Chapter 17 #2
‘There’s clearly nothing wrong with Sofia, otherwise you would have opened with that or maybe not even come at all. Fuck knows. Whatever you need to say couldn’t wait another fifteen days until I get out of here. So how about you say what you came to say and be on your way?’
She nodded. There weren’t many things she could respect about Jay.
There were many things she could hate, like the way he’d manipulated his way into Sanfia Records, which, she suspected, had been a major factor behind him seeking out Sofia in the first place.
Like the way he tried to change Sanfia Records, wanting to introduce dance music and drum and bass, basically using an established label for his own preferences, rather than having the balls to set something up for himself.
Or the way he spoke down to Sofia and demeaned her without her even realising it.
The way he had changed and continued to change her bright, quirky and happy younger sister into someone plain and unhappy.
But if there was anything about Jay she could respect, he, like her, also liked to cut to the chase.
She slowly sipped her water, knowing that she could be the bigger person but unable to let Jay have control of the situation.
‘You’re not wearing your wedding ring,’ she said, looking out to the ocean.
She saw from the corner of her eye as he wrapped his right hand over his left. ‘That make you happy? You’d love it, wouldn’t you? If this was it for Sofia and me?’
‘I want what I’ve always wanted for my sister – what’s best for her.’
‘Regardless of what makes her happy?’
God, he was poison. He’d been poison since the day they met. Always talking into Sofia’s ear, making her think she needed him, that she wouldn’t find someone else. Sofia wanted the complete picture – career, husband, family – and Jay preyed on that.
‘What you’ll figure out one day, maybe sooner rather than later now that you’re sober – for however long that lasts – is that what’s best for Sofia will also make her happy.
You’re scum, Jay. You’re a leech. You wanted Sanfia Records as much as you wanted Sofia, and don’t you dare tell me that isn’t true.
You came from nothing and you thought your dreams of being a music producer would be made by Sofia.
So you’re right, nothing would make me happier than to see her rid of you.
Not because I don’t like you, which I don’t, but because she deserves a hell of a lot better than you. ’
She paused as her voice rose, glancing around to make sure they had no prying ears. It wouldn’t be good to be seen cursing the patient, would it?
When she looked back to Jay, she was surprised to find his eyes on the brink of tears and his skin red as he stifled a sob.
Now, she looked around wondering what the heck she was supposed to do with a crying Jay. She had said things in the heat of the moment that she had wanted to say to him for a long time. Yet it didn’t make her feel good at all.
‘I know she does,’ he said, before quickly swiping at his cheeks and sniffing back his upset, straightening his back as if his blip in composure was over and never to be seen again.
What surprised Andrea more was, though she didn’t feel good about releasing her venom, faced with a broken man, in tears, she still felt nothing but loathing for him.
‘It’s why I’m here,’ he said, stronger and clearer than just seconds before.
‘Some things are too little, too late, Jay. Sofia will stand by you, of course she will. It’s what she does. But why should she? What did you ever do for her?’
He gazed out to sea, as if contemplating, then told her, ‘You’re a bitch.
’ It wasn’t said viciously or in distress, it was matter of fact, which was somehow worse.
Like the first time your parents tell you they’re disappointed in you, rather than being angry, like the first time your sister keeps something from you as big as the fact she’s engaged because she knows you wouldn’t approve, and the worst part is, you know it’s true; you understand their reasoning.
Was she a bitch? She had been screwing Rosalie’s dad, a married man, for six months; of course she was a bitch.
She was here now, meddling in business that most people would consider wasn’t hers, even though she thought she was doing it for love. She loved Sofia liked she was her daughter, not her sister.
And that was perhaps the scariest realisation of all – she could be a bitch in the name of someone she loved like a child.
She thought of the thing that was maybe growing in her stomach.
She couldn’t be a mother. She wasn’t fit to be a mother.
She needed to get out of here and back to some place where she could take a test and find out what was going on with her.
Reaching into her purse, she retrieved a white envelope and slid it across the table to Jay, drawing his attention from their surroundings.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, holding up but not opening the envelope.
‘It’s an offer. A business proposal.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘Open it,’ Andrea demanded.
He read the short letter and took in the figure printed on the cheque attached to it.
