When She Was Bad (24 page)

He gulped down his Scotch, wondering why he was even drinking it. It wasn’t as if he was enjoying it. And he already knew he was going to feel like shit in the morning.

‘Bloody Sarah, hey,’ said Amira, apropos of nothing. She was slumped in one of the velvet bucket chairs turning a black cardboard coaster over and over between her fingers. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for her and everything, but seriously, I’m sick of covering for her. She says it was all a mistake, but when you’ve already got two kids under four, I’d say you kind of know how mistakes happen.’

‘Next you’ll be saying kids are a lifestyle choice,’ said Charlie. ‘And then you might have to start wearing a tall pointy white hat and carrying a burning cross over your shoulder.’

‘You can dig all you like, Charlie, but I’m just saying what everyone is thinking.’

‘Are you sure you’re not saying that because you’d secretly like a baby too?’ Chloe blurted out.

Bloody hell, she wasn’t very tactful, was she? Even Ewan wouldn’t have come out and asked that. Some people just couldn’t have kids. You had to be careful.

‘Tom and I couldn’t afford to have a baby even if we wanted one, so no, actually.’

They remained at the table in bad-tempered silence until Charlie received a text that made him glare at his phone and then snap the case shut and stand up so suddenly that the table shook.

‘Right. Bedtime.’

Drunk as he was, something in the tone of Charlie’s voice made Ewan sit up a bit straighter and scrutinize him through the alcohol fug in his brain. Charlie had always been so easy-going, one of those men who called himself a total wimp almost as a badge of pride. But now his features were set hard, those brown eyes so narrowed as to be almost hidden. Together with that mysterious wound on the side of his arm, it made Ewan feel uneasy. Why couldn’t people just be who they appeared to be? Why did they have to keep chopping and changing? He thought he’d left all that behind him at home where his normally loving mother would change for a few days every month into someone who seemed to view everything he did as a personal affront. And now here was laid-back Charlie acting all moody and uptight and it just made him nervous.

Now Amira was on her feet too.

‘Gotta get my beauty sleep in preparation for whatever delights we have in store for us tomorrow.’

‘Orienteering,’ muttered Chloe.

‘Oriental what?’ asked Amira.

‘You know, where we get dropped in the middle of a wood with a map and have to find our way back. Will told me. We’re in competition with Sales and Marketing again.’

Ewan was starting to feel very sluggish, as though the Scotch was mixing with the blood in his veins to form a thick paste that was clogging everything up, making it hard to think. Still, he registered that he didn’t like it when Chloe said ‘Will’ like that. So casually. Like they had some kind of special relationship or something.

‘Fantastic,’ said Amira, gathering up her handbag from the side of her chair. ‘Just when I thought this weekend couldn’t get any better.’

After she’d gone there fell a silence as dense as the fog in his head. Chloe tossed back her hair and combed her fingers through it, looking off to the side. He was touched at how much effort she was making to appear unbothered. She was so young, he remembered again. He hadn’t behaved well towards her.

‘Sorry,’ he blurted out, even before he knew he was going to say anything. ‘I was a bastard to you.’

She flicked her hair back again, still gazing off to one side, and shrugged her shoulders.

‘Yeah, you were a dick, but I’ll live.’

‘No, I mean it. I’m sorry. I really do like you, Chloe.’

He stuck his foot out under the table, meaning just to nudge her leg as a peace gesture, but instead he found himself rubbing the toe of his shoe up and down her shin. She looked down at the table, as if studying something written there but, despite her flaming cheeks, she didn’t move her leg away.

How did it happen? How does it ever happen? One moment he was running a toe down her leg and the next they were in the lift, kissing, her mouth tasting of the crème brûlée she’d had for dessert. And then he was sliding her hotel key card into the slot and they were falling inside the room and on the bed and it was hot and sweaty and fun and straightforward and he was drunk and horny and not thinking about anything except what they were doing. And everything was good until . . .

