Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“And I don’t? You think my secrets are less important than yours?
You think I’m less hurt by your blurting them out on television?
” I’m smarting with anger, with disappointment.
“I suppose that’s because you’re so huge and important and I’m…
What am I again, Jack?” I can feel my eyes filling with tears.
“A ‘nothing-special girl’? An ‘ordinary, nothing-special girl’?”
Jack winces, and I can see I’ve hit home. He closes his eyes, and for a long time I think he isn’t going to speak.
“I didn’t mean to use those words,” he says. “The minute I said them, I wished I could take them back. I was…I was trying to evoke something very different from that…a kind of image.” He looks up. “Emma, you have to know I didn’t mean—”
“I’m going to ask you again!” I say, resolute. “What were you doing in Scotland?”
There’s silence. As I meet Jack’s eyes, I know he’s not going to tell me.
“Fine,” I say, trying to keep control of my voice. “That’s fine. I’m obviously not as important as you. I’m just some amusing girl who provides you with entertainment on flights and gives you ideas for your business.”
“Emma—”
“The thing is, Jack, a real relationship is two-way. A real relationship is based on equality. And trust. So why don’t you just go and be with someone on your level, who you can share your precious secrets with? Because you obviously can’t share them with me.”
I turn sharply before he can say anything else, and stalk away in tears.
—
How I get through the afternoon, I don’t know. I sit at my desk, my face numb, while Artemis and Nick persist with their oh-so-funny running commentary. Artemis starts by asking me if I can recommend a good set of bathroom scales. Then Nick starts dropping Dickens references into every sentence.
“…He’s a real Scrooge. Sorry, Emma, by ‘Scrooge’ I mean ‘miser.’ ”
“You’re so hilarious,” I say without raising my head. “Really, you should have your own show.”
Caroline, meanwhile, is obviously feeling sorry for me, so she comes over to my desk and makes conversation about my parents. Which, to be honest, is even less welcome.
By the time I arrive home that evening, I have a throbbing headache and feel like crawling into a hole. I open the door of the flat to find Lissy and Jemima in a full-scale argument about animal rights.
“The mink like being made into coats—” Jemima is saying as I push open the door to the living room. She breaks off and looks up. “Emma! Are you all right?”
“No.” I slump down onto the sofa and wrap myself up in the green chenille throw that Lissy’s mum gave her for Christmas. “I had a huge row with Jack.”
“With Jack?”
“You saw him?”
“He came to…well, to apologize, I guess.”
Lissy and Jemima exchange looks.
“What happened?” says Lissy, hugging her knees. “What did he say?”
“He said…he didn’t ever mean to use me. He said I got in his thoughts. He said he’d fire everyone in the company who teased me.”
“Really?” says Lissy. “Gosh. That’s quite romant—” She coughs, and pulls an apologetic face. “Sorry.”
“He said he was really sorry for what happened, and he didn’t mean to say all that stuff on the TV, and that our romance was…Anyway. He said a lot of things. But then he said…” I feel fresh indignation rising. “He said his secrets were more important than mine.”
Simultaneous gasps of outrage.
“No!” says Lissy.
“Bastard!” says Jemima. “What secrets?”
“I asked him about Scotland. And rushing off from the date.” I meet Lissy’s eyes. “And…all those things he would never talk to me about.”
“And what did he say?” says Lissy.
“He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was too ‘sensitive and complicated.’ ”
“Sensitive and complicated?” Jemima looks galvanized. “Jack has a sensitive and complicated secret? You never mentioned this before! Emma, this is totally perfect! You find out what it is…and then you expose it!”
God, she’s right. I could do it. I could get back at Jack. I could make him hurt like I’ve been hurt. “But I have no idea what it is,” I say.
“You can find out!” says Jemima. “That’s easy enough. The point is, you know he’s hiding something.”
“There’s definitely some strange stuff going on,” says Lissy thoughtfully. “He has all these phone calls he won’t talk about, he rushes off mysteriously from your date—”
“He rushed off mysteriously?” says Jemima avidly. “Where? Did he say anything? Did you overhear anything?”
