They all start laughing. ‘I was such an idiot, at that point, everyone loved The Weeknd! No, it’s in the subtle things. He doesn’t like the exact same bands as me, but he loves vinyl and searching for forgotten albums at old music stores.’ She gestures to the tweed dress she’s wearing. ‘And he appreciates my style. It’s also in the way he is with me. He sees things about me that I’d always hoped someone would notice.’
‘Like that overly romantic imagination of yours?’
She playfully slaps her friend. ‘No, it’s just this feeling that he was here waiting for me all along and I just needed to find him.’
Kate whistles, long and low. ‘Easy there, tiger. Go on a few more dates first.’
Freya blushes, and her heart skips a beat.
‘You have to admit there is potential. No hand-holding, no come-ons, just his smoldering stare and his whip-smart banter.’
Kate is getting distracted now, wanting to practice handstands against their grubby wall. Her muscular arms tense as she slowly balances her whole body in the air. The strength in her small frame always comes as a shock to Freya.
‘Enjoy it,’ says Hattie as they watch Kate. ‘That feeling of lust building between the two of you, with no knowledge of when and where it’s going to burst.’
Just the thought of it makes Freya sweat a little, despite the cool weather. ‘So, you think it’s going to happen, Jay and me?’ she asks hopefully.
‘Of course! It’s a done deal,’ says Jasmin. Freya’s heart soars at the confirmation, but then she catches Kate’s expression, which looks grave.
‘It just sounds like it has the potential to get quite intense. I mean, I’ve known you when you were dating Chris for that brief period, and even Ian. You’re passionate, hell, I remember some of your fights with them, but I’ve never seen you this – what’s the word for it? – feverish.’
Jasmin nods between mouthfuls of lasagna. ‘She’s right, Freya, you look a bit whipped. I feel like Jay is pressing a button for you.’
Freya gathers the empty plates and storms into the kitchen. She hates it when Jasmin psychoanalyzes her, especially when she’s right. Freya’s crush on Jay has pushed a button for her, it has touched a suppressed longing to feel loved. While her friends have grown to become her family, they could never bring the intimacy of true love. She has wanted men before, but she has never needed to be close to anyone like this.
‘I know I seem crazy, but it just feels special.’ She catches her glassy-eyed reflection in the kitchen window. Her hair, while messy, looks glossy. There is a fresh sheen to her skin. In that split second, she can imagine how she looks through his eyes. Beautiful, wistful, elegant.
A look of doubt flashes across her friends’ faces. Kate has a patronizing look that only makes the anger in Freya rise. She feels like she needs to defend herself.
‘It’s hard to explain if you haven’t felt it before, Kate,’ she says curtly.
Kate doesn’t know, because she has gone from one doomed relationship to the next since before they became friends. Both women are accustomed to pacing through bars, eyes lowered like prey, pulsing with the fear of locking gazes with unwanted men, giving them the wrong idea. Liking someone usually means kissing them in a dark corner, bumping into them weekend after weekend until the hookup settled into an inevitability which may be called a relationship for a brief while. Online dating has been no different – the guys they really wanted disappeared while the desperate ones lingered. The attraction brewing between herself and Jay feels intentional, which adds to its meaning. Kate wouldn’t understand that, and part of Freya wonders if her friend is jealous.
‘You’re right,’ Kate says bitterly. ‘I wouldn’t know. My life is just one sorry, fragmented warning tale on how lonely it can be to surf the backwaters of Tinder.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ But Kate’s arms are folded tightly, and she is pressing her lips together the way she always does when she is trying to keep her composure. Hattie and Jasmin glance at Freya in warning. This is about to turn into a fight. ‘I’m just worried about you. You have more potential than all of us put together. I wouldn’t want you to waste it on a guy.’
‘Like my mother did?’ It is a sore point and everyone knows it. Freya’s mother put her up for adoption when she was a year old. According to the note she left with her at the orphanage, she was a promising engineering student who fell pregnant in her second year of college. She tried to take care of Freya by herself, but gave her up when she realized that no matter how hard she tried, she was too young to give Freya the life she deserved. As a result she grew up a cliché, a stray without a family, a new life that had robbed her mother of her own. ‘I’m not stupid, Kate. I know what I’m doing.’
Tension bristles between them. Kate’s voice softens and she pulls Freya into a hug. They’ve known each other too long to cling on to a disagreement.
‘I know, and I love you, which is the only reason why I am concerned. You’re standing at the edge of your new life and everything is so close. And unfortunately it still holds that a man can afford to make a few mistakes along the way. Tech isn’t a friendly space for women to begin with. You need to be sure of who you want to be.’
Freya wants to be respected and a master of her craft, but most of all she wants to be remembered for making a difference. She wants to take her intuition for technology and use it to help women who don’t have the power to help themselves. Whether that makes her successful or rich is beside the point. The work is her greatest inspiration, and her greatest healer.
They hold each other for a while, Kate stroking her hair. The others quietly leave the room. In moments like these, Freya feels the full force of their friendship, the protracted, tearful conversations, the vicious end-of-the-world fights that peter out in an hour, the shared secrets and clothes, the dancing, the music, the neon-lit midnight trips to McDonald’s, the late nights spent studying, the joy and high-fives at their results. This is the home she has created for herself.
