“Hello, Mel? It’s Karen at reception here. I have Becky here. Becky Brandon. She’s here to…surprise Luke.” There’s quite a long silence, during which Karen listens intently. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do that.” She looks up and smiles at me. “Take a seat, Becky. Someone will be with you shortly.”
Take a seat? Someone will be with me? What on earth has happened to them?
“Why don’t I just go straight up?” I suggest.
“We’re…not quite sure where Luke is.” Karen definitely looks shifty. “It’s probably better if you…” She clears her throat. “Adam will be down shortly.”
I don’t believe this. Adam Farr is head of corporate communications at Brandon C. He’s the guy they always summon for tricky situations. Luke says Adam is the consummate expert at handling people.
I’m being handled. Why am I being handled? What’s going on?
“Do take a seat, Becky!” Karen says, but I don’t move.
“I couldn’t help overhearing you earlier,” I say casually. “Is something wrong?”
“Of course not!” Karen’s reply is too swift, as though she’s been waiting for me to ask. “We were talking about…something on TV last night. Weren’t we, Dawn?”
Dawn is nodding agreement, but her eyes are edgy.
“What about you?” says Karen. “Keeping well, are you, Becky?”
“Not long to go, is it?” puts in Dawn.
I try to think of a natural, friendly reply — but how can I? This whole conversation is fake. Just then, the lift doors open and Adam Farr strides out.
“Rebecca!” He has his corporate smile on and is slipping a BlackBerry into his pocket. “What a pleasure to see you!”
This guy may be the smoothest operator in the company. But he is not fobbing me off.
“Hi, Adam,” I say almost curtly. “Is Luke around?”
“He’s just finishing up a meeting,” says Adam without missing a beat. “Let’s go up and get you a coffee. I know everyone will be thrilled you’ve dropped by—”
“What meeting?” I interrupt him, and I swear I see Adam flinch.
“On finance,” he says after an infinitesimal pause. “Very dull, I’m afraid. Shall we?”
Adam ushers me into the lift and we travel up for a while in silence. Now that I’m up close to him, I can detect signs of strain in him, beneath the confident, business-y manner. There are shadows under his eyes, and he keeps tapping his fingertips together in the same rhythmic pattern, like a nervous tic.
“So…how’s life?” I say. “You must all be really busy, with the expansion and everything.”
“Absolutely.” He nods.
“And is it fun, working on all these different Arcodas projects?”
There’s silence. I can see Adam’s fingers tapping together faster and harder.
“Of course,” he says at last, and nods again. The lift doors open, and he shows me out before I can say anything else.
A few Brandon C staff are standing there, waiting for the lift, and I smile and say “Hi!” to the faces I know — but no one smiles back. At least not a genuine smile. Everyone seems taken aback to see me, and there are a few fake little flashes of teeth, and a couple of people say, “Hi, Becky,” and then look down awkwardly. But nobody stops to talk. Not even to ask about the baby.
Why is everyone being so weird? Over by the water cooler I can see a couple of girls talking in lowered voices and glancing at me when they think I’m not looking.
My stomach starts to churn. Oh God. Have I been totally naive? What do they know? What have they seen? A sudden vision comes to me, of Luke ushering Venetia down the corridor to his office, closing the door, and saying, “Please don’t disturb us for an hour.”
“Becky!” Luke’s resounding voice makes me jump. “Are you OK? What are you doing here?” He’s striding down the corridor toward me, flanked by his second-in-command, Gary, on one side, and some guy I don’t know on the other, with a bunch of people following in their wake. They all look fairly stressed out.
“I’m fine!” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “I just thought…we could have a picnic in your office.”
Now that I say it, in front of all his staff, it sounds really stupid. I feel like Pollyanna, holding this stupid wicker basket. There’s even a pink stripy bow tied round the handle, which I should have torn off.
“Becky, I have a meeting.” Luke shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“But Mel said you didn’t have anything booked!” My voice is more shrill than I intended. “She said you’d be free!”
Gary and the others glance at each other and melt away, leaving Luke and me alone. My cheeks are prickling with humiliation. Why should I be made to feel stupid and in everyone’s way, just for dropping in to see my husband?
“Luke, what’s going on?” The words spill out before I can stop them. “Everyone’s giving me weird looks. You sent Adam down to ‘handle’ me. Something’s wrong, I know it is!”
“Becky, no one’s been handling you,” Luke says patiently. “No one’s giving you weird looks.”
“They are! It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers! No one’s even smiling anymore! Everyone looks so tense, and strained….”
“They’re preoccupied, that’s all.” Despite his easy veneer, Luke seems rattled. “We’re all working very hard right now. Including me. I really have to go.” He kisses me. “We’ll have the picnic at home, OK? Adam will call you a car.”
And the next minute, he’s disappeared into the lift, leaving me alone with my basket and my jumping, unsettling thoughts.
A meeting. What meeting? Why didn’t Mel know about it?
Now I’m envisaging him hurrying into a restaurant where Venetia is waiting, cradling a glass of wine while all the waiters watch admiringly. She gets up, and they kiss, and he says, “Sorry I’m late, my wife turned up —”
No. Stop it. Stop it, Becky.
But I can’t. Thoughts are piling into my head, thicker and faster, like a snowstorm. They’ve been seeing each other every lunch hour. All the Brandon C staff know about it. That’s why Karen and Dawn looked so awkward, that’s why they tried to get rid of me….
The other lift is waiting with its doors open, and on impulse I get in. I reach the ground floor and walk as swiftly as I can manage out of the foyer, ignoring the calls of Karen and Dawn, just in time to see Luke being driven away by his company driver in the Mercedes. Frantically I hail a taxi, step in, and dump the basket on the seat.
“Where to, love?” asks the taxi driver.
I slam the door and lean forward.
“You see that Mercedes up ahead?” I swallow hard. “Follow it.”
I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. I’m tailing Luke through the streets of London. As we drive round Trafalgar Square with the Mercedes in sight, I feel like I’m in some kind of movie. I even find myself glancing through the rear window to check that there are no baddies in pursuit.
“Your boyfriend, is it?” the taxi driver suddenly says in a strong South London accent.
“Husband.”
“Thought as much. Got another woman, ’as ’e?”
I feel a horrible pang in my chest. How did he know? Do I look like the cheated-on partner?
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “Maybe. That’s what I want to find out.”
I sit back and watch a bunch of tourists follow their tour leader across the road. Then it occurs to me that this taxi driver is probably a total expert on people following their partners to prove adultery. He probably drives them all the time! On impulse I lean forward and slide the dividing window across.
“D’you think I should confront him? What do most people do?”
“Depends.” We’ve reached some snarled-up traffic and the taxi driver turns round to face me. He’s got a long face like a sniffer dog, and dark, mournful eyes. “Depends if you want to ’ave an open an’ honest marriage.”
“I do!” I exclaim.
“Fair enough. Risk is that by ’aving it out, you drive ’im into the arms of the other bird.”
