Page 88 of Love and Loathing

“Ford & Ford!” Evie interrupted eagerly. “They might know!”

She grabbed for her phone, then paused. “Maybe… Maybe it’s best if you call them?” But she shook her head before he could do anything more than give her a sympathetic look. “No, no. It’s my problem. I’ll fix it.”

But the extremely polite receptionist couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her any information. Yes, she said smoothly, Andrew Ford was at work today. But no, she couldn’t give any information on his visitors and clients.

“I’ll go down there myself,” Evie said, standing up.

Roscoe gave her a sceptical look. “It’s an enormous law firm. Several floors. Dozens and dozens of rooms. Are you going to search the whole building? Security will throw you out before you get past reception.”

“But what can I do!”

“Give the man some time. Call him again tomorrow.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but it was too pathetic to describe the image she had: Aubrey suffering alone through the night. Roscoe understood, anyway. She saw the sympathy in his eyes.

“I’ll try to call him, too,” Roscoe said. “But right now, the best thing you can do is order something to eat and regroup. Because you look like a drowned ghost.”

Reluctantly, Evie gave in. “Do you have a computer I can borrow? My phone is almost dead.”

She would message Amy. She had to tell someone. And Amy was sensible and practical and kind. Maybe she would have a plan of how to make things right. She understood forgiveness. Besides, there were things Evie needed to tell someone that she simply couldn’t tell her brother. Things about how it felt to be in love. The perfect fit of Aubrey’s arms. The way he understood her, on some deep, deep level that went beyond beliefs and opinions and likes and dislikes. He liked her despite it all, despite himself. Or he had. The horror of what she might have lost swept through her again, and she sat blankly down at the desk Roscoe pointed out, turning on the computer and staring at the screen, not a single word in her head to convey even half of it to Amy.

After a while she found herself back on the news site where she had first read the story in her father’s home office. It was still everywhere, hadn’t magically gone away. The articles were multiplying. Calls for an inquiry into tax law, into firms like her father’s. Opinion pieces and political statements and the whole world wading in.

The emails themselves had all been loaded to a public website. Anyone could read them. Evie clicked the link, unable to help herself. It was terrible, seeing them all there, Aubrey’s name, his words for all the world to see. She didn’t understand any of it, but it didn’t make it seem any less invasive. A flash of memorycame, of walking in Spain under the hot summer sun. A dead cow in the field—long dead—bones and leathery, dried-up flesh. Ants crawling all over it, marching in and out of the hollow sockets of its eyes. It felt like that. All these people picking over the bones of Aubrey’s life. And she, herself, had nearly done this to him.

She scrolled all the way through the emails. There were weeks and weeks of them. Some of the dates caught her eye. Emails sent the weekend they were at Conyers. Emails sent while he sat in her bed the morning after they slept together. And more, more, the weeks after that when they argued over the garden, when she thought she’d never see him again.

She stopped, looking at the date. Emails from when they werenot together. Emails right up until the day he quit BlacktonGold. How would she have got hold of them? His personal laptop she’d seen at his place wasn’t even connected to the BlacktonGold system. As Fi pointed out, she’d have to be some kind of computer genius to hack into the email servers of a place like BlacktonGold. Surely he’d believe it wasn’t her if she explained that. She had to try.

Grabbing her still wet coat, she ran from the office.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Aubrey was sure thiswas very definitely hell. Sitting in a corporate meeting room, surrounded by lawyers, with his broken heart leaking all over the floor, corroding the last shreds of his self-control.

He wanted to break things. He wanted to crawl into a corner and die. He wanted to laugh, hysterical and weeping, and demand of them all if they’d ever seen a bigger fool?

Why bother with this whole charade? Coming here had seemed better than sitting alone in his flat. But it didn’t seem to matter now. He was exhausted. Let them take his money, let them sue and smear and accuse him of what they wanted. They could lock him up. He didn’t care.

“One person of interest,” said a smart young lawyer who looked about sixteen, “is Evelyn Blackton. We’ve found some online references that seem to link her to FTP. Is it possible they could be behind the leak?”

“No.”

“The profile we have suggests Evelyn Blackton—”

“No.”

“But we do need to explore every avenue. Let’s talk about your relationship—”

The pen in Aubrey’s hand gave a warning crack, its plastic casing bending, starting to split.

“OK,” Andrew interrupted smoothly from where he sat on a windowsill, observing the room. His subtle glance took in the tortured pen, the look on his brother’s face. “Let’s take five,” he said calmly. And with nothing more than the slight inclination of his head towards the door, all six of the other people in the room silently stood and filed out.

Both Aubrey and Andrew stayed where they were. Neither spoke for a moment, until Andrew said, “I know it’s unpleasant.”

“Understated, as always.”

Aubrey was much closer to his younger brother, Charlie. Andrew was cold, reserved, always had been, even as children. The type to sit in the study revising French verbs or practising arpeggios while Charlie and Aubrey played football on the lawn beyond the patio.

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