After he’s stalked off, I take several messages for Paul, one for Nick, and one for Caroline. I file a couple of letters. I address a couple of envelopes. And then, after twenty minutes, I’ve had it.
This is stupid. I love Jack. He loves me. I should be there, supporting him. I pick up my coffee and hurry along the corridor. The meeting room is crowded with people, but I edge in at the back and squeeze through two guys who aren’t even watching Jack but are discussing some football match.
“What are you doing here?” says Artemis as I arrive at her side. “What about the phones?”
“No taxation without representation,” I hear myself responding coolly, which perhaps isn’t exactly appropriate (I’m not even sure what it means) but has the desired effect of shutting her up.
I crane my neck so I can see over everyone’s head, and my eyes focus on the screen … and suddenly there he is. Sitting on a chair in a studio, in jeans and a white T-shirt. There’s a bright blue backdrop and the words “Business Inspirations” behind him, and two smart-looking interviewers sitting opposite him.
There he is. The man I love.
This is the first time I’ve seen him since we slept together, it occurs to me. But he looks as gorgeous as ever, his eyes all dark and glossy under the studio lights.
Oh, God, I want to kiss him.
If no one else were here, I would go up to the television set and kiss it. I honestly would.
“What have they asked him so far?” I murmur to Artemis.
“They’re talking to him about how he works. His inspirations, his partnership with Pete Laidler, stuff like that.”
“Shh!” says someone else.
“Of course, it was tough after Pete died,” Jack’s saying. “It was tough for all of us. But recently …” He pauses. “Recently my life has turned around and I’m finding inspiration again. I’m enjoying it again.”
He has to be referring to me. He has to be. I’ve turned his life around! That’s even more romantic than “I was gripped.”
“You’ve already expanded into the sports drinks market,” the male interviewer is saying. “Now I believe you’re looking to expand into the women’s market.”
There’s a frisson around the room, and people start turning their heads.
“We’re going into the women’s market?”
“Since when?”
“I knew, actually,” Artemis is saying with a smug expression. “Quite a few people have known for a while.”
I remember those people up in Jack’s office. That’s what the ovaries were for. This is quite exciting! A new venture!
“Can you give us any further details about that?” the male interviewer is saying. “Will this be a soft drink marketed at women?”
“It’s very early stages,” says Jack. “But we’re planning an entire line. A drink, clothing, a fragrance. We have a strong creative vision. We’re excited.”
“So, what’s your target market this time?” asks the man, consulting his notes. “Are you aiming at sportswomen?”
“Not at all,” says Jack. “We’re aiming at … the girl on the street.”
“The ‘girl on the street’?” The female interviewer sits up, looking slightly affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean? Who is this girl on the street?”
“She’s twenty-something,” says Jack after a pause. “She works in an office, takes the tube to work, goes out in the evenings, and comes home on the night bus … Just an ordinary, nothing-special girl.”
“There are thousands of them,” puts in the man with a smile.
“But the Panther brand has always been associated with men,” chips in the woman, looking skeptical. “With competition. With masculine values. Do you really think you can make the switch to the female market?”
“We’ve done research,” say Jack. “We feel we know our market.”
“Research!” She gives a scoffing laugh. “Isn’t this just another case of men telling women what they want?”
“I don’t believe so,” says Jack, still pleasantly, but I can see a slight flicker of annoyance pass across his face.
“Plenty of companies have tried to switch markets without success. How do you know you won’t just be another one of them?”
“I’m confident,” says Jack.
God, why is she being so aggressive? I think, feeling indignant. Of course Jack knows what he’s doing!
“You round up a load of women in some focus group and ask them a few questions! How does that tell you anything?”
“That’s only a small part of the picture, I can assure you,” says Jack in even tones.
“Oh, come on,” the woman says, leaning back and folding her arms. “Can a company like Panther—can a man like you—really tap into the psyche of, as you put it, an ordinary, nothing-special girl?”
“Yes. I can!” Jack meets her gaze square-on. “I know this girl.”
“You know her?” The woman raises her eyebrows.
“I know who this girl is,” says Jack. “I know what her tastes are, what colors she likes. I know what she eats; I know what she drinks. I know what she wants out of life. She’s size eight, but she’d like to be size six. She …” He spreads his arms as though searching for inspiration. “She eats Cheerios for breakfast and dips Flakes in her cappuccinos.”
I look in surprise at my hand, holding a Flake. I was about to dip it into my coffee.
And … I had Cheerios this morning.
“We’re surrounded these days by images of perfect, glossy people,” Jack is saying with animation. “But this girl is real. She has bad-hair days and good-hair days. She wears G-strings even though she finds them uncomfortable. She writes out exercise routines, then ignores them. She pretends to read business journals but hides celebrity magazines inside them.”
Just … hang on a minute. This all sounds a bit familiar.
“That’s exactly what you do, Emma,” says Artemis. “I’ve seen your copy of OK! inside Marketing Week.” She turns to me with a mocking laugh, and her gaze suddenly lands on my Flake.
