When she arrived at the R/C building on Monday, she was visibly subdued. She plodded across the office to her desk without greeting anyone, ignored Donna’s obnoxious smirk, then slumped into her chair and started setting up her laptop.
A moment later Greg was beside her.
‘Ray, you look terrible. I take it you’ve heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Oh God, listen – let me take you out for a coffee. We really need to talk.’
Greg had covered her left hand with his, and his eyes were round with concern.
‘Greg, what on earth is going on?’
‘Not here,’ he muttered, looking around. Rachel’s eyes followed his, and with a chill she realised that almost everyone in the office was staring at her.
Greg pulled her up out of her seat, then guided her back the way she’d just come, towards the door. Something was very wrong here, and she had no idea what.
Once they were settled at a corner table in Java Jo’s, Greg waved at the barista – a young girl he seemed familiar with – and asked for two flat whites.
‘Ray, you’re scaring me,’ he said. ‘You look traumatised and I haven’t evensaidanything yet. Or have you heard from him yourself?’
‘Heard from who?’ Rachel asked, waking up a little.
‘Jack, of course, the absolutebastard.’
‘Greg, you’re not making any sense,’ she said. ‘And what’s Jack done to upset you?’
‘He’s taken advantage of a good friend of mine. Someone I care about a lot.’ He sighed. ‘He’s in Manchester. His wife summoned him back up there yesterday, apparently. She heard rumours that he’d taken up with an old flame and couldn’t handle the thought of him with someone else.’
‘Rumours?What …? I don’t understand.’
‘Clara – that’s his wife – used to work for Mountaintop, so she still has plenty of friends there. Some of your less discreet R/C colleagues appear to have shot their mouths off about you and Jack while they’ve been up there for meetings, or in emails and IM conversations. You’d think they’d have better things – or perhaps some actualwork– to do, instead of speculating on who their co-workers might be sleeping with. But apparently not.’
Rachel put her head in her hands and groaned.
‘It seems Clara and Jack have a very … volatile relationship. Very up and down. Apparently they’ve split up several times before because one or the other of them’s cheated – but this time Clara got serious. Told him to move out because, although they both wanted kids, she didn’t trust him to stick around and raise them.’
Rachel remembered Jack’s claim in the pub, months ago, that he wanted children but his wife hadn’t been keen. She remembered how deftly he’d implied that this timehe’dbeen the one who’d been let down.
‘I had a long conversation with the Mountaintop MD early this morning. According to him, when they started looking for a London agency to buy out, Jack was the one who helped the exec team research and assess the options. I’m sure there were lots of reasons why R/C ended up at the top of the list – but Jack was well aware you worked here long before the day he and the rest of them came down to announce the merger. Your photo’s on the team page of the R/C website.’
Rachel groaned again, the sound ripping painfully from her throat. ‘He told me the opposite – that he had no idea I worked at the agency until he saw me in that meeting.’
‘I figured. I guess he also told you that he had nothing to do with you getting promoted and ending up on the same team as him. I had to do some digging to confirm this, but it seems that’s not entirely true either. He made his boss aware that you two knew one another, so it was suggested to Isaac that you might be well matched. Then, without knowing it, I sealed the deal by singing your praises – saying how great you’d be at charity work.’
This was too much to take in. Fully alert now, Rachel took a large gulp of coffee and tried to digest Greg’s revelations.
‘I still don’t understand where the rumour that Jack and I are an item has come from. We aren’t. And I might as well tell you …’ She sipped at her drink again, deciding the time had come to be honest. ‘… Tom and I aren’t together either; we actually never were … But, under the circumstances, that’s probably a story for another time.’
One of Greg’s eyebrows hitched up by a clear inch. ‘Okaaaaay, we’re going to park the Tom thing – but only because desperate times call for desperate measures. As for why people believe you and Jack are having an affair … He’s hardly been restrained around you, has he? He’s ignored every woman in the office who ever tried it on with him – and believe me, there’ve been many. Every time you’ve been out together in a group, he’s made sure to be seen leaving with you. Kemi told everyone who would listen that he walked you home after you guys took her back to her flat on the night we went to the speakeasy. There were Manchester people there that night too, and he didn’t leave your side the whole evening.’
In fact, Rachel remembered, Jack had been delighted to squire her around, topping her up with drinks and intermittently pressing his hand into the small of her back. He’d introduced her to his old colleagues as his partner – a word so obviously ambiguous she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it at the time.
‘So let me guess: I’m a homewrecker,’ Rachel sighed. ‘The scarlet woman who’s tried and failed to break up his marriage for good. But what about the “old flame” thing? Where hasthatcome from? You aside, neither Jack nor I have told anyone we used to go out … At least, not that I know of.’
‘Clara had heard your name in conversations between Jack and his old college pals, apparently – she knew you were an ex-girlfriend. Then, when you were mentioned as someone he was working with, she supposedly freaked: told her friends there was history between you. It’s filtered down through them to people here in London. Unfortunately, the fact that you kept your prior relationship with him quiet …’
‘… makes it seem like I’ve been dishonest,’ Rachel finished. Greg nodded, then reached over the table to pat her arm.
