‘Leaving, are we?’
Mirren flicked her long black hair over her shoulder and settled the strap of her bag there. ‘Yep,’ she said, not making eye contact.
‘I’ve got a room at the Radisson,’ he said, low and shifty, so at first Mirren wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
‘Good for you,’ she replied, and as she was about to stand up and say ‘Cheerio, then,’ it happened, too quickly for her to be able to do anything to prevent, but also somehow in slow motion so she knew exactly what was coming.
His hand slipped from his lap and down onto Mirren’s knee before reed-like, cold fingers slithered along her thigh, under her hem. She caught his wrist and held it fast, pulling his hand away and shifting herself off the barstool in one movement. ‘What the—?’
‘I thought we were getting on?’ he said, insulted.
‘You always do, your lot, don’t you?’ Mirren said as she threw his wrist back and attempted a dignified walk from the bar.
Just as she was straightening her jacket and looking around, hoping no one had seen, she heard him say it. The word was thrown towards her, hissed between teeth and fat wet tongue. ‘Slut.’
She let the door swing closed behind her and walked mechanically towards the station wondering when these encounters would cease to shock and unsettle her. After all, it had happened so often, and to most of her mates too, in one form or another since she was a young teen, except when she was with Preston. Nothing like that ever happened when she was with him.
All the way home from her encounters with Jamesey and Andrew, she’d let their behaviour sink in and her indignation rose.
That night, as she sat up in bed, she drafted a message in theEdinburgh Broadsheet’s staff email app on her phone, leaving it unsent until Saturday morning to be sure it was worded correctly and giving herself time to change her mind.Always best to sleep on these things; nothing worse than sending an off-the-cuff flame-mail and instantly regretting it,she cautioned herself.
When she opened her eyes the next morning, she reached for her phone and read it all through once again, just to be sure.
Look James, I don’t know what it is I’ve done to you to become the target of your secret little hate campaign, but I’m telling you this: if you tell me I look like I need a good fucking one more time I’m reporting you to HR and Mr Angus. Stay away from me, you creepy arsehole. We’re not friends.
She hit the send button before she could crumble and chicken out.
Moments later her phone flashed into life again. A new email – but she was surprised to see it was from Mr Angus. Why would he be contacting her at – she looked at the time – eight fifteen on a Saturday morning?
Did you mean to send that to me? Come to my office first thing on Monday.
Her thoughts raced. Could Mr Angus be talking about the theatre feature she’d sent in yesterday? He’d been expecting that though. She looked again at the email she’d sent and there it was. Mr Angus’s name in the CC line. Somehow, stupidly, she’d copied in her boss to the warning meant for Jamesey.
She hurriedly re-read her words, checking exactly what it was he had just seen. The wave of nausea nearly knocked her onto her back. Heat was spreading from her stomach up her spine and to her face; red, horrified, zinging heat, making her nerves prickle and scream. It was followed by cold, creeping white despair as the blood drained away again, seemingly sinking down into her legs, making them leaden and leaving her dizzy. Now she’dreallyrocked the boat in the newsroom, and the horrible, humiliating matter she’d hoped to sort out by herself at long last had, thanks to her blundering, ended up escalated right to the top of her organisation.
Mirren switched her phone off and slid under the covers with a groan.
Chapter Eleven
‘I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood’
(Hamlet)
‘You’ve already got a copy of the paper?’ Kelsey said after Blythe let her in, and shuffled ahead of her, leading her through the purple velvet drapes and into the sitting room, which Blythe referred to with lavish French pronunciation as hersalon. She’d hoped to surprise Blythe with a Saturday afternoon visit to look at the pictures in the paper but someone had beaten her to it.
‘My young man brought it round. Roses, too.’ Blythe indicated the blushing blooms in the vase by her side as she settled on her pink chaise once more.
Unsure how to respond to the idea of Blythe having a young man, Kelsey steered a safe course. ‘Did you,umm, did you like the pictures?’
‘Not bad at all considering I was rusty. Paid you, has he?’
‘Not yet, no.’
‘Hmm.’ Blythe raised an arch – browless from decades of over-plucking – and reached for the gin bottle on the silver tray beside her, arranging two glasses. ‘Ice is in the freezer, my dear.’
Within moments they were sipping another lethally strong batch of Blythe’s gin and Kelsey had settled on the velvet stool by Blythe’s stockinged feet which looked tiny and doll-like, and cold too.
