Chapter 71 Teddy
Alone in my car, I feel rather like running someone over, so I call the most obvious target.
‘Krill,’ I say. ‘My husband isn’t a partner yet.’
‘What do you mean?’ he says, as if we’ve never met.
‘It’s Lalla Rook, we made a deal. You make Stephen partner and I don’t publish these stories about you. You need to keep your side of the bargain.’
‘But that’s blackmail,’ he says. ‘And those stories aren’t even true. You just tried to entrap me.’
‘Krill, if you don’t want the world to know what you are, make Stephen partner.’
‘I couldn’t if I wanted. The idiot resigned,’ he replies.
‘Because you fucking told him he wasn’t going to get it.’
‘Look, he was desperate for a way out. Some men facing divorce do that to avoid maintenance payments to their vicious ex-wives.’
‘He’s not getting divorced.’
‘Odd. That’s what he told HR. Change of life circumstances.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, he’s your husband, you ask him.’
‘Listen, Krill, this story about your abuse of interns is going everywhere unless you backpedal like your life depends on it, get Stephen his job back and make him partner.’
‘I’m not going to be blackmailed,’ he says, coolly. ‘And I don’t think any of the girls will speak out against me.’
‘Creep,’ I say. ‘But I’ve found one who will.’
‘Are you talking about that dark-haired girl from the north with a Cambridge degree?’
‘You’ll find her story in tomorrow’s papers – along with details of the five women you abused and then paid off,’ I tell him.
‘Six,’ he says. ‘She signed an NDA yesterday.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘You have to accept that there are several reasons that a company will use NDAs, and it’s a complex area. You’ve got no evidence and no one who can speak against me.’
‘I can make evidence, Krill, don’t try me.’
‘I don’t doubt you, Mrs Rook, but I’ve got a better story for the papers. It’s about a high-flying investment banker who gets his sexy wife to try to blackmail his boss to make him partner.’
‘You’ve got no evidence of anything,’ I say.
He pauses, I hear a click, then my own voice saying, ‘You’ve got no evidence of anything.’
I’ve got nothing to come back with and it hurts.
‘I’ve stopped recording now,’ he says. ‘The Sun is interested in the story. You’d be splashed all over the papers. Stephen would never get another job. You’d be labelled all kinds of things.’
‘How does that benefit you?’ I say.
‘I don’t like to be blackmailed, Lalla, so I want to show you what it feels like. You meet me in a hotel and apologize properly, and I won’t send this tape to the papers.’