and the banter of what had now become a sullen group.
It was on leaving the office one Friday evening that in her side vision she caught the blaze of silver hair on the opposite side of the road. It was Katherine. She tried to hide her face but the PA was there with a purpose, and determined.
“Alex, we need to talk,” she said, collecting her breath after running across the street.
She was shocked to see her again and, unprepared, quickly became flustered. “Nick sent you?”
“No, he doesn't know I'm here. I've come to apologise. And I'd like it if you would just give me the chance to explain.”
She walked quickly but Katherine matched her stride. “I don't want to be rude, but what is there to explain? You sent me quite scary text messages, one in the middle of the night. I don't know how that can be explained.”
Katherine kept walking beside her. She pushed back her hair. “I just want to try. I owe it to Nick...and to you...to try to put the record straight.”
Alex stopped and looked at her. “Nick and I had a fling, it's over now. It doesn't matte
r. You can go back to your shiny office and fuck each other silly – but I'd prefer it if you, him and everyone from Hensen stayed out of my life.”
She held up her hand for an oncoming cab but it stopped twenty yards before it got to her to pick up a group of men in suits.
“Do you think if I wanted to be with him – and if I thought Nick wanted it – I would be here now? Just a coffee, ten minutes and then you can tell me to get lost?”
She looked up. There was a café opposite. “I really don't know, Katherine.”
“You can decide on everything afterwards, at least be in possession of the facts.”
She again looked up and down the street to give her time to think. She wondered what Kerry, her rock, would advise. But what harm could there be if she listened for just a short time?
“You promise he didn't send you?”
“Absolutely. He has no idea I'm here.”
“Over there,” she said, nodding towards the café.
After they had sat down, Katherine stirred her coffee slowly even though it was unsugared.
“From the beginning,” she said, taking a deep breath.
“I remember your file coming through with your photo when you were pitching for the contract and I remember saying to Nick scornfully that you looked more like a model than a business woman. I know, a really disparaging remark, particularly from another woman.”
She played with the spoon, looking down to conceal the embarrassment she was feeling.
“If I'm totally honest I was hoping you wouldn't get the contract, though at the time it was just something in the back of my mind. The thought even surprised myself.
“There was no big plan to try to snare Nick, but obviously, looking back, there must have been something in my subconscious that was telling me to get away from my unhappy home life and try something new, and Nick might be the way out.”
Alex looked at her, trying to understand the defence she was making. “Not very professional, to want someone to lose a contract on the basis of appearance, is it?”
“Of course it's not – it's totally juvenile, but I'm being honest.”
Katherine went on to confess that the time when whatever thoughts she was having breached her subliminal to enter the forefront of her mind was after she, Alex, had left the post-race party.
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