38. JACK
38
JACK
I ’m sitting in my car, parked outside Nico’s apartment building. I know Elly’s up there, but Kate won’t let me inside.
She came over the day after Nico’s party to collect Elly’s things from my house. I hadn’t realised how little Elly owned, but the absence of it is painful. Everything is so fucking neat now. Aggressively tidy and organised. That would have calmed me in the past, but now it’s horribly jarring. Neat little reminders that Elly is gone.
I hate being at home when she isn’t there, which is why I’m here, waiting for any glimmer of hope that I’ll be forgiven. Elly hasn’t acknowledged the flowers or the car, and won’t answer any of my calls, all because of those damn photos. I wish I’d never taken them.
I scroll through my phone, searching for traces of the pictures. I loathe that the memories of the first time we made love have been ruined by them being blasted far and wide. I’ve got a team of people on it, hiding the links, reporting the users . With everything I’m doing, they’re getting harder to find, but they’re still there if you search hard enough, springing up like a game of Whac-A-Mole.
The profile of User5498 has been taken down, but not before the video montage of Elly’s photos gained millions of views. There was nothing to identify the profile at all. It’s as though it was created with the sole purpose of attacking Elly. I’m determined to find the culprit, whoever they are.
There’s a tapping on the window, and I look up to find Kate staring in at me, gesturing with a rolling forefinger that I should unlock the doors, and when I do she gets in the passenger side.
She turns to me, her gaze at once hard and soft, as though she wants to tell me off and hug me at the same time. “You can’t stay out here.” She looks around the car, noticing my crumpled spare clothes in the back, the empty crisp packets and plastic water bottles littering the seats. “How long have you been in here?”
“Three days.”
“You’re sleeping in the car?” I shrug and Kate’s eyes fill with compassion. “Go home. Elly’s not coming down. She doesn’t want to see you. And I’m not letting you up.”
“I need to talk to her. Please.”
Kate sighs. “I should have known the two of you living together was a disaster waiting to happen. The photos, Jack. What were you thinking?”
I can’t listen to more recriminations about this. As if I haven’t spent every second beating myself up for this royal cock up. “I never meant—”
“Stop. I don’t actually want an explanation. I don’t care whose fault it was. Clearly, you were both losing your minds if you’d take photos like that on a mobile phone.” Kate covers her face briefly with her hands, as though this is all too much for her, and lets out a tiny, exasperated groan before she speaks again. “How did they get out? How did it happen? I’ve had your back on this. I’ve been telling Elly there’s no way you’d have done that to her on purpose. That you might be a ruthless businessman, but this isn’t some PR stunt where you’ve sacrificed her like a lamb to the slaughter in the name of her career. Please tell me you didn’t do that.”
“Jesus, no.” I’ve gone over this a million times in my head. I stared at those photos so many fucking times. Could I have accidentally sent them somewhere? Pressed some button, and shared them? No, I don’t think so. But how else could it have happened? Could someone have hacked my phone? But why would they bother? I’m not exactly up there on the UK’s most-wanted list. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that to her. It’s killing me that she thinks I could have done that.”
Kate inhales through her nose, staring out the windscreen, her nostrils flaring. After a few moments of silence, she says, “Have you heard from Mum?”
“No. I bet she’s loving this. Is she?”
Kate picks at her nails. “I don’t know. I’m not answering her calls either. I’ve no interest in hearing her say ‘I told you so’ about my best friend. Not when Elly’s as upset as she is.” Kate stares at me. “She’s distraught. You fucked up. Big time.”
My heart aches at the thought of Elly upstairs and me down here, the two of us separated by an insurmountable fuck up and my bulldog of a sister. “Is it just the photos?”
“Just the photos?” Kate retorts, clearly horrified that I’d diminish the severity of this scenario with such a question.
“I mean, is it the messaging that’s going alongside the photos, more than the photos themselves? All those videos talking shit about her. It’s as though whoever made them knows her, or has some personal vendetta. Is there something I don’t know?”
Kate shrugs. “I have no idea. Why?”
“I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
Kate fixes me with a hard stare. “You’re dealing with the fact that you lied about a bunch of explicit photos. You’re dealing with the fact that they’re out there in the world and it’s your fault.”
