“And”—a deep, steadying breath—“I lost my fiancé. A few months ago.”
“Andhisname was also Freddie, wasn’t it?”
I want to stuff every page of Fiona’s stupid book into her stupid mouth to shut her up, but it’s too late. The damage is done. I raise my eyes to Greg’s and see understanding dawning there.
And his voice cuts across the circle like a machete. “What’s your rule on someone pretending that they had a closer relationship with the person they lost than they actually did?”
Fiona’s eyebrows rise an inch. “I’m not sure I follow, Greg. Are you saying you didn’t lose your friend?”
He clears his throat, and though I can’t look at him, I can feel his stare burning through the side of my face. “No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that there’s someone here who is pretending they were in a relationship with someone when they weren’t.” He points at me. “She barely knew Freddie at all.”
Forty-six
Greg makes itsound bad. Worse than it was. He misses theromanceof the whole thing. He frames it as something entirely different. “He said it all started with a kiss,” he tells the group, who seem to lean forward as one. To hang from his every word. Already, Greg is wrong, but I find I can’t voice my rebuttal. My throat feels like it’s closed up.
That’s not where it started at all. It all started when he paid for my coffee that day. When he recognized something in me—a sadness, perhaps, that I saw reflected in him. He wouldn’t have paid for my coffee otherwise. And then again, when I saw him in the office. In London, the chances of bumping into the same person are minuscule in ayear, but the very same day? That’s got to be something close to fate.
When he told me that he, too, had lost a sibling, it was confirmed. Something had brought us together, and I was not going to let it get away from me. He seemed tolikeme, with some persuasion from Marcie’s repertoire of moves, of course. He asked me out. Our first date, at the pub. We bonded over our shared loss, and I was so sure that he was the one. The person who would make me feel less alone in this world.
“He said he felt bad about it—that he thought he’d maybe encouraged her a bit,” Greg is saying. “They’d both lost siblings, and I think he felt protective over her. But she was always so weird toward him. At the first office drinks she came to, she made a beeline straight for him. Barely spoke to anyone else.”
Why does he have to make it sound so seedy? I didn’t know the rest of the office was coming, and, besides, Freddie didn’t seem interested in any of them. Not once Greg had moved away, anyway.
And then there was the second date. Just the two of us. When he bought me lunch and asked me all about myself. And the way he brushed against my leg under the table: I wasn’t imagining that. Icouldn’timagine the spark of attraction that ran between us in that moment.
“He said he took her for lunch one day, just to check in. See how she was getting on. He was her manager, so it was his responsibility to make sure everything was going OK, but he said she didn’t want to talk about work at all. Kept evading his questions and staring at him in a really intense way. Eventually, he thought she might want to talk about losing her sister, so he tried to pave the way for that conversation.”
He’s wrong. Freddie encouraged it. He was interested in getting to know me, too. He opened up to me that day, told me personal details that I was sure he’d never revealed to anyone else. Greg doesn’t have the whole picture. He doesn’t know about our secret meetings, where it was just the two of us. Like when we were in the kitchen together, and the air crackled with electricity. Like in meetings when our legs would touch under the table. The way it always took him a little too long to move away.
“She kept cornering him, so they’d be alone together. Finding little ways to talk to him. Insisted on sitting next to him in meetings. There was one point, in the pub, where we all got together for a photo. Iris practically pushed me out of the way so that she could be next to him init. I think he found it funny, to begin with. Shrugged it off as a schoolgirl crush.”
I loathe Greg. I hate that he has reduced what we had to something as minor—as inconsequential—as a crush. I glare at him with as much hatred as I can muster, but it doesn’t deter him. He plows on. Spreading lies, falsehoods.
“He made a bit of a twat of himself after that. I think he’d been having girl trouble, not that he was ever particularly open about it with me, and he was definitely drinking too much. We had another work night out, and most people had gone home by the time Iris arrived. I left the two of them alone together, and the next morning he came to me and told me he’d done something stupid. That he’d kissed Iris, and he was worried that he’d overstepped. Said it was a drunken thing, but he was concerned that our boss would find out.”
No, no, no. The kiss was genuine. I felt it. Iknewit.
“I encouraged him to speak to her the next day. Play it down. But I think he felt so embarrassed by what he’d done, he just ignored it and hoped she wouldn’t say anything.”
Greg doesn’t know the half of it.
“That’s when things started to get really bad. Freddie started getting the sense that someone was following him. He thought it was a bloke at first, but I’ve always wondered if it was her.” He tips his head in my direction, and all eyes turn toward me, like he’s broken the spell he was binding them with. “I thought he was being paranoid at first. He kept going on about feeling watched. Thought there was someone in his flat. I’ll regret that I didn’t do more for a long time.”
Well, on that point he’s got me. I did mention love pushed me to lengths I didn’t think myself capable of. Even before I suspected there was another woman, I’d found ways to get into Freddie’s flat. He was never particularly security conscious, and occasionally he left awindow unlocked. But when I began to suspect his infidelity after Greg—fuckingGreg—planted that seed of the other woman in my head, I went further. I began following Freddie. I stole his keys so I could access his flat whenever I wanted.
It was easy enough to do. He always left them on his desk, and I waited until he was in a meeting, then swiped them. I had them copied at the key-cutting place down the road, and they were back on his desk before he even missed them.
I sent him a few messages, just to gauge his feelings toward me, but he was unresponsive, clipped. And so I decided to use them. I let myself into his flat and I began to look for evidence. I didn’t find anything that first time. It was a thrill just to know I was there, in this intimate space of his. I lay on his lumpy mattress and inhaled the smell of him from the pillow. I even took a pair of pajama bottoms, savoring the fact that they had pressed against his skin.
As time passed and I wasn’t caught, I grew bolder. Sometimes I’d wait until he was asleep, then let myself in and watch him breathe from the corner of his bedroom.
I grew bolder in my search, too, looking in places I hadn’t previously dared to go lest he notice a difference. It was in Freddie’s sock drawer that I found the ring, buried right at the bottom. It was exactly the sort of ring I’d have wanted. It broke me a little seeing it there, so incongruous in its tiny velvet box. Something inside me gave.
“I put two and two together a few weeks later,” says Greg now. “I watched Iris staring at Freddie across the office, and something just slotted into place. I warned him that it could be her, tried to get him to go to our boss, but he was worried he’d be in trouble for encouraging her. Weirdly, I think he was quite pleased that it was only Iris. That it wasn’t something more sinister than a crush.”
I fuckinghateGreg.
After I found the ring, I decided to confront Freddie. I would lay my cards out on the table. Tell him I loved him.Proveto him that I was the one he wanted.
