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‘I dunno. There was just something about how it looked – sort of shifty. The woman was driving, and I was in the car behind them, and it was easy to see the way she kept leaning towards him and laughing, and how he kept looking all around whenever they were stopped at the lights, as though he didn’t want anyone to see them.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything to Gemma?’
Again, that was my question, screamed silently from the privacy of my cubicle.
‘It was none of my business. Anyway, like you said, there might have been some perfectly innocent explanation. I wouldn’t want to be accused of spreading gossip.’
Too late, I thought bitterly, as, having casually decimated my relationship, the women walked out, completely oblivious to the devastation they had left behind.
*
‘Close the door,’ instructed Jacqueline.
I turned and did as she asked, dismayed to see there was still a slight tremor in my hand. What I’d overheard in the Ladies’ had rattled me, and the only thing stopping me from immediately fleeing the building was my promise to drop by and see Jacqueline.
Once the room had emptied, I’d spent several minutes splashing copious amounts of water on to my flushed cheeks. It hadn’t done much to tone down the redness, and I still looked like someone who’d been repeatedly slapped. That wasn’t a bad analogy, because the words of my unseen colleagues had certainly felt like an assault.
It wasn’t the identity of the mystery woman in the car with Finn that bothered me, because we both had plenty of friends of the opposite sex who we saw regularly. It wasn’t even their verdict that I was punching above my weight, because what Finn and I shared was too secure to let that kind of nonsense worry me. All that proved was that no one ever really knows or understands the dynamics in someone else’s relationship.
But what did bother me, much more than I cared to admit, was that the person telling the story had been so certain that Finn hadn’t wanted to be seen.
My eyes looked odd, suddenly too big for my face, as I’d patted my cheeks dry with a handful of paper towels from the dispenser. What was it that Finn had been doing that he was so anxious no one should know about?
‘Did you manage to do your printing?’ Jacqueline asked as I entered her room, her eyes dropping briefly to the box balanced on my hip.
‘Yes. Thank you again for that.’
Jacqueline smiled and nodded towards the chair on the opposite side of her desk. Reluctantly, I sat down, my hopes of making this a flying visit rapidly disappearing.
‘How are you doing, Gemma?’ my boss asked, leaning further towards me with her chin resting on her cupped palms. It was a classic ‘I am really listening’ pose, and it instantly made me uncomfortable.
‘Okay. Well, you know, not okay. Not really.’
‘If there’s anything at all we can do to help, you only have to ask.’
I didn’t imagine for a moment she was volunteering to join me in tacking flyers to tree trunks, but suddenly I realised there was a way she could help me – very significantly, in fact.
‘Actually, there is something.’
Jacqueline bristled in the way of someone who hadn’t really wanted – or expected – her offer to be taken up.
‘Would you be able to post one of these on theGlowwebsite?’ I asked, my fingers clumsy as I pulled the lid off the box and passed one of the ‘Missing’ posters across the desk to her.
Jacqueline looked down at the sheet for a long moment, as though it was a piece of copy that required a great deal of work before it could go to print. After what felt like an uncomfortably long silence, she set down the flyer and met my anxious gaze.
‘Finn’s an extremely attractive man.’ I wondered what the appropriate response was to that observation. Thank you? I know? ‘It must have been very upsetting to have been left at the altar.’
Unconsciously, my hands tightened on the wooden arms of the chair. ‘That wasn’t exactly what happened.’
Botox allows for only limited eyebrow movement, but Jacqueline gave it her best shot.
‘I mean, yes, Finn didn’t turn up at the church, but not in the way that everyone seems to think. He didn’t leave me. He’s missing.’
‘Of course.’
My answer was there in those two words, and yet I pressed on. I had no idea why. ‘So, would you be able to put this up on the website?’
Jacqueline pretended to consider my request, but after working atGlowfor seven years, I already knew when her mind was made up. ‘As much as I would love to, it’s not really… appropriate. It’s not the kind of thing weusuallydo.’
