THIRTY-SIX
Evie huddled under the small porch to Aubrey’s building, arms folded, shivering despite the heat of her race across the city. Her phone was in her hand, a dozen unanswered calls. She’d left several voicemails, all equally incoherent, and now had no idea what to do.
He couldn’t be here. No matter what had happened, Aubrey wasn’t the sort of man to hide in his flat, pretending not to hear the doorbell. He would face anything, however unpleasant. But where had he gone? What had Liv told him…?
Another wave of nausea went through her. She felt ill, truly ill, physically sick with all the emotions that flooded her. Taking a breath to steady herself, she dialled a different number.
“Hi, Evie.”
“Roscoe! I…”
“Hey, hey, steady up. What’s wrong?”
“Aubrey…”
“Oh. You heard the news.”
“Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”
Roscoe paused. “No… I spoke to him this morning, but…”
“Yes, yes, we’re a thing.” She waved a hand in the air, irritated, embarrassed. “Again.”
“You need to update your social media status or something. On, off. Real, fake. No one can keep up.”
“Please, Roscoe. I’m not in the mood for joking. I need to talk to him. I’m at his flat, but he’s not here. And he’s not answering his phone. And…and…something terrible has happened. I really, really need to talk to him.”
“Take a deep breath, Eve. What’s going on?”
“He thinks it was me! He thinks I leaked the emails! I’m sure he does. He has good reason to think so. And he must think all of it was fake, but it was only at the start, and I think it might have been Liv, but I don’t know why, except I think she’s planning something, and—”
“Woah! Stop. Breathe. Are you breathing?”
She sniffed, wiped her dripping nose. “I think so.” Rainwater snaked from her sodden hair, tickling her forehead. Rain poured relentlessly from the edge of the porch, drumming to the wet, cold ground.
“Where are you right now?” Roscoe asked.
“Outside Aubrey’s place.”
“In this weather? Jesus. Look, get a cab here, to my office. I’m stuck here all day, but you can dry off, have a cup of tea. We’ll put our heads together and figure this out, OK?”
Roscoe was in the office kitchen when she arrived. He passed her a big handful of blue industrial-looking kitchen roll to mop her face, then grimaced apologetically. “Only got cow’s milk.” The kettle beeped as it finished boiling. Roscoe hunted through cupboards. “Sure there’s some awful herbal stuff somewhere, though. Got it in a complimentary gift basket.”
Evie smiled weakly, close to tears again just because he was being so nice and she was so grateful.
“I don’t mind. Anything hot will do. I’ll just have hot water.”
“No need. Look. Lemon and…erm, turmeric? Lovely.” He tossed the bag in the cup, poured in the water. “Come on,” he said, leading the way to an empty desk in the corner. “Explain all.”
He took her coat, hung it over a radiator. Then they sat together and Evie outlined everything that had happened, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the tea. She had no appetite for it, was still nauseous. Roscoe’s eyes went very wide at the mention of the garden. She told him about meeting their father, then her theories about Liv having something to do with it.
“The problem for Aubrey is this gagging clause,” Roscoe said after a thoughtful pause. He sipped his coffee. “This supposed leak is an absolute breach.”
“But he didn’t do it!” Evie’s protest was immediately followed by the plunging of her heart. “He thinks I did.”
Roscoe gave her a careful look, not quite managing to hide his big brotherly disappointment, nor his hurt that she’d targeted his friend. “And you really planned to?” he asked quietly. “You were really going to get this stuff from his laptop, behind his back?”
Evie blushed, fiddling with the wet string of her tea bag where it lay over the rim of her cup. “Yes,” she admitted. “I was. Or I told myself I was. I managed to believe I could. But it wasn’t meant to be about him. It was evidence about Domnall’s wrong-doing I was looking for. Just things they could use to get him in trouble, highlight all his corrupt business practises. It wasn’t meant to be about BlacktonGold or Aubrey at all. He was just…just the means to the end.”