“She loves clothes, but she’s not a fashion victim,” Jack is saying on-screen. “She’ll wear, maybe, a pair of jeans …”
Artemis’s eyes run in disbelief over my Levi’s.
“… and a flower in her hair …”
Dazedly I lift a hand and touch the fabric rose in my hair.
He can’t—
He can’t be talking about—
“Oh … my … God,” says Artemis.
“What?” says Caroline, next to her. She follows Artemis’s gaze, and her expression changes.
“Oh, my God! Emma! It’s you!”
“It’s not,” I say, but my voice won’t quite work properly.
“It is!”
A few people start nudging one another and turning to look at me.
“… She reads fifteen horoscopes every day and chooses the one she likes best …” Jack’s voice is saying.
“It is you! It’s exactly you!”
“… She scans the back of highbrow books and pretends she’s read them …”
“I knew you hadn’t read Great Expectations!” says Artemis triumphantly.
“… She adores sweet sherry …”
“Sweet sherry?” says Nick, turning in horror. “You cannot be serious.”
“It’s Emma!” I can hear people saying on the other side of the room. “It’s Emma Corrigan!”
“Emma?” says Katie, looking straight at me in disbelief. “But … but …”
“It’s not Emma!” says Connor all of a sudden with a laugh. He’s standing over on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall. “Don’t be ridiculous! Emma’s size four, for a start. Not size eight!”
“Size four?” says Artemis with a snort of laughter.
“Size four!” Caroline giggles. “That’s a good one!”
“Aren’t you size four?” Connor looks startled. “But you said—”
“I … I know I did.” I
swallow, my face like a furnace. “But I was … I was …”
“Do you really buy all your clothes from thrift shops and pretend they’re new?” says Caroline, looking up from the screen.
“No!” I say defensively. “I mean … yes … maybe … sometimes …”
“She weighs 135 pounds, but pretends she weighs 125 …” Jack’s voice is saying.
What? What?
My entire body contracts in shock.
“I do not!” I yell in outrage at the screen. “I do not weigh anything like 135 pounds! I weigh … about … 128 … and a half …” I trail off as the entire room turns to goggle at me.
“… hates crochet …”
There’s an almighty gasp from across the room.
“You hate crochet?” comes Katie’s disbelieving voice.
“No!” I say, swiveling in horror. “That’s wrong! I love crochet! You know I love crochet—”
But Katie is stalking furiously out of the room.
“She cries when she hears the Carpenters …” Jack’s voice is saying on the screen. “She loves Abba, but she can’t stand jazz …”
Oh, no. Oh no, oh no …
Connor is staring at me as though I have personally driven a stake through his heart.
“You can’t stand … jazz?”
It’s like a bad dream. One of those dreams where everyone can see your underwear and you want to run but you can’t. I can’t tear myself away. All I can do is sit in agony as Jack’s inexorable voice continues.
All my secrets. All my personal, private secrets. Revealed on television. I’m in such a state of shock, I’m not even taking them all in.
“She wears lucky underwear on first dates … she borrows designer shoes from her roommate and passes them off as her own … pretends to kickbox … confused about religion … worries that her breasts are too small …”
I close my eyes, unable to bear it. My breasts. He mentioned my breasts. On television.
“When she goes out, she can play sophisticated … but on her bed …”
I’m suddenly faint with fear.
No. No. Please not this. Please, please—
“… she has a Barbie bedspread.”
A huge roar of laughter goes around the room, and I bury my face in my hands. I am beyond mortification. No one was supposed to know about my Barbie bedspread. No one.
“Is she sexy?” the interviewer is asking, and I feel a stab of shock. I can’t breathe for apprehension. What’s he going to say?
“She’s very sexual,” says Jack at once, and all eyes swivel toward me, agog. “This is a modern girl who carries condoms in her purse.”
Every time I think this can’t get any worse, it does.
My mother is watching this. My mother.
“But maybe she hasn’t reached her full potential. Maybe there’s a side of her that has been frustrated …”
I can’t look at Connor. I can’t look anywhere.
“Maybe she’s willing to experiment. Maybe she’s had—I don’t know—a lesbian fantasy about her best friend …”
No! NO! My entire body clenches in horror. I have a sudden image of Lissy watching the screen at home, wide-eyed, clasping a hand over her mouth. She’ll know it was her. She’ll know! I will never be able to look her in the eye again …
“It was a dream, OK?” I manage as everyone gawks at me. “Not a fantasy! They’re different!”
I feel like throwing myself at the television. Draping my arms over it. Stopping him.
But it wouldn’t do any good, would it? A million TVs are on, in a million homes. People everywhere are watching.
“She believes in love and romance. She believes her life is one day going to be transformed into something wonderful and exciting. She has hopes and fears and worries, just like anyone. Sometimes she feels frightened.” He pauses, and adds in a softer voice, “Sometimes she feels unloved. Sometimes she feels she will never gain approval from those people who are most important to her.”
As I watch Jack’s warm, serious face on the screen, I suddenly feel my eyes stinging slightly.
