Chapter 26
26
Had Sarah possessed the ability to run, she would have run. The spasm beneath her ribs had been joined by a trembling in her legs and a tightening in her throat that was getting worse and worse by the second.
‘I’m sorry,’ Polly said, raising her hand and placing it against Sarah’s shoulder. ‘Is everything okay? You look rather pale.’
‘I just need some air, that’s all.’ Sarah managed to stumble forward. Her elbows jostled a person in front of her as she tried to make her way to the elevator.
‘Please,’ Polly said, grabbing her hand. ‘Let me help you.’
Sarah shook her away. ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’
‘Honestly, it’s no bother,’ Polly said.
‘Really, I’m?—’
‘Please, I can?—’
‘Will you just fuck off ?’
She hadn’t planned on the words coming out quite so loud. She hadn’t planned on saying them at all. She didn’t even know this woman. Polly. With her unfeasibly long legs and perfect skin who had just offered… Who had just suggested that…
Sarah’s head was swimming. Everything was swimming. Polly couldn’t have offered what it sounded like she just had, could she? Because it had sounded very much like a proposition. The tightening in Sarah’s throat had been replaced by an impossibly large lump that refused to be swallowed back down. Whether Polly had proposed what Sarah thought she had or not was irrelevant. She knew about the book. Drew had told her about the book.
Sarah’s eyes scanned the room. Faces had turned towards her, all with a mixture of expressions. Some offered glances of concern with worried creases on their foreheads. Others appeared to be smirking behind their glasses.
‘Sah,’ Drew appeared at her side, his hands laden with two plates piled high. ‘Are you okay? Is everything okay?’
He couldn’t understand what had happened. One minute, he had looked over at Sarah, and she was sitting happily by Stu, listening to him jabber away – most likely about the Paul McCartney cover-up that he talked about constantly – then two minutes later, she had silenced the whole party with her screaming. By the time he had put a spoonful of spicy jalapeno salsa onto his plate, Sarah’s face had turned purple with rage.
‘Sah.’ He realised a bit too late that it was impossible to comfort someone when both his hands were full. ‘Are you okay? Is everything okay?’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?’ Sarah pointed her chin at Polly before slamming her fist against the elevator button.
‘Shit.’ He wasn’t sure if he muttered the words or said them out loud. Either way, it didn’t make any difference. It all meant the same. Sarah knew. How much was the first question that sprang to mind. Exactly how much did Sarah know? His eyes momentarily left his wife and darted around the room. There was Heidi, staring straight at them. Andrew and Trisha. And dozens of other people whose names he didn’t know. All of them were staring at Drew and Sarah, waiting to see how the scene would unfold. Only when he turned back did he see that somehow, in that blink of an eye, the elevator had appeared and Sarah had slipped inside.
‘Sah!’ Drew lunged towards it and tried to jam his leg in the narrowing gap, but his foot scuffed against the metal. He kicked the closed doors with his shoe, which had absolutely zero impact on the elevator, but – judging from the pain that was searing upwards from his big toes – may well have broken something.
‘Drew?’ He turned behind him to where Polly’s face crumpled in concern. ‘Is she okay? What’s wrong? Do you need to go after her?’
The air quivered in his lungs. ‘What did you say to her?’ His words came out as a hiss as he placed the plates on a table. ‘What did you just say to my wife?’
‘Nothing.’ Her face was still a picture of innocence. ‘I didn’t say anything. Not anything bad, at least. I was full of compliments.’
‘About?’ A squeezing twisting motion was laying claim to Drew’s intestines. ‘What were you complimentary about?’
‘About you. How great you are. How good your marriage is. Her writing.’
‘Oh, Christ.’ He brought his palms up to his temples. ‘You mentioned the writing.’
‘Only in passing. I told her it was hot, that was all. Seriously hot.’
