Chapter Forty-Six
Forty-six
Greg makes it sound bad. Worse than it was.
He misses the romance of the whole thing.
He frames it as something entirely different.
“He said it all started with a kiss,” he tells the group, who seem to lean forward as one.
To hang from his every word. Already, Greg is wrong, but I find I can’t voice my rebuttal. My throat feels like it’s closed up.
That’s not where it started at all. It all started when he paid for my coffee that day.
When he recognized something in me—a sadness, perhaps, that I saw reflected in him.
He wouldn’t have paid for my coffee otherwise.
And then again, when I saw him in the office.
In London, the chances of bumping into the same person are minuscule in a year, but the very same day?
That’s got to be something close to fate.
When he told me that he, too, had lost a sibling, it was confirmed.
Something had brought us together, and I was not going to let it get away from me.
He seemed to like me, with some persuasion from Marcie’s repertoire of moves, of course.
He asked me out. Our first date, at the pub.
We bonded over our shared loss, and I was so sure that he was the one.
The person who would make me feel less alone in this world.
“He said he felt bad about it—that he thought he’d maybe encouraged her a bit,” Greg is saying.
“They’d both lost siblings, and I think he felt protective over her.
But she was always so weird toward him. At the first office drinks she came to, she made a beeline straight for him. Barely spoke to anyone else.”
Why does he have to make it sound so seedy? I didn’t know the rest of the office was coming, and, besides, Freddie didn’t seem interested in any of them. Not once Greg had moved away, anyway.
And then there was the second date. Just the two of us. When he bought me lunch and asked me all about myself. And the way he brushed against my leg under the table: I wasn’t imagining that. I couldn’t imagine the spark of attraction that ran between us in that moment.
“He said he took her for lunch one day, just to check in. See how she was getting on. He was her manager, so it was his responsibility to make sure everything was going OK, but he said she didn’t want to talk about work at all.
Kept evading his questions and staring at him in a really intense way.
Eventually, he thought she might want to talk about losing her sister, so he tried to pave the way for that conversation. ”
He’s wrong. Freddie encouraged it. He was interested in getting to know me, too.
He opened up to me that day, told me personal details that I was sure he’d never revealed to anyone else.
Greg doesn’t have the whole picture. He doesn’t know about our secret meetings, where it was just the two of us.
Like when we were in the kitchen together, and the air crackled with electricity.
Like in meetings when our legs would touch under the table.
The way it always took him a little too long to move away.
“She kept cornering him, so they’d be alone together.
Finding little ways to talk to him. Insisted on sitting next to him in meetings.
There was one point, in the pub, where we all got together for a photo.
Iris practically pushed me out of the way so that she could be next to him in it.
I think he found it funny, to begin with. Shrugged it off as a schoolgirl crush.”
I loathe Greg. I hate that he has reduced what we had to something as minor—as inconsequential—as a crush. I glare at him with as much hatred as I can muster, but it doesn’t deter him. He plows on. Spreading lies, falsehoods.
“He made a bit of a twat of himself after that. I think he’d been having girl trouble, not that he was ever particularly open about it with me, and he was definitely drinking too much.
We had another work night out, and most people had gone home by the time Iris arrived.
I left the two of them alone together, and the next morning he came to me and told me he’d done something stupid.
That he’d kissed Iris, and he was worried that he’d overstepped.
Said it was a drunken thing, but he was concerned that our boss would find out. ”
No, no, no. The kiss was genuine. I felt it. I knew it.
“I encouraged him to speak to her the next day. Play it down. But I think he felt so embarrassed by what he’d done, he just ignored it and hoped she wouldn’t say anything.”
Greg doesn’t know the half of it.
“That’s when things started to get really bad.
Freddie started getting the sense that someone was following him.
He thought it was a bloke at first, but I’ve always wondered if it was her.
” He tips his head in my direction, and all eyes turn toward me, like he’s broken the spell he was binding them with.
“I thought he was being paranoid at first. He kept going on about feeling watched. Thought there was someone in his flat. I’ll regret that I didn’t do more for a long time. ”
Well, on that point he’s got me. I did mention love pushed me to lengths I didn’t think myself capable of.
Even before I suspected there was another woman, I’d found ways to get into Freddie’s flat.
He was never particularly security conscious, and occasionally he left a window unlocked.
But when I began to suspect his infidelity after Greg—fucking Greg—planted that seed of the other woman in my head, I went further.
I began following Freddie. I stole his keys so I could access his flat whenever I wanted.
It was easy enough to do. He always left them on his desk, and I waited until he was in a meeting, then swiped them. I had them copied at the key-cutting place down the road, and they were back on his desk before he even missed them.
I sent him a few messages, just to gauge his feelings toward me, but he was unresponsive, clipped.
And so I decided to use them. I let myself into his flat and I began to look for evidence.
I didn’t find anything that first time. It was a thrill just to know I was there, in this intimate space of his.
I lay on his lumpy mattress and inhaled the smell of him from the pillow.
I even took a pair of pajama bottoms, savoring the fact that they had pressed against his skin.
As time passed and I wasn’t caught, I grew bolder. Sometimes I’d wait until he was asleep, then let myself in and watch him breathe from the corner of his bedroom.
