Chapter 20
20
Drew put his hand on the purse in front of him.
‘I am paying for this one. I insist.’
‘You paid for the last one. Let me get this round.’
‘You just stopped me getting fired. I think I owe you a little more than one drink.’
‘Well, when you put it like that…’ Polly grinned.
Even now, Drew was having a hard time shaking the queasiness that had gripped his intestines as he rode the elevator up to the top floor and knocked on Casper Horton’s door. It had been a superfluous knock. His employer was already out from behind his desk, pacing the room in much the same way Drew had been doing downstairs.
‘I haven’t opened it,’ Casper said as he took a seat in his custom-built swivel chair. ‘But I’m guessing everyone else in the company has by now.’
Drew’s cheeks went from ashen to fuchsia and back again as he stared at his feet. It was worse than being called into the head teacher’s office. At least there you could claim childish ignorance and promise to try better in the future.
‘It was my assistant, Hilary, who read it this morning,’ Casper continued. ‘She said it contained some kind of…’ he emitted a stuttering sound from the base of his throat. ‘Pornography?’
The gut-wrenching contortions of Drew’s stomach had only increased.
‘I wouldn’t call it porn,’ he said, feeling that Sarah’s hard work deserved a little more credit than being thrown into the mix with a badly shot home video.
‘But it is of a sexual nature?’
‘Well… I…’ There was no way out of that one, he could tell. It was just a matter of phrasing it so he didn’t sound like he was some kind of pervert. ‘The thing is?—’
‘Sorry.’ A rap on the door and the apology came at the exact same time, causing Drew to swallow back his words before he’d even figured out what they were.
‘Polly?’ Casper’s eyes narrowed at the figure in the doorway. ‘What is it? This really isn’t a convenient time.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ She cocked her head to the side as she bit down on the corner of her lip. ‘But it is rather urgent.’
The flare of Casper’s nostrils was accompanied by a loud inhale.
‘It’s about the email I sent,’ Polly pressed. ‘From Drew’s account.’
‘The email—’ Casper’s eyes went from overly narrow to bulging from their sockets in a matter of seconds. ‘You mean…?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Polly nodded slowly, throwing the smallest of glances Drew’s way as she did.
If Casper was confused, it was nothing compared to how Drew was feeling. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to interject, but something about the way that Polly remained so poised told him it was probably best if he stayed silent. At least until he’d figured out what on earth was going on.
‘Look.’ Polly inched into the room, partially shutting the door behind her. ‘Would you mind if I talked to you about this privately?’ she said, her eyes on her uncle, whose nostrils were now doing a repeated flare and flatten performance. ‘Please?’
After one more round of inhale and exhale, he rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. Come in and shut the door.’
She made a face, somewhere between a grimace and a frown. ‘Actually, can I talk to you alone alone?’ She tipped her head towards Drew. Now he was even more confused as he shrank back into his seat. What the hell, he thought. It wasn’t like it could get any worse.
‘Fine.’ Casper snorted as he spoke. ‘I’ll give you two minutes. Drew, you wait outside. Do not go anywhere, you understand? Do not leave this floor.’
Drew nodded, not really understanding anything what was going on at all, but swiftly getting up and out of the chair all the same. On the way through the door, Polly caught his eye and winked. Whatever she had planned, she, at least, looked confident.
He had waited a lot longer than two minutes, and each one dragged out more than the previous. He drummed his fingers on the wooden arm of the chair, checking both his watch and his phone. For a full ten minutes, he remained shut outside with exactly zero idea what was happening. A ping from his phone caught his attention. Drew lifted it from his pocket, saw Sarah’s name, and promptly thrust the phone away and out of sight. Whatever it was, he couldn’t deal with it right now. He couldn’t deal with anything.
Sixteen minutes after being sent outside, the door to Casper Horton’s office sprang back open, and out of it walked a sheepish-looking Polly.
She had made a subtle OK sign with her hand as she passed him. A second later, Casper’s voice had bellowed from within.
‘Drew, get in here.’
Leaping to his feet, Drew scuttled back into the office.
‘Well.’ Casper paused after only one word and scratched the bridge of his nose. The silence elongated around them. ‘Polly just explained the situation,’ Casper said eventually said with a sigh.
