Chapter 20
“Ifucking knew it!” Becka howled in clear and triumphant glee. “I fucking called it!”
I laughed, watching as she spun around on her little, second hand office chair, swinging her arms up in the air as if she was the main attraction at a ticker-tape parade.
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to get her attention, “but you called me. What the fuck did you know?”
Becka doesn’t even pause and just kicked her way back over to the desk, face red, grin slightly manic.
“Fucking Celine!” She crowed. “I said it! I said something was going on with her! I didn’t know what, I couldn’t figure it out, but I knew something was off with her!”
It took me a few moments to catch up to what she was saying, to switch into Becka’s lane, because when she’d video-called, I’d been nose deep in a music magazine. An actual, glossy magazine I’d bought from the little newsagents in the village, now that lockdown was easing.
“Hang on,” I said, frowning, “are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yes!”
Her face was wild, and the last time I’d seen that look was back in university, and we’d just spelled out the word ‘twat’ in weed killer on the lawn of a boy who’d called her some very misogynistic slurs.
“It was her! Celine leaked the tape from the conference room!”
I gasped. “No fucking way!”
“Way!” Becka nodded emphatically.
“I…. What? How? How is this just now coming to light? It happened months ago!”
Honestly, I was just stunned it actually hadn’t been Trevor Kyle. Even with all of Becka’s thought-out reasoning, I’d held onto the idea it was him.
“I don’t know all the details,” Becka admitted, “but it seems like IT had been investigating after the footage was made public in December, but then legal got involved because of the lawsuit from ENT. They shut the whole thing down. Dad says it was probably to prevent IT finding anything that could hurt Pisces in discovery.”
“Becka, should you be talking about this to your dad?” I asked, exasperated. “This sounds very… illegal.”
Becka waved this away with a dismissive sound.
“It’s badly-contained office gossip, and no one told me to sign anything to say I can’t gossip. Dad’s just speculating on the mechanics, he isn’t actually involved.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, keep going.”
“Yeah, so it sounds like Pisces put a stop to anything that might expose them legally, and then covid happened–”
“And the court case was pushed back,” I finished for her. “Yeah, I know that bit.”
Jihoon had told me as much. The whole world had been pushed back.
“Anyway,” Becka went on, “from what I’ve been able to find out, the lawsuit is going ahead, and Pisces received some sort of legal disclosure request. They had to turn over the forensic IT findings, which means IT had to prepare a report outlining everything.”
My head was beginning to throb.
“Ky, it was Celine,” Becka repeated, but this time even she sounded a bit baffled, like she couldn’t believe she’d been right.
“How do you know? I can’t imagine that report was pubic information.”
“She confessed the whole thing to Clara-Beth! Clara-Beth is a lot of things, but discreet ain’t one of them. Celine had a big, secret meeting with upper management, and when she came out, she just broke down in the corridor. Everyone knows.”
Becka sounded breathless, and I paused, letting each word sink in.
I heard the words, I understood the words. What made my head swim was the ‘why’ of it all.
“But… why?”
“Because she’s a big, dumb assh-”
“Becka” I cried, laughing. “That doesn’t answer the question! Focus!”
Becka snorted as she shook her head ruefully.
“Okay,” she took a breath. “I have the scoop, but be prepared, it is monumentally dumb.”
I cleared my throat, sat up straighter, and solemnly said, “I am prepared.”
“Remember when you asked me if Trevor Kyle and Celine were, ‘together’?” Becka said, and then snapped her jaw closed as though trying to trap a laugh with aspirations of escape.
“No!” I gasped. “I was right?”
“No!” Becka cried, and the laugh escaped.
I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I shouldn’t laugh,” Becka said, sobering up slightly, although her lips still puckered with a restrained grin. “No. They are not an item. But according to Clara-Beth, Celine thought they were, which is why she leaked the footage.”
“I’m lost,” I confessed. “How are those things related?”
Becka waved a hand at me. “I’m getting to it, hang on.”
She took a breath, and I watched as her mouth relaxed and she collected her thoughts.
“Let’s start from the top,” she said as though reciting a speech. “TK turned on the cameras to catch you in the act. He then uploaded the footage to the shared Pisces servers, but then he was put on leave, meaning he wasn’t there when the footage was leaked externally in January.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m all caught up, Becka, I lived through this.”
“Hush, I’m making it make-sense.”
I held up my hands.
“This is what we know now – and again, this is from the horse’s mouth–”
“Via Clara-Beth’s mouth,” I cut in.