Afterwards he tried to make sense of it, to remember when it changed and what changed it, but all he could think of was that one moment they were rolling around on the bed play-wrestling in the way drunk young people do when they’re enjoying themselves and their bodies and the anticipation of what’s about to happen . . . and then Rachel had popped into his head. He couldn’t remember if it was something Chloe said or just one of those random thoughts. He remembered how Rachel had seemed to lead him on, singling him out in the office, offering him a lift to the hotel. And then she’d ignored him all day. Humiliated him. Flirting with Will in front of him. Anger pulsed in his veins, hot and insistent. And after that it wasn’t fun any more.

‘What’s wrong?’ he heard Chloe say, but it was like she was in a different room. Somewhere far away from the fury that was smothering him, making it hard to breathe.

‘Ewan?’ said the faraway Chloe, but all he could see in front of his eyes was Rachel raising her face to Will’s, her whole body leaning towards him. What a bitch she was. He wanted to do something to make her sorry for the way she’d treated him. He wanted to hurt her like she’d hurt him, so she knew how it felt. He wanted to—

‘Ewan, you’re hurting me!’

Now Chloe’s voice wasn’t far away. It was right here in the room. He looked down at his hands which were pressing down on hers, pinioning her arms above her head, and her blue eyes which were wide with alarm.

He sat up, head suddenly clear.

‘Oh God! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Are you OK?’

She grabbed the sheet and held it up against her, her breath tearing from her chest in rasps. He reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, but she flinched from his touch.

‘Get away from me!’ Her voice was croaky, but there was no mistaking the fear embedded in it. ‘You scared me.’

‘I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what happened . . . God, I’m so sorry.’

Ewan was aware he wasn’t making sense, but shock seemed to have robbed him of the ability to carry a sentence or a thought through to its end. All he knew was that for a few seconds, the woman on the bed beneath him, the woman he’d wanted to hurt, had not been Chloe.

‘Get out of my room.’

‘Please let me explain.’

But when he tried to find the words, he couldn’t. He hadn’t been himself, hadn’t been in his body or in his head. And she too had been someone else, but how could he make her understand when nothing made sense?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again eventually. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He picked up his clothes from around the bed, and tried not to look at Chloe’s tear-stained face. He’d never laid a finger on a woman in anger. Ever. And, despite the tough-guy persona he liked to adopt, his experience of physical violence in any capacity had been limited to a few playground scuffles at school and a Saturday-night shoving contest in a pub with some body-building type clearly wired on steroids whose girlfriend he’d smiled at.

He felt like crying himself. He felt sick. He felt guilty and ashamed and unable to meet her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ he said again. Then he turned the handle of the hotel-room door and stumbled out, blinking in the bright overhead lights of the corridor. He had on his suit trousers and his new floral shirt which was unbuttoned and, he noticed now, inside out. His shoes and socks were in his hand.

In the lift, his reflection in the mirror scared him. His face was white and clammy, sweat beads popping on his skin like mini blisters. His eyes seemed hooded, the pupils staring wildly out from the bottom of a long dark tunnel. He leaned back against the wall and put his head in his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at himself.

When the lift pinged two floors up, Ewan remained in his slumped position. Everything about him felt too heavy, as if he himself was a dead weight he couldn’t face carrying around any more. His leg, which hadn’t given him any trouble on the high wire earlier in the day, was now aching in that dull but persistent way that usually presaged an uncomfortable night ahead. Eventually he peeled himself off the wall and limped out into the corridor.

‘Hello, Ewan.’

After everything that had just happened, Rachel Masters standing in the deserted hotel corridor in the middle of the night felt unreal. In his blurred head, he wondered whether perhaps the whole night had been some sort of test, culminating in him standing here, half dressed in front of his boss.

‘Been sleepwalking, have we? Or sleepstripping, maybe?’

‘It’s not what you think.’ He had a flash of Chloe’s terrified expression, and felt as if he was about to throw up. What
had
it been exactly?

‘Please don’t try to make excuses, Ewan. I made it perfectly clear where I stand on personal relationships between staff members. I’m going to have to think about this very carefully. Clearly you and Chloe can’t work in the same department. One of you will have to go. Now I think you should get back to your room.’

Letting himself through the door, he lay down on his bed without taking off his clothes and focused on the ceiling, trying to work out what was real. The ceiling was blank, white, giving nothing away. He studied it until he located, in the far corner by the window, a hairline crack. The tiny imperfection convinced him that this wasn’t all in his head, a nightmare from which he would soon wake up, hungover, but not ashamed.

