Chapter 22
‘What’s wrong?’
Leo had no idea what was happening. Vidya was staring at him, with both her hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes huge.
‘Vidya?’
She shook her head, hands still over her face. ‘I have to go.’ She scrambled to her feet. Her blouse was open, she gathered it up in one hand, pulling it over her lacy bra. With her free hand, she grabbed her jumper off the floor.
He could see she was leaving, but he had no idea why. ‘Vidya, what’s wrong?’ he asked again. ‘What happened?’
He stepped back so that she could go past him and unhook her coat and handbag.
‘Did I hurt you?’ Had he? He couldn’t think how. Maybe he’d trodden on her foot in his haste? Was that possible?
When she looked at him, her eyes were full of tears, which frightened him more than anything. Something was clearly very wrong. He took a small step towards her. ‘Vidya. Talk to me.’
But she was already opening the door, with her things clutched to her. Just before she left, she turned. ‘It’s not you,’ she said. ‘Not your fault.’
Then she was gone.
He stood, frozen in the middle of the room, not sure what to do. Should he go after her? Should he just leave her be and see if he could talk to her in the morning? He looked around the room. What on earth had she seen to make her react like that?
It dawned on him that he was standing there with no shirt on. He looked down at his own chest, in case he had a weird rash or something that he didn’t know about. No. He wasn’t exactly ripped, but he didn’t look that bad, surely.
He was still standing in the same place, twitching indecisively from one direction to another, when someone knocked on the door. Oh, thank God.
He pulled the door open. ‘Vid—’
It was Caleb, who looked him up and down, then looked down the corridor and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’
The sight of Caleb kicked Leo’s brain back into operation. He stepped back and let Caleb in. Remembering that he was bare chested, Leo went over to the chair and picked up his jumper. Was it because he was careful where he put his stuff? No. It couldn’t be that. Could it?
Caleb said, ‘I just saw Vidya running down the corridor in a state of …’ He looked around the room. ‘Well. Anyway. She looked upset.’
‘Did you talk to her? What did she say?’ Leo pulled his jumper on. It felt strange and prickly, as though his skin was highly sensitised.
Caleb shook his head. ‘I was coming out of the lift and she was running into the stairs. She saw me and I saw her, but I didn’t think I should follow her. I thought I’d come and ask you.’
‘Ah.’ Leo picked up his coat from where it had fallen off the hook when Vidya had grabbed her own coat. Her scarf lay on the floor. He picked it up and stood there with it, not sure what to do. Hanging it up on top of his coat seemed like a transgression.
‘So, what happened?’ Caleb moved the shirt onto the desk and sat down in the chair.
Leo gave up and put the scarf on the desk, on top of his shirt. He sank onto the edge of the bed, exactly where Vidya had been sitting only moments ago. ‘I don’t know.’
Caleb made a winding gesture with his hands, as though telling him to go on.
‘We … er … after you left, she confronted me about being a bit distant this evening.’
‘A bit,’ said Caleb.
‘And I told her I liked her. She said she liked me. We kissed and … things progressed.’ He could still feel her, taste her skin against his lips.
He couldn’t think about that now. He shook his head and carried on.
‘We came here. We agreed it was a terrible idea, but we were going ahead anyway. I took my shirt off and then she suddenly … looked sick and ran away.’
He braced himself in case Caleb brought out his sense of humour. He didn’t. He simply listened before weighing in. ‘Nothing else happened? You didn’t say anything weird that might have triggered a reaction?’
‘No.’ There hadn’t been much talking. They’d been busy. He thought it through. There had to be a trigger. ‘I was standing there.’ He pointed. ‘I took off my shirt. Turned around to put it on the chair. When I turned back to face her. That’s when she freaked out.’
He looked at what he could see from his position. There was nothing that might cause alarm. Was there something he simply wasn’t seeing? His brain wasn’t exactly working at full capacity right now. Leo shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Didn’t she say anything else?’
‘Oh. Yes. She said it wasn’t me; it was her. And then she ran away.’
‘Well, that’s something at least,’ Caleb said. He sounded genuinely relieved.
Leo looked up, offended that Caleb might have suspected him of doing something bad to a woman.
Then he remembered that he’d suspected himself of mistakenly hurting her.
She had said it wasn’t him. So … if he took her words at face value.
Perhaps it wasn’t anything he’d said or done. It was something to do with her.