She always hoped to find a romantic love similar to the bond she shares with her friends. That’s what makes her feel so good about Jay. The few times she has been in his company, alone or with her colleagues, she has felt carefree and fully herself. She hasn’t had to dumb herself down for him. She stands firm in her ideas and feels colorful and interesting.
‘I can’t wait for you to meet him,’ she says softly, imagining Kate, Hattie and Jasmin hitting it off with him, laughing at his jokes till they cry, grabbing her by the arm when he leaves the room to say, wow Freya, yes, we can see what you have been talking about, this man is something special.
‘There is nothing to worry about, you know, I have everything under control.’
Chapter 21
Isla
Four days after the murder
What Isla needs is hard evidence. She will find out more about both Nicole and Freya, and see where their lives intersect. Were they simply work colleagues, or did they have something deeper in common? She searches Freya’s name, and finds nothing but a smattering of achievements. There is Freya, looking not much younger than today, accepting an award for exceptional achievement in computer science. There is her radiant, smiling face staring out from her Facebook profile. Isla takes a look at her friends list. She recognizes some names – Jay, Julian, a product designer called Virginie – but Nicole is not among them.
While Nicole’s neighbors and her colleagues only have nice things to say about her, a crop of unsupported statements from Nicole’s so-called friends and family have begun to creep into the media. Isla spreads today’s papers in front of her, and highlights them, one by one.
‘She was unapproachable, and mostly kept to herself.’
‘Nicole was addicted to work and never left the office.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a secret life – she never revealed too much.’
‘She had a history of mental illness.’
Each statement, each quickly drafted article
is another weight on Isla’s chest. The news is a cycle, temperamental as the weather, and the tide is about to turn. Nicole is about to go from a victim to a topic of cold debate, as people begin to wonder what she did to ask for it.
She takes another color and highlights passages about Atypical. In each piece, the company comes off perfectly, especially Julian. It is as if Nicole was privileged to work there, and not the other way around. Statements about her workaholic tendencies are punctuated by paragraphs about everything that the company has achieved. Isla has heard rumors that the tech industry has a dark side, where bright young hopefuls become entangled in sex parties, and CEOs indulge S&M fetishes. Simon was once tipped off about an anonymously opulent high-end hotel room, only to find underage sex workers draped over a man whose face had previously appeared in the Financial Times. Yet by reading the flattering statements on Atypical’s noble vision, it would seem that the company was different, on the surface at least.
Her hands travel up to her neck subconsciously. Her shoulders feel as solid as concrete, her jaw tense. She should call Lizzie, or her mother, just to focus on something lighter and get out of her head for a while. They both say it’s not good – this fixation on stories about women like her.
But Isla knows what happens next – the masses on Twitter will start to gain momentum and question Nicole’s character, her sanity. Soon, the trolls will find something – maybe her clothes that night, or the amount of makeup she was wearing – to say that she deserved it. Words like slut and bitch will be thrown around carelessly, without thought to the woman she was.
It’s a strange aftershock that follows a crime.
Why? Because if horrible things happen to those that don’t ‘deserve’ it, then nobody is safe.
Chapter 22
Freya
Five days after the murder
There is something alarmingly intrusive about seeing a stranger’s message flash across your cellphone screen. It is immediate, intimate, as real as unwelcome hands running down your spine.
But, thinks Freya, it doesn’t have to be this way. She has some control. She blocks a few of the numbers, but more messages keep popping up.
Hello, gorgeous.
I love your dirty mouth.
Are you free tonight? Now?
She shakes her head. She can’t get upset about this any longer. She has a job to do, a boyfriend to love, and a pact to uphold.
She logs on to a website that offers reverse cellphone number searches. Maybe if she finds out who is doing this, she can put a stop to it herself. For an extra $5 she selects the option that reveals the location of the sender. She wonders if Nicole did the same, and if she felt the same panic she feels now.
One number is from Monte Sereno, the other from Albany and two from Palo Alto. Two of the messages have numbers that are intentionally blocked.
She buries her head in her hands. It’s getting too late for this. She’ll approach the problem with a clear head in the morning.
A loud bang breaks her thoughts with a jolt. A stone, she thinks, something hard, has hit her window. This is unusual – she lives on the second floor. A spider web crack unspools around the place of impact. Freya lowers herself to the floor, too scared to cry for help and looks down. It is too late for construction or any kind of activity that would fling stones about, and there is nobody in the street below her.
From across the room, she sees the reflection of her phone lighting up the wall. This is a message, a sign. Because while Freya cannot see anyone, someone wants her to know that she is not alone.
Chapter 23
Freya
Two months before the murder
Freya takes the long route to her desk. By weaving through the office in a certain path, she can make it all the way to her chair without feeling Nicole’s eyes on her, or hearing her muffled laughter. She knows she’s fooling herself, but there is a spark of hope that if she just keeps out of Nicole’s way, she will stop being a target. Nicole may forget about her, and pick on someone else.
