Chapter 24
Leo sat in yet another hotel room. A well-appointed city hotel in Brussels this time. He and Caleb had only left Waterloo Bay that morning, but it felt like a hundred years ago. Back in the distant past, when he’d accidentally believed that he could have a normal relationship.
He changed, wearily, into his pyjamas and brushed his teeth. Everything felt like a huge effort. Had it only been last night that he’d kissed Vidya? Just before everything went wrong. Again.
It felt like he had a gaping wound in his chest and everything hurt. He crawled into bed and lay on his back, staring at the darkened ceiling. Try as he might, he couldn’t think what had caused Vidya’s sudden reaction. He wished he could work out what he’d done, so that he could stop doing it.
As they often did, his thoughts went back to Jessica.
That had been his first real relationship.
They hadn’t moved in together, but they’d been a couple.
It had been a fairly steep learning curve for him.
Caleb, for all his teasing, had been a great help at the time.
Jessica had seemed happy. With hindsight, he realised that she’d seen him as an oddity that she could fix.
A challenge. Then, when she realised that he was always going to be reserved, that she couldn’t suddenly unlock a dramatic, tap-dancing, sparkling persona in him, rather than talking to him maturely, like a sane person would do, she’d cheated on him.
Leo had thought that Vidya was different.
She had seemed relaxed around him. She found his jokes funny – which was rare; most people didn’t even notice when he made a joke!
He had hoped that she saw him as he really was and liked him anyway.
So, what on earth had happened to scare her off like that?
He sighed and checked his phone. It was late.
He should get some sleep. He and Caleb had a client meeting first thing.
After a full day, they would be heading home and on Friday, Leo would have to report to Charlie about the work they’d done in Waterloo Bay.
Vidya would be at that meeting. He needed to pull himself together before then.
He closed his eyes and an image of Vidya’s horrified face, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, formed behind his eyelids. Leo sighed again and punched his pillow into a different shape. He was never going to get to sleep tonight.
***
On Friday morning, Vidya dressed extra smart.
She even put on heels that were slightly higher than her usual one-inch mules.
Today, she needed all the extra confidence she could find.
She had a meeting with both Leo and Caleb, as well as their line manager, Charlie, to update him on the progress of the project.
For the last two days, the guys had been in Brussels and the wait for them to come back had been agony.
Today she was going to have to talk to Leo and tell him about Udeni.
The idea of seeing him again was wreaking havoc with her mind, and she had been too anxious to sleep much last night.
This was a terrible thing to have to do.
How did you tell a guy you’d almost slept with – and who you thought you might love – that the woman he’d had a one-night stand with two months ago was your sister and …
that she was expecting his child. Ugh. Vidya had to remind herself that she was doing the right thing.
This was for her sister and her unborn niece or nephew …
and for Leo himself. Vidya drew herself up to her full height.
Embarrassment and self-pity had no place here.
She was an impenetrable fortress. She could do this.
She could. She checked herself in the mirror one last time and set off for work.
***
Vidya got to the meeting room ten minutes early. She had printed out hard copies of her report and the summary that Leo had put in the shared drive last night. For all the talk of going paperless, some people still preferred paper copies of things.
The idea of sitting in this meeting with Leo made her queasy.
She took a deep breath. Right now, her issues weren’t as important as this meeting was.
This was the first time they’d used the AI assistant in an actual project.
If Charlie disapproved, then some of that was on her.
Looking around, she decided that the best place to sit was facing the door.
This meeting room looked very different to the big room in the hotel in Waterloo Bay she’d spent the last week in, everything was more polished, including the dark wood table.
The view was of other buildings, and the birds were pigeons, not gulls. She pulled out a chair and sat down.
The door opened and Caleb came in. He looked tired, but he gave her his usual cheerful smile. ‘Hey, Vidya, how’s it going?’
She felt an unexpected surge of relief that he was still talking to her. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t … but it was still nice to know.
He took a seat next to her and poured himself some water. ‘Looking forward to this?’
‘No, are you?’
