Under One Sky

Chapter 20

20

As the empty lift rises, the metallic taste in Kate’s mouth grows. She looks out at the overpowering skyline. The Gherkin sits just beyond the end of the road. It was new and exciting when Kate left Digby’s, but already it is dominated by newer, more exciting, more polished architecture. The Walkie-Talkie. The Cheesegrater. The Scalpel. Kate feels as though she is drowning under all of them.

The doors ding like the bell at the side of a boxing ring.

The moment arrives.

‘Kathleen? I’m Freya.’ A glossy Essex goddess with long, brown, poker-straight hair and plump gleaming lips stands in the doorway. ‘Bethany’s in with her boss at the moment, but I can deal with whatever you’re here for,’ Freya says, walking away so Kate has to follow her. ‘As long as it’s quick, I’m having my nails done at one forty-five.’

Kate’s eyes dart to the closed door of the corner office. The blinds are drawn over the glass walls so she can’t see inside. She has a fight-or-flight moment. She looks back at Freya’s pert and purposeful bottom, striding away in front of her to a desk further away.

‘I really need to see Bethany Henderson. Is she in there?’ Kate stops, nodding to George’s office. Freya stops and twists on the stiletto of her pointed heel.

‘Yes. But you can’t go in, she’s in a meeting.’

She’s covering for them.

‘This is important.’

Freya’s incredulous mouth hangs open, her plump pout gleaming five different shades of nude.

‘So’s her meeting. You can’t just go in there… EXCUSE ME!’ An English affectation turns to a full Barking drawl. ‘They’re in a meetin’!’

Kate pulls the brushed-steel handle on the door down and opens it wide, deliberately, vengefully. George is sitting on the edge of his desk, and a cascade of long blonde hair extensions lean in towards his crotch. Bethany is in the chair facing her boss and turns around clutching a tissue.

‘Kate?’

‘Hello, George,’ Kate whispers through gritted teeth.

Angry, wobbly, vindicated.

‘I’m in the middle of something!’ George doesn’t look flustered or flushed, just confused and irritated.

‘Sorry, George, she just burst in, said she was from Staples to see Bethany…’

Bethany looks up, tears in her eyes.

George’s confusion turns to panic. ‘Are the kids OK?’

‘The kids are fine…’ Kate is overcome and starts to look around, lost for words, her body flooding with self-doubt. She feels a twitch in her left eye and puts her hand to her brow to try to quash it. The meek-looking girl in the chair doesn’t look fresh fr om sex, or as if she’s about to skip out of here hand in hand with George for a romantic lunch. ‘I just…’

‘You’re George’s wife?’ interrupts Freya with a scowl and shoots Bethany a conspiratorial look. ‘Why did you say you was Kathleen from Staples?’ Freya lets out a confused laugh, then double-takes as she notices that her friend is crying. ‘You OK?’ she mouths. Bethany gives a small shake of her head as if to say no.

‘Kate, I’m just dealing with something very important, give me two minutes.’ George looks baffled and angry. Kate has never seen George look like this. And guilty, he looks guilty, but Kate can’t understand why now. Gobsmacked and humiliated, she retreats and closes the door.

‘Tell George I’ll be in the lobby…’ Kate says with a pull of her ponytail.

Freya tuts and strides back to her desk, her bottom even more pert and purposeful than before.

The shame. Kate knows everyone in the open-plan office will now be talking about George’s embarrassing wife, bursting in to his office as Freya shouted at her not to, so she marches shame-faced through the doors to the lifts but takes the stairwell, down five flights of stairs, and an escalator, past the women on the front desk and out into the street, her horror blowing on the wind down Bishopsgate.

Deep. Breaths.

Three minutes later, George finds Kate leaning against a wall.

‘What the FUCK just happened there?’

George’s tiny eyes have turned from blue to steel.

‘I’m sorry, I thought I needed to talk to you. Urgently.’ A rash spreads from Kate’s russet cheeks down to the V-neck of her butterfly top .

‘Are you OK?’

‘No!’ she says with a wobble. ‘I thought you were having an affair.’

‘You thought I was having an affair?’ George rubs his cropped grey hair. ‘With Bethany? Jesus, Kate, I’m old enough to be her dad.’

‘Well… I did think it was a bit of a cliché.’

‘Actually, I was letting Bethany go. She’s not up to the job. As you can imagine, she was upset. Nice one, Kate. You made a very tricky thing I wasn’t much looking forward to doing even more difficult.’ George walks away down the road towards the Gherkin, hands stuffed in his pockets. Kate is surprised by his temper. He’s never usually this impassioned. If she wasn’t feeling so mortified, she’d think it was sexy.

‘George!’

She scurries behind him to catch up, battered boots scuffing along the pavement.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were firing her?’

Kate catches up with George and tugs the arm of his blue shirt. They stop and lean into the exterior wall of Digby Global Investors.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you thought I was having an affair? Anyway, why did you think I was having an affair?’ There are a million reasons Kate thought George was having an affair. The distance, the disinterest, that text, that hair, working on a Saturday, the vague blocked-out lunches, disabling Find My iPhone, the new passcode… And she knows all of them will sound ridiculous in the lunchtime hum of beeping buses and taxis.

Kate’s eyes fill up. ‘Oh, George, what have I done?’

‘I don’t know, but you’ve got to pull yourself together. This is ludicrous, not to mention embarrassing, for you as well as me. ’

Freya walks out of the building, gazing at her nails as she sashays down the thin wide steps onto the pavement. She walks past George and Kate as she flits to her appointment in a hurry, shooting them a look of condemnation as she passes, shaking her head to herself. George manages to avoid her eyes.