Roscoe said nothing. There was nothing to say. Her shame spoke for itself.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s Aubrey who needs to hear that.”
“I know!” Tears clutched her throat again. She forced them back with a hard swallow. “He will hear it. I’ll make it right. Somehow. But I need to find him first. Where could he have gone?”
Roscoe frowned in thought. “Probably not a long walk in this weather.” He smiled slightly, trying to lighten her mood. “I’m sure he’s OK, Evie, wherever he is.”
“But he thinks I…”
“I know.” Roscoe sighed. “Poor old Aubrey. I suppose he’s gone to a friend. Perhaps his family, one of his brothers.”
“Do you have their number?”
“No. But his dad and his brother Andrew both work at—”
“Ford & Ford!” Evie interrupted eagerly. “They might know!”
She grabbed for her phone, then paused. “Maybe… Maybe it’s best if you call them?” But she shook her head before he could do anything more than give her a sympathetic look. “No, no. It’s my problem. I’ll fix it.”
But the extremely polite receptionist couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her any information. Yes, she said smoothly, Andrew Ford was at work today. But no, she couldn’t give any information on his visitors and clients.
“I’ll go down there myself,” Evie said, standing up.
Roscoe gave her a sceptical look. “It’s an enormous law firm. Several floors. Dozens and dozens of rooms. Are you going to search the whole building? Security will throw you out before you get past reception.”
“But what can I do!”
“Give the man some time. Call him again tomorrow.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but it was too pathetic to describe the image she had: Aubrey suffering alone through the night. Roscoe understood, anyway. She saw the sympathy in his eyes.
“I’ll try to call him, too,” Roscoe said. “But right now, the best thing you can do is order something to eat and regroup. Because you look like a drowned ghost.”
Reluctantly, Evie gave in. “Do you have a computer I can borrow? My phone is almost dead.”
She would message Amy. She had to tell someone. And Amy was sensible and practical and kind. Maybe she would have a plan of how to make things right. She understood forgiveness. Besides, there were things Evie needed to tell someone that she simply couldn’t tell her brother. Things about how it felt to be in love. The perfect fit of Aubrey’s arms. The way he understood her, on some deep, deep level that went beyond beliefs and opinions and likes and dislikes. He liked her despite it all, despite himself. Or he had. The horror of what she might have lost swept through her again, and she sat blankly down at the desk Roscoe pointed out, turning on the computer and staring at the screen, not a single word in her head to convey even half of it to Amy.
After a while she found herself back on the news site where she had first read the story in her father’s home office. It was still everywhere, hadn’t magically gone away. The articles were multiplying. Calls for an inquiry into tax law, into firms like her father’s. Opinion pieces and political statements and the whole world wading in.
The emails themselves had all been loaded to a public website. Anyone could read them. Evie clicked the link, unable to help herself. It was terrible, seeing them all there, Aubrey’s name, his words for all the world to see. She didn’t understand any of it, but it didn’t make it seem any less invasive. A flash of memory came, of walking in Spain under the hot summer sun. A dead cow in the field—long dead—bones and leathery, dried-up flesh. Ants crawling all over it, marching in and out of the hollow sockets of its eyes. It felt like that. All these people picking over the bones of Aubrey’s life. And she, herself, had nearly done this to him.
She scrolled all the way through the emails. There were weeks and weeks of them. Some of the dates caught her eye. Emails sent the weekend they were at Conyers. Emails sent while he sat in her bed the morning after they slept together. And more, more, the weeks after that when they argued over the garden, when she thought she’d never see him again.
She stopped, looking at the date. Emails from when they were not together . Emails right up until the day he quit BlacktonGold. How would she have got hold of them? His personal laptop she’d seen at his place wasn’t even connected to the BlacktonGold system. As Fi pointed out, she’d have to be some kind of computer genius to hack into the email servers of a place like BlacktonGold. Surely he’d believe it wasn’t her if she explained that. She had to try.
Grabbing her still wet coat, she ran from the office.