Chapter 19
19
Fiona decided she had to go with the truth. It was the only option she had that would be anywhere near powerful enough to explain her faux pas.
As requested, Annabel got to work, once more clearing her schedule for the following day, while she worked on a presentation for Dominic. It was going to take some smooth talking to come back from this.
Unfortunately, researching how to set up environmentally friendly seminars and conference workshops proved somewhat of a rabbit hole. Every click of her mouse took her from one page full of data and information to another, all of which she devoured with a ferocity she couldn’t remember since university days. Some of the facts, she discovered, were truly horrifying. A thousand dead dolphins off the coast of France in six months, caused by fishing boats. So many dead grey whales washed up that landfills were no longer accepting them, and landowners were being forced to leave them to rot on their shores.
Pushing the plunger on the cafetière, she reloaded the PowerPoint and started again from scratch. She’d wallowed in self-pity for long enough. Now, she was going to be the person who made a difference.
As she curled up under the blankets that evening, she was convinced that there was no way Dominic could ignore what she was trying to do. Not if he was half the man she hoped he was.
Being well aware that her biggest client was an early-morning person, she was in the office at six thirty, coffee brewed, ready and waiting.
At nine, there was still no sign of him. At eleven-fifteen, still nothing and she had to stop herself drinking a fourth cup of coffee. This was the problem with the new cafetière, she decided. When you used it, you felt obliged to drink it all.
‘Do you want me to ring through to his office?’ Annabel asked. ‘They can at least tell me if he’s still in the building.’
‘No, it’s fine. You managed to clear everything I had on, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but?—’
‘Then it’s fine. It’s fine. We wait. He’ll come at some point. He’ll be here eventually.’ She went back into her office and paced from one end to the other before returning.
‘I need to go out,’ she announced. ‘I need some air.’
‘But what if he comes when you’re not here?’
‘I’m only going downstairs. I’ll see him.’
As it happens, she didn’t even get that far. She was halfway down the staircase when, dressed in a deep-green suit, he appeared through the front door.
‘Dominic.’ She raced down to greet him, only realising a moment later that, in doing so, she had him pinned in the tiny entrance. She hopped backwards, making room for the door to close. The polite, handshake-slash-air-kiss that followed was awkward, bordering on cringe-worthy.
‘I assume now is a good time?’ he asked, an eyebrow raised. ‘You weren’t going out, were you?’
‘No, no. Now is perfect,’ she enthused, gliding back up the stairs, trying not to trip. ‘Absolutely perfect.’
They must have made the ten-metre walk from the top of the stairs to her office together nearly a hundred times. And, on those occasions, they’d be chatting, usually about something work related: what events they each had coming up, how the previous event had gone. But, sometimes, it would be about something more personal: Stephen or Joseph’s birthdays perhaps, or how Octavia was getting on at university, all those years ago when she’d just started. Not to mention holidays. That was a favourite topic. This time, however, they walked in silence. Only when they arrived at the door and she leaned forward to push it open for him did he speak.
‘I’m assuming this won’t take all afternoon,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment at three.’
‘No, no,’ she said, ushering him through, while trying to stifle the feeling of nausea that was currently engulfing her. ‘Not at all.’
‘Good luck,’ Annabel mouthed, giving her a nervous thumbs up, as she closed the door behind them. This was it.
After opening both windows – the room had become inexplicably warm since her return with Dominic – she proceeded to take his coat and hang it up.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got some of that Jamaican blend you like so much. Although I’m using a cafetière now, as opposed to the machine.’
He didn’t even honour the question with a shake of the head.
‘I don’t understand what happened, Fiona. You and I have always had such a great relationship. And Octavia was over the moon about working with you.’
‘I know. I know. I can only apologise and hope you’ll let me explain.’
His eyes suggested some uncertainty, his tongue drawing a line across his lips. ‘I don’t know how to say this, I really don’t.’ The worry lines deepened. ‘Are you okay?’ he paused, before adding, ‘Personally?’
‘Oh. Have you heard about Stephen?’
There followed the look that she’d experienced the previous day from Annabel. It brimmed with concern and sympathy but this time also implied that, because her husband had left her for another woman, she was no longer capable of making rational decisions.
