Jay throws his vintage leather jacket across his desk. Freya tried to explain to her roommates how cool it was after another giddy evening with him. She even searched online to try to show them something similar. But the jacket holds stories of its own that can’t be replicated through a picture on the Internet. It’s the kind of jacket a person has to live in to earn its faded effect. This fascinates her, the man he was before he met her, the intimation of a life well lived.
After starting up his computer, he walks toward her, and her mouth goes dry.
‘Thanks for last night. I keep thinking about it.’
‘Me too . . .’
It was a silly premise for a date, initially. There was a sale at her favorite fabric store and she wanted to go after work to buy something warm and cozy to make a winter coat. Jay asked if he could come too. She was nervous at first – how would he react to trawling through four floors and ream upon ream of fabric? She shouldn’t have worried because he had a good eye, and charmed all the staff. Their conversation bloomed among the riot of color and pattern, and they kissed each other deeply, hidden behind curtains of rich maroon velvet.
‘I particularly enjoyed that kiss,’ she adds.
‘Don’t get me started! I didn’t want last night to end. And that says a lot because I usually can’t stand shopping. Please, come for a quick walk with me before work? We can grab a coffee.’
‘I’ve just had one,’ she says, hesitantly. She needs to work. Most importantly, she needs to be seen at her desk and working when Nicole walks in. She doesn’t want to make things harder for herself than they already are.
‘Come on, you could always use a little more. Besides, I want to talk to you about something.’
He must notice the wave of fear she feels, the ever-present pull towards her work. Freya keenly feels their imbalance of power: she has yet to prove herself, and he has proved himself already. He holds time in his hands like small change, time he has got to lose.
‘You’ve earned it, everyone can see that,’ he continues. ‘There’s a little gem around the corner that serves up my favorite croissants. You don’t want to miss this.’
‘Fine,’ she says, ‘but I can only spare half an hour.’
They walk in step, and she notices with a smile that they fit together perfectly. She in her vintage suit, and Jay in his smart jeans, classic loafers and chestnut leather jacket. The pavement has been washed clean by rain the night before and the sunrise has given the city an ethereal glow.
Slowly, through the course of several dates, late-night phone calls, shared laughs and gentle mornings like this, the distance between them has shrunk. Every now and then his hand brushes against hers and her heart skips a beat. Sex is close now, inevitable.
‘When are you two going to fuck already?’ Nicole had said the day before, mouth twisted in a sneer. It was a quiet afternoon in the office and Jay had come past her desk to discuss a new client. As always, Freya could feel the other women watching but she didn’t care. She had solved a critical technical problem that morning and felt invincible. Jay started a silly argument about her endearing love for The Shins, calling them a ‘weak Mummy’s boy band’. She pushed him playfully and he pushed back. After years of strength training, she was tougher than he expected.
In the cold light of the new morning, Freya cringes. It was unbelievably childish, and so stupid. What kind of person finds themselves play-fighting with a colleague, a director no less, at their new job? She really needs to remember what is important. Most of the time she does – her work at Atypical consumes her every waking moment – but somehow being around Jay turns the smallest, most vulnerable screws loose in her mind. She becomes unhinged.
‘When are you two going to fuck already?’
She said it as Jay was holding tightly on to Freya’s wrists. People from other departments had started to stare. She couldn’t angle her head enough to see through the glass walls of Julian’s office, but she could feel his disapproving gaze. They looked like two hormone-crazed teenagers, looking for any excuse to touch one another. Freya was shame-faced, but a little proud, a little excited. Nicole had a point. Sex was definitely in the air between them.
Freya looks at him now, admiring his easy walk and assured smile. He is the kind of person who confidently occupies every inch of space in their world. She hasn’t known him long but he already feels like a close friend. Everything between them is smooth and easy. Nicole’s bitter face flashes in her memory, her rabid, harsh words. Why was she so insistently awful to Freya? The closeness of the morning has boosted her confidence. She decides to just come out and ask him.
‘So, what’s up with Nicole anyway?’
‘What do you mean?’ he says lazily, turning and picking something out of her hair. It’s a tiny blossom, which he turns round and round in his hand.
‘She doesn’t seem to like me very much.’ It was the understatement of the century. Just voicing it makes a lump swell in her throat. Freya looks across at him, fast enough to see a shadow creep over his face. He feels the tension as keenly as she does.
Jay is quiet for a moment. He takes her arm casually and leads her down a side street, towards the café. The world around her takes on a blurry quality. Maybe she needs that extra coffee after all.
Finally, he clears his throat. ‘Can you blame her? You come in here, fresh out of college and hit the ground running. Everyone’s talking about you. Nicole has worked for three years to get where she is today, and you’re just swooping in and taking it all. There is nothing more dangerous, or toxic, than a jealous woman.’
She thinks of her clipped, work-related conversations with Nicole. She may be a bit bitchy but she is extremely intelligent. Besides, Atypical is expanding at such a fast pace. There is more than enough work to go round.
