That’s how we met, Ed and I, at work, or through both spending lunchtimes in the gym next door.
On rare Manchester sunny days, we’d meet outside and go for a run together instead, sprinting the last one hundred metres, competitive with each other. Then Ed got offered a job at another company and took it, both of us thinking that was probably sensible anyway, now we were spending most nights at each other’s flats. Jared got promoted. He and Ed kept in touch, meet for a pint regularly. But as I wave at him from the lift, Jared keeps his head down. Mustn’t have seen me.
Eventually we get to my floor and I step out, straight into a waiting Felicity.
I fling my arms around her even while I know it is unprofessional.
‘Flick!’ I exclaim, relieved, and she hugs me back hard.
‘Good to see you,’ she says and I pull out and look at her.
‘You look amazing,’ I say because this, for unknown reasons, is how you reacquaint with female friends. I love your earrings. Your shoes are hot. Where’s that lipstick from? Et cetera, et cetera. Start with the pawing of the new coat and the stroking of the cashmere, then you’re ready to move on to real subjects.
‘Nice shirt,’ I add. ‘And thanks for the welcome committee.’
She smiles but it’s close-mouthed.
‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about. We’ll grab a boardroom.’
The goose bumps are worse than the ones I had without a coat in Sowerton this morning. A boardroom means we need privacy; our office is open-plan. So what is it? Redundancy? Can they do that when I’m on maternity leave? Or is that the point – I’m not any more, so they can?
But I can’t ask because Flick is marching off now, past the beanbags, towards the room I presume she has booked, a hand on my lower back to guide me there too. I quickstep to keep up, new trainers threatening blisters.
On the way we pass my colleagues, ten or twenty of them.
‘Sara!’ I say, excited to see a long-term desk buddy. But Sara just smiles awkwardly and ducks her head.
Freddie doesn’t look up at all.
Sanjeeta rummages in a drawer.
I think about Jared.
Something odd is happening.
‘Is the company folding?’ I whisper to Flick, half-laughing. ‘Why is everyone being strange?’
She doesn’t answer but ushers me into the room and shuts the door, flicking on the lock.
The trainer situation dictates that I sit down immediately. Flick stays standing.
‘Firstly,’ she says. ‘Welcome back.’
She gives me the only genuine smile I’ve seen since I walked in here. ‘It’s lovely to see you. I’m sorry I’ve not made it over in a few months.’
I look away awkwardly. She visited when Poppy was small. It was about nine months ago. She was one of my closest friends.
‘Well, firstly too it’s nice to be back,’ I say. ‘But I think we had better get to secondly. There’s a disconcerting vibe in here?’
Flick nods, seriously.
And then she does sit down, and jiggles her mouse to make her computer come alive.
She clicks onto something, then looks at me.
‘I need you to steel yourself here, Scarlett,’ she says.
My stomach lurches. Redundancy, then. I think about the size of our mortgage and regret following Ed’s lead despite my nerves and maxing ourselves out on our four-bed pretty listed building on the winding country road in our idyllic Cheshire village. How long will it take me to find something else? How big will my pay-off be?
‘Go on,’ I say, needing the conclusion as I try to do sums with no facts.
She sighs. Clicks again.
‘I was sent a link to this in the early hours of this morning by somebody I don’t know,’ says my friend, my boss. ‘And so was everybody else on the team.’
I nod.
‘Right,’ I say, searching her face for clues about where this is going. But Felicity cannot meet my eyes.
‘It’s a sex tape,’ she says.
My eyebrows shoot up. Jesus. That explains why everyone is in a strange mood; my return isn’t the headline this morning. A sex tape!
‘Whoa,’ I say. ‘Do you know why you were sent that?’
Flick doesn’t say anything else. Instead she wipes her dark-rimmed glasses on her expensive blue silk shirt to – I’m sure – try and steady hands I notice are shaking.
But then she composes herself.
‘I didn’t open it at first because it was an unknown link. But I came in early and asked IT to take a look at it, because of the title.’
I nod. Yep. We are always being told to be careful what we open. Makes sense.
Flick bows her head, as if in prayer.
‘I did send a memo to everybody, to tell them not to open it,’ she says, looking tortured. ‘I tried to act, as fast as I could. But it wasn’t fast enough, evidently. They’d either already looked or they were too curious and ignored me.’
I reach a hand to her then.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘It’s not your fault. They shouldn’t have done that if you told them not to look at it.’
Would I have looked, though, I wonder? A sex tape isn’t normal Monday morning fodder.
Flick’s prayer ends and she looks at me.
‘Scarlett,’ she says. ‘The video clip was titled with your name. You’re in it. It’s your sex tape. You and … two men.’
I laugh at first, in disbelief.
‘That’s impossible,’ I say.
But then I look at her screen, from a chair where I usually sit with a cup of coffee in my hand looking at the Google Analytics and I freeze with a memory of something that happened in a different time, to a different me.
Fuck.
Sitting in the chair next to my boss, I am still and I am ice. Flick’s hand is hovering over a video clip.
‘I can show you, if you want me to, but I understand if not,’ she says quietly.
Perhaps if she weren’t my friend, or if she were a man, it would be different. But something compels
