Page 57 of How to Get Even

‘Absolutely,’ Chester replied.

Bella got up from the table and walked a little away. Enough to make it possible for Chester to try and peek at the paperwork she’d purposely left on the table.

She pressed a button on her phone that brought up the world clock.

‘Yes, Chase? I know, I’m sorry,’ she said, stuttering into her phone as if she were intimidated by him. ‘But we have the… no, I understand but… yes. With Mr Carlton. No, I think he’d wanted to speak to you specifically. Oh… okay… well… No, yes, obviously I… Mm hmm.’

She flicked a glance back to Chester who was eating all this up. And now for the pièce de résistance, she cradled the phone in the crook of her neck, tore a strip off the paper sachet of ground pepper she’d found just for this occasion and sniffed the smallest pinch of it.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, accidentally out loud as the pepper reached the delicate lining of her nose. This wasn’t supposed to hurt according to the internet. ‘Oh,’ she said again before clamping her mouth shut. But finally, as predicted, though with a lot more inconvenience than imagined, Bella’s eyes began to well with tears.

Bella caught Campbel’s shocked gaze, and the last thing Bella saw before turning back to the table was an impressed thumbs up.

Chester’s rather smug look turned to one of alarm when he caught sight of Bella.

‘Oh lord, what happened?’ he asked, standing up to usher her into the seat opposite him.

‘He’s… ehm, he’s…’ Bella didn’t even have to fake it, she was practically choking on the pepper, tears streaming down her face – it was all becoming a little too much. A glass of water appeared at her hand alongside tissues from Campbel who seemed under the impression that her performance was Oscar-worthy.

‘Oh my God, is he dead?’ gasped Chester C. with rather more glee than horror in his expression.

She shook her hand and her head, causing tears to run in different directions.

‘Not coming… he’s not coming,’ she finally spluttered out.

‘Oh,’ Chester replied, sitting back into his chair and Bella couldn’t work out whether he was disappointed that Chase was still alive or not.

‘I’m just so embarrassed,’ Bella confessed, half truthfully. ‘Mortified, even.’

‘There, there,’ Chester replied, patting the back of her hand.

‘I’ve gone to such lengths to try and get some positive PR after…’ She trailed off, glancing at Chester awkwardly.

‘Oh hun, we all know about Julia.’

‘Yes! Yes, Julia. That’s what I meant.’

Chester opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, eyes appraising.

‘And now you’ll have to print an article that writes Chase as a no-show and it will all come back on me, because youknowhow he’s able to slip around things like that. I should have known better, I should havedonebetter,’ she said, leaning heavily into themea culpa.

‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that,’ he offered, not quite sincerely enough for her to be sure yet. She just needed to give him something bigger to write about.

‘And you’ve been so kind,’ she said, leaning across the table and intentionally knocking over the takeaway coffee cup so that coffee spilled across all her paperwork.

She gasped in shock and, hand over mouth, as if it were all too much, she ran towards the ladies’ around the corner, stopping where she could just make out the table reflected in the mirror behind the bar.

Chester looked after her and then back down and… picked up the bait, exactly as planned. Step 3 was an internal email she’d mocked up about Zadzisai pulling out of the running as featured artist. It would be enough for Chester to speak to the people he needed to and put a story together about Chase’s incompetence. Bella had purposefully left Levy out of it, absolutely refusing to draw the young student into this at all.

But she knew she had Chester when he whipped out his phone and snapped pictures of as many of the coffee-soaked documents as he could. She came back around the corner just as he was putting his phone away.

‘I really am sorry,’ she said, offering to pick up a dry-cleaning bill if it had caught any of his clothes.

He assured her it wasn’t necessary, and (a very important Step 4 – getting whatshewanted) promised not to breathe a word of the interview before he practically ran for the elk horn-handled door. She didn’t even need Step 5 in the end.

‘Paige said you’d be good, but I must say, I’m very impressed,’ Campbel said, bringing cleaning products to the table. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy trying to break up my sister-in-law and her obnoxious husband?’

Bella smiled, but once again didn’t quite feel as victorious as she thought she might have been feeling.

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