My fault. Hearing those words is never not going to hurt. “I’m doing everything I can to wipe those photos out of existence.” I cup the back of my head with both hands, a noise of pure frustration ravaging the back of my throat. “If I did it, if I caused this, it was an accident. I would never, ever , have done anything to deliberately hurt Elly. Ever .”
“Doesn’t matter. No woman lets a guy take pictures like that unless…”
“Unless what?”
Kate shakes her head. “She must have decided to trust you. God knows why. And you betrayed that trust.”
“Fuck, I know. I know .” I can’t stand the idea that I did this; that the woman I love is distraught because of something I did. “What if someone else leaked the photos? What if it wasn’t me? Remember, I lost my phone at Nico’s, the night of Dad’s fundraiser? Maybe—”
“Jack.” She cuts me off, and I know I’m clutching at straws, looking for excuses that don’t exist. “Your phone was exactly where you said you left it. Right there. No one had even touched it.”
I drop my head into my hands. Shit . “I don’t see how I could have done it. There’s no record of it on my phone. I didn’t send them anywhere. I don’t—” I break off, groaning into my cupped hands, and Kate squeezes my shoulder.
“If it wasn’t you, who was it?” she asks, her voice soft.
My hands fall to my thighs. “I don’t know. Lydia? She was there, outside the bathroom. That was the last place I remember having my phone.”
Kate splutters. “Okay, that is mad.” All the softness in her voice falls away, replaced by dismissal. “I know Lydia was a bit disturbed by finding you and Elly together, but what you’re suggesting is bordering on Machiavellian. Besides, I’m pretty sure Lydia was off hooking up with someone else. Seb Hawkston, maybe. I bet she wasn’t even thinking about you. Either way, you’re the one who had such incriminating photos on your phone, and who kept them there even after Elly asked you to delete them. You have to accept culpability here. You fucked up. That’s all. You have to take responsibility for that and all its consequences.”
The silence prickles.
“Am I going to lose Elly over this?”
Kate is quiet for far too long. “Maybe.”
I bang furiously on Seb Hawkston’s office door. I am determined to find out what happened to those photos if it’s the last thing I do. If someone is out there trying to harm Elly, I need to fucking know about it. Ever since I mentioned it to Kate, I haven’t been able to give up on the idea that Lydia had a hand in it, but for the life of me, I can’t work out how. The determination to find out who’s responsible has driven me here, to Seb’s office, a fog of rage clinging to me.
“Quit the fucking noise and come in,” he yells.
I enter and close the door behind me. Seb’s sitting behind his desk, looking all immaculate in a perfect suit and pale blue tie. Even his light brown hair is perfectly coiffed. I must look deranged in comparison.
Seb raises a brow and unsubtly gives me the once over. “What can I do for—”
“Did you fuck Lydia?”
Seb gives me a bemused smirk and steeples his hands, leaning back in his chair. “A gentleman never tells.”
His calm demeanor irritates the fuck out of me. “The night of Dad’s fundraiser. Did you, or did you not, fuck Lydia Archer?”
He leans forward, peering at me. “You’re serious?”
“I am.”
“All right…” he says after a moment. “No, I did not.”
My heart is racing. Maybe this is going to get me nowhere. But I have this feeling that maybe, just maybe , there’s something here.
Seb must read the relief on my face, but misinterpret it, because he says, “You moving on from Elly already? Because I think Lydia would be keen.”
“God, no. I need to know anything you can remember about Lydia that night.”
Seb strokes his lips with two fingers. “I was drunk. I haven't thought about it, to be honest. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Is that it? That’s all you’ve got for me? This is important.” I sound frenzied, and Seb leans away from me, his brows drawing together.
“I thought at one point we might hook up,” he says. “She’s gorgeous, but she wouldn’t stop talking about you. The whole time I was with her, she was going on about how you and her are meant to be and she wants to fucking marry you. And I’m like, what the fuck? This woman could be hooking up with me, and instead, she’s chewing my ear off about some other bloke. So yeah, no. I didn’t hook up with her.”
I don’t know what to make of this. Seb Hawkston is what my mother would term ‘a catch’, and I had Lydia pegged as a woman out to hook someone. Anyone . But it sounds like that’s not the case; it’s only me who’s the target. “Okay. Nothing else? Nothing weird?”
