‘The rumour is that Clara finally lost it when Jack posted an Instagram photo of you guys from your birthday night out.’
‘My birthday was weeks ago,’ Rachel said, frowning.
Greg shrugged. ‘He’s only just put it up.’
Rachel picked up her phone and clicked into his profile – accessible to her since they’d begun following one another – and saw that it was a shot he’d taken of her and Anna just after he arrived at the piano bar. Anna had been completely cropped out.
Rachel was smiling into the camera, a glass of celebratory fizz raised in her hand. He’d captioned it:Birthday drinks with this one @rach_ryan_1988. So happy we found each other again x
‘Oh my God.No.’
She was incensed – not to mention enraged with herself for turning off all her social media notifications. She’d have spotted this earlier otherwise.
Jack was devilishly clever, though, and his post was brilliantly ambiguous. If she’d seen this without knowing all the things Greg had just told her, she had to admit she’d probably have thought nothing of it. Jack was rightly confident that she wouldn’t suspect his ulterior motives for tagging her.
‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you all this,’ Greg said, stroking her arm again. ‘But I wanted you to hear it from a friend – not fuckingDonnaor one of her feeble-minded followers.’
‘I’m glad you told me. I’m grateful,’ Rachel said. To her surprise, she didn’t feel like crying.
She was humiliated, but a cool rage had settled in her stomach – and she found that she didn’t care whether Jack’s attentions to her had been real or all for show. It was probably some mixture, she thought, but it didn’t matter – because it wasn’t Jack she wanted. Perhaps it never had been.
And in the end, how much worse was Jack’s behaviour than her own? Hadn’t she misrepresented things, manipulated people and twisted the truth for her own ends?
Yes, Jack was the sort of master schemer she’d never be – he’d gone further than she had, been prepared to dredge up long-buried pain and reignite old feelings, probably without a thought for how that might affect her. But what had Anna said on the night of Rachel’s birthday?You’re messing with other people’s emotions … And it seems not to have occurred to you that someone might get hurt. She’d been right – and it was time Rachel admitted as much.
‘Hold on a minute,’ she said, snapping back into the now. ‘Did you say Jack had gone to Manchester? If so, I presume he’s on his way back? We have a huge meeting with Lighthouse this afternoon. Awful Olivia wants to go through the whole content plan again before signing it off.’
Greg made a disgusted face and shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t bank on him coming back today. Maybe not tomorrow either. Do you think you can lead the meeting if I come with you as back-up?’
Rachel hesitated, then said, ‘Yes, I can. I don’t need him.’
She felt the truth of her own words as Greg smiled and nodded approvingly.
‘Atta girl. Now … are you ready to head back?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Rachel said.
‘Shoulders back, head up and tits out,’ Greg told her. ‘You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. And Jack’s boss says he’s going to set up a call with you and Florence, in her role as HR director, so they can listen to your side of all this. When that meeting happens, hold absolutely nothing in. Truth will out, Ray – and the truth shall set you free.’
Rachel spent the remainder of the morning ignoring her colleagues’ whispers and furtive glances. She put her headphones in and concentrated on preparing for the Lighthouse meeting.
Predictably, Kemi had IM’d her within five minutes of her return from Java Jo’s.
Kemi Percival
Is it true about you and HH? What happened to your scientist guy?
Rachel Ryan
No, it isn’t true. And Tom is not a scientist!!!
After that, Rachel had set her IM status toDo Not Disturb.
The Lighthouse meeting was at their HQ in Bayswater, and Rachel used the journey over there to update Greg on the project’s progress.
‘Editorially, we’ve stuck to exactly the brief she gave us back in March.’
‘Nothing’s changedat all?’ Greg rolled his eyes.
