Chapter 10
Sarah
London
There was a long, long silence between them, Amy watching Sarah, Sarah desperately trying to think.
She didn't process the question at first, her mind recoiling from any sort of parallel that could be drawn between her and the senior associate.
But then the thoughts started coming thick and fast, even as she felt her stomach do somersaults at the realisation of the point that Amy was making.
And all the while, Amy just watched her, placid, emotionless.
"That's... that's not the same," Sarah managed eventually. "That's completely different."
"How?"
"Because... because I'm not like him. I don't pressure anyone. My mentees come to me willingly, knowing what my mentoring entails."
"I went to his flat willingly, and I knew what it entailed. It was consensual. I enjoyed at least some of it."
"That's different, he made it transactional. He explicitly…”
“And sleeping with you isn’t the price of your mentoring? Your career guidance, your connections, your advocacy? My LA project came, from my recollection, with a pretty explicit condition.”
“You enjoy it with me. My mentees enjoy it with me.”
“I enjoyed it with him, at least in parts. He was good in bed after that first time.”
Sarah opened her mouth and closed it again, her mind reeling. She tried again. “But I’m a woman, the power dynamic is…”
Amy laughed at that, a short, incredulous sound, and that hit Sarah harder than anything else.
“You think the fact you’re a woman makes it different?
You’re a senior partner, Sarah. You have direct influence over these women’s careers.
Whether you’re a man or a woman doesn’t change the hold you have over them. ”
“I’m not holding anything over anyone.”
“You don’t have to… that’s the whole point.
The power imbalance does the work for you.
You don’t need to make the benefit explicit to every one of your mentees, you don’t need to say ‘I’ll help you with X if you come to my flat tomorrow and do Y with me.
’ You just need to be someone who can make or break their career, and also be someone who sleeps with them. The implication takes care of itself.”
Sarah sat back, winded. Her mind raced through her mentees… not just Amy but also Rebecca, Joanna, and the rest. She’d always been clear on the quid pro quo, up front about it. She’d deliberately left nothing to implication because that was where misunderstandings could lie.
“But we’re all adults,” Sarah tried, hearing the desperation in her own voice. “Everyone knows what the arrangement is. Nobody’s being deceived.”
“Yes, I know. I’m culpable too. So is every one of your mentees.
We all made choices.” Amy’s voice was patient now, almost gentle, and in some ways that was worse.
“But here’s the question you need to ask yourself, Sarah.
I only ended up back at his flat, in bed with him, because of the leverage he had, regardless of whether I enjoyed parts of it.
Would you have ended up in bed with any of them without the leverage of your mentoring?
Without the career help, the connections, the advocacy…
would any of those woman have slept with you?
Because your offer is: sleep with me and I’ll mentor you and help your career.
Don’t, and I’ll do nothing… but I also won’t do anything to help. ”
“But I’d never harm anyone’s career. I’d never…”
“Neither would he.” Sarah sat back, as if slapped.
“He never gave me an ultimatum. He never said ‘sleep with me or I’ll ruin you.’ He said ‘sleep with me and I’ll help you.
’ Just like you. But a lack of help can be just as damaging as deliberately doing harm, particularly when you know that if you don’t take the offer, someone else will, and they’ll get ahead while you fall behind.
That’s how it felt in the taxi, Sarah. That’s how it feels for your mentees. ”
“But I genuinely help them. Their careers are genuinely better for knowing me.”
“His advocacy helped my career too. I qualified where I want to. Does that make what he did acceptable?”
Sarah couldn’t answer. She stared at the table, struggling to find the words to make this all right somehow…
this was turning into a nightmare and she could feel the years of self-justification tottering, threatening to collapse, and it was terrifying because she didn’t know what existed in its place.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said eventually, her voice sounding uncharacteristically small.
“I know you don’t.” Amy’s tone and expression had softened, although only a little.
There was anger there, though, unlike anything she’s seen from Amy before.
