The Greek Escape

by Karen Swan

  ‘Jack and Tom have had some huge fight.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘They’re barely even talking now.’

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. All I can tell you is they can barely even be in the same room together. They can’t look at each other. And every five minutes I’ve got one or the other of them coming up to me: Where are you? Have I heard from you?’

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m really sorry, Xan, I don’t know why they’re so agitated.’ Well, not Jack at least. ‘I’ll go and speak to them now. I didn’t realize me being out of the office for a few days would cause so much upset. It’s not like I haven’t been dealing with the others; I’ve been picking up all my calls.’

  ‘Not all. Like I said, someone’s been sticking her fingers in the pies. Oh, talk of the devil,’ he muttered, rolling his eyes and turning away as footsteps approached. Chloe half turned to see Serena coming straight for her. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks, her hands tightening into balled fists. She wouldn’t dare, she wouldn’t dare come up to her and act like nothing had happened, would she?

  She would, stopping when she was only a foot away. ‘Chloe, hey,’ Serena smiled, a bunch of papers in her arms clasped to her chest. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Chloe’s voice was clipped and she refused to smile, to pretend to be friendly to this woman after everything she’d done.

  Xan pretended to make himself useful, switching on the coffee machine and throwing open the cupboard doors, looking for their favourite capsules.

  Serena ignored him, as she always did, and if she had picked up on Chloe’s abruptness, she wasn’t showing it.

  ‘Thank God you’re back. I’m sure you’ve heard it’s been so crazy here this week. I don’t know what’s going on – something in the air.’

  Chloe didn’t reply; she refused to do anything that might make Serena comfortable: speak, smile . . . There was a short silence.

  ‘So anyway, I fielded a few calls for you while you were abroad. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘It’s a few calls, Serena. Hardly my job.’

  Serena, picking up on the atmosphere finally, gave a hesitant smile. ‘Yes, well . . .’ She looked down at the papers in her arms. ‘Well anyway, I was just signing off on some of the paperwork that’s come through and there’s an invoice here for Mr Subocheva from a florist in Provence – 2,000 peonies to dress a yacht?’ She pulled a face. ‘I don’t think so, do you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, that many flowers in a confined space seems a little . . . overwhelming.’

  Chloe’s eyes narrowed as she watched Serena thinking she knew it all; striding around here with her paperwork and officious, fake smiles. ‘Or perhaps Alexander thought it would be a romantic gesture for his wife, given that she’s staying there on her own.’

  Chloe straightened herself further; it felt good to have the upper hand, to know something Serena didn’t, for once.

  Serena looked chastened. ‘Oh. I see. Well, yes, I can see how he might have . . . that’s very romantic indeed.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘I-I just wanted to be sure it was a valid claim, you understand; you know how some of these suppliers get – the bigger the budget, the more they think they can slip a fabricated claim through and no one will notice.’

  ‘I placed the order myself, Serena. He’s my client. The claim is legitimate.’

  Serena shifted weight uncomfortably. ‘Okay, great.’ She gave a lackadaisical shrug. ‘Well I guess that’s okay then. Thanks for clarifying.’ She walked off, tossing her sleek hair over her shoulder as she went. Xan was by Chloe’s side in a flash.

  ‘Bitch,’ she muttered under her breath, watching her go.

  ‘Well, take a look at you, Frosty. You showed her.’

  ‘I hate that woman.’

  ‘Yeah. Getting that,’ he said with lifted eyebrows. ‘Care to share?’

  Chloe looked back at him. She wished she could, to start from scratch and tell him all of it . . . But, well, it was a long story now. She had transgressed quite enough political lines as it was – becoming involved with her boss and her client? It required a context she really didn’t have the time or energy to give, especially not now. She closed her eyes as she heard the voices coming down the hall – those British accents carrying like red balloons in the sky – unmistakable, unmissable.