‘I’ll admit,’ she said with an ironic smile. ‘I didn’t see it coming. How did you find out? The golf club?’
He gave a nod. She sighed wearily.
‘And I guess they’ve known there for months, haven’t they? Everyone having a good laugh at my expense.’
‘I don’t know about the others. I only found out last week. I imagine people were trying to stay schtum around me, because of how closely we work together.’
‘How decent of them. Well, it’s done now. He’s made his bed. Which probably contains someone substantially younger than me.’
He scrutinised her. ‘For what it’s worth, no one is laughing at you. If anything, it’s him and the damn workplace cliché they’re laughing at.’
‘So, it’s the secretary then?’
He blushed ever so slightly at the slip.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I had guessed as much.’
A moment passed as she reflected on his words. It was a cliché, he was right; the whole thing was. But that wasn’t what this was about.
‘Look, about Octavia?—’
‘Yes.’ His demeanour altered, as if he had suddenly remembered the reason he was there. ‘About that?—’
‘If you would give me a chance, please. I went about everything the wrong way, I really did. And maybe, just maybe, there was perhaps the slightest bitterness towards Stephen and weddings and whatnot playing some sort of mischief in there. But, honestly, I think if you’ll listen to what I’m about to tell you, you’ll understand why I suggested to Octavia that she make changes to her wedding. And why, perhaps, you’ll consider making some similar changes to your own business too.’
He frowned. ‘Okay, I’m listening,’ he said.
Until that moment, the only person she’d divulged her secret link with Martha the whale to had been Professor Arkell, and that had only come about to avoid being arrested. But whether she wanted to or not, she had to share it now. Clenching and unclenching a fist, she brought the first image up on the screen.
‘This is a picture of my son’s sixth birthday party…’ she started.
From there, she went through the whole sorry tale. Keeping the television on in the house when she was on her own to fill the void of Stephen and Joseph’s absence. Learning about Martha, a mother, separated from her family and alone in the Thames. Researching more about whales. She talked about going down to the waterfront, when she’d first heard Martha was in distress – although, for obvious reasons, she skipped the part about ending up in bed with a twenty-five-year-old yoga teacher. Then it got to the bit about the death. About the stomach contents. About her role in it.
‘It had never crossed my mind that I could be even part way responsible for something like that. We buy all these disposable items,’ she said. ‘Pens, plastic bags, plastic bottles. And in a hundred years, you’ll be long gone but your water bottle is still going to be around. Maybe it will be recycled into another bottle and another, before it ends up as a plastic bag in the bottom of a massive landfill or washed out into the ocean, but it will still be here. At some point, somewhere along the line, something you have owned could end up being responsible for the death of an animal, and the only person to blame will be you.
‘Sitting there, in that professor’s office, I knew I didn’t want to be part of it any more. I wanted to opt out. And I wanted to do everything I could to help other people opt out of it too. And if that meant telling Octavia that having two hundred rainbow-coloured balloons at her wedding was a bad idea, then what else could I do? I had to say something. I hope you understand.’
Despite her fears, she’d managed to hold back the tears during the presentation. It was only now that she’d finished, did she feel the familiar prickling sensation behind the eyes.
‘I can’t imagine,’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I really can’t imagine what you’ve been through.’
‘You and me both.’
‘I heard about the whale, obviously, but I would never have thought…’
‘But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? We don’t. We can’t. We’re all so detached from the process, it makes it impossible to believe that we could have any part to play in what happens a thousand miles from here. But the fact of the matter is, any of us could. That could have been any one of our plastic bags in there.’
A low hiss blew from his lips. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’ll speak to Octavia. I don’t know if she’ll be willing to listen to you. If I’m honest, she’s not exactly a forgive-and-forget type of girl, but I’ll tell her. If you’re all right with that.’
‘There’s no point in hiding it now,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘And, as for us.’ His expression changed with a sigh as he made to leave. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know where we stand, to be frank. I would like to think we could continue working together. I really would. But that level of unprofessionalism, Fiona?—’
‘If you could just hold on for one more minute.’ She stopped him with a hand. ‘The thing is, there are a few more things I would like you to consider, too.’