Chapter Thirty-Seven
Olly and I decided to walk to the venue where the brainstorming was taking place.
We’d agreed to synchronise announcing about Esme and Ajax, so that the employees in Venice didn’t message the UK team anything they didn’t know, and we’d updated Jacob and Amber via messaging.
Walking took longer, allowing us both to clear our heads and put in calls to the two colleagues who would announce to the London staff.
Olly had been negotiating hard with the newspaper editor, who’d finally agreed our terms; I’d been crafting the statement and trying to process the idea that Esme might be a sociopath.
‘Who’s going to announce it to the Venice team?’ Olly said, as we walked. ‘You or me?’
‘Flip a coin,’ I said.
‘Fine.’ I dug around in my bag and found my coin purse. ‘Let’s just say I’m more prepared than you. Heads or tails?’
He winked. ‘Tails, lass.’
‘How can you make tails seem filthy?’
‘It’s a gift.’
I smiled and flipped the coin. As we looked down onto the cobbles in the hazy light, a tourist brushed past me and Olly put his hand to my waist, gently pulling me close. There was something so protective about the gesture, it took all of my self-control not to melt into him.
‘Keep touching me like that and you’ll get in trouble,’ I murmured.
‘That’s the plan,’ he said, pulling me towards a doorway, his hand cradling the back of my head as he leant to kiss me.
The taste of his mouth, the slow rhythm of his kiss, pulled me under, like a swimmer caught in a riptide.
It wasn’t Olly in trouble. It was me. As he kissed me everything around me faded and there was just us; his touch, which I was blooming under.
I felt dizzy, unbuttoned, ready for anything.
I couldn’t tell if it was just lust or infatuation, but frankly, I didn’t care who was there, I would have been with him right there and right then, and as for being professional, I was over it.
I had never felt like this before.
It was – yet again – our phones, our bloody phones, that broke the moment: the buzz in my back pocket, and the sound of his ringing. He answered and I heard him begin a chat with Amber; mine was a message, shortly followed by another. Then another.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Hey Lizzy. I’m enjoying Venice. Just like old times.
It’s Jack, just in case you were wondering.
This is my new number.
And I wouldn’t block it, if I were you x
I tried to ignore the violent thud of my heart in my chest. I’d thought I was going out of my mind when I saw someone who looked like Jack Dillane in the streets of Venice.
I’d never been the fanciful type, but if you were going to be fanciful – or unhinged – anywhere, then surely Venice was the place?
And yet, I hadn’t been imagining anything.
He wasn’t a figment of my imagination, and right now, I wished he was.
Remember, you’re not afraid of anyone, I reminded myself.
And yet, the element of threat in his words seeped into me. I heard Olly finish his call.
‘You okay?’ he said. ‘That was Amber. She and Jacob are about to start the afternoon session. I told them we’re ten minutes away. What was the result of the coin toss?’
‘Tails,’ I said. ‘Which means you’re telling the kids what’s happened.’
‘I thought it meant I could choose whether I told them or not.’
‘Whatever.’ I shoved my phone in my pocket and wrapped my arms around his waist, giving him a squeeze and breathing in the scent of his skin.
‘This new touchy-feely you is delightful,’ he said, putting his arms around me.
I smiled up at him and let go. ‘I suppose we’d better cool off, as we’re heading into an allegedly professional arena.
’ I glimpsed his phone lock screen, a picture of his niece and nephew laughing and looking adorable.
There was so much about his life that I didn’t know.
And there was a ton of things he didn’t know about mine, either.
‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ said Jacob, taking me aside as we arrived. ‘Everyone’s just back from lunch. I didn’t have the strength to start another session. Are they really splitting up?’
I nodded, taking the cup of coffee he was offering me.
‘My prayers are answered then,’ he said. ‘The idea of stitching EKArts and Resilience Needs into a combined whole was giving me nightmares. Is there any chance I can get home tonight? Sleep in my own bed with my own husband?’
‘Nope, sorry,’ I said. ‘Esme wants to give a speech tomorrow.’
He groaned and raked his hand through his hair. ‘Surely I’m not needed for that?’
I could sense his exhaustion. ‘Let’s talk later. Is everyone together in the usual room?’
He nodded.
I watched Olly tell the group about the split, as I checked emails on my phone.