  She turned again to see Jack, closely followed by Tom, striding down the office towards her, looks of fury and relief marbled on their faces.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Xan whispered as the two bosses bore down upon them. ‘I promise I didn’t tell them anything.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she smiled, straightening up slightly as Jack got to her first. ‘Hey, Jack. How are you?’

  Tom was only two strides behind, his eyes shining with a thousand silent accusations.

  Jack stared at her, as if in disbelief at her nonchalance, before jerking his thumb behind him and almost stabbing Tom in the eye. ‘Conference room, Chloe. Now.’

  Was this glass bulletproof, she wondered as they sat in the conference room, because the way Tom was shooting looks at her . . .

  Jack was just as mad. He had spent at least five minutes shouting at her and giving the rest of the team a good mime show: if they couldn’t hear his words, they could certainly tell by his body language that she was being hauled over the coals, with his arms flying, his floppy hair tossing first one way, then the other.

  Xan kept walking past the windows, behind Tom and Jack’s backs, with hilarious written signs: Medical emergency? Death in the family? Gun?

  It was all she could do not to burst out laughing; she couldn’t take any of this seriously – their anger and indignation. She didn’t care any more. She had had enough of being used, of being disposable; second best. Let them rage, she thought to herself, watching as Jack brought his fist down on the desk, Tom beside him with his head in his hands. She realized she wasn’t even listening to what they were saying – something about responsibility . . . pulling together as a team . . . time of crisis . . . danger . . . Lincoln . . .

  Perhaps she should quit? It would probably be better than waiting to be fired; at least then they’d be obligated to give her a reference.

  Wait, what?

  ‘What did you say?’ she asked, cutting in over Jack, leaving him silent in surprise again.

  ‘I said,’ he sighed exasperatedly, ‘anything could have happened to you and we would have had no idea where you were.’

  ‘Xan knew where I was.’

  ‘No. He knew only that you were in Greece. That was no more helpful than saying you were in Europe.’

  And whose fault was that if she didn’t want to be found? She looked at Tom coldly. He looked back at her with a blank look of defeat. ‘So?’

  ‘So – you were off God-knows-where, doing God-knows-what, with God-knows-who. Isn’t it bad enough that we’ve already got one employee in the hospital under police guard?’

  She tipped her head wearily and sighed. God, this melodrama was getting dull. Exactly why were they trying to draw a parallel between her work trip and Poppy’s predicament? ‘I’m sorry but I don’t get what all the fuss is about. Joe Lincoln is a client, I was helping him with this overseas project.’

  ‘Except you weren’t, were you?’ Jack demanded.

  Chloe felt her face burn, her eyes automatically flashing to Tom’s; she saw him jolt in recognition of her guilt as the truth teleported between them in silence. Surely Joe hadn’t rung in and told Tom and Jack what had happened between them out there? No, that made no sense. Why would he do such a thing? Unless . . . her mind was racing. Unless it was revenge for the way she had left him like that, still in bed, rejected? Was her job the scalp he demanded in return?

  She couldn’t believe it of him. She didn’t. Whatever he was, he wasn’t petty.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for Tom, we’d all still be labouring un
der the illusion that this guy was who he said he was.’

  What? ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice had turned thin.

  ‘Well, if he hadn’t FaceTimed you and seen this Joe Lincoln for himself, none of us would be any the wiser even now that he wasn’t who he said he was.’

  She felt sick; dizzy. This couldn’t be right. His voice sounded far away, her thoughts pressing in on her so that it was another moment before they registered and she felt the floor drop beneath her chair. ‘When . . . when did you FaceTime me?’ she asked Tom, looking straight at him.

  ‘Yesterday. You were on some boat?’ His words were clipped, the unspoken accusation dripping from them. He knew.

  The boat – she had been asleep, her phone beside her.

  ‘He answered, said you weren’t available,’ Tom said, the words hot with anger. ‘Asked who I was and then hung up on me.’

  ‘Who’s Tom?’ Joe had asked . . .

