Chapter 12
I’m at Matcher HQ today – and relieved to tell you that the lift is working.
It’s funny, when the man I got stuck with said he would rather chance it breaking down than take the stairs every day, I thought he was crazy, but when I arrived here this morning, walked into reception, my entire body feeling stiff from the freezing December weather outside, it made sense.
The thought of walking up all those stairs, well, it made me roll the dice on the lift without batting an eye.
Should I be nervous, that Paige has called me in? I guess because so far my job has been, well, not very jobby, it feels like a red flag to be invited here to talk, especially when I’ve just got back from Sydney.
‘Hello,’ I say brightly, stepping into Paige’s corner office.
‘You’ve caught the sun,’ she points out. ‘Look at your tan.’
‘Yeah, I could definitely get on board with living six months here, six months in Australia,’ I joke – although I could.
‘Sit,’ she tells me, pointing to the chair on the other side of her desk. ‘I got us coffees and pastries.’
Okay, so this is either really good news, or really bad, because she’s either trying to soften me – or – the blow from whatever she’s about to say.
‘Lovely,’ I reply, holding my nerve.
I don’t know if I feel penned in or exposed, here in her office, which is basically a glass box in the sky. I’m a little unnerved by the fact that all of the walls are glass, meaning everyone else in the office can see right in here, so if I have an emotional outburst, everyone will see. Cool.
‘So,’ she begins, her face giving nothing away. ‘Tell me about the dinner in Sydney.’
I sit up a little straighter.
‘The meeting,’ I say, suddenly feeling uneasy about what I’m supposed to be reporting on. ‘Well… it was two people. A man and a woman. They arrived together, chatted, ate dinner…’
‘Were they… close?’ she asks, her word getting shorter and sharper.
‘They sat next to each other,’ I say. ‘They were chatting, laughing…’
My voice trails off.
‘Did it look like a meeting?’ she asks.
‘It looked like a dinner,’ I reply.
This doesn’t feel professional, it feels personal. What the hell have I got myself into?
‘Did they leave together?’ she eventually asks.
I don’t know what else to say, apart from…
‘Yes.’
‘Bastard,’ she blurts softly.
She stares at me for a moment, then exhales.
‘Liberty, I have a job for you,’ she says.
‘Okay…’
‘I need you to go to New York,’ she replies. ‘This week.’
I try not to smile. I’ve always wanted to go to New York. It’s one of those iconic places you see in movies and TV shows, and somehow you feel like you’ve been, like you know your way around. I can’t believe I’m getting to go there.
‘I can do that,’ I reply. ‘Usual drill? Being on call? Observing?’
‘No,’ Paige says. ‘This time it’s different, I need you to work. Really work. Long hours. Whatever it takes.’
‘Assisting someone?’ I say, cautiously.
She shakes her head.
‘Not exactly,’ she tells me. ‘I need your specific skillset. Your experience working for a private investigator.’
Ah. The experience I mostly exaggerated in my interview. I was an admin assistant, not a trainee investigator, which I think might be what Paige believes I was doing there.
‘Right,’ I say, nodding like I believe I’m the person for the job, when in reality the only thing I cracked at my last job was a mug. ‘Of course. I’m happy to help.’
‘I’ve made a big mistake,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘But I think you can fix it – you’re my only hope.’
‘Okay…’
‘The man you were observing, in Sydney,’ she begins, ‘was Jordan Bill. He’s my business partner. And until very recently, my husband.’
‘Oh… right,’ I reply plainly.
That has surprised me. I don’t know why – we all have exes. Yikes, it was bad enough for me, having to work with Ben, but imagine owning a business with someone, and trying to separate.
‘Our divorce is done and dusted – but only just,’ she tells me, which explains why she wasn’t happy about him having dinner with another woman.
‘The only thing left is to divide the business. It’s all civil on paper, but really we’re at war.
I won’t bore you with the finer details of it.
We’ve divided certain things up – basically he’s taking the US division and I’m keeping the rest – but Matcher is my baby, and I’ll be running most it alone moving forward.
The UK is what I care about the most, where it all began.
If he wants to gad about in the US then fine, let him have it, so long as the main business remains mine. ’
‘Well, that’s good,’ I reply. ‘That you’re getting to keep the UK, working here, running things as usual.’
I say that but she’s not making it sound like it’s good.
‘Except…’ She sucks in air and puffs her cheeks.