“–and according to said-horse, Trevor Kyle told her to send the footage to some guy he knew that worked for one of those celebrity magazines.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“Right? So because she’s so in love with Trevor,” she paused briefly to mime sticking her fingers down her throat, and gagging, “she emailed the file to herself, and then sent it to Trevor’s guy. That’s how the footage left the building. Ta da!”
My eye twitched.
“Babes?”
“Hold on. I’m processing.”
“Your eye is twitching.”
“Processing!”
“Okay, Commander Data, take your time,” Becka said in the tone reserved for placating angry toddlers.
“Now is not the time for Star Trek references!” I took a breath. “Okay, so let me make sure I fully understand. Celine was so in love with TK that he was able to persuade her to breach like fourteen different confidentiality clauses, probably the law, and email some gossip rag the footage?”
“Basically,” Becka confirmed. “Clara-Beth said that Celine said that Trevor said he wanted to make sure you ‘never worked in this industry again’.”
“Holy hell,” I said, faintly, as an image of TK with a vaudevillian style moustache entered my brain. I could imagine him twirling it. A shiver slinked down my spine.
“We’re certain this is the leak? That it was absolutely not Trevor?”
“He may have orchestrated it, but according to IT, the only time this footage left the building was via an email from Celine’s work email to missmilleniumbaby87 ‘at’ .”
“So how do we know what happened after that?”
“Celine! I guess she cracked under pressure and sang like a bird.” Becka threw her hands up in the air.
“I think she’s known for a while that the jig is up.
Remember I told you how shady she’s been recently?
She’s probably suspected for months that she was gonna get caught.
Clara-Beth said that when she found her, she was hysterical, wouldn’t shut up.
That’s how we have the whole story. She says she told them everything, including admitting to sending it to Trevor’s guy, but most importantly, admitting Trevor’s involvement. ”
“Good grief.” I dragged a hand down my face.
Becka snorted. “I know, right?”
I fell silent, running over the events in my head. It was a strange thing to realise that someone had deliberately acted in a way designed to hurt you. There was no way she could have been ignorant of the possible consequences of leaking the footage.
I resisted the urge to bite my thumbnail, instead picking at it until it stung.
“I kind of don’t know how to feel about this,” I admitted.
Becka sighed. “I hear that. But hey, at least you know you don’t have a criminal mastermind gunning for you. Celine is a lot of things, but mastermind she is not.”
I huffed out a laugh.
It didn’t matter that Celine’s motive for sending the footage was down to some love-sick misadventure.
To her, it hadn’t been personal, and in a way, that was worse, because she’d been willing to throw us to the wolves only because she thought it would, what?
Make Trevor Kyle like her more? The thought process almost made me feel sorry for her.
Almost – because I thought about those months we’d spent looking over our shoulders, of tabloid speculation, triggering Jihoon’s press-related trauma...
All the times he’d been called into secret meetings with ENT executives and lawyers. The time I had been dragged into one such meeting and had been made to feel like a dirty affair partner.
What Celine had done had had real world consequences, but it hadn’t been personal. Not to her.
I bit my lip so hard I flinched as the taste of iron hit my tongue.
I wanted to hate her, because it might help to have a target I could feel vindicated about, knowing she was getting her own repercussions, but I couldn’t ignore the TK of it all.
Celine was a big girl, and she’d acted of her own accord, but she had done it on his instruction.
Somehow I doubted that would hold up in court.
Fuck it. I couldn’t help but feel that we had all been played by TK, and that, unfortunately, made it impossible for me to hate her.
“Is Celine gonna get sued?” I asked as the thought occurred to me.
“I don’t know,” Becka shrugged. “Sounds like a classic case of fuck around and find out.”
I barked out a laugh.
Becka continued; “Her legal fate falls well out of my jurisdiction. Why don’t you ask that pretty boyfriend of yours?”
“So you do think he’s pretty?” I teased.
“Babes, that whole group is pretty.” Becka fanned herself theatrically.
“I’ll tell Woojin you think so.”
“That man could get it,” she said dreamily.
“Rebecca Hanson!” I gasped, and then laughed so loud I slapped a hand over my mouth.
“What?” she said defensively. “As if I’ve been subtle about that?”
“What about sofa-boy?” I teased.
Becka rolled her eyes. “If you mean Ben-” She bit her lip, and it was like watching a balloon deflate.
“What’s going on there?” I asked, my smile fading.