He said it with admirable simplicity: Esme and Ajax were no longer together, the split was amicable, the Chroma project would still be going ahead and the rest of EKArts and Resilience Needs in the UK were being told the same thing right now.
‘No drama,’ he said, at one point. But I was watching the faces of the team, their mouths open; I saw people nudge each other, the glances, the bitten lips.
When Olly finished speaking the room erupted into an excited babble.
If anything, they were even more frenzied than when Esme and Ajax had got together.
I thought of Ajax, crying in the hotel room.
I thought of Esme, the woman I’d considered to be a vulnerable artist, who was currently behaving like a cool-eyed publicity hound.
I had witnessed her suffering in the past, and I felt I had known a woman whose artistic brilliance proceeded directly from her sensitivity, but now I had no idea who she really was.
‘Guys,’ I shouted. Gratifyingly, the noise died down at once.
‘Remember you’ve all signed confidentiality agreements.
’ I looked around the room, taking in their faces.
‘Keep this information within the companies until the press statement has been released. Also, can we all please remember that Ajax and Esme are people? People with real lives, and real feelings. Let’s just get the job done and get back to London.
Do not speak to journalists, that’s down to Olly and me. ’
I listened; the babble was slightly less intense. Some of Olly’s team were approaching him to ask questions. As I stood there, Sasha came bouncing over.
‘Well,’ she said, laughing. ‘I am shook. What a day! So glad I came here. Wouldn’t have missed this drama for the world.’ She gave a little double clap.
I tried to suppress my irritation. ‘Being callous over the break-up of someone’s relationship isn’t a good look, Sasha,’ I said.
‘And, while we’re at it, nor is spreading gossip about me.
As my assistant, you’re meant to have my back, not be sticking knives in it.
’ Seeing her smile fade, I felt slightly guilty about going so hard at this, but I needed her to understand it wasn’t okay.
Plus, when she’d been dropping leaden hints about me and Olly, we hadn’t even been doing anything, apart from swapping sarcastic ripostes and some accidental perfect kisses.
Sasha’s eyes were wide. ‘What— what do you mean?’ she said, in a small voice.
‘Esme said you told her there was something going on between me and Olly,’ I said.
She opened her mouth and I held up my hand.
‘Speculating about other people’s private lives is something we all do, I get it.
But why would you start rumours about me within the business?
Why would you go to the head of that business? ’
She looked worried, and about fifteen different thoughts were flitting across my mind as I looked at her.
Sasha was young. She hadn’t seen sexism at its worst, and I knew if I told her the range of remarks and physical gestures I’d been subject to in my twenties, she would be shocked.
There had been such a sea-change in the way our professional world worked.
At her age I was busy pretending to shrug it off when a man got too close, opened his legs in front of me or tried to look down my top.
I was sure Sasha didn’t understand how much sex had once been used as a weapon in the workplace, but I also knew that what she had done – whispering rumours into Esme’s ear – was not an innocent thing.
It was calculated. And it wasn’t something the Sasha I thought I knew would have done.
As I looked at her, she gave a little shake and recovered her composure. ‘Chill out, Lizzy-Lou,’ she said. ‘It was just a joke.’
Lizzy-Lou.
Hearing that name made my stomach drop, my shoulders tighten. As I processed it, I saw the falter in Sasha’s expression as she gazed at me. And I felt it: the clicking of pieces falling into place.
Someone had manipulated her.
Someone who meant more to her than her career.
‘Who’s your boyfriend, Sasha?’ I said.
All the colour drained from her face, and for a second, I thought she was going to faint. I glanced to my left, towards the door. ‘Let’s go and sit in the other room, shall we?’ I said.
She nodded, and followed me into the ante room Olly and I had worked in a few days before, the silk covered armchairs facing the water. To buy myself some time, and to regain my composure, I pulled one of the chairs a little way from the others. Sasha perched on one and I sat down opposite her.
‘Do you need a glass of water?’ I said.
She shook her head.
I sat down. ‘Is your boyfriend Jack Dillane?’ I said.
She looked at me as though I had occult powers, and nodded. ‘How did you know?’
I suppressed the instinct to swear under my breath. I had hoped, wished, it not to be true.
‘There’s only one person who’s ever called me Lizzy-Lou,’ I said, swallowing hard. ‘And it makes sense of a few things.’ Booking the hotel I’d stayed in with Jack; her high gloss appearance, tailored to his taste; her simmering, developing resentment towards me.