He knew there’d been a moment when he was in bed with Chloe where he’d genuinely lost control. And he knew that she knew it too. And tomorrow she would tell everyone what he’d done, what he was.

The room, like a womb with its burgundy curtains and walls, pressed in on his already thumping head until it felt as if his skull was caught in a vice. He fell asleep with his hands pressed together on his chest, as if he was praying.

29
Sarah

No signal.

Sarah knew she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, they were in the middle of nowhere. Literally. But still the fact of being cut off from her children, from Oliver, made her feel nervous and panicked. Twenty years ago, before everyone had mobile phones, no one was able to stay in touch all the time. When you went out of the door, that was it until you stepped back in again. Unless you hovered by a landline all day. Under different circumstances maybe she’d see it as quite liberating, this being apart from her family, out of range of their demands, but she felt so low, so miserable and exhausted. And it didn’t help that the wood they were passing through was so dank and gloomy.

‘No point looking at your phone,’ said Will cheerily. ‘There’s no signal out here, otherwise it would defeat the point of the exercise, wouldn’t it? Can’t have you all ringing your mates to navigate your way out or ordering yourselves a Domino’s pizza when you feel peckish.’

As soon as he mentioned pizza, Sarah felt ravenous. She’d thrown up her breakfast shortly after eating it far too quickly on her own in the hotel restaurant and now she was hungry again in that early pregnancy way where your body feels like a black hole sucking food into it without enjoyment. They weren’t going to be eating again until they’d found their way to base camp, aka the minibus in which Will had driven them halfway here and to which he would presently be returning. The idea was that he would then drive it to a new location marked with a cross on the Ordnance Survey map they’d been given. Then it would be up to them to navigate their way to it – once they’d worked out where they were. They’d already been walking at least forty minutes through these woods and, before that, across a few fields. They’d even crossed a couple of sizeable streams by stepping from one strategically placed rock to another. ‘Watch out, the water is much faster-moving than it looks,’ Will had warned them. Sarah hated it all. Despite a fear of confined spaces that extended way back into childhood, she’d never felt comfortable in the countryside either. The idea of being cut off from everything left her feeling exposed and vulnerable. She was someone who needed human contact to an almost embarrassing degree. Her unease wasn’t helped by being grossly overdressed. As it was November, she’d come prepared for Arctic conditions in a down jacket of Oliver’s that was like wearing a maximum-tog duvet at all times. But the weather was damp and sluggish rather than cold and she was hot and clammy inside the coat.

‘Kinda creepy here, isn’t it?’ Will said. ‘Apparently, until recently the locals used to avoid coming here. There are lots of really wild stories about this place being haunted and stuff – which is a good thing because you won’t want to hang around, which means you’ll be first back to the van . . . and the champagne is all yours!’

The sales and marketing team were being taken to a different spot that was equidistant to theirs, from where they’d be making their way to the same end point. Whichever team arrived first would win a magnum of champagne. It was supposed to make each team work together so they came back bonded and thinking as one well-oiled machine. Sarah looked around at her markedly subdued co-workers. It was hard to think of a group of people who less resembled a well-oiled machine.

Ewan was striding ahead through the half-light of the wood, his hands thrust into his pockets, head down. He’d been plastered last night, so his head must be pounding – but he could at least make some effort to be sociable, she thought. And he wasn’t the only one. Charlie, who’d been glued to his phone all the way in the minibus until the signal abruptly stopped, was now making very sparse conversation with Paula and Rachel. Amira was walking slightly apart from everyone, not surprising after what she’d said last night. Sarah had been so shocked. There had been a few seconds’ gap between Amira speaking and her words actually sinking in, when time had stood still. Poor Paula, she’d looked so stunned. Sarah knew Amira was mortified; she had apologized time and again, but the damage was well and truly done by then. Even Chloe, who could usually be relied on for a bit of light chatter, was silent, bringing up the rear, looking as if she was being led out to the gallows. She wore her North Face jacket zipped right up so it covered the bottom part of her face. At least Mark Hamilton was tagging along with the other team this morning so they didn’t have to be on best behaviour for him.