Concealment (7 page)

But I couldn’t admit any of this to Ryan.

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘No—it’s not—it’s the truth and you know it. I could see by the way you just reacted when I said so.’

He nuzzled up against me; so close I felt his breath on my face.

‘I never realised you were so human before. I like that side of you—it makes me want to…’

‘Want to what?’

Despite the strength of the signals, I could scarcely believe I was reading them accurately. A heady cocktail of fear and desire overwhelmed me as I sank back into the cushions of the sofa.

We hesitated, but the time for analysis and sober reflection had passed. Our lips met and my stomach lurched in anticipation of the inevitable.

Surely I should stop this madness…

***

I woke at eight to the sound of the front door banging shut. Ryan had gone.

The brutal force of my hangover floored me as I dragged myself out of bed. I crawled to the bathroom on all fours as if crippled, and gulped water from the tap on the bidet. It came straight back up, along with undigested scraps of the previous night’s food. I sat on the floor, gasping for breath and filled with self-loathing.

Fragmentary but shocking memories jabbed at the edges of my perception. Ryan’s tenderness had vaporised in the instant I’d regained my sanity and tried half-heartedly to push him away. He’d been determined to have me and prove which of us was the real boss. The inside of my thighs ached dully, as did the developing bruises on my arms where he’d pinned me down.

I’d been so weak—I’d surrendered. The Nicole Farhi dress lay in a wrinkled heap—yes, it had made me vulnerable alright.

What had possessed me to be so feeble and stupid? My brain had said no, but my body had overridden it—I’d allowed myself to be used, like a loser with zero self-esteem. I could have stopped him, should have stopped him…

And most shaming of all, I’d boosted his ego by enjoying the experience.

‘Boy—you needed that, didn’t you?’ he’d said after it was all over, as though he’d done me a huge favour. And then, in a statement that simply begged for psychoanalysis, ‘You’re not the first woman I’ve shared with Greg, you know.’

I shuddered. Was that it, simply wanting what his big brother had already sampled? Even if it was only his sad old minger of a boss?

I pulled myself to my feet and peered in the mirror. Sad old minger was about right. My tangled hair lent a startling intensity to my wild, baggy, panda-rimmed red eyes, while fresh lines and wrinkles had etched themselves in my face in the dead of night.

‘
You disgust me, you slag,’
said the little voice, from behind me. I turned, but Little Amy wasn’t there.

I hoped to God Ryan wouldn’t tell anyone.

In the following forty-eight hours my mind obsessively circled the same ground.

Easy to blame the drink—I must have been off my head to see the weird image of Little Amy. But alcohol didn’t absolve me of responsibility—it only added to the shame at my stupidity. Letting Ryan into my home while plastered—what had I been thinking? The minute I’d opened the door I’d shown I was up for it. What a fool.

By Sunday, the humiliation was superimposed with a churning anxiety over what Ryan might do next. With luck, he wouldn’t ever refer to the incident again, but even that possibility unsettled me. Once my bruises had faded, I might as well have dreamt the whole episode. Still, feigned amnesia was a better outcome than him bragging to his mates, or confessing all to Isabelle, or the Armageddon scenario of a harassment claim against me.

God—no.

On balance, a claim seemed a remote possibility. Despite equality in the workplace, men who reported women were still generally considered to be wimps. But Ryan might see a complaint as a tactical move to have his promotion reconsidered. And who knew, Smithies might even back him if it gave him a stick to beat me with.

No, the greater risk was of Ryan telling his chums, and me being landed with the reputation as the office slut, my authority irreparably weakened. The whispers would go round at lightning speed, quickly reaching Smithies’ ears, and I’d be finished. Still what did it matter? I was done for anyway—six years must be time to move on—before they all saw that I’d climbed higher than I deserved to.

Several times I began to dial Lisa’s number and stopped midway. Sure, she’d keep my shame a secret, but how do you admit to your protégée that you’ve fallen so short of your own standards? And heck, I’d been too feeble to stop Ryan when I came to my senses. Feisty Lisa would be appalled at my weakness.

