Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
W hether it was Allie’s walk with Martin, or the fear that Tessa might not come through and Allie might end up having to meet Jake Matthew’s deadline was unclear, but by Friday Allie had written three new chapters and was feeling as good about life as she could while still dwelling on her conversation with Tessa and Verity. She was managing to distract herself from the pervasive misogyny of the world with writing. She hadn’t worked this hard since the time she’d written a new book in the space of a month, and she was enjoying it. Martin sent her regular little messages of encouragement, all of which sounded like they could have been lifted straight out of the mouth of General Kitchener. Jess had been in touch with plans for that evening and Allie was beginning to think things were looking up again. She had even contemplated sending the new draft to Verity, just to get her opinion, but Verity had visibly blanched at the suggestion and whispered the words ‘NDA’ at her and rapidly changed the subject. Allie sent over some silent positive vibes of fortitude and bravery to Tessa, in the hope that they might help her decide whether to out Jake Matthews or not.
Will had been in touch just the right amount, sending sweet messages along with some delightfully suggestive ones. Even if neither of them were truly being honest with each other, she knew he was definitely keen to see her when he got back.
Allie had surprised herself by saying, ‘I wish you were here,’ when they’d spoken the other day on the phone and then immediately held her breath, grimacing, holding the phone away from her ear, waiting for Will to get cold feet and swiftly end both the phone call and whatever type of relationship they were currently in.
‘I do too,’ Will said straight back. ‘I’ve really missed you.’
Allie bit her lip and smiled. Her stomach swooped, which was a nice feeling, and her palms went sweaty, which was a less pleasant sensation to endure. But this wasn’t the plan. Telling Will she missed him was not ‘keeping him at arm’s length.’ It was not playing it cool, getting her writing done and then figuring out if he might still like her after he discovered she had been essentially lying to him. But it would also be lying to say she hadn’t missed him. She had missed the way he made her laugh, the way he held her hand, the way his hand tightened around her waist as he pulled her close to kiss her, and god dammit, if she wasn’t falling for him hard. Her already overactive mind was literally screaming at her to stop, to pull back, to remember her deadline, to focus on her career. But instead, she asked in a small voice, ‘When do you get back?’
‘In a day or two? I really want to get back to London and see you…’
He had left the suggestion hanging in the air and Allie in suspense as to all the things he might have in mind for his return. She had gone back to her laptop frustrated yet inspired and, courtesy of these thoughts, written a steamy chapter for her new book. She told herself she was back on track, back to getting what she needed from Will and pretended she wasn’t getting in too deep.
* * *
So, it was in just such a confused mood that Allie found herself sitting in a hip rooftop bar near London Bridge waiting for Martin. The location had flummoxed her. Much as she was invested in the love story of Martin and Angie, she wasn’t blind to its limitations, and lack of hipness was certainly one of them. She couldn’t imagine this being somewhere Martin was scoping out to take Angie on their next married couple date night.
‘This is very nice,’ she said, once Martin had picked his way through the city suits towards her.
‘You like it?’
‘I do! Good choice.’ Martin blushed a little under her praise. ‘Somewhere you’re thinking of taking Angie?’
‘Brought her here the other night actually.’ Martin failed to conceal the note of pride in his voice at this revelation.
‘Good for you!’ Allie reached across the table and gave Martin a friendly punch on the arm, causing him to spill his beer.
‘Sorry!’ Allie handed him a napkin so he could mop up his beer. ‘So, did she like it?’
‘She did. We’d been to see a play at The Chocolate Factory and Liam had suggested this place.’ Martin smiled. ‘I think he’s thinking of bringing his new lady friend here, he wanted an in-depth report on the ambience of the place.’ He started laughing. ‘Sorry, I just find it peculiar he would trust us with checking the location, it seems like a big responsibility because he seems to really like this friend.’
Once again Allie wished she had come clean sooner, and then she and Martin could be sitting here having a perfectly normal conversation about writing without all of this subtext and subterfuge roiling away under the surface and giving her heartburn. She rubbed the top of her ribcage.