I grew bolder in my search, too, looking in places I hadn’t previously dared to go lest he notice a difference.
It was in Freddie’s sock drawer that I found the ring, buried right at the bottom.
It was exactly the sort of ring I’d have wanted.
It broke me a little seeing it there, so incongruous in its tiny velvet box. Something inside me gave.
“I put two and two together a few weeks later,” says Greg now.
“I watched Iris staring at Freddie across the office, and something just slotted into place. I warned him that it could be her, tried to get him to go to our boss, but he was worried he’d be in trouble for encouraging her.
Weirdly, I think he was quite pleased that it was only Iris.
That it wasn’t something more sinister than a crush. ”
I fucking hate Greg.
After I found the ring, I decided to confront Freddie. I would lay my cards out on the table. Tell him I loved him. Prove to him that I was the one he wanted.
Wanting to get him alone, I waited for him leave the office and then followed him into that alleyway.
He had his phone to his ear, speaking in the continuous stream that indicates a voice note.
His tone was soft, crooning, sickening. When I heard what he was saying, it was like a physical pain.
I staggered, and the noise of my soles on the concrete caused Freddie to swing round toward me.
He hung up and was on me in seconds. He grabbed me by the arm so hard I could feel the tendons twisting.
“It’s been you all along, hasn’t it? Fucking hell.
Greg was right. You’ve been following me for weeks, letting me think I had some sort of stalker.
” He was so, so angry. He didn’t understand that it came from a place of love.
“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression with the kiss.
That should never have happened. But you have got to stop texting me, and messaging me, and staring at me.
You’re freaking me out, Iris. You’re being so fucking weird.
” It was the shudder he gave that made something in me snap. The utter revulsion it contained.
He didn’t know what he was talking about. He was wrong. We were right for each other. Just as soon as he forgot about this other woman, we would be together.
“Please, Freddie.” I hated the note of desperation in my voice. He heard it, too, because his lip curled.
“Never contact me again, Iris.” And he dropped my arm with a final sneer and marched away. Toward the main road. Toward his end.
The call came early the next morning: an accident, my boss said. A lorry. I couldn’t breathe. “Take all the time you need,” he said as he ended the call, in a tone of voice that suggested he meant the exact opposite. “I know you two were close.”
The days that followed were awful. I could barely keep my head above water, the grief, the tragedy of losing Freddie was so strong. I didn’t go into the office the day after he died. I couldn’t face the thought of his empty desk.
When I finally mustered the strength to go back, Greg was in our boss’s office, shouting. I could hear him through the glass. “He was sure he was being followed. She’s had this weird obsession with him for weeks.”
Not long after that, I was called in by stony-faced HR.
“We’re letting you go. Don’t make this harder, Iris. You’re lucky that we haven’t got the police involved.”
So I left—with no references, nothing to show for the months and months of work I had given to them.
They let me go like I was nothing. I couldn’t find another job after that.
Not until Mick took me on. Greg made me lose everything: my job, my flat.
Now he’s going to take this from me, too. The group. My safe haven.
I don’t look at Jack, but I can sense his gaze boring into the side of my face.
Judgment rolls from every corner of the room in thick, black waves.
I am so blindsided by this turn of events, I can’t even think of a way to worm myself out of it, cast aspersions on Greg’s testimony, twist the narrative so that I am the wronged party here. I can only sit there.
“I always just had this sense about her,” he finishes. “Like she was acting. Like she was an empty shell and there was nothing underneath.” He shudders. Just as Jack did earlier today. Just as Freddie did minutes before he died.
The silence stretches. No one moves. Somewhere in the distance, a siren screams. I could say he’s delusional.
That Freddie and I decided to keep our relationship a secret, even from him.
But they won’t believe me. Greg pitched it perfectly: his voice low yet angry, imbued with just the right amount of righteous injustice to add veracity to his claims.
I can’t out Jack now. I can’t do anything now. How has everything gone so spectacularly wrong?
Even Charlie has deigned to lift his head. Above, one of the striplights flickers.
After a long, long pause in which I can only stare at a patch of chewing gum on the floor, Fiona speaks. “I think, Iris, it’s probably best if you leave us.”
No anger. Just deep, deep disappointment. I’m used to it. I disappointed Mum the moment I was born, and every day after that.
It’s a bad situation, but—as I always do—I intend to make the best of it. Because, unknowingly, Fiona has provided me with an escape. I may not be able to out Jack as the controlling abuser he is, but I have been afforded an option Alice never had. The option to leave.
So I do. If I’m quick, I can slip out before he has a chance to raise the alarm.
He wouldn’t want to grab me in here: too many witnesses.
If I can get through the door to the lobby, I might just be safe.
I dread to think what would happen if he caught me.
Now that I know what he did to Mum, what he’s capable of.
This is my one chance to get out, start over.
I could move abroad. I’ve always liked the sound of Italy.
Over there, fall in with the right people, and law and order are more guidelines than decree.
I give myself a dignified departure. I’m owed that, at least. I’ve given a lot to this group. I stand, make sure I stare each person—even Jack—right in the eyes, and then, with my back perfectly straight, I walk right through the center of the circle. Back to being myself.