I trusted no one else at work—my fellow partners were colleagues rather than friends, and several had ambitions to usurp my leadership role. The climate of suspicion created by our CEO not only prevented people from uniting to depose him, but made it impossible to trust anyone. I wished so much I had a close friend, someone unconnected with work, to confess my idiocy to. But close friendships didn’t come easily to me, and nor did confessing my deficiencies.

So I toughed it out, unaware that Monday’s events would render all my worst imaginings trivial by comparison.

***

I’d been in work for all of five minutes when I spotted Lisa ambling towards my office, carrying coffee for both of us and obviously keen to talk. I hoped she’d reflected over the weekend and decided to fight for her promotion after all, because the place would be unbearable without her.

She was almost at the door when a visibly distressed Ryan shoved her out of the way in his haste to reach me first.

‘Piss off, Ryan,’ Lisa said. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s bad manners to push?’

‘I need five minutes to tell Amy something,’ he shouted.

A sudden nausea hit the pit of my stomach. Ryan’s appearance suggested he’d lain drunk in a gutter since Saturday. His red eyes hinted at raw emotions. Had I been responsible for this?

Lisa opened her mouth to protest, but Ryan cut in.

‘It’s bloody urgent,’ he snarled.

Lisa gave me a knowing glance, smart enough to recognise when she was onto a loser.

‘OK, keep your hair on. If it’s so important, you go first,’ she said.

She handed me my coffee, although I fancied I’d need something stronger to get me through this particular encounter. My heart pounded faster than on the early morning treadmill session I’d just endured.

I closed the door and invited him to sit down. The formality of the office setting accentuated the stupidity of Friday night’s events, as everyone watched us through the glass with curiosity. Ryan’s reflections in the mirrored panels embodied an infinity of anguish—an anguish of my creation.

‘You look dreadful,’ I told him, unhelpfully, as I braced myself for the coming outburst.

There was a long, painful silence while he fought to control himself.

‘Issy’s gone missing,’ he said at last.

I held my breath. They’d rowed about me—she’d stormed off. Shit.

‘Missing? Since when?’

‘I’m not sure exactly—she arrived home after the party on Friday, because her jacket and phone and everything were inside the flat on the dining table. But when I got home last night, she’d gone.’

My mind raced.

‘No contact during the weekend?’

‘Nope.’

My relief was both profound and selfish as I discounted the possibility of any connection between her disappearance and my idiotic fling with her boyfriend.

‘You said you got back
last night
? What were you doing since Saturday morning?’

‘Now see,’ he said, ‘I spent the weekend with Greg, like I told the police.’

‘The
police
are involved?’

‘Yes—that’s what you do when someone’s missing—you report it to the police.’

‘And you told them you’d been with Greg.’

‘Yes.’

‘But…’

‘But nothing,’ he said nastily. ‘I stayed
most
of the time with Greg, after all. What the bloody hell difference does it make?’

Quite a lot, as it transpired.

‘You didn’t tell Greg about…’

‘How can you be so egocentric? Issy’s missing and all that bothers you is people finding out what a slut you are. Issy is
missing
,’ he repeated. ‘This is serious shit.’

‘So where does Greg believe you were on Friday night?’

‘Christ—will you shut up worrying about yourself.’

‘I wasn’t,’ I lied.

‘You don’t get it, do you? No one has seen hide nor hair of Issy since Friday. She’s gone—vanished.’

He spoke with deliberate slowness, as if to a foreigner.

‘OK—I hear you. Are you sure she didn’t go somewhere to cool off after your row?’

‘I checked everywhere, and besides her phone was there, her handbag, jacket and everything. She wouldn’t go out without her things. And the flat… it was different somehow. That’s why I called the police.’

‘I’m positive she’ll turn up soon,’ I said in a vain attempt to soothe him. ‘Why—it’s only just gone half nine—she might walk in here at any moment.’

‘Believe me—she won’t. To be honest with you, it looks like…’

He paused as he wiped away a tear from his face and gave a strange hiccupping sob.

‘It looks like… she’s been abducted.’

‘
Abducted
?’

I hadn’t meant to sound disbelieving, but the idea did seem farfetched.