‘By the way, I hope you don’t mind but I told him I’d be here. He’s been away but he said if he was back in time he’d call in and have a beer with me. I’m still trying to make it up to him for not being honest about everything. I hope that’s OK?’
Allie’s eyes widened in panic. Will was coming here? To meet Martin? His dad? With absolutely no knowledge that Allie would be here, not even realising that Allie knew his dad? This was not OK. This was very far from OK.
‘He’s … he’s … coming here?’ she spluttered.
‘Maybe.’ Martin shrugged. ‘As I said, he’s been away but he said he’d be back tonight, just not sure what time.’
‘Does he know you’re meeting me here?’ Allie’s mouth had gone incredibly dry, which was an interesting and new side effect of utter panic.
‘Well he doesn’t know it’s you ,’ Martin said, in slight bemusement at Allie’s line of questioning. ‘I mean, he knows I’m meeting a writer friend here, but I didn’t tell him your name. Should I have done?’ He raised a bushy eyebrow at Allie.
‘No! I mean, no, no, of course not. I mean, he wouldn’t even recognise my name, so what would be the point?! Ha ha! Completely stupid, of course!’ Which was a charge that Allie felt could be levelled at her right now. ‘So he’s coming here, when?’
‘I don’t know!’ Martin frowned at her. ‘Are you OK? You seem extremely bothered about the fact Liam might be coming here. I know we discussed not telling anyone about helping each other out. But it’s only Liam, I didn’t think it would matter.’
‘Matter? Oh no! Of course it doesn’t matter.’ Allie took a large gulp of her wine and tried to look at her watch to gauge the time, wondering if she could finish up her meeting with Martin and hot foot it out of there before Will showed up, and manage all of this without seeming like a total lunatic to Martin, who was already looking at her as if he might have suspicions about that.
‘So tell me how writing has been this week?’
‘Great! Fantastic,’ babbled Allie. ‘Almost done.’
‘You are? Well, that’s amazing, Allie, congratulations. Wish I could say the same for me.’
Allie grimaced – this wasn’t working. Even if she could persuade Martin that she had almost finished her manuscript (she hadn’t) then he was still going to want to talk about his, and that could take a while, in fact, it could take right up until the moment Will walked up the steps, out on to the rooftop bar and destroyed Allie’s happy ever after forever.
‘Yes, I’m really rather stuck on the third murder. What do you think about it happening on the trading floor of the bank? I was thinking about having a wall of those monitors collapse on top of Harry. Or do you think it would be better if there were balconies overlooking the trading floor and he plunged to his death, crashing into the bank of monitors as he went? I mean, I’d have to rewrite that description I have in chapter two, because I don’t mention any balconies, but I could easily put them in. But then I also have to think how Chastity planned all of this. I mean, if he’s to plunge to his death, then surely she has to push him, and do you think she could? She’s supposed to be quite petite so I’m not sure about the logistics of her pushing a six-foot man over a balcony. Maybe it’s better that she has rigged the monitors to collapse on top of him.’ Martin paused for breath mid-muse. ‘What do you think?’
What did Allie think? Allie had a lot of things on her mind at that precise moment, none of which involved the intricacies of how Martin might kill off his third victim. She was scanning the entrance of the bar for Will, trying to work out how long a train journey from York would take and the subsequent Tube journey to London Bridge. Would he go home first? That would give her a little longer to wrap things up with Martin and then get the hell out of there. And that was the main focus of all her thoughts. She knew that it ought to be how she should handle it when Will found out she knew Martin, but instead she was single-mindedly concentrating on how to make a speedy exit and prevent him from finding out this unwelcome fact tonight. Martin was aware of none of this, still pondering the logistics of a balcony plunge vs a monitor collapse. Either of which Allie would have been grateful for as a distraction right about now.
‘Allie?’ he asked again.
‘Hmm? Oh yes, right. No, I think that definitely works.’
He frowned. ‘But which one? The balcony shove or the monitor collapse?’
‘Definitely the balcony shove, I love what you did there,’ Allie said with far more conviction than she felt.
