Chapter 1
I t was 7:54 a.m. on the third freezing morning of 2023. Glancing at the empty office chair opposite my desk, I knew David would enter in a few seconds. The others would only start to arrive a minute or two after him. So I had about ninety seconds to greet, smile at, and attempt small talk with him without being observed by anyone through the internal window – although fitted with a blind, said blind never got used because fiddling with it would have drawn more unwanted attention.
Thanks to Selena, the ‘Spanish grandma’ of our site offices – who was keen to celebrate everyone’s birthday – I knew David had been born on 19 October and had just turned thirty-five. Making him one of the youngest contracts managers in the history of Brooks O’Grady, a leading construction company we both worked for.
As expected, bang on 7:55 a.m., the door to our private office opened, and a tall, handsome man entered. His confident steps had echoed through the building long before he’d climbed the stairs. As always, his short blond hair and beard were perfectly trimmed, his tailored grey suit immaculately pressed, and his brown brogues polished to a shine.
‘Good morning, Evelyn.’
‘Good morning, David.’
After he took his seat, his icy-blue eyes locked with mine as he started up his laptop – no surprise there; all part of the routine.
I could have had a minor orgasm just from the intense way he looked at me .
As usual, his glorious smile and beaming gaze were the icebreakers to kickstart our morning conversation. It felt like I was back in secondary school waiting for Dennis Leaman, the most attractive boy in the class, to ask me out – but he never did. He always just smiled at me and every now and then dropped his head, embarrassed, to avoid being caught staring at me – though he was never quick enough to turn away.
After a few months, I got fed up with this silly game and approached him. My forwardness shocked him so much that he remained speechless until the next period when he finally decided to seek me out and reply with a ‘yes’.
Unfortunately, Dennis wasn’t much of a talker, and apart from his good looks, he possessed no other valuable or noteworthy characteristics to maintain my interest. However, I never regretted asking him out. After all, he was the reason I lost my virginity at the age of sixteen.
I’d be lying if I said I’d never thought about asking David out, but he seemed like a man more than capable of taking the first step.
I knew he liked me. The non-verbal signs were all there: he leaned towards me, and his voice filled with warmth when he talked to me; his eyes lit up, and his eyebrows raised, arching softly, whenever he saw me. I often caught him watching me, even at meetings, then quickly moving his eyes towards the ceiling or dropping his head, just like Dennis Leaman.
Perhaps David just thought the same as me – that it wasn’t worth sacrificing our work relationship for something that might be a passing moment of passion… And, in a selfish way, we needed each other to achieve the financial targets that led to potential promotions, which demonstrated just how ambitious we both were.
He was known to be the best contracts manager in the region, and I was said to have a similar reputation in my own role as a quantity surveyor. But a commercial person can’t perform without a good operational counterpart and vice versa. At the end of the day, for the top management, all that mattered was how much profit the job was bringing in. Board directors weren’t known to recognise hard work without seeing tangible outcomes – like that ABBA song ‘Money, Money, Money’.
‘Did you have a nice Christmas break?’ David asked.
His deep, musical voice sent a tremor from the pit of my stomach to my groin again.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied coolly, trying to ignore the heat rising from below. ‘How about you?’
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Did you go and see your parents like last year?’
‘I did. What about yourself? Did you go skiing in the Alps again?’
‘No, not this year.’
Outside, heavy doors banged, metal stairs creaked, and shouting and laughing voices filtered up from the downstairs lobby and kitchen/staff room. The outer office soon filled with low murmurs and loud conversations, computers beeping, and ringing landlines and mobile phones, bringing an end to our chat. This left me wondering how, where , and, most importantly, with whom David had spent his Christmas.
Half an hour later, when my office partner had left for the first client meeting of the new year, I rose from my seat and ventured into the chaos of the open office area. It was a territory ruled by site managers, tenant liaison officers, and junior surveyors; their desks pushed together in pairs, facing each other. Plus, of course, there was Jenny, our temp admin lady, sitting in a far corner, handling the phones.
For once, everyone was in. It was an unusually busy Tuesday, but that was to be expected on the first day back after the festive shutdown.
