“I enjoyed it with him, at least in parts. He was good in bed after that first time.”
Sarah opened her mouth and closed it again, her mind reeling. She tried again. “But I’m a woman, the power dynamic is…”
Amy laughed at that, a short, incredulous sound, and that hit Sarah harder than anything else. “You think the fact you’re a woman makes it different? You’re a senior partner, Sarah. You have direct influence over these women’s careers. Whether you’re a man or a woman doesn’t change the hold you have over them.”
“I’m not holding anything over anyone.”
“You don’t have to… that’s the whole point. The power imbalance does the work for you. You don’t need to make the benefit explicit to every one of your mentees, you don’t need tosay ‘I’ll help you with X if you come to my flat tomorrow and do Y with me.’ You just need to be someone who can make or break their career, and also be someone who sleeps with them. The implication takes care of itself.”
Sarah sat back, winded. Her mind raced through her mentees… not just Amy but also Rebecca, Joanna, and the rest. She’d always been clear on the quid pro quo, up front about it. She’d deliberately left nothing to implication because that was where misunderstandings could lie.
“But we’re all adults,” Sarah tried, hearing the desperation in her own voice. “Everyone knows what the arrangement is. Nobody’s being deceived.”
“Yes, I know. I’m culpable too. So is every one of your mentees. We all made choices.” Amy’s voice was patient now, almost gentle, and in some ways that was worse. “But here’s the question you need to ask yourself, Sarah. I only ended up back at his flat, in bed with him, because of the leverage he had, regardless of whether I enjoyed parts of it. Would you have ended up in bed with any of them without the leverage of your mentoring? Without the career help, the connections, the advocacy… would any of those woman have slept with you? Because your offer is: sleep with me and I’ll mentor you and help your career. Don’t, and I’ll do nothing… but I also won’t do anything to help.”
“But I’d never harm anyone’s career. I’d never…”
“Neither would he.” Sarah sat back, as if slapped. “He never gave me an ultimatum. He never said ‘sleep with me or I’ll ruin you.’ He said ‘sleep with me and I’ll help you.’ Just like you. But a lack of help can be just as damaging as deliberately doing harm,particularly when you know that if you don’t take the offer, someone else will, and they’ll get ahead while you fall behind. That’s how it felt in the taxi, Sarah. That’s how it feels for your mentees.”
“But I genuinely help them. Their careers are genuinely better for knowing me.”
“His advocacy helped my career too. I qualified where I want to. Does that make what he did acceptable?”
Sarah couldn’t answer. She stared at the table, struggling to find the words to make this all right somehow… this was turning into a nightmare and she could feel the years of self-justification tottering, threatening to collapse, and it was terrifying because she didn’t know what existed in its place.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said eventually, her voice sounding uncharacteristically small.
“I know you don’t.” Amy’s tone and expression had softened, although only a little. There was anger there, though, unlike anything she’s seen from Amy before. “And I’m not saying you’re a predator, Sarah. I don’t think you’ve ever set out to exploit anyone. But the effect is the same. You’ve built a system where junior women sleep with you in exchange for career advancement. The fact that you’ve convinced yourself it’s mutual doesn’t make it so, it just means you’ve never taken the time to look at it properly.” Amy leaned forward. “How many, Sarah? How many mentees have you had? And how many of them had partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands? How many relationships have been blown up like mine with James? What’s the damage?”
Sarah opened her mouth but nothing came out. Rebecca… she’d had a boyfriend at first, but she dated women now. Did that count? Joanna… a boyfriend still, maybe? The others, she was struggling to remember. She’d not thought about it much, so focused as she was on her own need for connection, for validation, for the thrill of being wanted, that the collateral damage had been background noise, dismissed as just part of each of her mentee’s everyday lives. Something that happened off-stage where she didn’t need to see it.
“I don’t know.”
“No,” Amy said. “You don’t. And that is the problem.”
Sarah sat in silence for a long time. The bar was emptying out around them, it was getting late, and she could hear the wind driving the rain against the windows behind her.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I want you to actually hear what I’ve told you. I’m sorry to have told you my story, but it was important and it was all true. I don’t think you’ve actually heard yet, though. You’re still looking for the argument that makes it all ok.” Amy stood up and pulled on her coat. “So here’s what I need from you. Tell me you understand, really understand, what you’ve been doing, and tell me what you’re going to do about it. Until you can do that…” Amy trailed off, then took a deep breath. “Until you can do that, we’re done.”
Sarah’s mouth fell open and she felt tears coming to her eyes.Please, God, don’t let me cry in public. “Amy, please…” she managed to whisper, but it came out strangled.
“I mean it.” Amy looked down at Sarah and, just for a moment, her composure cracked so that Sarah could see everything underneath… the anger, the hurt, the desire, the frustration of wanting someone you also know that you need to hold to account. “I really like you, Sarah. Really like you. That’s what makes this so hard, but also what makes this so important.”
Amy turned and walked towards the door. Sarah watched her go, unable to move, and then threw some cash, probably quite a bit too much, on to the table to settle the bill, grabbed her umbrella and went after Amy.
***
Sarah caught up with Amy just outside the market. She was sheltering under the edge of an awning from the rain that was hammering down, phone out, a taxi app up on screen. Amy turned when she heard Sarah’s footsteps and her expression was… well, it wasn’t welcoming.
They stood facing each other, the market that late at night deserted around them, close to each other out of necessity given how narrow the strip of pavement that was out of the rain was. Amy’s hair was already wet from her walk from the bar, and Sarah could see her breath fogging in the cold air. Neither of them spoke.
Sarah looked at Amy’s face, her eyes, her mouth, the droplets of water on her cheek catching the streetlights. She could feel the pull between them, undeniable, the same gravity that had been there right from the beginning, right from that first lunch together when Amy had asked if she could be mentored. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage.
She moved closer. Slowly, very slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time. Amy didn’t move, didn’t step back but didn’t step forward either. She just watched Sarah with those unreadable eyes and the same serious expression that she’d had when she left the bar.
Sarah raised her hand and touched Amy’s face, gently, letting her thumb slowly trace its way along her cheekbone. Amy still didn’t move. Sarah could feel the warmth of Amy’s skin, could see that despite it all her breath was quickening, and she knew, knew with absolute certainty, that Amy was as drawn to her as she was to Amy, even after everything she’d just said.
