Page 34 of A Lot to Unpack
‘The meeting,’ I say, suddenly feeling uneasy about what I’m supposed to be reporting on. ‘Well… it was two people. A man and a woman. They arrived together, chatted, ate dinner…’
‘Were they… close?’ she asks, her word getting shorter and sharper.
‘They sat next to each other,’ I say. ‘They were chatting, laughing…’
My voice trails off.
‘Did it look like a meeting?’ she asks.
‘It looked like a dinner,’ I reply.
This doesn’t feel professional, it feels personal. What the hell have I got myself into?
‘Did they leave together?’ she eventually asks.
I don’t know what else to say, apart from…
‘Yes.’
‘Bastard,’ she blurts softly.
She stares at me for a moment, then exhales.
‘Liberty, I have a job for you,’ she says.
‘Okay…’
‘I need you to go to New York,’ she replies. ‘This week.’
I try not to smile. I’ve always wanted to go to New York. It’s one of those iconic places you see in movies and TV shows, and somehow you feel like you’ve been, like you know your way around. I can’t believe I’m getting to go there.
‘I can do that,’ I reply. ‘Usual drill? Being on call? Observing?’
‘No,’ Paige says. ‘This time it’s different, I need you to work. Really work. Long hours. Whatever it takes.’
‘Assisting someone?’ I say, cautiously.
She shakes her head.
‘Not exactly,’ she tells me. ‘I need your specific skillset. Your experience working for a private investigator.’
Ah. The experience I mostly exaggerated in my interview. I was an admin assistant, not a trainee investigator, which I think might be what Paige believes I was doing there.
‘Right,’ I say, nodding like I believe I’m the person for the job, when in reality the only thing I cracked at my last job was a mug. ‘Of course. I’m happy to help.’
‘I’ve made a big mistake,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘But I think you can fix it – you’re my only hope.’
‘Okay…’
‘The man you were observing, in Sydney,’ she begins, ‘was Jordan Bill. He’s my business partner. And until very recently, my husband.’
‘Oh… right,’ I reply plainly.
That has surprised me. I don’t know why – we all have exes. Yikes, it was bad enough for me, having to work with Ben, but imagine owning a business with someone, and trying to separate.
‘Our divorce is done and dusted – but only just,’ she tells me, which explains why she wasn’t happy about him having dinner with another woman. ‘The only thing left is to divide the business. It’s all civil on paper, but really we’re at war. I won’t bore you with the finer details of it. We’ve divided certain thingsup – basically he’s taking the US division and I’m keeping the rest – but Matcher is my baby, and I’ll be running most it alone moving forward. The UK is what I care about the most, where it all began. If he wants to gad about in the US then fine, let him have it, so long as the main business remains mine.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ I reply. ‘That you’re getting to keep the UK, working here, running things as usual.’
