THIRTY-FOUR
Evie lied to Aubrey. She didn’t go straight to the garden, but to her parents’ house in Mayfair, hoping to catch her father before he left for work.
It had been a long time since she was last at the big house. The building took up almost one side of the quiet square, its white pillared porch facing onto the gated leafy green space. She no longer had a key, or knew the entry code, and the housekeeper who came to the door took a few minutes’ convincing that she really was who she said she was.
But she got in, strode through the marbled entry hall, heading for her father’s office where he normally liked to check his emails before starting the day, and came face to face with him leaving the room, slipping his phone into his pocket.
“I won’t pretend to be surprised,” he said, and gestured back into his office. “Come in and do your weeping woman act.”
Evie hesitated, thrown. But perhaps he had guessed this was coming.
He sat down in the big chair behind his desk and tilted his head, waiting impatiently.
“You can’t ruin Aubrey’s career just because of a falling out. He may have said some heated words, but it’s petty to punish him for them.”
It was her father’s turn to pause, surprise flickering over his face, replaced by an amused smile. “I don’t think you need to worry about me ruining his career. He’s doing a perfectly good job of it himself.”
“Because of one argument with you?”
“You really haven’t heard? Did he not tell you?”
Her father turned on his laptop, then turned the screen towards her. She read the headline, then stepped right up to the desk, pulling the laptop closer as she tore through the words on the screen. “What…? No. They can’t have. They said they wouldn’t.”
“Ah,” her father said slowly, his curiosity full of dark relish, “so you do have something to do with it. He seemed very certain that you didn’t.”
Evie felt sick, her heart racing though she was cold, frozen. “It wasn’t me. But it wasn’t him, either.”
“Then who? You know, don’t you?”
FTP. They’d done it without her. After promising her his name would be kept out of it. But she was the one who had brought his name to them in the first place and made him a target. Her stomach twisted, the world around her pulsing with the rushing blood in her ears.
Her father’s smile was black. “What have you done this time, Evelyn?”
She read every article she could as she travelled north, palms sweating, fingers trembling. She was going to kill them. Zig, Fi, all of them. She’d kill them, then she’d make them make it right—somehow, somehow they would make it right—and Aubrey would be OK. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to know it was her… Her stomach cramped again. Nausea. Shame. Guilt.
God, she’d have to tell him, but…
She was going to be sick. She really was, right here on the tube as it ground along, rocking and trundling, creeping so fucking slowly into north London.
When she got off, she got caught in the slow-moving crowd, fighting her way out of the stuffy platform, impatient and furious and close to tears. It was raining, the late autumn street sharp and cold, but she barely noticed, practically running, hot and sweating when she got to the street, Laburnum Grove, a small group of people already waiting outside the padlocked gate, grumbling among themselves, stamping cold feet, rubbing cold hands.
“Sorry, sorry…” she said, false smile fixed to her face, unlocking the gate with fumbling fingers. Zig was moaning at her, scowling like usual. She grabbed his elbow in a grip that made him yelp, grabbed Fi, too, and dragged them to the clammy, freezing portacabin.
“How could you!” she hissed, slamming the door shut, then rounding on them.
They both frowned, exchanging a confused glance.
“You knew what happened! That things changed! And you all promised from the start that his name wouldn’t be involved in any of it!”
“Um,” Fi said. “Maybe rewind a little?”
“Yeah, what the fuck, Evie? What are we being accused of here?”
She pulled her phone from her pocket, thrust it at them. Zig took it, Fi reading it, too. Zig let out a whistle, then chuckled. Evie could have slapped him.
Fi looked up with a frown. “You think this was FTP?”
“Who else!”
But Fi was shaking her head. “Not us. Not them. We couldn’t.”
Zig made a noise of agreement, handing her phone back. “Domnall’s not a target anymore. His lawyers got wind of what we were up to, hit us with so many threats of libel, invasion of privacy, defamation of character, anything you can think of, that FTP got scared. Backed off. The whole thing got dropped. Your man in the suit along with it.”