“And I’m not saying you’re a predator, Sarah.
I don’t think you’ve ever set out to exploit anyone.
But the effect is the same. You’ve built a system where junior women sleep with you in exchange for career advancement.
The fact that you’ve convinced yourself it’s mutual doesn’t make it so, it just means you’ve never taken the time to look at it properly.
” Amy leaned forward. “How many, Sarah? How many mentees have you had? And how many of them had partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands? How many relationships have been blown up like mine with James? What’s the damage? ”
Sarah opened her mouth but nothing came out.
Rebecca… she’d had a boyfriend at first, but she dated women now.
Did that count? Joanna… a boyfriend still, maybe?
The others, she was struggling to remember.
She’d not thought about it much, so focused as she was on her own need for connection, for validation, for the thrill of being wanted, that the collateral damage had been background noise, dismissed as just part of each of her mentee’s everyday lives.
Something that happened off-stage where she didn’t need to see it.
“I don’t know.”
“No,” Amy said. “You don’t. And that is the problem.”
Sarah sat in silence for a long time. The bar was emptying out around them, it was getting late, and she could hear the wind driving the rain against the windows behind her.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I want you to actually hear what I’ve told you.
I’m sorry to have told you my story, but it was important and it was all true.
I don’t think you’ve actually heard yet, though.
You’re still looking for the argument that makes it all ok.
” Amy stood up and pulled on her coat. “So here’s what I need from you.
Tell me you understand, really understand, what you’ve been doing, and tell me what you’re going to do about it.
Until you can do that…” Amy trailed off, then took a deep breath. “Until you can do that, we’re done.”
Sarah’s mouth fell open and she felt tears coming to her eyes. Please, God, don’t let me cry in public. “Amy, please…” she managed to whisper, but it came out strangled.
“I mean it.” Amy looked down at Sarah and, just for a moment, her composure cracked so that Sarah could see everything underneath…
the anger, the hurt, the desire, the frustration of wanting someone you also know that you need to hold to account.
“I really like you, Sarah. Really like you. That’s what makes this so hard, but also what makes this so important. ”
Amy turned and walked towards the door. Sarah watched her go, unable to move, and then threw some cash, probably quite a bit too much, on to the table to settle the bill, grabbed her umbrella and went after Amy.
***
Sarah caught up with Amy just outside the market. She was sheltering under the edge of an awning from the rain that was hammering down, phone out, a taxi app up on screen. Amy turned when she heard Sarah’s footsteps and her expression was… well, it wasn’t welcoming.
They stood facing each other, the market that late at night deserted around them, close to each other out of necessity given how narrow the strip of pavement that was out of the rain was.
Amy’s hair was already wet from her walk from the bar, and Sarah could see her breath fogging in the cold air. Neither of them spoke.
Sarah looked at Amy’s face, her eyes, her mouth, the droplets of water on her cheek catching the streetlights.
She could feel the pull between them, undeniable, the same gravity that had been there right from the beginning, right from that first lunch together when Amy had asked if she could be mentored.
Her heart was hammering against her ribcage.
She moved closer. Slowly, very slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time. Amy didn’t move, didn’t step back but didn’t step forward either. She just watched Sarah with those unreadable eyes and the same serious expression that she’d had when she left the bar.
Sarah raised her hand and touched Amy’s face, gently, letting her thumb slowly trace its way along her cheekbone.
Amy still didn’t move. Sarah could feel the warmth of Amy’s skin, could see that despite it all her breath was quickening, and she knew, knew with absolute certainty, that Amy was as drawn to her as she was to Amy, even after everything she’d just said.
Sarah took a risk… she leaned in and kissed Amy. Softly at first, tentatively, her lips barely brushing Amy’s. Amy was completely still, and for a terrible second Sarah thought she’d made a mistake.
