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I’m probably still over the limit, so I have no intention of driving yet.
Instead, I begin to run.
I go down Shortland Street, then Princes Street, heading for Albert Park. Traffic is already building up, but it’s not too bad, and when I reach the park itself, I find it mainly empty, with just a few joggers like me, enjoying the peace of the early morning. The rising sun has filled the sky with a deep orange hue.
I start slow, letting my body warm up, then gradually speed up. It’s hard to think while I’m running, and instead I lose myself in the physical exertion, pushing myself hard, until instinct takes over and I become like a machine, eating up the miles. I know it’s not good to run after a night of drinking, but I empty the Sports drink, and I know from experience that I’ll feel better doing this than just sitting down all morning.
After about forty minutes and several loops of the park, I slow as I approach the fountain, drop to my haunches, then tip back onto my butt and stretch out on the cool wet grass. My chest heaves, and I let the morning air fill my lungs.
It’s only now my body’s stopped that my brain finally begins to work.
Part of me doesn’t want to confront what happened last night. I want to take the cowardly route, push it all to the back of my mind, and just forget about the woman I met yesterday.
But I need to think about it. Firstly, because my business is being threatened, and I’m not going to let some arsehole who can’t come up with his own ideas think he can waltz in and take mine.
And secondly, because I want to understand why Sidnie agreed to do it.
It’s how my brain works. Dissect and analyze. I’m not good at just accepting facts. I need to work out why something does or doesn’t work.
I came here to spy on you,she said.I was paid to come here and take photographs of your work.But when I asked her who paid her, she wouldn’t tell me. Why?
She obviously came to my office on Tuesday night looking for information. I presume she didn’t find much. I have a strict policy that my staff tidy away all paperwork, lock their drawers and cabinets, and have complicated passwords on their laptops. Any confidential papers to be thrown away are shredded first, then burned. I doubt she found anything.
And then I asked her to go to Huxley’s with me. My suite there is a different thing. I work there often, and although I usually still lock everything away before I leave, if I’m in the middle of something, I have been known to leave papers out until I’m done working. If Sidnie had gone through with it—if she’d slept with me and waited until I crashed out, I have no doubt she would have found something interesting amongst the papers I’d left on the desk.
So why didn’t she go through with it? Why confess, when she must have known I’d throw her straight out?
I remember how she’d looked yesterday at lunchtime, when I asked her to come to the office. She was terrified. She must have thought I’d somehow caught her snooping, and that I was going to call her out on it. No wonder she’d looked so relieved when all I did was ask her out.
My insides twist at the thought that she must have said yes because she knew it would give her another opportunity to spy on me.
Was that the only reason?
The sky to the east is now a beautiful blend of rose pink and gold. It reminds me of her complexion, the pink of her blush against her golden curls.
Somehow, I don’t think she’s a professional spy. No, someone convinced her to collect information with the incentive obviously being money.
So why does she need money?
She’s fresh out of university, and I know most students nowadays leave with loans around fifty or sixty thousand dollars. It’s a hefty amount, one that can take an eternity to pay off, and is why many students end up working abroad, because wages are so much higher in Australia, the States, or the UK. Maybe the notion of paying off a good portion of that for the simple act of taking a few photos was enough to convince her.
But it doesn’t sit right with me. Every kid has a student loan on leaving university. There’s nothing unusual about it. And she doesn’t strike me as the type of person who’d do something illegal and underhand to pay off debt she’d accumulated.
So why else would she need a significant amount of money?
It doesn’t really matter. In a way, she’s not the important one in this situation. It’s the guy—or girl—who asked her to do it that I should be focusing on.
But Victoria’s diatribe from last night is burned into my brain.You don’t have a great track record with the way you treat women. You use them, then you discard them like dirty socks… You’re one of the good guys in so many ways, and you’re a better man than this. Sidnie left here in floods of tears. Whatever she did, she’s very upset about it. She deserves better.
And she’s right. I sleep around because I can’t face commitment, and I rarely give a thought to how the woman feels when I don’t call back.
I didn’t give Sidnie a chance to explain, and I should have.
The sun is rising now, appearing on the horizon like a freshly cracked egg, spilling its yolk across the city. Still, I lie there for a long, long time, watching the seagulls flying above the buildings, and thinking about Sidnie, and her beautiful curly hair.
Chapter Eight
Sidnie