‘So, what now?’ Leo said. Letting his guard down enough to kiss Vidya was not something he’d done lightly.
The last time he’d done that, he’d been with Jessica, only for her to very publicly cheat on him and then dump him.
The public nature of their breakup meant that everyone in the office had been whispering about it for weeks.
The humiliation had taken away two things he’d loved – Jessica and his work – at the same time.
He’d had to move jobs to get away from it all.
He groaned and fell backwards onto the bed with his hands over his eyes. He should have known better than to get involved.
‘Hey, hey,’ said Caleb, gently. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it.’
‘I should have just held it together for one more day,’ Leo said from behind his hands. ‘Just one more damn day and I’d have gone back to London. I wouldn’t have had to see her, apart from random glimpses. I would have got over it. What on earth possessed me?’
‘You fancy her. She fancied you. You’ve been working together under pretty intense conditions, for over a week. It’s only natural. It happens all the time.’
‘To you, maybe. Not to me. I can’t mix my work life and love life. It was always going to end in disaster. It always does.’
‘If our roles were reversed,’ said Caleb, ‘you’d tell me that there isn’t evidence of a connection. What is it? Correlation is not connection?’
Leo parted his fingers to glare at his friend through the gap. ‘Causation,’ he said. ‘Correlation is not causation. And you’re not helping.’
He closed the gap again and stared at the darkness under his hands. ‘Just one. More. Day. And I would have been okay.’
They stayed like that, silent, for a minute, then Caleb stood up in a determined sort of way.
Leo sat up, alarmed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to take Vidya’s scarf back to her.’
‘No. Don’t. You’ll make things worse.’ Leo stood.
‘How could I possibly make things worse?’
‘I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want you to. I seem to have upset her by mistake. It’s entirely possible that you’ll do the same.’
‘But don’t you want to know why?’
‘Of course I do. But she has the right to change her mind. She doesn’t owe me an explanation.’
Caleb stared at him. ‘I’m worried about her, though,’ he said, finally. ‘And she’s a friend too.’
That was a good point. Maybe she needed a friend right now. ‘Okay,’ said Leo. ‘But don’t make her feel bad. I’ll be fine.’
Caleb’s expression was full of pity. ‘Okay, mate. If you say so.’ He picked up the scarf. ‘I’ll just go see if she’s okay.’
‘If there’s anything she needs help with …’ Leo said. ‘Obviously, I’ll help.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’d come with you, but it’s all too awkward right now.’
When Caleb had left, Leo changed into his pyjamas and carefully packed the rest of his clothes, ready for tomorrow. He didn’t know what he’d done to precipitate her reaction, but he hoped that Vidya was okay.
He sank down on the bed. Suddenly, all he wanted was to talk to his grandmother. Except, she wasn’t around anymore. He took out his phone and stared at it. He could call his sisters, but … how on earth would he explain what had happened when he didn’t understand it himself?
***
Vidya sat scrunched up on her bed, knees drawn up, arms clasped around them. How had this happened? How?
The moment that Leo had turned towards her, so that she saw his pale chest with the dragon tattooed on it, kept replaying in her mind. She felt nauseous. She had almost slept with someone who had slept with her sister! The father of her sister’s baby.
How could she have been so wrong?
Her heart picked up speed and her breath came short. This was terrible. Pain writhed inside her. She had really liked Leo, she realised – more than she’d admitted to herself. She had really, really liked him. She was suddenly boiling hot. She couldn’t breathe. Oh. Shit.
Panic attack. This was just a panic attack.
‘No one ever died of a panic attack. No one ever died of a panic attack.’
She’d been here before. She knew what to do. Blowing out exaggerated breaths, she forced herself to breathe slowly. Inflate the lungs until they were really big. Exhale everything. Let them fill up again. See. She could breathe. She was okay.
Eventually, her body came back under her control. She unclasped her arms from around her knees. Everything felt cold and clammy as she cooled down. Slowly, she tucked her legs under the duvet and hugged a pillow, so that she could rest her chin on it.
How had this happened? They had discounted Leo from the running early on.
The clues Udeni had given them were so few – one of the white male lawyers in Team B, who had been at the party.
That narrowed it to three. The only real defining feature had been the tattoo.
Angie had said it couldn’t possibly be Leo because …
well, Leo was so unlikely to have a one-night stand.
Vidya would have agreed with that assessment until a few minutes ago. They’d been too quick to dismiss him.