Jay moves a step ahead of her, muscling through the people at the counter, ordering two espressos and two pains au chocolat. The shop is packed with locals spreading out today’s paper on red-and-white checked tablecloths. They find a corner of the café and sit down. It’s the kind of perfect moment that would be a shame to ruin. She’s soon buzzing on the caffeine, flaky pastry and smooth dark chocolate. Jay’s thigh feels warm against her own. She could simply lean over and kiss him, right now and lose herself in him. Freya resists. The anxiety screams, urgent. She needs to know the truth first.
‘Jay?’
‘Mmm?’
Freya’s heart pounds in her chest. Does she really want to know the answer?
‘Were you and Nicole ever . . . you know . . . involved?’
A complicated look flashes across his face. ‘I mean, it’s OK if you were,’ she says, ‘I just thought I’d ask.’ It’s not really OK. The thought of them together makes her deeply uncomfortable, but she doesn’t want to appear the kind of woman who can’t take a bit of competition.
He sighs. ‘I suppose it’s obvious, isn’t it? Yes, Nicole and I had a brief fling, over a year ago. I wouldn’t call it a relationship. We’d both had one too many drinks one night and something happened. We were just two adults having a bit of fun.’
Of course. The man always calls it a bit of fun, doesn’t he? He can shake it off with ease and forget about it the next day. For the woman, the intimacy, or the lack thereof, lingers.
He laughs incredulously. ‘I don’t know why she’s so weird about it still. It was so long ago.’
‘Maybe she liked you a bit more than you realized?’ Freya feels bad for Nicole. She’s been in that situation before where her genuine emotion has been misconstrued by a man as harmless fun. That’s how she could write off most of her relationships. However, from what she has experienced so far, Nicole is cold, brittle and tense, quick to escalate a conversation to an argument. Freya can’t imagine her laughing, tugging Jay’s hand while removing her clothes in a champagne-bubble haze. She is a difficult woman, the kind that makes a man’s heart stop when her number appears on his phone. She won’t make the same mistake, she will be lighter
, different.
‘I mean, who wouldn’t fall for you a little bit,’ she says, more to herself.
Jay takes her hand in his. ‘Touché, I could say the same for you. Which brings me to something important, which I really should have said yesterday.’
His skin is warm against hers, the attraction between them palpable. The past doesn’t matter, does it? One woman’s heartbreak can be another’s true love. She sees Nicole’s behavior with a new perspective. Her fighting words are those of a scorned woman, the one who didn’t get the guy she wanted. Perhaps she was different back then, perhaps heartbreak changed her. Yet one glance at Jay confirms that he and Nicole could have never worked. He is far too rough around the edges. Nicole may have been a fling, but Freya was always going to be the one Jay chose.
‘Yeah? I’m intrigued now.’
‘I’ve made a big deal of this now, haven’t I? I like you, Freya, a lot. I lose all sense of time when we are together, and when we’re apart, I find myself wanting to tell you all the little things that happen in my day—’
‘I do too,’ she says. ‘When something happens, I want to message you straight away. It’s weird.’
‘Right? I haven’t felt this way before, to be so in sync with another person. Which is why I wanted to ask if you wanted to make this an official thing.’
She laughs. ‘Of course! You didn’t need to ask so formally!’
‘I wanted to. A woman like you deserves it. You’re different.’
She breathes in the scent of his recently smoked cigarette, and then tastes its bitterness on her tongue. His hand is soft as it rides ever so slightly up her shirt.
‘What about work?’ she asks, nervously. ‘I’m worried about what Julian will think.’
‘Let’s give it a few months where we keep this just to ourselves, OK? Then, when we’re ready, we can share the news at the office.’ He takes her hand. ‘For now it will be our little secret.’
As they walk back, the challenges inside don’t seem as daunting anymore. After years of hard work and struggle, her path now seems to be greased with good fortune, careering to an inevitable happy ending. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Chapter 29
Isla
Six days after the murder
Isla jumps when the phone rings. She really needs to ease up on the coffee.
‘Hello?’
‘Isla, it’s Simon.’ She smiles, despite herself. Simon sounds so abrupt over the phone, but what could easily be construed as unfriendliness is simply shyness. For someone who spends a large part of his job having difficult conversations on the phone, Simon is particularly averse to the communication method. In person his chats are meandering, and follow many tangents.
‘How are you doing today?’
‘Busy. I’ve just sent you the coroner’s report that you requested.’
‘Really? Thank you! Let me make sure it’s come through.’ She clicks through her emails with gritted teeth, stomach churning. Isla is best described as a person who lives in a constantly adrenalized state.
‘How are you doing, by the way?’ asks Simon.
There it is. An email titled, Confidential: Coroner’s report for Ms Nicole Whittington. ‘The usual,’ she says, distractedly. ‘Flirting with burnout, running on sugar and caffeine.’
‘You really should invest in a multivitamin,’ he laughs. ‘I’m serious. You would feel like a new person on some Vitamin B12 and zinc.’
‘Jeez, Simon, you really buck against the cop cliché, don’t you?’
Beneath the intimidating brawn, Simon is a sensitive soul. Two years into his career as a cop, he was on the scene of a terrible crime and took a few months off afterwards. Ever since then, he has been diligent about self-care, from the fresh foods he grows in his back garden and his dedication to home-cooking, to the range of supplements he swears by. Although they discuss crimes, past and present, he has never mentioned what happened that day.
