‘Don’t listen to her,’ Megan jumped in, taking Kate and me by surprise with her assertiveness. ‘We’ll have that arse whipped into shape in six months flat.’
‘It had better be three,’ I said.
‘So how do we get him fired?’ Kate asked.
‘He’s an equity partner so he can’t be fired as such, but he can be voted out or asked to leave. I was thinking that the first thing we do is capture some evidence of what he gets up to on company property in company time. If we share that with the Haiden brothers I imagine that would be enough for them to ask James to leave. I just don’t know how to go about it yet.’
‘Okay, well, you can leave that to me.’
I shot her a concerned look.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be discreet – it’s best you don’t know anything in case James confronts you about it.’
Kate left to meet Carl for dinner somewhere and Sam called in after work. I skulked off to the spare room. It felt strange having people around me all the time. I was so used to my own company or James’s quiet presence that I still found myself needing alone time at Megan’s. It wouldn’t be long before the baby came, and time to myself time would definitely be a thing of the past.
Alone with my thoughts, they soon meandered to the place where they always seemed to go lately: to Andrew. My mind whirled back to our chats, his messages, and the fact my stomach flipped every time I saw his picture. It had been over a week since I sent him the message apologising and he must have seen it by now. I drew a breath before switching on my laptop and logging into the website. My heart tingled with anticipation as the little circular timer spun around and around in response to Megan’s inadequate Wi-Fi, which I hadn’t upgraded to fibre for her because I was on a meddling detox.
0 New Messages
I hit refresh repeatedly as if it would magically produce a reply. Then I thought about sending something else and went into my messages to double-check whether my last message sent. It had – it was just sat there unanswered. Andrew’s beautiful face was missing from the grey box in the top left-hand corner where it should have been. I clicked the blank profile picture icon to go to his page.
User not found.
That was strange. I searched for him by name.
0 Matches.
Then my fingers started to feel clammy and my chest tight. I was starting to panic.
He’d disappeared.
***
The house purchase started to progress and solicitors were working their magic in trying to finalise the sale as quickly as possible. I’d made arrangements with my cleaner to start boxing up my belongings at home and put everything in one of the spare bedrooms. I’d collect them on moving day. I’d deleted all things Me & You, including Andrew’s phone number – I’d promised Andrew that’s what I was going to do and I hadn’t felt able to forget about him whilst it was lingering on the back burner. He’d made his feelings quite clear through his silence. James hadn’t been in touch, which I was relieved about, and I’d had a relatively nausea-free morning. Things were looking up.
‘Do you remember that George Clooney lookalike who works at James’s office?’ Kate said breathlessly the following evening as she bounded through the door.
‘Vaguely,’ I said, unsure as to where this was going.
‘Well, it transpires that he’s a terrible flirt and a sucker for an Italiano.’ She grinned, flicking her hair back.
‘What, like a pizza?’ Sam asked, puzzled. He was sat twiddling something that looked like some part from a lawnmower. Even though he’d found himself an apartment, he still spent an awful lot of time at Megan’s house.
Ignoring him, Kate continued, ‘I acted so disappointed to find James was out to lunch when I turned up for my “appointment” that he let me sit and wait in James’s office because he felt sorry for me. I managed to turn on the little camera thingy connected to his PC that he uses for Skype and stream it to an app on my phone. I can’t believe that philandering husband of yours still uses his mother’s name for his work password too. Anyway, silly me, I realised I had the wrong day for my appointment after all, so I thanked George C and left. By the close of business, the goings-on in that room started to represent an X-rated movie.’ She placed a hand on mine. ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte . . . and Sam.’ She reached down into her bag and pulled out an envelope, which she slid across the table.
‘You don’t have to look at them, but we have everything we need.’
I glanced at the innocent-looking manila envelope. My imagination was enough; I didn’t need the mental images scorching into my brain. ‘I think I have a good enough idea,’ I said grimly.
‘I don’t need to see what they get up to either,’ Sam added.
‘So we just need to decide what to do next,’ Kate said. ‘You could probably use this evidence to get a quick divorce and come out fairly well financially. You’d probably get custody too based on how he wasn’t ever home and has all these extra-curricular activities going on – not that I’m a solicitor or anything.’
‘I don’t want that. I don’t want my baby to become a bargaining chip, and I’m not out to milk James for all he’s worth. I have some money and that will be enough. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all of this it’s that the money is irrelevant – the nice things are all very well, but it’s the people around us that matter. James never saw that. Cutting his financial umbilical cord is enough to teach him a life lesson. Anything else will be no more than a minor
