Page 55 of Fake It 'til You Make It

I type the nameVanguard RED Technologiesinto the internet and click through to a website that looks very Matrix-esque – the focal point an image of what I believe is computer code.

Apparently, Vanguard is one of the fastest growing technology innovation businesses in the USA. I scroll to the bottom of the page and find the sectionAbout Us.

As I dig, I find that Vanguard software is amongst some of the key software packages used in the finance world. Software I have used and loved – logical, solutions-driven technology. It’s seriously impressive. I can’t believe the business is still run as a partnership and not a huge company.

Whilst my head is still very much in my new research project, now back to digging about Mike, there’s a knock on my door, which can only be one of three people – Dee, Shernette or Mike, because they’re the only people that I know who have access to this floor.

I take my mug of tea with me to the door, where my suspicions are confirmed.

‘Please don’t close the door in my face,’ Mike says, not at all his usual, overconfident self. His hair looks disheveled, his eyes look exhausted and he has a backpack slung across one shoulder.

The thought actually hadn’t occurred to me, but now that he mentions it, he was rude earlier and he’s clearly been lying, or at least withholding the truth from me, about Fleur Dumont. Notthat we’ve known each other for a long time but I might have thought if he was seeing someone, he’d have told me.

‘I ought to,’ I tell him. ‘You made me feel like a prize clown.’

He just nods, accepting, as if there’s no fight left in him, and despite whatever truths he hasn’t shared with me, despite the fact I don’t really know the man on my doorstep, I feel for him.

‘So, Mike, are you in a relationship?’

He drags a hand through his hair and puffs out air, then his eyes fix on me and I think he’s about to tell me yes, that he is, or something of that magnitude.

Then he shakes his head. ‘Not anymore.’

He’s drained and I know that feeling. When I was at rock bottom, he was there to put an arm around my shoulder and be whoever I needed him to be.

So I scowl in a way he knows is good-humored. ‘Are you a psychopath?’

One side of his mouth quirks up ever so slightly. ‘No.’

‘Then would you like to come inside for a mug of green tea?’

His eyes drift to the laptop resting on my coffee table, on which is a photograph of him playing ball.Oops, caught red-handed. ‘It looks like you’ve been doing some digging on me,’ he says.

I don’t dare look at him in case my rapidly heating ears actually spark into flames, so I head over to my kitchen to prepare him a green tea.

He follows me inside, depositing his backpack by the door.

‘Are you going somewhere?’

‘A hotel, when I find one with availability.’

I turn to lean back against my kitchen benchtop and he steps into the area, resting his hands on the bench. ‘I’m sorry for how I treated you upstairs, Abbey. In my defense, I was blindsided by my ex turning up and the doorstep wasn’t the place to explainwho each of you are to the other. But I swear, she and I aren’t together anymore.’

‘I suppose I can understand that. Was it a recent break-up?’

‘Recent. Messy. She cheated on me with a colleague.’

‘Another player?’

He hesitates, then says, ‘He’s a player all right. My best friend, too, incidentally.’

I finish making his tea and hand him the mug, honestly in shock. Mike just doesn’t seem like the type of guy who gets cheated on. ‘I’m sorry, Mike. It’s a really shitty thing they’ve done to you. I thought being cheated on by my long-term boyfriend and being told about it on the night that I thought he was going to propose to me was bad, but being cheated on by two people you love is double the pain, I imagine.’

He stares off into the distance for a moment, as if gathering himself. ‘Is that why you’re actually going easy on me here? I half expected you to slam your door in my face.’

‘Maybe. That, and I guess for a man quite as obnoxious and arrogant as you, it must hurt even more to be cheated on.’ I finish with a smile, because whilst there is truth in my words, I’m largely teasing. Thankfully, his expression says he gets it.

‘Not that I expect you to believe me but the arrogance can be a front sometimes.’

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