Martin’s frown intensified causing his eyebrows to completely meet in the middle and, not for the first time, Allie could see the family resemblance between him and Will. Not that she had seen much of Will frowning, but there was something that the intense frown did to the shape of Martin’s eyes that made him resemble his son, or presumably, the other way around.
‘You think it’s plausible Chastity would be able to push a six-foot man over a balcony? I was trying to work out momentum, where she would need to push him, how low the balcony would need to be so that a stumble and a shove could send him plummeting to his death. I presume these places have health and safety rules that require a minimum height for a balcony railing.’
Allie allowed herself a small smile at the wormhole Martin was evidently travelling down. It was something very familiar to her – not the murder and the balcony shove, but the logistics of making a plot plausible. And she thought of all the weird google searches she had done over the years to work out things like whether a five-foot-four woman would need to stand on tiptoes to kiss a nearly six-foot man. Just how long it takes the Eurostar to get through the tunnel on its way to Paris and whether that’s long enough for an entire relationship to unravel and come back full circle so that by the time the train shoots out into the French countryside the two romantic leads are kissing passionately in the luggage compartment.
‘I think it’s OK to allow a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in novels, don’t you?’
Martin didn’t look convinced so she tried a different tack. ‘OK, maybe you’re right, maybe it’s too much to expect her to be able to pull that off. How about you have her rig up the monitors to collapse for this murder and save the balcony shove for later?’
Martin’s features visibly lightened. ‘Good idea, but you don’t think it’s too repetitive to have two murders happen on the trading floor?’
Allie contemplated this. ‘Well, how about Chastity commits the first murder, and then she manages to torment Archie—’ the VP at the bank and the worst offender of the lot ‘—enough that he is provoked into the final act, and it’s actually him who pushes the chairman to his death from the balcony, just as the police swoop in. So they see Archie commit the final murder and, as Chastity has planted enough incriminating evidence, they pin all the murders on him?’
Martin gave a low whistle. ‘That’s good,’ he said admiringly. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to try your hand at writing crime? You could save this for your debut crime novel?’
Allie shrugged. ‘I appreciate the gesture, maybe at some point, but I did double check, and my contract is quite specific – my next novel for Brinkman’s needs to be a romance. And while I’m sure some editors would see the benefit of an author writing in two genres, I am sure Jake will use this as some way to further ruin my career.’
‘I despise him,’ Martin said bleakly and took a sip of his beer.
‘Yup. Me too. Sounds like most of publishing does.’
‘Got any further on your plan to ruin him?’
If Allie hadn’t been so nervous about the outcome of her recent meeting with Tessa she would have more deeply appreciated the way Martin so casually asked this; as if it was perfectly normal for the two of them to be discussing taking down their nemesis. And maybe it was for Martin because while Allie was usually trying to engineer meet-cutes, Martin was conspiring to commit murder. She wondered just how much to tell Martin that wouldn’t impinge on Tessa’s privacy.
‘I met with Tessa the other day,’ she confessed.
Martin’s ever-expressive eyebrows shot up. ‘And?’
‘And … it’s complicated. It’s a lot to ask of her.’
Martin shook his head. ‘Maybe he doesn’t treat her as badly as we think he does?’
‘Martin,’ she said sternly, ‘I thought we’d done the work on you being an ally? Her boss is using her to get drugs, threatening her with professional death if she exposes him, and generally playing in to the systemic corporate patriarchy by proving that men always hold all the power.’
To his credit, Martin looked suitably ashamed.
‘This is not about being a feminist,’ lectured Allie, as if reading Martin’s mind, ‘it’s about recognising the structural issues in place which prevent women from holding any kind of power in the workplace.’ Martin nodded, as though keen to ensure that Allie realised he was fully behind her and totally invested in smashing the patriarchal structures that enslaved both men and women.
‘Also, Jake is a complete ass. Everything she told me just confirms that. She definitely knows it, how could she not?’
