But then she leaned in a little, and lowered her voice.
‘I broke up with my ex, Harvey, after a brief, intense relationship and then he posted naked pictures and videos of me online.’ Sienna cursed inwardly – the really bad words that her meemaw would have strung her up for saying. ‘He’d taken them without my knowledge or consent.’
Sienna gasped then clamped a hand over her mouth when several heads turned their direction. ‘Revenge porn?’ she hissed, her eyes spitting chips.
Paige nodded, her cheeks pink. ‘I’ve never felt so degraded.’ She dropped her gaze to the table. ‘I met him at Oxford. He was studying IT and I was a third-year law student. It completely ruined my future career prospects. No prestigious law firm was going to take me on after that. Hell, not even a terrible law firm would. And I couldn’t bear staying on at Oxford. Where everyone had seen the pictures. So I’ – she shrugged as she raised her eyes – ‘dropped out.’
‘What a bastard,’ Bella said, a little hesitantly for Sienna’s liking so she added:
‘Absolute bastard! What’s he doing now, do you know?’
‘He’s some kind of tech bro. Travels between London and Silicon Valley.’
‘Ugh.’ Sienna rolled her eyes. ‘Of course he is.’
It was all just so unfair! Again her eyes shifted to the picture behind the bar, and at the precise moment a couple of women stopped to take a photo with it. Both beautiful and glossy, just the kind of arm candy that superstar NHL player Aiden would no doubt go for. The wave of jealousy surprised Sienna. It had beentenyears, for God’s sake. But Aiden had become a sort of slap-in-the-face for Sienna. He’d gone on to become everything he’d ever hoped, and she’d been left behind, treading water just to get by.
She jerked her attention back to the table with renewed determination. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.’
Astrid spilled some prosecco as she connected her glass to the tabletop with a little too much gusto. ‘Damn right they shouldn’t.’
Sienna had felt impotent for a long time, and she’d felt alone for even longer. What else explained why she’d put up with Cory? He hadn’t been much, but at least he’d been someone to do things with, someone to talk to at the end of the day, someone she could pretend cared about her… But these women were like steel being liquified and poured into her spine. For the first time in a long time, she felt strong. She felt empowered. And it was all thanks to them.
‘What if we… look, I know this sounds crazy.’ Her eyes fell to her empty prosecco glass. ‘And I may be a little drunk.’ Out of nowhere, she hiccupped and the other women giggled. Sienna laughed too before refocusing her attention on the idea she’d been about to share. ‘What if we took it upon ourselves to exact some… revenge?’
Silence.
Crackly, hard-to-read silence.
Then, Bella queried, with a quiet caution that was very wise, ‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t mean murdering them or anything,’ Sienna clarified quickly. She’d been visiting her dad in prison every Saturday for more than nine years and was determined never to see the inside of a jail cell herself. ‘I mean, look. These guys have had everything go their way, right? They got to walk all over us. Or walk out on us. Why should they just get to live their best lives while we’re picking up the remnants of ours?’
Astrid’s excitement was visible. ‘Yes. I like where this is heading.’
Sienna nodded. ‘Why not have a little fun at their expense?’
Bella though was still wary. ‘What kind of fun?’
‘Nothing serious,’ Sienna promised, the idea bursting in her mind like fireworks. ‘Stuff that would inconvenience them, that we can have a laugh over. Like…’ She wracked her brain, trying to think of something suitable. ‘Signing them up to hundreds of mailing lists. Or putting a dead fish in their wheel hubs. Buy them a cow and have it delivered. Switch out their clothes for a size or two smaller. Change all the names in their phone contacts to Dr Seuss. That kind of thing.’
She felt the collective stares of the group and wondered if she sounded as though she’d lost the plot.
‘Wow.’ Paige, though, sounded truly impressed. Scared, but impressed. ‘Remind me to never get on your bad side.’
‘Some of those things would require us to get close.’ Bella picked up the threads of the idea. ‘They’ll know it was us. There’s no way we’d get away with it.’ But Sienna, an expert at reading people, could tell from her tone that she was in. She was working out the kinks but in a way that showed how much she wanted this to happen.
Confidence lurched inside Sienna. She hadn’t lost the plot, she’d damn well found it for the first time in a decade. In a migraine-inducingly pink bar in an overcrowded airport, but so what? ‘That’s why we pick someone else’s ex!’
The other women went deadly silent. Sienna could almost hear their cogs turning.
‘It’s an excellent plan.’ Astrid was the first to speak. ‘So good I wish I’d thought of it.’
Bella nodded. ‘Me too. Very Machiavellian.’
Paige was the holdout, the last juror to be convinced. ‘Okay,’ she said, slowly, evidently still thinking. ‘Maybe.’
Astrid though was already taking Paige’s acceptance as a foregone conclusion. ‘Who would you pick?’ Her excitement was contagious and Sienna knew exactly who she wanted to crush like a vile little bug. ‘Harvey the Horrible.’ That rat deserved to pay, big time. ‘If he spends time regularly in the US I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out something. You?’