He knew they shouldn’t have come. They just shouldn’t. He beat his fist against the elevator button. Why the hell was it taking so long to come? Sarah could be anywhere by now. And she had the freaking car keys too. Damn it. Drew looked at the number above the elevator. ‘Where the hell is the staircase?’
Humiliated didn’t even come close. Sarah had been humiliated before. Like the time she had gone to Philomena’s birthday party at the swimming pool and discovered only at the end that she had had her bikini bottoms on inside out the entire time. All of Justine’s posh friends had seen her Asda-brand label sticking out the back. And that was before Eva had decided to take off her swim nappy and poo right on the edge of the pool. Then, of course, there was what had happened only recently at the post office. That had been humiliating. But this… this was something altogether different. This was mortifying. This was demoralising. This was her husband’s doing. She could hear him still shouting for her as the elevator door closed on his foot; she hoped he’d broken a bloody toe at least.
Letting Polly read what she had written, without her permission. How could he have even thought that was all right? And not letting her know afterwards?
The thought caused bile to rise up and hit her in the back of the throat. The attractive, young, childless woman with her perfectly applied makeup and stretch-mark-free stomach. The way she spoke about it like it was some casual matter she and Drew chatted about in the staff kitchen each morning. Or maybe they didn’t. A worse thought entered Sarah’s mind, coinciding with a stomach-searing pain. Maybe he hadn’t told Polly about it at the office at all. After all, her invitation wasn’t the type of comment you’d make if you weren’t sure it would be reciprocated. Images swirled and spiralled in Sarah’s head. Lunchtime rendezvous; Polly and Drew clocking off early to head back to her impeccably decorated, LEGO-free flat. How was that even possible? After all he and Sarah had been through together, would Drew really do something like that to her?
A stabbing pain, this time at the base of her spine, brought her thoughts back to reality just as the elevator slowed to a stop.
With a steadying breath, she stepped into the foyer. Drew’s phone was still in her handbag, she realised, as was his wallet and car keys; standard protocol for a normal night out – when they used to go out, that was. Well, sod him. He could make his own way home. He could walk if he had too. That should give him a bit of time to think about what a prick he’d been.
‘Sarah, wait!’ A door to the left of the elevators flung open. Through it came a panting, red-faced Drew. ‘Please, wait. I can explain. I can explain.’
The blood pounded in her face as she spat the words at him.
‘You can explain how someone – some pretty young woman I might add – managed to read a personal email that I sent to you? The most personal email.’
‘I can. I can.’ He paused and rested his hands on his knees while he panted. By the looks of things, he had run down the stairs, although given that it was only three floors, his displaying a clear lack of fitness did nothing to soften her mood. ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued. ‘I didn’t want to tell you. It was Barry.’
‘Barry?’ Sarah lifted her hands with the question. ‘What the hell has Barry got to do with this?’ Her heart tripped over in her chest. ‘He’s read it too? Are you serious? How many people, Drew? How many people have seen it?’
She watched as his Adam’s apple rose and fell.
‘It was an accident,’ he said. ‘He thought he was closing the window. He didn’t mean to send it.’
‘What? What are you on about?’
‘Barry… he used my computer. Just after you sent your chapter through to me… He accidentally forwarded it.’ Drew’s words tumbled out between pants.
The room was growing more oppressive by the second. As if there wasn’t enough air for her to breathe properly. ‘Who did he forward it to?’ she whispered, although, in her heart of hearts, she felt like she already knew the answer. ‘Drew?’ she questioned again when the pause had stretched out so thin, it felt like it might splinter in the air around them. ‘Who did Barry send the email to?’
‘Everyone,’ Drew said, his voice almost as quiet as hers. ‘He forwarded it to everyone.’
Something more physical than the stupidity of Drew’s words walloped Sarah firmly in the stomach.
‘Jesus!’ she said, doubling over and grasping her bump.
Drew jumped to her side.
‘Sah, are you okay? Is it the baby? You need to sit down.’