In our division, we didn’t build new houses; we carried out planned maintenance works to occupied properties. And who in their right mind would want to have a kitchen upgrade, a new roof, or other intrusive works done at Christmastime? The tenants of our clients certainly didn’t.
‘Morning. Can I please talk to you for a second?’ I asked, walking up to Adam. He was scrolling through emails on his laptop, sitting alone at a round table with three spaces previously reserved as hot desks for visitors. He was a late addition to our team – after the client had awarded us more work last autumn – and another long desk upstairs would have erased the light and airy feel of the space our guests kept complimenting us on. ‘In my office,’ I added.
He slowly got up with a scowl, barely acknowledging my presence. His hostile behaviour made me even more uncomfortable than I’d felt since our last encounter; I’d spent hours trying to figure out how to approach him about our night together.
No one looked up, but I could tell by the sudden silence and the withheld breaths around us that they all had their ears open.
‘Okay,’ he said, still not looking at me, as if he was speaking to our audience instead. He hadn’t even bothered to hibernate his laptop, which I found highly irresponsible.
‘We need to talk,’ I said as Adam closed the door.
Standing at my desk, I watched him, trying to make him just as awkward with my confident manner as I felt.
‘You said that already.’ His voice was cold, and he crossed his arms; his light-blue shirt tensed over his biceps. His jet-black eyebrows sloped inwards as he narrowed his dark eyes, watching me without blinking. He was said to be half Korean, and this was the first time his stern expression made the otherwise subtle Asian features more distinguishable to me.
I gestured towards David’s chair, but he dismissed my offer – this was already not going the way I’d planned it.
‘Listen, about the night of the Christmas party—’
‘It didn’t happen.’
‘ What ?’
‘That’s what you were going to say, right?’ he asked. ‘We should pretend it never happened. Just like how you disappeared on me the following morning, leaving me without my bank card. Which, of course, you never did because nothing had ever happened. ’
‘Yes… No … I mean…’ I stuttered like a schoolgirl. Then I reminded myself that it was me who’d invited him for this meeting, not the other way around. So I cleared my throat and added, ‘I don’t appreciate your tone.’
My comment misfired. Adam now looked even more miserable and angry – I had to change tactics to get to the bottom of this.
‘The truth is I don’t remember anything,’ I said, trying to sound calm and sympathetic. From his confused expression, I could immediately tell that my statement had triggered his interest. ‘Why don’t you please sit down and tell me what exactly happened?’
‘You don’t remember?’ he asked cautiously, lowering himself into David’s seat. He first spun the chair left and then slowly right, not taking his eyes off me.
‘No, the last thing I remember is having Prosecco with… I mean, having Prosecco. That’s it. So can you please tell me how we ended up in Wales?’
‘Are you being serious?’ He’d stopped playing with the chair, which I was grateful for, as the spinning motion had been quite distracting and was giving me a headache.
‘Of course I am. Do I look like someone who wakes up in Cardiff every weekend after a night out in London?’
‘I don’t know you that well,’ he said. Then his lips curled up at one end. ‘Actually, in a way … I do know you that well,’ He winked at me.
‘Oh Lord,’ I murmured as his words sank in. ‘So we did do it.’
Until now, there’d been a glimmer of hope in the back of my mind that we’d just stripped naked without touching each other. But what naked man and woman would get into bed together without the intention of satisfying certain primal human needs?
Adam straightened himself up in the chair and looked at me with a winner’s smile. ‘Just so you know, if we’d done something, we’d have done it multiple times, since you’d been begging me— ’
‘ Begging ?’
‘You practically told me you’d get me fired if I didn’t… if we didn’t… So we did a bit of sixty-nine, tying up – you know, just the usual bondage – choking sex and the like. Our safe word was “the boss lady”.’
‘Oh Lord,’ I repeated, sinking into my chair. I wanted to bury my face in my hands, but instead, I just took a long inhale and kept my eyes down, trying to display no emotion, still conscious of our audience outside. I felt lightheaded with cold sweat collecting on my back, and I was already drafting my resignation letter in my head. But when I looked up, he was smirking.
‘I’m only messing with you,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to check whether you truly can’t remember. But we did have a noisy night, and you properly wore me out.’
