CHAPTER 51
One hour gone, four and a half to go. I was in my car again, driving back to Johannesburg. Mike had escorted me to the town limits once more, and, this time, there had been no kiss goodbye, no lingering look, noI wish we’d met under different circumstances. I was sure he wished he’d never actually met me. Truthfully, I wish I’d never met me. The new me. This me that lied and manipulated and was devious and deceitful. But that still didn’t change the fact that my heart was breaking, right now. It had broken before, but not like this. This felt nothing like what Blade Sanders had done to me.
Blade was my famous and charismatic editor and ex-boss—even his name was charismatic—the man I’d admired more than I can say. He was a journalist supreme, going undercover in crime rings and cracking open some of the country’s biggest stories. It all added to the legend and mystique of the man who had given me my dream job, plastered me with praise and compliments and poems, and then stolen my young, naïve heart.
Let’s keep it a secret at work, he’d said.Wouldn’t want anyone here to think I favor you, he’d said. The secretiveness had made it that much more thrilling. Those late-night moments in printing rooms. Stolen kisses in the elevator, the basement, on his desk, under it, in the locked boardroom. Late-night calls, sexting at our desks . . . It was all so thrilling for my younger self. I had been so naïve.
But all the secrecy had had nothing to do with our work situation, and everything to do with the fact that he had a live-in girlfriend. How had I not known, when apparently it was common knowledge? She was the editor of one of South Africa’s bestselling women’s magazines.
It’s over between us.
We don’t even sleep in the same bed.
We haven’t had sex in years.
The lines that he’d kept feeding me had kept me hanging on for so long. Looking back now, I can’t believe I bought it all and allowed myself to become the mistress in a bad movie for another year. In my defense, I was a star-struck twenty-five-year-old. At that age, you’re still just teetering on the precipice of true adulthood, and any shove in any direction can either set you back or propel you forward. Well, I was pushed back—especially on the Monday morning he’d come to work engaged to be married. He’d announced it nonchalantly in our regular Monday-morning meeting . . .
Got engaged.
How?someone asked.
Took her to her favorite restaurant. Put the ring in the bottom of the champagne glass.
What does the ring look like?
Very simple and elegant. Princess cut. One and a half carats.
Did she cry?
She did. She did.
It was as if the whole world stood still in that moment. The boardroom table that I’d been resting my elbows on vanished and I fell through it, like a ghost moving through a wall. I felt like all the blood had drained out of me, leaving me cold and empty, and the coffee cup fell from my hand. The hot, black liquid spread fast over the polished table and dripped off the edge, on to the carpet. I still remember that sound, that franticdrip, drip, drip, drip. At the time, it was the loudest sound I’d ever heard.
I’d lost it—broken down in front of everyone in the room. Tears and snot and trying to gulp in air between sobs. Thinking back on that moment now, I cringe at the sheer embarrassment of it all. He’d pulled me out of the room, dragged me into his office, slammed the door and we’d gotten into a screaming match. Everyone heard, and when I walked out of his office, five minutes later, broken, bruised and rejected (didn’t I know I was only a bit of fun?), I had to do this walk of shame across the newsroom floor. Later that day, I’d gotten it into my head that I needed to callher. She needed to know. One woman to another, I needed to tell her, to save her from the biggest mistake she would ever make: marrying him. I wish I’d had someone to sense-check that thought, though. If I’d had a good friend or a close family member to turn to, maybe they would have saved me from that moment. Because it turned out to be a big mistake.
Of course I know. Just like I known about all the others, she’d said.
What others?God, I had been so stupid.
She’d laughed.Did you think you were the only one he was fucking? Do you think you mean anything to him? Look at you. You’re just a junior writer who is fucking her boss. How pathetic can you be? You’ll never get anywhere, after this. Your career is doomed. No one likes the girl that fucks her boss.
It was true, what she said. No one likes that girl, especially the boss she’d been fucking. He tried to get me to leave. Said it was awkward, now, in the office. He even offered me a retrenchment package, but I refused to go. I had something to prove, now. To her, to him, to all my colleagues who now looked at me like I was just sleeping my way to the top—as if I was a talentless writer and this was the only way I would make it. My refusal to leave was what ultimately led to my downfall. The big, public downfall. The one where I wrote that big, political story and “misquoted” our finance minister.
Mr. Mcube said that budget cunts were coming.
It had been printed like that and you can imagine what happened next. Think funny Facebook memes, think a lawsuit, think the whole country laughing at that unintentional joke. Thing is, my copy hadn’t said that when I handedhimthe article to go to print. I had written “cuts”—let’s be clear about that, there was no “n” in the version I submitted. See what a problem just one wrong letter can cause?
He’d deliberately changed it so he had a reason to fire me and then publicly humiliate me and kill all my future prospects as a journalist. He’d take some slack, too, as the editor, but he’d managed to emerge on the other side with his reputation fairly intact—his biggest mistake was trusting atoo young, too overzealous journalist.
My stomach twisted at the memory, but I continued to go down the dark rabbit hole of my thoughts. In fact, I was so far down the rabbit hole, I was about to drink the potion to make me fit through the door, when . . .
I heard the siren.It must have been going for ages, because I’d been vaguely aware of some red and blue lights.
“Fuck! What now?” I pulled over at the side of the road. I was sure I hadn’t been speeding, but, then again, I had been so deep in thought that I might have been, and this car was naturally fast—you had to really concentrate to keep it moving slowly . . . God, why did I buy it?
The police car stopped behind me and I started scrambling for my license. I swung around as I felt the shadow of the man beside my car. I opened my window and launched into it.
“Hi, officer. I hope I wasn’t speeding.” The sun was behind him and I shielded my eyes so I could see his face, but, when I did, my jaw fell open.