With gritted teeth, she breathed out, partially against the pain, partially to stop herself clobbering her husband in public. Now that they had stopped arguing long enough for her to take stock of her surroundings, she could see the people at the reception desk watching them, waiting to see what the crazy pregnant lady did next. At least she had that on her side.
‘Get off me,’ she said, flicking his arms off from around her shoulder.
‘Sarah, please. Let’s just go up to the room like I?—’
‘Ohhh.’ Sarah let the vowel resonate around her as more of the puzzle pieces clicked into place. ‘So that’s why you wanted to skip the party altogether? Nothing to do with spending a bit of quality time together like you’d said at all, was it? It was all just part of the plan to make sure you didn’t get caught.’
‘Sah, there was no conspiracy. I swear. It was all just a terrible accident. I promise, if you sit down and take a minute to calm down, you’ll see that this is actually quite funny.’
Drew realised afterwards that that might not have been the best choice of words. Yes, he now managed to find what Barry had done moderately amusing, but he had had two weeks to process it all. It was likely to take a good long while before Sarah could see the funny side of it. Judging by the purple hue that was currently flourishing on her cheeks, she was most definitely not there yet.
‘You find this funny? You find every person in your office talking about me behind my back funny ?’
‘Look, I didn’t mean that.’ He tried to backpedal. ‘I should have told you. I know I should. I just didn’t want to upset you. You’ve already got enough going on with the baby and the others.’
She was still shaking. Her fists were alternating between clenched, unclenched, and grabbing her side where the baby was performing parkour against her kidneys.
‘You thought it was okay? Just letting people read my personal writing?’
Drew opened his mouth to respond before changing his mind, and then his tone. ‘That was the whole point, Sarah. That was the whole point of doing this. We wrote this book so that people could read it. So what if it happened a little earlier?’
‘A little earlier and without my consent. We hadn’t even discussed this, whose name it would publish under. Who we would tell about it.’
‘I assumed we would tell everybody.’ Drew felt like he had been fired back to a couple of months earlier. ‘I assumed the whole point of this was to sell books. People need to know about it if we’re going to sell it.’
‘Well, how about instead of assuming , you actually talk to me about things instead? Or is that what you’ve got Polly for?’
‘For God’s sake.’ This had been going on too long, Drew thought. People were starting to look. ‘Sah, please, can we just go upstairs and talk about this?’
‘The only place I’m going is home.’ As she spoke, her hand reached into her bag. Drew felt his pockets, realising where this was going next.
‘Sarah, you can’t possibly think of driving like this.’
‘Like what? Pregnant? You don’t seem to mind when I’m lugging groceries here, there, and everywhere.’
‘I mean this upset. You can’t drive this upset.’
‘You think I’m upset? I’m not upset.’ Her eyebrows rose as she sneered. ‘I’m bloody furious.’ With the keys in her hand, she turned around to go. Drew squeezed on the bridge of his nose as he tried to work out what the hell to do next. He was in a no-win situation. Insisting she stayed would be a disaster. There was as much chance of trying to persuade Sarah to see his side right now as Barry getting promoted to CEO. What she needed was a bit of time to think this through and realise it really wasn’t as bad as all that after all. But he couldn’t just let her go. Not the way she kept clutching at her sides.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he said, reaching over and taking the keys from her hand. ‘We’ll go now.’
Sarah spun around as fast as her bump would allow. ‘Give those back.’
‘Sah, you’re being ridiculous.’ He twisted his arm behind his back, placing the keys out of her reach. Still, she lunged for them. ‘Sarah, stop it.’
‘I said, give them back.’
‘Just let me drive you home. Please. You’re upset. There is no way I’m letting you drive home in this state.’
Something venomous flashed across her face, and for a second, Drew assumed she was going to make another bid for the keys, but instead, she took a step backwards.
‘Fine then. I won’t drive. I’ll get the train home.’
‘Sah—’ The impulse to object flickered through him as she glowered. At least a train journey home would give her time to think about how unreasonable she was being, he considered. At least there was that.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Do what you like.’