‘Well let’s hope she either comes to her senses or we both manage to deliver our manuscripts. Either would be OK with me right now.’ Martin broke off, his face suddenly creasing into a broad grin as he stood up from the table. Allie had become so engrossed in discussing Martin’s plot and outlining her righteous indignation at the behaviour of Jake Matthews, that she had completely forgotten her pressing need to finish up this drink and make herself scarce before there was any danger of Will arriving on the scene. Her stomach dropped as Martin exclaimed, ‘Liam! Good to see you,’ and she realised she was too late.
Allie kept her gaze firmly focused on the table in front of her so she was only half aware of Martin grabbing Will by the shoulder and pulling him into the awkward hug, double pat release, that was widely recognised as the symbol of male-on-male affection. If Will had made his entrance from behind her then there was obviously another way in and out of the bar. Slowly, she began to push her chair back from the table, keeping her head down. She hoped she might be able to get far enough away in this position that she could then do a crouching turn and make a run for it before Will could get a good look at her and realise who she was. Her chair scraped loudly on the floor and Allie cursed the idiot who had decided to install trendy metal chairs in this bar. Not only were they uncomfortable, but they got too hot, and when they got too hot, they burned the back of your thighs, and you got stuck to them. Which made getting up out of them a less than graceful move; it was hard to maintain an air of dignity when you were welded to a chair.
‘Allie?’ With her head down and her hair hanging over her face she realised her cover was blown, and now she was two feet from the table in the awkward position of looking like she was about to make an escape. Also, there was still the chair situation to work through, Allie wished she hadn’t chosen a bare leg and short skirt combo that evening.
‘Will!’ She slowly turned and grinned up at him, hoping a full-wattage smile would divert him from the awkwardness of the whole situation. ‘Erm, lovely to see you!’
Lovely to see you? Was that the best she could come up with? For goodness’ sake, who said ‘lovely to see you’ to a person who you had basically seen naked? Allie felt herself begin to blush, her colour only deepening as Will put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a playful squeeze.
‘Wait?’ Martin looked at Will’s hand on Allie’s shoulder and then between the two of them in obvious puzzlement, which made Allie think that he should hold that look, because this situation was about to get a whole lot messier. ‘You know Allie’s name?’
Will looked down at Allie, his eyes seemed to be asking her what the correct response to this situation was, and, considering she had been about to do a runner thirty seconds ago, she really had no answer for him. She wasn’t sure whether her red face and panicked look was adequately conveying this.
‘Er?’ Will scratched his head with his free hand and smiled bashfully. He was behaving exactly how you would want the man you were seeing to behave when he was startled into introducing you to his father. But right at that moment, Allie couldn’t appreciate this. Luckily Martin either didn’t see or didn’t care about the awkwardness.
‘Of course!’ He put a hand to his forehead. ‘Allie must have told you her name when you met at the party, right?’
‘Right,’ Will confirmed, and then Allie felt his arm stiffen as the penny dropped with him that there was something off with this whole scenario. ‘Hang on. Dad, I thought you were meeting one of your writer friends?’
‘I am!’ Martin confirmed, presumably willfully ignoring the discomfiture in his son’s voice. ‘Allie is my writer friend.’ If it had been under different circumstances Allie would have felt distinctly touched by the note of pride in Martin’s voice.
‘Oh!’ Will was startled by this revelation. ‘But … erm … OK. Wow.’ He looked down at Allie and gave her a wide-eyed look that begged her to copy him, to laugh at this weird situation and then to explain in exacting detail just what he was missing and to reassure him that it really wasn’t all that weird after all. Allie swallowed nervously. ‘Lots to catch up on?’ he said in a painfully reassuring voice.
‘Yes!’ Allie grasped at what she saw as an escape route of some kind. ‘We should definitely do that.’ She straightened abruptly, Will’s hand falling from her shoulder as she did so. ‘But I should get going. Don’t want to interrupt your drink.’
She easily shirked off Martin’s thanks for helping him with the latest murder scene, and less easily shirked off Will’s attempts to kiss her goodbye, leaving him gracelessly hanging as she hurried away.