‘Fuck you!’ The words slipped out – my diplomacy was gone. Still, my crude exclamation didn’t wipe the smug contentment from his face.
‘Hmm, could this be considered sexual harassment? Perhaps I should report it to HR.’
I gave him another hard stare, wishing his head was a shooting target and that I had a gun.
‘Just messing again – you need to chill.’
‘ Chill ? I slept with an employee,’ I snapped, but he still appeared rather pleased with himself.
‘Strictly speaking, I’m not your employee. As a site manager, I report to David,’ he said, but I couldn’t find much comfort in that. ‘And can I have my bank card back now?’
‘I don’t have your bank card.’
He rolled closer to David’s desk, leaned forward in the seat, and held out his palm to me. ‘Yes, you do. You wanted to check the spelling of my middle name because you didn’t believe it was Gavin – you kept saying “Kevin”. Then you used it to buy two single tickets to Cardiff and pay for the hotel room but never gave it back to me. You told me you’d hold on to it till the morning. You kept saying if you were a professional, you’d be worth all my money anyway. ’
‘You’re just messing again.’
‘Nope, that’s actually true.’
Reluctantly, I removed my wallet from my bag. His card was hiding in a back compartment, among some business cards. I examined the writing on the front for a minute before passing it back to him – most of the digits were doubles or primes. ‘It doesn’t say “Gavin”; it only says “G” – could mean anything.’
‘I did warn you, but you still wanted to see my bank card because my driving licence didn’t mention my middle name – the “G” does confirm, though, that I’m not a Kevin.’
‘Fair point. But this is bad. My career is over.’ Everything I’d worked so hard for was now crumbling into pieces. I was back to drafting my resignation letter – it wasn’t a long one.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘Please don’t patronise me.’
‘Okay, you’re in trouble then.’
‘Don’t threaten me.’
He sighed, defeated. ‘I see. Nothing I say is right, is it? Best if I go then.’ He started rising from David’s chair but paused halfway. ‘Am I okay to leave?’
‘Yes, just go.’
After he’d left, I started typing up my resignation letter.
*
‘Adam, can I please have another word with you?’ I asked, passing his desk on the way to my office from the kitchen, where I’d made a strong coffee. All morning, I could barely focus on work as I was trying to figure out how to save my career – I thought caffeine might help me concentrate.
My resignation letter had remained in my draft emails for now. As I’d been hovering over the send button, the glimmer of hope had popped up once more, and I was tightly clinging to it.
When David had left for another meeting in the afternoon, and Adam had returned from his first site visits of the day, I decided it was time to salvage what I could .
‘I’m not giving you my card again,’ Adam said loud enough for everyone to hear.
‘I don’t need your money. I don’t need anyone’s money for the record.’ Again no one raised their heads, but I was positive they were all listening to our conversation. Thankfully, only three colleagues were sitting at their desks; the others must have gone out on site. Still, rumours spread fast in a tight-knit community like ours. I preferred to keep my distance and stay outside of any drama to avoid twisted tales circulating about my life. ‘Can you please step into my office?’
Adam stood up, tossing his mouse further back on his desk.
‘Are you sure you want to leave that on?’ I asked, looking at his monitor. But, like earlier, he made no attempt to bring up the screensaver, demonstrating again how new he was to this team – I was sure he’d learn with time.
When Ardas, our Lithuanian site manager, started a year ago, he’d left his laptop unlocked once, and Dean, a young tenant liaison officer (or TLO for short), had grabbed the opportunity to email a client. The message was short and sweet: ‘ You look gorgeous in red .’
The addressee, a large mid-fifties black man, didn’t quite appreciate the joke. However, Ardas didn’t realise why Claude had been avoiding him for weeks until one day, looking for an email in his outbox, he came across the message…
Adam stepped into my office smirking; he seemed in a much better mood than a few hours ago. I could only hope he hadn’t been telling everyone about our Welsh adventure.
I didn’t sit down until I’d checked that the door was indeed shut behind him. I wouldn’t have put it past the cocky site manager to leave a small gap just so the others could listen in.
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked, indicating for him to take David’s chair again, and this time, he obliged without making a fuss.