“But…” Evie said. “Are you sure? Maybe they just pretended to drop it. Someone might have still done it. Hacked into his computer, the BlacktonGold network, some cyber activist somewhere…”
“I mean, it’s possible,” Zig said, sitting back against the desk and scratching his beard thoughtfully. “But FTP isn’t exactly bursting with tech-savvy computer experts. That’s why we wanted you to get the emails the way we planned.”
“Exactly,” Fi said. “It’s not easy to access things on a system like BlacktonGold have. They’re not an amateur operation. They’re dealing with people’s money, personal details. I suspect all of their IT stuff is secured pretty damn tight.”
Zig nodded. “And those lawyers—Domnall’s lawyers—they were scary , Eve. It’s HallardPuck . They could literally get away with murder. Probably do. No one’s going to be dumb enough to tangle with them. It’d be suicide.”
Fi gave a dramatic shudder. “They have investigators. Like their own secret police. That’s how they knew what we were up to. They managed to get into our computers no problem at all.”
“Like a hot knife through butter,” Zig said. “I had to erase my entire hard drive. Then I ended up getting a new laptop anyway just to be safe. Still gives me the creeps thinking about it. It’s unethical, spying on people’s emails, getting into their computers…”
Fi gave him a pointed look.
He grinned sheepishly. “Oh. Yeah. Like we were trying to do. Fair cop.”
Evie didn’t pay much attention. Her mind was still stuck on that name. HallardPuck. Liv worked for HallardPuck. Liv was one of Domnall’s lawyers. She could easily have been told about FTP. About Evie’s mission.
She still felt sick, the damp, musty air of the portacabin not helping. She opened the door, stepped out vacantly into the mud, looking at the unimpressive view of the empty site without really seeing it.
She got her phone out. Looked up a number. Dialled it.
“Who are you calling?” asked Zig. Both he and Fiona were giving her worried looks.
“HallardPuck,” Evie said as the phone rang.
“No, no, no, no…” Zig tried to grab her phone. Evie turned away. A receptionist answered.
“I’m a client of Liv Villais. I’d like to speak to her, please.”
“May I take your name?”
“Evelyn Blackton.”
“One moment, please.”
Fi stepped into her line of sight, making slashing stop motions with her hands. Evie turned away.
“This is Liv Villais’s secretary. I’m afraid Liv is out of the office right now. May I take a message?”
“No. It’s fine.”
Evie hung-up, hands shaking.
“Are you mad?” Zig asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know. But I think I know who’s behind this.” She tucked her phone away, looked at Zig and Fi. “The leaks only hurt Aubrey and BlacktonGold, not Domnall White. That doesn’t make much sense for FTP.”
Zig shrugged. “No one’s going to cry any tears if they go down.” Fi elbowed him sharply. “Except, uh, you, of course.”
Evie ignored that, frowning at nothing. “But why would she hurt him,” she said to herself, “if she loves him?”
“Who?” asked Zig.
“Aubrey’s ex,” Fi said, watching Evie think. “Liv. The one who’s now with Domnall.”
Zig shook his head. “I can’t keep up.”
“It was all in the FTP briefing!”
“Well, I skipped the boring bit.”
Fi rolled her eyes. “Men.” She touched Evie’s arm. “He loves you now, right? That might be enough of a reason.”
Evie frowned at her, not wanting to believe in the scorned woman stereotype. Even Liv wasn’t that bad. Surely.
“Jealousy?” she asked.
“Or the simple joy of breaking what she can’t have.”
“No one really does that.”
“No one nice,” Fi said. “Or sane. Is she either?”
Evie’s frown froze. Sane, maybe. But nice? Even she couldn’t be quite that charitable. She turned, ran slipping on the mud for the gate. It took forever to get back across town, and when she arrived at Aubrey’s, wet and breathless, she rang the buzzer, and rang it, and rang it, but no one was there, and his phone went unanswered.