  ‘It was only then we realized the guy you were with wasn’t who he was claiming to be,’ Jack said, just as hotly. He pushed a piece of paper in front of her. It showed a company logo of DCS Engineering and beside it, a photo of a very pink, balding man in his early sixties. ‘Thank God Tom had followed due diligence and checked him out.’

  ‘But I did!’ she protested. But even as she said the words, she saw where her failure lay – she had gone on the DCS website, checking the company was real. She had seen his name come up and that had been enough for her. Everything checked out at first glance, she hadn’t felt the need to go forensic on it. But she should have done – looked for a photograph, double-checked the age . . .

  ‘When Xan said you were with Joe Lincoln, and then Tom saw him . . .’ Jack looked at her with an inscrutable expression, as though he barely dared say the words. ‘. . . That man there is Joe Lincoln,’ he said, stabbing at the picture.

  ‘Not your pretty boy,’ Tom snapped.

  ‘He’s not my anything,’ Chloe snapped back. ‘I was doing my job.’

  They glared at each other but she knew her blushes had betrayed her.

  Jack looked first at her, then at Tom, picking up on the arctic freeze between them. There was a long three-way silence, Tom still communicating unspoken accusations with his eyes. She had left him again and she had slept with Joe, he knew it . . .

  ‘I think it’s probably best if I hand in my notice,’ she said quietly, tearing her gaze away from him and looking over at Jack. ‘This isn’t working out.’

  ‘Oh no. You’re not getting off that lightly,’ Jack snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Christ, you must think I’m an idiot,’ he murmured, dropping his voice now, sinking back into his chair, fingers interlaced, elbows out. ‘You think I don’t know what happened between you two?’

  Both of them looked back at him in surprise. Tom looked especially stunned.

  ‘Of course I bloody well knew! But I turned the other cheek, didn’t I? You were discreet, it didn’t affect work. I mean, I thought you were a bloody idiot for what it’s worth,’ he snapped, glaring at Tom. ‘Lucy deserves better frankly—’

  ‘We both did,’ she cut in hotly, refusing to be cast as the villain in this. ‘He kept telling me he’d finish it! I had zero desire to be his bit on the side, let me tell you!’

  Jack shot his old friend a weary look of disdain, although it wasn’t like he could take the moral high ground himself.

  ‘Well, whatever happened between the three of you was your own business,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t care then and I don’t care now.’ He looked at Chloe again. ‘But when you turned up here five months ago with no warning, I knew exactly what had gone down and, frankly, I thought it was the best thing for everyone – I didn’t want this company to lose you, Chloe; you’ve been good news for us, no two ways about it. So I held my tongue and let you two get on with . . . playing your charade! But when you bring your shit in here – you turning up out of nowhere last week,’ he spat at Tom before turning back to her. ‘You running off to nowhere a couple of days later? Well, then I’m obliged to get involved.’

  ‘Piss off, Jack – you’re not,’ Tom said, rallying, his own cheeks flushing with anger. ‘Chloe and I have always kept our private life well away from the office. What is or isn’t happening between us is nothing to do with the matter in hand.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’ Jack sneered again. ‘So then, you’re telling me she would have disappeared in the middle of the night with that man – whoever the fuck he is! – even if you two hadn’t had some lovers’ quarrel?’

  Neither of them could reply, but they both knew it was the truth. Tom still had no confirmed idea why she had gone.

  ‘You’re overreacting,’ Tom mumbled instead. It was no defence.

  Jack stabbed the desk hard with his finger. ‘We’ve got Poppy lying in a hospital bed like Flat Freaking Stanley, with God-knows-who after her,’ he hissed at his partner. ‘And then Chloe disappears to some Greek island with a man going under a stolen identity and you tell me I’m overreacting? We have no idea who he is or what he wants. Just like we have no idea who hurt Poppy or why. For all we know, he’s the same guy! He could have hurt Chloe too, don’t you get that?’

  The words echoed around the room, shocking them all. Had Chloe been in danger? She had certainly felt frightened after she’d overheard his secret phone call.