‘I’ve made a mistake. Only a small one, a silly one really, but it is going to ruin everything.
I’m not in the best place, thanks to our split, and I may, in temper, have done a “find and replace” on all of our Ts and Cs, to get his name out of the day-to-day business, but I didn’t stop to think about the harm that would cause.
Again, I won’t bore you with the details, but it turns out removing every instance of his surname – Bill – also removed all instances of the word “bill” – let’s just say the “employment bill” is a mess, and it affects everyone, their rights, their benefits. It affects you, Liberty.’
‘I see,’ I reply. ‘That’s not great, then.’
That… that sounds like a lot. I know divorces can be messy, but damn, she’s found a way to make it worse.
‘Not great? It’s a disaster,’ she snaps.
‘Without it, most of our contracts are void. No maternity leave, no sick pay. And if Jordan finds out, he’ll use it to drag me back to the negotiating table.
Or worse, he’ll take the business outright, and the first thing he’ll do is clean house and sack everyone who was loyal to me – and that means you. ’
Bloody hell, I will never rage-delete anything ever again.
‘That man has taken everything from me, but this business…’ Her voice begins to crackle with emotion.
‘This business is the only thing I have left. He cheated on me, you know. Moved on instantly. And now he’s clearly screwing every female client and associate put in front of him.
Well, I’m not going to let him screw me again. ’
As someone who was betrayed by the man I lived with, worked with – the man I thought I was in love with – I get it. I know the heartbreak, the rage, and the unbearable feeling of failure that things didn’t work out, even if it wasn’t my fault.
Jordan sounds like Ben, but worse. A real piece of work. I don’t want him to take Paige’s company from her, out of sheer girl code, but I also don’t want to lose my job. I’ve only just started to feel like I’m getting my life back on track. I suppose Paige feels a similar way.
‘Okay then,’ I say confidently, whipped up on her behalf. ‘What exactly do you need me to do?’
‘Jordan is flying to New York for his last few meetings on behalf of Matcher and he’ll have the contract with him,’ she explains.
‘He promised me he would return with it signed – we’re so close – but it has the new terms in and that’s where the words are missing.
I’m doing this for all of you, for all of you, I swear.
So I’m assigning you as his assistant. He’ll say he doesn’t need one, but you’ll be there anyway, so just ignore him.
I’ve booked the rooms, you’ll be in the one next to him, and I’ve made sure you’re in first class on the plane too.
You’ll be by his side the whole time which should give you the perfect opportunity to swap out the contract he has with the correct version, without the missing words. Simple, really.’
Simple – maybe if I did actually have skills one might boast if they were a private investigator but, beyond Facebook stalking exes, I’m not much of a spy. What Paige is asking me to do is tantamount to espionage – corporate espionage, just, y’know, for the greater good.
‘How am I going to get close enough to him to swap it?’ I ask. ‘He’s not going to leave it lying around, surely?’
‘In his room, he will,’ she replies. ‘It isn’t hard to get close to him. He loves getting attention from women – he’s addicted to it. Flirting with him will get you far – pretend you’re interested in him, seduce him but, and it is a big but, do not sleep with him.’
‘It would never come to that,’ I reply.
Believe me when I say that the reason I’m not going to sleep with this random man for a work task isn’t because Paige told me not to, it’s because I’m not going to sleep with a random man for work. I do not need this job that badly.
‘He’s charming,’ she warns me. ‘Dangerously so. Do you think you can pull it off?’
I would’ve thought that would be off the table too.
‘There will be a big bonus waiting for you when you get back,’ she tells me. ‘And a full-time job, of course.’
‘Don’t I already have that?’ I ask.
‘I hired someone else, for the assistant position in the office,’ she explains. ‘I hired you specifically for this. I sent you to all of those locations to be on call if I needed you – if I needed you to spy on Jordan for me. That’s done now. But if you come through for me on this…’
Great. So the reason the job seemed too good to be true is because it was.
She’s had me on standby, stalking her ex, and now she needs me to do her dirty work, because she’s made a mistake.
I don’t want to lose my job (but only in the way that anyone who needs money to live on needs to keep their job) and I do want to help her, but most of all I just really, really want to go to New York.
Apart from stalking (and low-key seducing) her ex, everything else sounded amazing.
My mind is telling me no, of course it is, but do you know what is telling me yes? My overdraft. My need for independence. My annoying little habit of needing to eat food to survive.
‘Okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’m in.’