‘Depends,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Charlie is expecting us to have managed all the work we’ve done. So, I’m looking forward to seeing his face when he finds out. I fully expect him to kick up a fuss about using AI.’
She nodded. ‘I think you’re right.’
Caleb was quiet for a moment, then whispered, ‘Have you spoken to him?’
She didn’t need to ask to know he was talking about Leo. ‘No.’
‘Hmm. He’s been so grouchy lately, he—’
The door opened again and Charlie, Mr Charles Bexworth Huxley, came in.
Behind him came Diane Askew, a formidable lady, who was one of the founding partners of Askew, Else and Thomas.
Caleb glanced at Vidya and widened his eyes.
If the big boss was here, this upped the stakes for this meeting considerably. She plastered a smile onto her face.
Leo entered last and closed the door behind him. ‘This is the rest of my team for this project,’ he said. ‘My colleagues Caleb Fotherill and Vidya Munasinghe from the paralegal admin team.’
Ms Askew nodded and sat down, so did Charlie.
Leo didn’t make eye contact with Vidya at all.
He came round and sat next to Caleb. Her heart cracked a little more.
Any chance of friendship they’d had was now clearly gone.
He was freezing her out and only interacting with her in a professional capacity.
It was understandable after what had happened.
All she could do now was show him that she could be a professional, even if they were no longer friends. Which meant she had to focus right now. This wasn’t about her. This meeting was about the work, and, it seemed, about proving Legal Team B’s competence.
While the others sat down and glanced through the paperwork, Vidya skimmed her notes.
Her phone buzzed; she took it out to put it on silent.
The message was from Leo. It said: Remember, you know more about querying the AI than any of us.
You are the expert in this room. But it was my call to use it. If needed I will take the flak.
Vidya leaned forward to look at him. He gave her a subtle nod, unsmiling.
She understood. Whatever they were outside this room, in here, they were a team.
She gave him a small smile and returned her phone, now safely on silent mode, to her pocket.
She sat a little straighter. Next to her, Caleb leaned forward.
‘Let’s get this started,’ said Charlie. ‘Vidya, please take notes.’
She nodded, but Leo interjected. ‘Actually, there will be some sections where Vidya will be taking the lead with the explanations. So, Caleb, would you mind assisting and taking notes when Vidya’s talking?’
‘Happy to.’ Caleb made a show of uncapping his pen.
Leo stood up and passed around the copies of his summary. He started by outlining the scope of the project. ‘Obviously,’ he said, ‘this is a substantial amount of work. We estimated the work would take thirty-five to forty person days, we had only twenty-one.’
‘Why was this the case?’ said Ms Askew.
‘There was a time barrier, in that the work needed to be done for today, before Charlie met with the company this afternoon,’ said Leo. ‘And Caleb and I had to fly out to Brussels on Wednesday. We got back last night.’
‘Well, why not put more people on it, then? This is a big project. Important.’
‘That, I can’t answer,’ said Leo. ‘When the timescales changed, I requested a team of five.’
Ms Askew turned to Charlie and raised a quizzical eyebrow. He blustered a bit and said, ‘That was all we had available. There are several other cases with imminent deadlines and I felt that Leo had overestimated the time needed.’
‘But you got the work done?’ Ms Askew asked Leo.
‘Yes. But we needed to enlist the help of the AI assistant.’
‘Why are we using a major client’s work as a guinea pig for testing out AI capability?’
‘I didn’t authorise it,’ said Charlie, smugly. ‘This was Leo’s call.’
‘We had a task that was repetitive but needed to be done accurately. There weren’t enough people to check everything manually.
The hotel had scanned documents, but they weren’t cross-referenced in any sensible way,’ said Leo.
‘The connections between agreements and suppliers were known to one manager, who has left the company, taking her knowledge with her. With all due respect, if we were to do this on time, with the number of people we had, we didn’t have a choice but to use the AI to filter out the boilerplate agreements from the ones that needed scrutiny.