Today, her plan is foiled. Nicole is standing right next to her desk, talking to Melanie. She will be the bigger person, no matter how much it hurts.
‘Good morning, Melanie. Good morning, Nicole,’ she says through gritted teeth.
They look back at her with faces of stone. Freya is sure she spots a smirk creeping up on Nicole’s face. The animosity towards her is thick and immutable.
She smiles as if it’s normal, as if they simply didn’t hear her, but tears threaten to spill from the corner of her eyes. If she can just hold out until she reaches the bathroom, then she can have a cry, just to release the tension. Right now she must stay strong. The way Nicole looks at her makes her feel unwelcome, hated. Feelings like that begin to stick to you, no matter how much you fight them. You start to treat them as your own.
‘Nice jacket!’ It’s Virginie, a product designer who joined the company from Paris, only a month before Freya.
Freya blushes. She points to Virginie’s worn-in white shirt, tucked effortlessly into a pair of high-waisted jeans. ‘Thanks, I made it actually, well, part of it. And I love your shirt, by the way.’
Whispers. Just loud enough for Freya to hear them. It’s Nicole.
‘That jacket is ugly as fuck.’
Freya feels a rush of heat to her face, her stomach turns. She found this vintage jacket at one of the stores in the East Bay. She was immediately attracted to its worn black leather and knew exactly what would make it even more perfect. She rushed to the little haberdashery only frequented by old ladies and seamstresses in the know, and found two strips of intricate cream lace. It took a few nights to stitch the delicate lace into the cuffs of the jacket without breaking the handiwork. The result is a little bit romantic, and a little bit rock ’n’ roll. This morning she had felt like she was wearing a piece of art, something that expressed her essence, now she just feels embarrassed.
Virginie clicks her tongue loudly in Nicole’s direction. ‘Don’t listen to her. It’s easy to seem stylish when you wear black all the time and spend hundreds of dollars on clothes directly from the mannequin. I prefer someone who takes a risk.’
The affirmation from another woman in the face of such animosity makes Freya want to weep with relief. Sometimes it’s hard being the new girl.
‘Thank you, that means a lot.’
‘My pleasure! Don’t let the cruel girls get you down, and find me at lunch, OK?’
Another relief. For the past few weeks, Freya has slunk to the fire escape, eating the same peanut butter sandwich surrounded by plumbing and worn, defaced walls, the secret, shameful exterior of Atypical’s lush office space. She didn’t want to give Nicole the satisfaction of seeing her alone, and while she has wanted to eat with Jay, their budding relationship is kept outside office walls for now. They have been on four dates so far, and even shared a kiss. She loves how their relationship is unfolding, and that they are doing things the proper way.
Bolstered by her interaction with Virginie, Freya flings the jacket over her chair, puts her headphones on and searches for a podcast to listen to. Every now and then, she spots the two women staring at her, talking intently. What now? she wonders. Does it ever end?
A hand on her shoulder. It’s Julian.
‘Good morning, Freya. Have you got a minute?’
They walk to his office, chatting idly about the latest Apple iPhone release. She’s used to these meetings now, they have them almost every day. But this one feels different, because out the corner of her eye, she spots the women sniggering among themselves.
Julian’s face twitches. ‘How is the algorithm design going? I’m concerned that I got too excited and overloaded you with work. Are you coping?’
Freya looks up abruptly, ‘Of course!’
Something about this conversation doesn’t feel quite right, or quite friendly. He leans forward, into her space.
‘I’m curious then, Freya. I’ve been hearing reports that you are spending your time
here watching YouTube clips, scrolling Instagram and listening to podcasts. You know I have to take comments like this seriously, no matter how much I believe in you. Should I be challenging you more?’
Julian says it in a helpful way, but his face is weary with disappointment. He hired her in the faith that she had something brilliant to offer, and he thinks she is falling short.
Nothing could make Freya feel worse. She is usually the person who always works the hardest, the one who shines with her resilience and commitment. She would give anything to succeed here, why would she waste her chance surfing the net on the job? She can do that all night when she gets home anyway! It’s mortifying. She opens her mouth and tries to sound calm.
‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I listen to tech podcasts while I code but I don’t watch YouTube or check social media. I need to focus. The work I do requires complete concentration.’
He puts an encouraging hand on her shoulder, massaging it slightly. The gesture is a little odd, a little out of place, but Freya knows he means well.
‘I know,’ he says, ‘and this is exactly what I suspected but I sometimes have to check these things out for myself. Unfortunately we have some rumor mongers’ – he flicks his head in Nicole’s direction – ‘who can get quite persistent in their claims. I have to honor all feedback.’
Their eyes meet and they both smile. Julian is on her side. He believes in her.
‘You’re a strong girl. Stand your ground and pay them no attention, you hear? Take it as a compliment.’
A compliment is all very well when you are Julian and get to sit in a protective glass box in the middle of the office. It is very different to the prospect of entering the fray day after day, and trying to be gracious in the face of passive aggression and the gossip. A compliment doesn’t help when you have begun waking up at night, drenched in sweat, unable to stop your mind looping over what small torture will be inflicted on you the next day.
The Pact Page 7