Page 113 of Lie For Me

‘Jack?’ Douglas prompted.

Jack shook himself back into the present.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ He gave Douglas a half-smile. ‘Just tired. The sale of the business and dealing with Casston on New York time while supporting the staff in the UK with the transition.’ He pulled a face. ‘I’m shattered, that’s all.’

‘Ah well,’ Douglas said, gathering up the papers. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’

‘Yes,’ Jack murmured. ‘It’ll all be over.’

Douglas was heading out now, saying something about picking his wife up from the station.

Jack nodded dully and muttered, ‘See you tomorrow,’ hoping that was polite enough for whatever Douglas had been talking about.

He couldn’t remember ever being this distracted. He was shattered, and not just from handling the sale of the company on top of the day-to-day running of the business. He wasn’t sleeping. He collapsed into bed each night exhausted, his body desperate for rest, and then his mind would start playing pictures of Lucy, replaying the events of the wedding. And he went round and round in circles about what to do, inventing things he should say. Then he’d scratch it all and find himself back at the beginning—exhausted and scared to trust his own feelings. Somewhere around two in the morning, he’d fall into a fitful sleep, then wake around six and drag himself back into work.

And he thought of her just then, standing in his office, vulnerable and raw, trying to tell him something. Mustering the courage to do what he had not managed yet—to try to be honest and say what she felt. What, he wondered, would she have said if Douglas hadn’t, with superb timing, interrupted her?

Glancing around his neat office, his eyes lighted on the little markers of success he had collected over the years. He looked at the framed magazine cover from an article several years ago where he was listed as one to watch. At the champagne cork he kept from the bottle he bought to celebrate the first seven-figure client he signed. At the framed agreement page from the day he had first been able to afford proper office space and had signed the lease on the offices here at The Mills.

All these mementos of a life spent working.

He got up and wandered across the corridor and into Douglas’s office, where the computer monitor, in use only moments before, still burned brightly. A framed picture of Douglas with his wife and two baby girls sat on his desk. A photograph of his girls, a little older, starting school, sat beside it. A happy birthday card the girls had painted for him a couple of years earlier when they were about four years old still had pride of place on his shelves, in amongst accounting books and files of petty cash receipts.

He walked back across the corridor and stared again at his champagne cork and framed office lease agreement. Grabbing his car keys, he headed for the door.

Pulling up outside Lucy’s house, he could see a faint light in the living room. He imagined her in there, curled up on the squashy sofa, glass of wine in hand, surrounded by cushions and books.

Walking to the door, he stood for a moment, keen to be on the other side of it but unsure how she’d greet him after he let her leave his office like that.

Grasping the old brass door knocker, he rapped three times. He heard something fall, then some swearing, then the door opened a crack, and Lucy, wrapped in a blanket, peered out.

‘Oh. Jack,’ was all she said.

She opened the door a crack more and tightened the blanket around herself, but she didn’t invite him in. Her face looked pale in the grey shadows of the early evening. Looking up at him from red-rimmed eyes, she said, ‘I got the message. You didn’t need to come out here to hammer it home.’ Her voice cracked as she added, ‘I’ve had about all the humiliation I can stand for one day.’

‘No,’ he put his hand out as she started to close the door over. ‘That’s not why I’m here. I’m so sorry about what happened at the office.’ He could hear the pleading tone in his voice. ‘I was surprised by your visit, that’s all. It threw me—it was a lot to take in.’

Lucy looked suspicious and didn’t budge from the doorway. Jack looked her straight in the eye.

‘But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to hear what you had to say. But then Douglas came in and started talking about accounts and….’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I didn’t know what to do. But Luce, for the first time I can remember, I resented the business for getting in the way.’

Lucy was watching him but said nothing. He took her silence as a sign that he should continue.

‘Luce, for years, the business was all I had. Long before we were friends. Dad died just before our first profitable year—he never got to see what it would become. And mum—’ He shrugged. ‘Well, you know she’s not a part of my life. The company was all I had, for the longest time. All my energy went into making it a success. I didn’t let relationships take my attention away from my…’ his mouth twisted, ‘from what I thought was truly important. The business. It seemed to me,’ he swallowed, ‘that work was the only thing that could be…relied upon. I didn’t realise until recently—perhaps not properly until tonight—that I was, um, sort of hiding. Behind work.’

He couldn't meet her eyes.

He had to get this out.

‘And then tonight you came in and, honestly, I was so glad to see you and terrified at the same time.’

He glanced up. Lucy looked confused.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I didn’t think I was ready yet. I still wanted to sort some things at work before I sorted out whatever,’ he gestured between them, ‘this is. But I get that’s not how it works. I can see—’

Lucy interrupted him, her eyes narrowing as she stepped onto the threshold, her voice low and furious.

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