‘She did?’ Drew wondered if they were even talking about the same situation, and if they were, how the heck Polly would have been able to say anything. Unless she had mentioned Barry, of course. A sinking feeling of dread corkscrewed in Drew’s stomach. That must be it. That must be what she had done. God. The corkscrewing continued. It was Barry’s fault, of course, there was no denying that, but to just throw him under the bus like that… That wasn’t what a team did. And Barry was bound to think it was Drew who’d dobbed him in. He was bound to think Drew had passed the buck just to save his own skin.
‘I have to say, I feel a little embarrassed for you if I’m honest,’ Casper continued. ‘I went through a similar thing myself, not so long ago actually.’
‘You did?’
‘It’s our positions of power, you see. Women like that. And not just women, other men too.’
‘They do?’ Drew had no idea where the conversation was going, or even where it had come from.
‘I’m just sorry it had to get this far.’ A heavy sigh reverberated in the air between them. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but try not to think too badly of Polly, even after all of this.’
Now Drew was sure he was part of a different conversation. Polly? Didn’t he mean Barry?
‘I, well, I’m not?—’
‘I know it’s difficult. I do. But she’s only young. And it’s different for young people today, you know. In my day, we knew about boundaries. We had limits. But young people, it seems like nothing’s off-limits to them. I have to say though, I’m surprised. And disappointed. I would never have expected anything like this from her. I guess she gets it from her father’s side.’ After one more contemplative sigh, Casper pushed himself up to standing and stretched out his hand. ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘And good work on all the Christmas load allocations. It’s going to be a good year. I can feel it. Oh, and Drew?’
‘Yes?’ A sudden soar in pulse caused Drew to feel that maybe he had not escaped quite as easily as he had thought.
‘Perhaps put a better password on your computer.’
Swallowing, Drew nodded rapidly. ‘I will do,’ he said.
With that, Drew could tell, he had been dismissed. He was not quite sure what he was feeling. It was a bit like when you miss an episode of a series you are watching without realising, and the one you are now watching doesn’t seem to quite make sense. When he returned downstairs, he found Polly waiting outside the elevator, grinning.
‘Do you want to fill me in on what just happened there?’ Drew had asked.
‘How about I fill you in after work with a drink? You’re probably going to need it,’ she said.
‘Just explain it to me again?’ Drew said. ‘You told him what?’
‘I told him I had a major crush on you.’ Polly lifted the wine glass to her lips, utterly unfazed as she spoke. ‘I told him that after you left, I logged onto your computer because I wanted to leave some naughty photographs of myself.’
Drew choked on his beer, causing a bit of froth to come foaming from his mouth.
‘You did not?’
She shrugged. ‘Believe me. I have a whole laundry list of things my uncle has done. And he knows it.’
‘So you threatened him?’
The same shrug.
‘There was no need to. He knows why my aunt insisted I got a job here and it wasn’t to help curb my wild ways. I’m essentially an in-house spy.’
Having wiped the coughed-up beer from around his mouth, Drew went back in for another gulp. ‘But that still doesn’t make any sense. What about the email?’
‘Ahh, yes.’ Polly sat back on her swivel stool and twisted from side to side. ‘Well, I told him I was just having a nose around when I saw the email from your wife and went mad with passionate rage. I forwarded it before I could even stop myself.’
‘What? Are you serious?’
‘Deadly. It’s just the type of thing some crazy, lovestruck intern would do.’
Drew was dumbstruck. His hand gripped the glass as he shook his head from side to side.
‘But why? I mean, why would you do that?’
He could probably have guessed that the question was going to be met with the same nonchalant shrug she had used to answer most of his questions. Maybe it came from having lots of money, he thought. Maybe when your family was rich enough, then shrugging was what you did when someone was about to become unemployed.
‘It was Barry, right? Barry was the one who forwarded the email by mistake?’
‘Well—’
‘See, even now you feel bad about it. About letting him take the blame. Even though he told me himself. Even though you were going to lose your job over it. You didn’t deserve to be in that room, Drew. Not for a second.’
‘But that still doesn’t mean you had to lie.’
‘Who said it was all a lie? Everyone needs a workplace crush now and again.’ The statement took a second to digest. When it did, a nervous squirming began to coil its way around Drew’s insides. Unsure whether he should look away or continue looking at her suddenly glinting eyes, he reached for his glass and took a very big gulp. It was starting to get very hot.