“No!” I say, flushing slightly. “Of course not! I don’t…I would never eavesdrop on people!”
Jemima gives me a close look.
“Don’t give me that! Yes, you did! You did hear something. Come on, Emma. What was it?”
My mind flashes back to that evening. Sitting on the bench, sipping the pink cocktail. The breeze is blowing on my face; Jack and Sven are talking in low voices….
“It was nothing much,” I say reluctantly. “I just heard him say something about…having to transfer something…and Plan B…and something being urgent.”
“Transfer what?” says Lissy suspiciously. “Funds?”
“I dunno. And…they said something about flying back up to Glasgow.”
Jemima is clutching her head in agitation. “Emma, I do not believe this. You’ve had this information all this time? This has to be something juicy. It has to be. If only we knew more…” She exhales in frustration. “You didn’t have a Dictaphone or anything with you?”
“Of course I didn’t!” I say with a little laugh. “It was a date! Do you normally take a Dictaphone on a…” I trail off, incredulous at her expression. “Jemima. You don’t.”
“Not always!” she says, shrugging. “Just if I think it might come in…Anyway. That’s irrelevant. The point is, you have information, Emma. You have power. You find out what this is all about—and then you expose him! That’ll show Jack Harper who’s boss! That’ll get your revenge!”
For a moment I feel sheer, powerful exhilaration. That would pay Jack back. That would show him. Then he’d be sorry! Then he’d see I’m not just some nothing nobody girl. Then he’d see.
“So…so how would I do it?”
“First we try to work out as much as we can ourselves,” says Jemima. “Then I’ve got access to various…people who can help get more information.” She gives me a wink. “Discreetly.”
“Private detectives?” says Lissy in disbelief. “Are you for real?”
“And then we expose him! Mummy’s got contacts at all the papers.”
My heart is thumping. Am I really talking about doing this?
“A very good place to start is rubbish bins,” adds Jemima knowledgeably. “You can find all sorts of things just by looking through somebody’s trash.”
And suddenly it’s like sanity comes flying in through the window. “Rubbish bins?” I say in horror. “I’m not looking in any rubbish bins! In fact, I’m not doing this, full stop! It’s a crazy idea.”
“You can’t get all precious now, Emma!” says Jemima tartly, flicking back her hair. “How else are you going to find out what his secret is?”
“Maybe I don’t want to find out what his secret is,” I retort, feeling a sudden sting of pride. “Maybe I’m not interested.”
I hunch my shoulders and wrap the chenille throw around me even more tightly.
So Jack’s got some huge secret he can’t trust me with. Well, fine. Let him keep it. I’m not going to demean myself by grubbing after it. I’m not going to start poking around rubbish bins. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care about him.
“I want to forget about it,” I say morosely. “I want to move on.”
“No, you don’t!” retorts Jemima. “Don’t be stupid, Emma!
This is your big chance for revenge! We are so going to get him.
” I have never seen Jemima look so animated in my life.
She reaches for her bag and gets out a lilac Smythson notebook, together with a Tiffany pen.
“Right, so, what do we know? Glasgow…Plan B…transfer….”
“The Panther Corporation doesn’t have offices in Scotland, does it?” says Lissy thoughtfully.
I turn my head in disbelief. She’s scribbling on a pad of legal paper, with exactly the same preoccupied look she gets when she’s solving one of her geeky puzzles.
I can see the words “Glasgow,” “transfer,” and “Plan B,” and a place where she’s jumbled up all the letters in “Scotland” and tried to make a new word out of them.
“Lissy, what are you doing?”
“I’m just…fiddling around,” she says, and blushes. “I might go and look some stuff up on the Internet, just out of interest.”
“Look—just stop it, both of you!” I say. “If Jack doesn’t want to tell me what his secret is, then I don’t want to know.”
Suddenly I feel completely drained by the day. And bruised. I’m not interested in Jack’s mysterious secret life. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I want to have a long, hot bath and go to bed and just forget I ever met him.