‘You want to buy Sanfia Records?’ he asked.
‘Not entirely. I want, on behalf of my label, to acquire your shares in Sanfia Records and I think you’ll find that sum more than fair value.’
He looked at the cheque, then at her, then back to the cheque. For God’s sake, he was slow.
She waited for his brain to catch up with the opportunity that had been presented to him.
‘Let me get this straight. Stellar, of XM Music Group, wants to acquire Sanfia Records?’
She tried but failed to stop her eyes rolling.
‘Soph will never go for this. Has she agreed to this?’
Finally. The crux.
‘She doesn’t need to agree because I’m not offering to buy Sanfia Records, I’m offering to buy your shares in Sanfia Records.’
And the proverbial light bulb…
‘You want to buy me out.’
‘Yes,’ she said, crossing one leg over the other, relaxing minutely now that the proposition was out in the open.
‘I want to buy you out and I want you out of my sister’s life.
’ She stood, knowing her answer would not come today.
‘It’s a great offer. And when you take it, you’ll take it subject to one condition. ’
‘What?’
‘You’ll file for divorce. You’ll let Sofia move on without you.’
He stared at her, not displaying shock or anger, or hatred even. Nothing she might have expected. He considered the cheque again.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have money for a change?
’ Andrea asked. ‘Rather than taking loans and remortgaging the apartment when a potential star comes along? Wouldn’t it be nice to take the money and start up as a producer, working on the kind of stuff you want to do?
I’d be paying over the odds for your shares, in the circumstances. ’
He scoffed. ‘Enlighten me.’
‘Sanfia is mortgaged up to the hilt. I know Sofia has put everything on the line for Seth Young.’
Jay’s eyes shot wide. As she suspected, he’d been out of the decision-making loop of Sanfia Records for some weeks.
‘One of the producers is an addict,’ Andrea continued, sealing the coffin. ‘If you love her. If you ever loved her. Do the right thing by Sofia.’
‘She would hate you more than she already does if she knew about this.’
Andrea’s stomach sank. Hate? But there was every chance his words were true. Regardless, she loved Sofia and this was for her.
‘Lucky for me, a good person like Sofia can only have so much room in her heart for hatred, and she’s used a whole load up on you and your habits.’
She started walking away, weaving through the tables on the lawn, and she heard Jay call out… ‘Sofia is right, you never do anything if there’s not something in it for you.’
His words made her freeze. Sofia said that?
‘I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that you’d get one of the biggest indie labels on your books, huh? You’d get the so-called star-in-the-making on your books.’
She spun quickly, aware that the centre’s staff were closing in on her. ‘If I wanted to bring Seth Young over to Stellar, I would.’
They glared at each other as a woman in a black uniform – tunic and pants – took hold of Andrea’s arm. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry,’ Andrea said, her eyes still locked on Jay’s. ‘I know the way out.’
* * *
She clenched her jaw as she wound her way out to the car park, swallowing down emotion that threatened to break from her throat. Inside the car, she pulled down the visor, looked at herself in the small square mirror and said, ‘No! He doesn’t get to upset you.’
Except, it wasn’t Jay who had upset her; it was his declarations. Did Sofia hate her? Was she a bitch? Those were the questions she played over and over in her mind as she drove back in the direction of the city.
Was her motivation for trying to buy out Jay solely Sofia?
She couldn’t deny that getting Sanfia Records on the label’s books and, in particular, Seth Young, if things kept showing as much promise as they currently were, would be good for her reputation.
It would, undoubtedly, stop her peers thinking she’d slept her way to the top.
It would silence their wagging tongues when, or if, her thing with Tommy, whatever it was, came out.
Tommy.
She swung off the road at the next opportunity and wound up parked outside a pharmacy.
She took three pregnancy test kits from the shelves and smiled awkwardly at the cashier as she paid.
Next door to the pharmacy was a coffee shop.
After purchasing a bottle of water, she went to the bathroom and did the deed on all three little white sticks.
She jammed them back in their holsters, dropped them into her purse and washed her hands.
Back in the car, she counted down the seconds as she continued the drive back to the city, waiting the allocated time before looking at those little sticks again as they taunted her from her purse on the passenger seat.