She persevered though, gently caressing Amy’s lips with hers, playfully taking Amy’s top lip between her lips, a little playful dart of the tongue, and suddenly Amy’s lips came to life, kissing back, kissing deeply, Amy’s hands gripping the front of Sarah’s coat and pulled her closer, and Sarah’s fingers found Amy’s damp hair, pulling them closer together still.
It was fierce and desperate, and it felt so, so good.
She pulled Amy as close as she could, and for a few minutes there was nothing in the world save for the two of them, sheltering from the rain, wanting each other, and it felt so, so right.
Amy broke the kiss. She pulled back, breathing hard, her hands still gripping Sarah's coat, her forehead resting against Sarah's.
"God, I want you," Amy whispered, and Sarah felt a thrill run through her, understanding quite how raw that admission was given what had happened between them, and how much it must have cost Amy to say it after the conversation in the bar. “I want this, I want us, I want to see what we could be. But I can’t be your Monday to Friday secret, Sarah. I can’t be the woman that you fit around your mentees and your family, left with whatever remains. I deserve more than that.”
“What about Luisa?” Sarah heard herself say, and regretted it immediately. It was childish and there was no parallel to be drawn here, Sarah knew that, but she’d said it anyway.
Amy pulled her head back and looked at Sarah, and for a moment there was a flash of the anger that Sarah had realised was still lurking beneath the surface.
“I’ve just come out. I’ve just ended a long term relationship.
Damn right I’m going to date people, Sarah.
That’s what single people do. Yes, I’m going to see Luisa.
I’m seeing her when I arrive in LA if you must know.
Why on earth shouldn’t I? Because you want me to wait dutifully here while you work out whether you can fit me in between your other conquests? ”
Sarah closed her eyes. Amy’s hands were still on her coat and she was close enough that Sarah could feel her breath on her face as she talked. She wanted nothing more than to pull Amy back to her, to kiss her again, to pretend that all of the complications didn’t exist.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said, her voice quieter now.
“I… I know you didn’t mean it like that.
It’s just… I need you to think about what you want your life to actually look like.
Not just because of the mentees. You need to think about everything.
Your husband, your family, all of it. Because if we’re going to be involved romantically, if we’re going to really have something, I’m not going to be something you hide.
I won’t live in the margins of your life. ”
“That’s… you’re asking me to blow up my entire life.” Sarah’s voice had dropped to a whisper, the enormity of what Amy was saying finally landing.
“No. I’m asking you to be honest about it.
Maybe for the first time.” Amy let go of Sarah’s coat and took a step back.
“You told me you liked me. You told me this was real. If that’s true, then it’s too important to be a secret, isn’t it?
But I understand too that you don’t want to risk everything, and that’s fine.
If I’m dating other people too then I can’t ask you to destroy everything you have for me.
What I’m asking is that you tell me how our future could look… because without that, it can’t happen.”
Sarah couldn’t speak and she realised that she had tears on her cheeks. Amy reached up and wiped one away with her thumb, gently, the tenderness of the gesture almost unbearable after everything they’d just said.
"Think about it. Tell me you understand what you've done with the mentees, tell me what you're going to do about it, and tell me what you actually want from your life. All three." She took another step back, right to the edge of the awning, almost into the rain. "Until then, we're done."
"Amy…"
"I fly on Thursday, then I'll be in LA for three weeks. That's plenty of time. You can find me before, or you can find me after." Amy’s voice was strong, though Sarah could see that she also had tears in her eyes. “You know how to reach me either way, and I’ll be there to talk.”
She turned and walked into the rain without looking back.
Sarah stood under the awning and watched her go, watched her figure grow smaller in the downpour, dark hair plastered to her shoulders, saw Amy hail a cab and get in.
She could still feel Amy’s lips against hers, Amy’s hands on her coat, Amy’s forehead pressed against hers.
Beneath it, though, Sarah was in turmoil…
everything she’d known and relied upon for the past five years had collapsed into rubble, and she was terrified at the thought of what might replace it.
She opened her umbrella, stepped out into the rain, and walked in the opposite direction to Amy, alone.