‘I have my moments . . .’ He slips back into his hurried demeanor. ‘I’ve got to go. Did you receive all the information?’
‘Yes – it says here that the UV light revealed hidden blood stains in the living room?’
‘Correct, which means the murder might have taken place there, and the body moved into the bathroom.’
Isla’s mind whirred. The attacker must have been strong enough to carry a body, in that case.
‘Did you get the images as well?’ asks Simon.
‘Yes,’ she says, a sense of trepidation creeping in as she considers opening the horrific pictures on her computer screen.
‘Good. Shout if you have any questions.’
‘Have a good day, Simon.’
‘You too. Remember what I said about the vitamins.’
‘Who was that?’ asks Kenneth, the paper’s new managing editor. After the paper was bought out by a faceless corporation the year before, Kenneth was brought on board to help ‘streamline production’, which was code for ‘cut as many jobs as possible’. Isla and her colleagues call him ‘The Grim Reaper’. For that reason, she walks a daily tightrope of smiling compliance and secret distrust. She and Kenneth don’t exactly have the same ideas on what constitutes breaking news.
‘Just Simon, one of the guys at the station. He’s sent me a fascinating coroner’s report on a recent murder.’
‘The lawyer who was killed while dropping his kids off at school?’
‘No, it’s for Nicole Whittington.’
She can feel him behind her, his eyes scanning over her shoulder.
‘This is the tech-industry girl!’
‘Yup.’ And please, please move on, she begs silently.
‘I thought you covered that story the other day?’
Isla bites her tongue. ‘It was a short, front-page article. I wouldn’t call it a proper analysis.’
‘So, what stands out for you in the report so far?’ Kenneth doesn’t usually pay her so much attention. Something about that makes Isla feel hopeful. This could be her chance to prove herself to Kenneth as a serious investigative reporter.
‘The murder weapon, for one. She was battered to death with a small bronze statue, a piece that fetches a nice price at auction.’
‘So . . .’
‘So the police say the murder is too violent to be a crime of passion, but surely, if the person was a seasoned criminal, they would have taken the weapon, washed it off and tried to sell it?’
He moves in closer. ‘Good point. Were any fingerprints found on the body?’
‘None that are identifiable enough to be useful to the police. They have found clearer prints in the bedroom, and now the kitchen and the living room as well. The police haven’t found any matches yet, but have taken the prints of those who have been identified as of interest to the case.’
‘Was anything else taken?’
‘Nothing, except for a gold necklace from Tiffany & Co that Nicole had registered on her insurance. It spelled out the letters of her name. It’s quite a sentimental item for a person to take, but I’m guessing they would just melt the gold . . .’ She feels more confident in his interest, adding, ‘I’m thinking of interviewing some more people close to her. I’ve already spoken to some of her colleagues in the company she worked for, in order to create a clear profile.’
He chews something invisible. ‘Mmm, is that what we really want to do, though? Where do we want to sit in the debate over this? I’ve read the reports that Nicole was medicated for bipolar disorder. There seems to be more than enough compelling evidence that Nicole was a bit . . . troubled . . .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s rumors that she used to go to those exclusive sex parties that the tech illuminati go to. Didn’t you see the exposé in The Daily News? Several unnamed sources said that they’d seen her in compromising situations.’
Isla knew those would come up at some point. The angle was just too irresistible for some journalists to ignore. Swingers’ parties where th
e cream of the crop in tech shake on billions of dollars worth of investment in steamy corners? Cocaine and playful bondage? What’s not to love?
‘Nobody can say for certain those parties exist.’ She stops herself from adding, and if they do, there is no way to negotiate that environment as a woman and come away unscathed. It’s a game of virgin versus whore, one that any woman is bound to lose.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ he sniggers. ‘Before we know her full story, do we really want to be pointing fingers at everyone else?’
‘It’s called journalistic objectivity?’ she says, trying not to let her sarcasm appear too bitter. Ever since Kenneth joined the paper, there is the constant shadow of the perennial question: what impact will certain stories have on the handful of businesses that still advertise in print?
His voice is higher, spiked with laughter. ‘Now, now, no need to bash me with your out-of-print journalism textbook! All I’m saying is we don’t report in a vacuum. We live in a context of Twitter, Facebook and online conversation. You need to check the tide of opinion.’
Isla flashes a smile, hating how easy it is to bury her rage, how easy it is to access the vacant, compliant person Kenneth wants her to be. ‘You’re so right, Kenneth. Thank you for reminding me.’
‘That’s what I’m here for.’ he winks.
Her smile drops the instant he slouches back to his corner office.
‘Asshole,’ she mutters and turns her attention to the file.
An elderly neighbor discovered Nicole’s body the morning after her death. Her door was ajar, which was unusual. She was friendly and always the first to smile, but at the same time very private, slipping in and out of her apartment at strange, moonlit hours, hardly making a sound on the stairs. The open wine bottle confirmed the source of the racket the night before, but otherwise the apartment was neat.
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