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‘Done,’ Beatrice said, and told him how much he owed her.
‘I don’t carry cash.’
‘Transfer it, then.’
‘I’ll call Tobias and ask him.’
‘Leave him alone.’ Beatrice actually laughed. ‘Oh, my God, you’re...’
She didn’t know what. Incorrigible? Annoying? Spoilt? She tried all of those words, but as she reached for her bag it was other words that sprang to her mind, and they shouldnotbe springing to her mind—at least not with him so close.
He moved away from the desk, thank goodness, and went to the decanter to pour a whisky for himself, as he sometimes did.
‘Do you want one?’ he asked, as if suddenly remembering his manners.
‘No,’ Beatrice said. ‘I mean, no, thank you. Sir.’
They were in his office now.
And, despite the polite refusal, she very much did want one. It felt like a whisky kind of night.
Whatever that meant.
‘Are you sure?’ he checked.
‘Quite sure. I had one too many Birthday Girl Martinis at the weekend—’ She tried to make a joke, but he cut it off at the neck.
‘Beatrice, can we stop with the hay fever and hangover excuses? We both know you’d been crying when you came in this morning.’ When she neither confirmed nor denied it, he made his point. ‘So—no, thank you, to your offer to hear how I’m feeling. Clearly it’s a one-way offer!’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘Is it?’ He looked at her, and there was no repentance, no apology or taking it back. ‘Okay, if we’re going to talk, why don’t you go first? Why were you upset this morning?’
She sat there and didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak.
‘Okay, let’s start with an easier one: howwas your weekend?’
Beatrice said nothing.
‘So I was right. You don’t actually want conversation?’
She did.
Badly.
So badly that finally she nodded.
‘The friend I was telling you about this morning...’ She raked a hand through her hair. ‘We lost touch. Completely my fault.’
‘Fault?’
‘My choice,’ Beatrice said. ‘But I know it would have hurt her an awful lot.’
‘You were children.’
‘It would still have hurt.’
It was too hard to explain to him that she’d changed her surname just to survive, and that in doing so had effectively cut off any chance of Alicia finding and contacting her. Nor could she tell him how essential a completely new start had felt at the time.