‘There’s stuff the police told me not to mention…’

Until this point, I’d suspected Ryan of overdramatizing. Now, the gravity of the situation hit me full on. It wasn’t Isabelle’s style to flounce off and miss work. The suave little bitch would show up and put on a professional performance irrespective of her personal life. The police were taking her absence seriously, plus Ryan’s grief was real and visceral.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ I asked, switching into my professional sympathy mode.

‘Nothing, apart from keeping your mouth shut,’ he said baldly.

***

‘Charming,’ said Lisa after Ryan had left. ‘What the hell was all that about?’

‘Isabelle’s gone AWOL. He’s beside himself.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, ‘after the way he spoke to her on Friday. But fancy little Miss Perfect being late for work, because of a row with her boyfriend...’

She didn’t even try to conceal her delight at the prospect of Isabelle having blotted her copybook.

‘Ryan says she’s been abducted.’

‘By who—aliens?’ she snorted.

‘Apparently she left her jacket behind, her bag, her phone. He’s called in the police.’

‘I say there’s nothing in it—I’d put money on it. Remember the guy who went missing after his stag weekend?’

Despite my sense of foreboding, I chuckled at the memory. The police were involved then too, and we’d all been worried sick. Finally, it transpired that his friends had bundled his comatose body onto the Inverness sleeper train for a prank.

‘This is different,’ I said.

‘But it’s far too early to jump to melodramatic conclusions.’

It puzzled me that Lisa was so unconcerned. I felt much less breezy. With hindsight, there’d been some nasty undercurrents swirling around for a while, which we’d all been too blinkered to notice.

‘Who said I was?’

‘You seem tense,’ she observed. ‘Is everything OK?’

I tried not to wince as she patted my arm on the bruises.

‘Apart from this, yes.’

‘But you had that stressed, haunted look even before Ryan came in, like something freaked you out.’

I obviously hadn’t done as proficient a job as I’d thought in pulling myself together.

‘No—no I’m OK. Anyway, how are you?’ I said, spinning the conversation around to a safer topic. ‘I assume you came to see me for a reason. Have you changed your mind about leaving?’

‘No—I came to tell you I’m definitely off—that pathetic bonus is the last straw. Why fight a foregone conclusion?’

Why indeed?

***

I figured Smithies should hear the news from me rather than a distorted version via the office rumour mill.

He was speaking on the phone when I arrived—his back to the door, and admiring his reflection in the glass. I took in the details of his office as I waited for him to finish his conversation.

The desk was bare, either in compliance with the firm’s ‘clear desk’ policy or because he didn’t have enough work to do. One of the glass wall panels had been replaced by an opaque partition, now filled by a jumbo-sized portrait of his wife and children water skiing—tanned, beautiful, smiling and perfect in every way. Naturally, the shot did not include Smithies—his flabby pasty body could only have detracted from the flawless image.

The biggest bastards often favour conspicuous displays of family photographs in their offices, in which everyone is invariably grinning as though auditioning for a toothpaste commercial. It’s a psychological thing—a means of saying—hey get this, I’m a nice guy, my family is happy and if you don’t like me it’s your fault. Smithies had taken this concept to a new extreme.

The picture disturbed me on various levels, yet I found myself inexorably drawn to it as Smithies wrapped up his discussion.

‘Don’t you worry,’ came his quasi-sympathetic nasal whine. ‘She’s got far too much on her plate to focus on the detail.’

Silence, as the person on the other end of the line no doubt protested. I hoped he wasn’t talking about me.

He abruptly stopped preening himself in the glass and terminated the call when he saw me loitering.

‘Must shoot now—let’s talk later.’

He spun his chair round to face me.

‘Can’t you see I’m busy,’ he snapped.

‘Yes, but this is important. Thirty seconds of your time.’

‘OK—but calm down for heaven’s sake. You’re making me tense just watching you.’

So he thought I was on edge as well. I would have to redouble my efforts to act relaxed.

Smithies greeted the news with an almost infinitesimal movement of the eyebrows—he might have been a professional poker player in a previous incarnation.

‘I heard she and that cretin Ryan had a big row,’ said Smithies. ‘Perhaps that’s why she went off.’

‘Perhaps.’

His extra-sensory antennae twitched, detecting I had something new to conceal.