His gaze drifts, but a second later, he’s back with me. “Actually, there is something. She was on her phone the whole time. Obsessively looking at it. Talking about you, scrolling. Jack this, Jack that. It was fucking rude, and so I looked over to see what had her attention, and it was… you know… this naked picture of a woman. No face, the image cut off at the neck. I saw it for a second before she yelled at me to mind my own business. She was really touchy about it.”
For the first time in days, hope tingles along the surface of my skin, sinking in and expanding as though I’m being pumped full of air. We’re getting somewhere . “Do you remember anything else?”
“Yeah. The naked woman in the picture was wearing cowboy boots. I remember specifically, because I said, ‘You into cowgirl porn? That’s niche, but I can work with it’.”
“Really?” I ask, my voice full of palpable excitement.
“Yeah. She got mad at me, gave me an absolute bollocking. Said, ‘Jack Lansen would never say something like that’.” Seb makes his voice all high and whiny as he impersonates Lydia. “So I walked out. I wasn’t going to take crap from a woman who had no interest in me. Anyway, I kinda forgot about it. That evening was a bit of a blur.”
Damn it. He’s had this piece of information the whole fucking time. “You didn’t think to tell me before?”
Seb scratches his chin. “No. Why would I? It was so random. It didn’t mean anything. It….” He trails off, his eyes widening. “Woah. No,” he says, dragging out the syllable in a parody of shock. “You don’t think Lydia took your photos?”
“That’s exactly what I think. My phone went missing that night. I reckon she copied them, or airdropped them to herself. Something like that.” I feel so buoyant that I want to vault over Seb’s desk and kiss him. “And you’ve confirmed it for me.”
Seb grins, making his one-sided dimple appear. “Glad to help, mate. If you need me to testify or some shit, let me know.”
I barely take another breath before I’m out of the office and heading down to Soho to Lydia’s offices. I don’t have a plan. All I have is hope and anger and the desire to do whatever it takes to confirm that Lydia is culpable so I can clear my name, and tell Elly I didn’t do it.
Less than thirty minutes later, I’m hanging over the reception desk at Lydia’s PR company, demanding to see her. The receptionist is staring at me like I’m an escapee from the nearest prison, who she expects to pull a knife on her.
“Sir, if you don’t calm down, I’ll have to call security.”
“Buzz her. Lydia Archer. Tell her it’s Jack Lansen. Tell her I need to see her. She’ll want to see me.”
The receptionist doesn’t take her eyes off me as she calls through to Lydia. “Yes,” she says. “There’s a Jack Lansen here to see you.” Her eyes widen. “Okay. All right. I’ll send him through.” She hangs up, her energy crackling with surprise and disapproval all at once. “Door on the right at the end of the corridor. She’ll see you now.”
I blow out a breath and push myself off the desk. Fuck . What am I going to say? Standing in Seb’s office, I felt so certain, so fucking sure that Lydia was guilty, that there was no room for doubt. But now, knowing Lydia’s in her office at the other end of the corridor, I’m suddenly not sure. What the hell am I going to do? But whatever goes down, I’m recording it.
I switch my phone to voice memos and slide it into the inside pocket of my suit jacket. I take a deep breath and head to her office.
I open the door to find Lydia sitting behind her desk. “Hey, Jack.” She looks calm, but one of her hands strokes agitatedly up and down her throat. She’s dressed in a silk shirt, her hair perfectly blow-dried. Professional .
Doubt consumes me. Can I come out and directly accuse her of stealing photos and sabotaging Elly’s budding career? Is that an accusation that makes sense? It’s too bleak, too twisted. What if I’m wrong? Maybe I’m deluded to think someone might be that into me, that they’d do something like this to hurt the person I love… I might need to take another route to get the answers I want.
“Hey, Lydia.” I steel myself for what I’m about to say. “I’d like to take you out for dinner.”
She looks visibly taken aback. “Oh. Really? That would be great. I’d love that.”
“Friday?”
“Sure.”
Fuck. What am I doing? “I’ll call you.”