Luckily, we had someone who was trained in writing AI queries with us, which made it possible. ’
‘It’s still a risk,’ said Charlie. ‘The machine is a blunt tool. What about hallucinations?’
‘That’s most common in generative AI,’ Vidya said. ‘This isn’t generative AI.’
Ms Askew frowned and took a few seconds to look at the paperwork in front of her. ‘And you trust a machine to do this work?’
‘Within certain parameters, yes.’ Leo looked at Vidya. She knew that he was passing the baton to her as the AI expert in the room to explain.
‘Let me explain what we did.’ Vidya quickly outlined her strategy for getting the AI to sort the standard agreements from the nonstandard ones and the checks she’d put in place.
Somewhat unexpectedly, Ms Askew listened. When she asked questions, it seemed that she knew a little bit about the AI assistant and its limitations. Finally, she said, ‘Carry on.’
Leo went through their findings, including the conclusions that, while taking over the hotel would incur quite a lot of costs, their client would probably still make a profit, according to their own projections, within five years.
Leo stopped talking. He glanced first at Caleb and then at Vidya and gave them a solemn nod.
Vidya knew that was him acknowledging a job well done.
Even now, when he was barely speaking to her, Leo was treating her like a professional.
She wouldn’t have expected anything less, but she was pleased nonetheless.
Ms Askew closed the report and looked up. ‘You take responsibility for this?’ she said to Leo.
‘I do.’
Across the table, Charlie looked smug.
‘Good. This is excellent. You had a difficult problem and you solved it using the tools available. We’ll take this to the client this afternoon. Good work.’ Ms Askew stood up.
Charlie’s face fell. He got to his feet.
Vidya and the guys stood too.
‘Now, Charles,’ Ms Askew said, as the two of them headed for the door. ‘We need to discuss why there were only three people available for the project.’
The door clicked shut and the three of them let out a collective breath.
‘That went well,’ said Leo. ‘Thank you, team.’
‘Did you collar Askew beforehand and tell her that Charlie made you do something impossible?’ Caleb said to Leo.
‘I couldn’t possibly say.’ Leo collected his paperwork and folder. ‘Right. I’ll see you later.’
‘Leo,’ said Vidya.
But he had already walked out, his long legs making short work of crossing the room.
She turned to look at Caleb.
‘I need to talk to him,’ she said.
‘I don’t think he wants to talk to you though. Not about anything other than work anyway.’
‘Can you—’
Caleb shook his head. ‘No. I tried, but he’s definitely not in the mood to listen to me. He has been cranky as hell the past few days. So, if you could hurry up and talk to him, that would be awesome. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.’
Vidya sighed.
Caleb patted her on the shoulder. ‘Good luck.’
Left alone in the meeting room, she gathered all the papers and notes and fought down the urge to cry. It was all so damned unfair. Now that the meeting was over, Leo’s coldness towards her really hurt.
She left the meeting room and headed back to her cubicle.
As she passed, Angie looked up with a quizzical expression on her face.
Vidya shook her head. Once she’d dumped everything on her desk, she opened a document to write up her notes.
She stared at it for a few minutes. No. This would not do.
She finally had Udeni’s permission to tell Leo and now he didn’t want to talk to her.
This was bigger than her feelings. She had to tell him.
In fact, she would do it right now. She stood again.
A few people looked up, but no one really paid any attention to her. She marched out.
The legal teams were two floors above, so she took the lift. Here, where it was much quieter and the offices were bigger, no one seemed to care that she was there. She had to stop and ask for directions to his office. When she got there, it was empty.
The momentum that had carried her up there drained away.
She walked on a few steps until she could see the secretary’s desk. ‘Hi. I’m looking for Leo.’
‘He’s gone out to grab a coffee,’ said the woman who was sitting there. ‘He’ll be back in a few minutes.’
‘Should I wait?’
The secretary glanced at the clock. ‘Come back in fifteen minutes, maybe.’
Vidya nodded. ‘Thanks.’ She walked back out. Now what? How should she waste fifteen minutes? She didn’t want to go back to her desk. No. She would go downstairs and catch him as he came back in.