‘Just messing.’
‘Enough of the messing – so how much?’
‘How much…? ’
‘How much do you want?’
He squinted, leaning forward. ‘You want to pay for my silence? I didn’t see that coming.’
‘No, how much do I owe you for the train tickets, the hotel, and whatever else I used your card for? I need an itemised bank statement though. If you bring it in tomorrow, we can settle it once and for all.’ I hesitated before adding, ‘Just one more thing – whom have you talked to about our trip to Cardiff?’
‘No one,’ he said, sounding insulted at my assumption. Then he put on a smug face again and asked, ‘But what about my services?’
‘What services?’
‘You know… my services.’
He is indeed a spineless little shit.
‘How much do you want?’
‘Hmm…’ he said, rubbing his chin and swivelling in the chair like he had earlier. ‘It was an all-nighter, plus the inconvenience of leaving me without any money to make my way back—’
‘How much?’
‘I don’t know; I’m thinking.’
‘Well, think faster – how much?’
Narrowing his eyes, he started smirking again. I could picture the devilish cogs turning rapidly in his head before he finally opened his mouth to speak.
‘A date,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Shall we say a dinner date? I’m free tonight. I can pick you up at seven – you live in West London, right? Or shall we make it half seven? Traffic might still be bad then.’
‘Listen, I’m sorry about taking your card, but I’m not going out with you.’ Inside, I was fuming but restrained myself from shouting. For any outsiders, this conversation had to look like we were just discussing work-related topics. I’d even picked up a lever arch file, turning the pages back and forth to pretend its contents were the subject matter of our meeting. ‘Bring me the itemised bill please, and I’ll compensate you for your actual financial losses. ’
‘I think it would be good for you to come—’
‘Is this blackmail?’ My hand tightened around the folder, and I was close to smacking him in the head with it. ‘Perhaps I must remind you that you have no proof of us ever being together – it’s your word against mine. But I’m trying to hand you an olive branch here…’
He looked at me with the confidence of a shark and smiled. ‘What about the selfies?’
‘What selfies?’
‘The selfies on my phone that you took of us… And there’s the voice recording.’
‘What recording?’ I asked, my voice trailing off.
‘You wanted to record… you know, the moment when we… when you—’
‘Enough. You’re just messing again.’
Reaching for his phone, he asked, ‘Do you want to listen to it?’
I quickly put up a hand to stop him from playing it.
‘So it is actually blackmail,’ I said more to myself than to him. I should have seen this coming. In my life, I’d dealt with a fair number of men wanting money from me. Even if, technically, it had never been my personal money. Funnily enough, it was always the ones who looked like they could never hurt a fly that turned out to be the greediest and most difficult to deal with. ‘What exactly do you want?’
‘I told you: a date. A dinner date.’
‘Are you forcing me to go on a date with you?’
He shrugged. ‘No pressure.’
‘ No pressure ? You’re kidding, right?’ No man had ever infuriated me so much as this arrogant bastard who was now looking at me innocently like a lamb. ‘You’re blackmailing me into submission, but no pressure?’
‘No, I’m not blackmailing you. When did I say anything about blackmail?’
‘Oh, you’re very good – I see what you’re doing.’
‘I’m not doing anything. You thought there was no proof of us ever being together, and I’m just saying you’re wrong about that. ’
But even after considering his words for a minute, I still remained sceptical and asked, ‘So you want a date and nothing else?’
‘Yes, just a date.’
‘To clarify, are you saying you’ll leave me alone and delete all the selfies and the voice recording if I go out with you this once, just once?’
He sighed in frustration. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I found it hard to believe his demands would stop there, but it took me only a second to weigh my options. Unfortunately, there weren’t many if I wanted to preserve my status at the company.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But not tonight. I’ve got to prepare for tomorrow’s client meeting, and I still have a budget report to write. Make it Thursday.’
‘What time do you want me to pick you up?’
‘I’m not giving you my home address. We’ll meet somewhere in the city. I’ll text you the place and the time.’
‘Okay, what’s your number?’ he asked, ready to save it on his phone.
‘You’ve got my number.’