I turn to leave, when Lydia says, “Changed your mind about the waitress, then? Because last time I saw you, you were buried deep.” She laughs at her own joke, and it’s such a mocking sound that anger flares in me like a forest fire, and I have to clench my jaw to hold it back. “Yeah. It didn’t work out. We had some… issues.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Nothing to do with all those photos that got released, I suppose?” I tilt my head to indicate that maybe that had something to do with it, but really I’m giving her an opening to expose herself. “Such a shame,” Lydia continues. “The timing was so bad, just when all her music was taking off. I saw the video of her singing with Amy Moritz at Nico’s party. That was good. Really good. Apparently, Robert Lloyd wanted to meet with her to discuss representing her.” Lydia breaks off to lick her lips. “That won’t happen now. Too much scandal. That shit will never wash.” She places her palm flat against her sternum. “Gosh, some of those photos were extraordinary. Like someone got right between her legs with a camera—”
“Cut the crap.” Rage is burning through me, and I can’t pretend any longer. I don’t know why I’m so sure that Lydia did this, planned it, fucked it all up for Elly deliberately, but I am.
“What?” Lydia asks, and her innocence strikes me as fake.
I stalk towards her, slamming my hand down on her desk. She jerks in her seat. “I know you did this. I fucking know you did it. You stole the photos from my phone, then you released them the night of Nico’s party. User5498. It’s you, isn’t it?”
A wicked smile curves Lydia’s lips. “Why on earth would you think that?”
I’m rising and sinking on the hope of getting somewhere. Of some of this shit starting to make sense, and her denial isn’t about to make me give up
“I know you took my photos.” My voice vibrates with barely restrained fury that’s turning my body into a fucking furnace. “I know you did. Seb Hawkston saw them on your phone.”
Lydia stills. “Ah.” She pauses, and I barely dare to breathe. “You were terribly stupid to leave your phone open, with those pictures on the screen. I hardly stole them. They were right there. So careless. I didn’t even have to look for them.”
“Fuck.” I drag both my hands into my hair. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“They were so pretty. A perfect body. Might even be better than mine.” She laughs, and chills spread over my skin.
I begin to pace, nervous energy beating through me like stormy waves. “This is insane. You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
She gives me a pitying look. “Some people deserve what comes to them.”
Outrage fires through me like a missile. “Elly didn’t do anything to you,” I bite out.
“Didn’t she? You were mine, Jack. She stole you from me. We were so good together. So good .” Lydia sighs, releasing a sound like an off key musical note. “She’s a heartless slut. Honestly, losing her now is saving you the pain that would inevitably come. You can’t trust a woman like that.”
I’m struggling to make sense of what Lydia’s saying, or how it pertains to me or the photos. Is this some perverse kind of punishment?
“She didn’t steal me. You never had me. We were never even together. You’re deluded. I love Elly. I’m in love with her. There’s no one else in the world I want to be with. Especially not you. I feel nothing for you. Worse than nothing. I will never forgive you for what you’ve done. Never .”
Lydia closes her eyes on an eyeroll, and flutters them open again. When she speaks, her voice is so calm, but the words so mad, that she seems unhinged. “Please. You don’t love her. She’s bewitched you. I’m the one who loves you. She came out of nowhere and swept you away. I couldn’t let that go unpunished, so I took your photos. Pushed them out into the world. But really, I’m blameless. She’s the one who posed for them. She’s more culpable than I am in this scenario, and if you can’t see that, perhaps you’re the one who’s deluded.”
What the fuck? “I can’t listen to this crap. What’s wrong with you? Can you hear yourself? None of this makes any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense to me.”
I’m starting to think I’m standing before someone on the verge of mental breakdown, and yet it’s eerie how sane she appears, how cool her tone is. By contrast, I’m breathing hard, pistons of rage pulsing through me. I can’t stay here. I’ll fucking kill this woman. One more word from her, and I’ll be out of control. I turn to leave.
“I guess we’re not having that dinner then?” Lydia calls.
I snap, spinning back towards her, the words exploding out my mouth. “What you’ve done is illegal. If you think I’m going to stand by and do nothing… let you sit here all fucking smug and pleased with yourself, while the woman I love has been publicly humiliated, then you really are insane.”
She gives me a coy little smile. “So… I’ll be hearing from you soon then?”
Un-fucking-believeable. It takes all my willpower not to grab her desk and turn the whole thing upside down. I pace away from her without answering, slamming the door on my way out. When I’m back on the street, I stop the recording on my phone and call Elly.
No answer. Fuck, Elly, pick up . Pick up.
I call three more times, with the same result, so I send the voice memo I’ve just recorded, and hope Elly listens to it.
And then I make one more call. “Nico,” I say when he answers.
The line crackles, but his response comes through loud and clear. “Tell me what you need.”