  Tom’s face crumpled at Jack’s harsh words, his clear, boyish beauty folding into rough pleats as he raked his hands into his hair, sliding his head down, his forearms and his body heaving with huge, silent sobs. Chloe couldn’t breathe as she saw the scale of his devastation, his despair an avalanche sliding down the face of him. Her eyes slid to the glass windows – the entire team was watching, Xan standing at his desk and looking over, his mouth hanging open at the sight of their mime. Suddenly it wasn’t so funny.

  ‘But . . .’ She couldn’t think straight, she couldn’t take any of it in. She tried going back over what they’d told her: that Joe wasn’t Joe, that was why they’d been so worried about her; that he might have been the one who’d hit Poppy? Maybe?

  And she’d shared a bed with him.

  Everything seemed warped; it was like looking at the world in a fairground mirror: truth and reality stretched and distorted so that nothing looked as it should. Plan. Arouse suspicion. So she’d been right. She had been in danger.

  ‘Christ, Chlo, the thought of anything happening to you . . .’ Tom sobbed.

  ‘But it didn’t. I’m fine,’ she said, reflexively reaching an arm over the desk and squeezing his hand, her voice barely a whisper as she remembered the softness of Joe’s touch on her skin, the way he’d murmured into her hair . . .

  ‘He didn’t hurt you?’ Tom croaked, looking back at her with red-rimmed eyes. ‘I swear to God, I’ll ki—’

  ‘He didn’t hurt me,’ she assured him. Not like that, anyway.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sergeant Mahoney didn’t blink much, although she noticed he twitched his moustache a lot when he thought she was lying; and right now, he seemed to be struggling to comprehend what she was telling him, as though it was too fantastical to be true.

  ‘So you’re telling me that in all that time you were in Greece together, you didn’t once take a photograph of this man?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she nodded, wondering how many times she had to say it.

  ‘Not a selfie at dinner?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not a sly side shot when he wasn’t looking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps when he was sleeping?’

  ‘He was my client; why would I have seen him sleeping?’ she said firmly, looking outraged and hoping to God he hadn’t talked to the hotel; the chambermaids would surely have seen that his bed hadn’t been slept in the morning after they checked out?

  ‘Well, I never thought I’d see the day,’ he muttered, a wry grin on his thin lips. ‘One of you millennials who isn’t on Instagram.’ Sarcasm oozed from the words
and he seemed to be pretty pleased with himself for labelling her as such.

  ‘I didn’t say I’m not on Instagram, only that I didn’t post to it,’ she clarified.

  Her calmness seemed to irk him and the smile faded from his lips as he looked down at his notes again. She concentrated on the badge on his shirt, reminding herself she was being interviewed, not interrogated; she had done nothing wrong.

  She was still in the conference room although the office was deserted now. It was Friday rules – half the team had caught the 3 p.m. Jitney, the rest sloping out on the dot of five, everyone disappearing in the elevators and talking about what had gone down this afternoon. Even Jack had manhandled Tom out of the building for a drink, insisting she be left to talk to the police without him hanging around, making things worse. Emotions were running too high as it was.

  ‘So you said he bought this house on the far side of the island?’ As though it was the far side of the moon.

  ‘That’s right. He wanted somewhere remote, no neighbours. He didn’t want to be contactable.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘He said it was his escape from the pressures of his job.’

  ‘And you didn’t question that?’

  ‘Why would I? Most of our clients have incredibly pressured lives. Many of them have holiday homes to retreat to.’

  ‘But this obsessive need to be out of touch?’

  ‘I think it’s fast becoming the new luxury,’ she shrugged.

  ‘Hmm.’ His moustache twitched again. ‘We’ve had the local police go over and take a look at it for us – it’s a farmhouse by all accounts.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘There was no one there.’

  ‘No, there wouldn’t be. He was flying back to France today.’

  ‘Did he say to where exactly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask.’

  He looked frustrated. ‘Well did he say when he was coming back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you arrange the travel for him? Book his flight?’