‘Come on – you weren’t going to use your work phone, were you? That would be unwise considering…’
I almost laughed. Adam was the one who kept leaving his laptop on unattended, yet he had the audacity to lecture me on what was irresponsible. I quickly calmed myself and said, ‘My work phone is my phone.’
‘You don’t have a personal phone?’
‘No, I don’t have a work phone.’
The truth was my work mobile broke shortly after I’d received it, and it took our IT department over a month to arrange for a replacement. By then, everyone at work had been given my personal number. But in my phone, I only had a handful of people as private contacts anyway. Thus, the new work mobile still lay in its original packaging in the bottom drawer of my desk .
‘You’re really a workaholic,’ he told me and leaned forward in his seat. ‘But we can change that.’
I raised my hand again. ‘Whoa, slow down. One date, remember? We aren’t changing anything.’
‘You still need my number though. Hold on a sec.’
Adam pressed a few buttons on his phone, and mine started to vibrate on my desk.
‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve got my personal number. Just remember to text that one. I don’t have my work phone on outside work – unlike you, I have a life.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? I do have a life.’
He sneered, holding my gaze. ‘Sure.’
I considered our discussion finished, but he sat back in David’s chair, clearly having no intention of leaving, and asked, ‘Are you not even remotely interested in how I managed to get back to London?’
‘All that matters is that you did,’ I said while keying in the password on my laptop to carry on with my budget forecast for the new year. ‘And you must have your bank details saved on your phone or access to online banking. After all, this is the twenty-first century – we live in a digital world. So don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.’
‘Except you zeroed my account…’
‘I – did – not.’ I forced my keystrokes to remain silent, but his words were increasingly irritating me. With every piece of information he revealed about our night together, he was painting a person who was so not me – someone spontaneous and careless – as if he was deliberately mocking me.
Unfortunately, I possessed no such intimate knowledge about him to fight back with. However, I kept reminding myself that I hadn’t asked him into my office to argue. Ultimately, my aim here was damage control.
‘Yes, you did,’ he said. ‘At some point during the night, you used my phone to do some online shopping at Coast, House of Fraser… I can’t remember the rest off the top of my head. For someone who tracks every penny at work, I’d have expected yo u to be more careful with spending private money. I must say you have very expensive taste – high maintenance, are you?’
‘Sure.’
‘I had to call my sister and ask her to book me a train ticket. But, of course, you can’t collect a prepaid ticket from the machine without a bank card. So I had to beg a stranger to lend me theirs. I almost got beaten up in the process, but hey-ho, after a few unlucky tries, I found a nice, helpful lady…’
‘You could have just asked a cashier at the kiosk.’
‘If it’d been open, I would have… Then I had to walk back from Paddington to Muswell Hill.’ When I didn’t comment, he added, ‘FYI, that’s a two-and-a-half-hour walk.’
‘Surely you could have just got someone to pick you up from the train station?’
‘Then they’d have asked how I got there in the first place… You know it’s pretty humiliating to admit I was kidnapped by a woman.’
‘I didn’t kidnap you—’
‘Also, my phone had died by the time I managed to catch a train. Must have been because of all that online shopping. In short, you zeroed my balance and my battery, so thank you very much.’
‘Welcome,’ I murmured.
‘Did you miss my sarcasm?’
‘Sorry, what was that? I wasn’t quite paying attention. You know some of us come to the office to work, in case you haven’t noticed,’ I said, clicking my mouse. ‘And I think this conversation is long over. Just don’t forget to bring me that itemised bill tomorrow.’
‘I thought that’s why we’re going on a date – to cover the costs—’
‘No, I’ll pay back your expenses, and we’ll go on a date just to shut you up. But after that, it’s like we don’t even know each other. Nothing ever happened.’
‘You don’t need to give me any money,’ he said, getting up. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. ’
I lifted my head. ‘Please don’t make this even more difficult.’
His eyes still had that innocent glint in them. He was clearly a good actor, not to be trusted. I felt hesitant about letting him out of my sight.
‘I’m just saying, as for me, nothing’s ever happened – my lips are sealed. Isn’t that what you want?’
‘That’s exactly what I want,’ I replied. ‘Now go back to work.’
‘You’re not my boss.’
‘Just get out!’