“But she’s brave and good-hearted and faces her life head-on.” He shakes his head and smiles at the interviewer. “I’m … I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened there. I guess I got a little carried away. Could we—” His voice is abruptly cut off by the interviewer.
He got a little carried away.
This is like saying Hitler was a tad aggressive.
“Jack Harper, many thanks for talking to us …” the interviewer starts saying. “Next week we’ll be chatting with the charismatic king of motivational videos, Ernie Powers. Meanwhile, many thanks again to …”
She finishes her spiel and the program’s music starts. Then someone leans forward and switches the television off.
For a few seconds the entire room is silent. Everyone is gaping at me, as though they’re expecting me to make a speech. Some faces are sympathetic, some are curious, some are gleeful, and some are just jeez-am-I-glad-I’m-not-you.
“But … but I don’t understand,” comes a voice from across the room, and everybody’s head swivels avidly toward Connor, like at a tennis match. He’s looking straight at me, his face red with confusion. “How does Jack Harper know so much about you?”
Oh, God. I know Connor got a really good degree from Manchester University and everything. But sometimes he is so slow on the uptake.
Everyone’s head has swiveled back toward me.
“I …” My whole body is prickling with embarrassment. “Because we … we …”
I can’t say it out loud. I just can’t.
But I don’t have to. Connor’s face is slowly turning different colors. “No,” he gulps. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost. And not just any old ghost. A really big ghost with clanky chains, going “Whooo!”
“No,” he says again. “No. I don’t believe it.”
“Connor,” says someone, putting a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs it off.
“Connor, I’m really sorry—” I falter.
“You’re joking!” exclaims some guy in the corner, who is obviously even slower than Connor and has just had it spelled out to him word for word. He looks up at me. “So, how long has this been going on?”
It’s like someone opened the floodgates. Suddenly everyone in the entire room starts pitching questions at me. I can’t hear myself think for the babble.
“Is that why he came to Britain? To see you?”
“Are you going to marry him?”
“You know, you don’t look like you weigh 135 pounds.”
“Do you really have a Barbie bedspread?”
“So, in the lesbian fantasy, was it just the two of you, or …”
“Have you had sex with Jack Harper at the office?”
“Is that why you dumped Connor?”
I can’t cope with this. I have to get out of here. Now.
Without looking at anyone, I get to my feet and stumble out of the room. As I head down the corridor, I’m too dazed to think of anything other than I must get my bag and go. Now.
As I enter the empty marketing department, phones are shrilly ringing all around, and the habit’s too ingrained; I can’t ignore them.
“Hello?” I say, picking up one at random.
“So!” comes Jemima’s furious voice. “ ‘She borrows designer shoes from her roommate and passes them off as her own.’ Whose shoes might those be, then? Lissy’s?”
“Look, Jemima, can I just … I’m sorry. I have to go.” I put the phone down.
No more phones. Get bag. Go.
As I zip up my bag with trembling hands, a couple of people have followed me into the office and are picking up some of the ringing phones.
“Emma, your granddad’s on the line,” says Artemis, putting her hand over the receiver. “Something about the night bus and he’ll never trust you again?”
“You have a call from Harveys Bristol Cream publicity department,” chimes in Caroline.
“They want to know where they can send you a free case of sweet sherry.”
How did they get my name? How? Has the word spread already? Are the women on reception telling everybody?
“Emma, I have your dad here,” says Nick. “He says he needs to talk to you urgently.”
“I can’t,” I say numbly. “I can’t talk to anybody. I have to … I have to …”
I grab my jacket and practically run out of the office and down the corridor to the stairs. Everywhere, people are making their way back to their offices after watching the interview, and they all turn to gawk as I hurry by.
“Emma!” As I’m nearing the stairs, a woman named Fiona, whom I barely know, grabs me by the arm. She weighs about 300 pounds and is always campaigning for bigger chairs and wider doorways. “Never be ashamed of your body. Rejoice in it! The earth mother has given it to you! If you want to come to our workshops on Saturday …”
I tear my arm away and start clattering down the marble stairs. But as I reach the next floor, someone else grabs my arm.
“Hey, can you tell me which charity shops you go to?” It’s a girl I don’t even recognize. “Because you always look really well dressed to me.”
“I adore Barbie dolls, too!” Carol Finch from Accounts is suddenly in my path. “Shall we start a little club together, Emma?”
“I … I really have to go.”
I back away, then start running down the stairs. But people keep accosting me from all directions.
“I didn’t realize I was a lesbian till I was thirty-three.”
“A lot of people are confused about religion. This is a leaflet about our Bible study group—”
“Leave me alone!” I suddenly yell in anguish. “Everyone, just leave me alone!”
I sprint for the entrance, the voices following me, echoing on the marble floor. As I’m desperately pushing against the heavy glass doors, Dave the security guard saunters up and stares right at my breasts.
“They look all right to me, love,” he says encouragingly.
I finally get the door open, then run outside and down the road, not looking right or left. At last I come to a halt in a small pedestrian square. I sink down on a bench and bury my head in my hands.
I have never been so completely and utterly mortified in all my life.
Can You Keep a Secret? Page 24