Page 31 of Duplicity

If I didn’t already have a firm expiration date for this job, I suspect he’d produce one fairly bloody quickly.

After we came around from our orgasm stupor the other night, he was surprisingly businesslike. Not unfriendly at all, but brisk and efficient. He helped me get my hooker dress back on and handed me a glass of water as he told me with a grin and a wink that the job was mine if I wanted it. There were no lingering looks, but neither was he at all awkward, and I realised that what had just gone down was nothing more or less than a straightforward transaction completed to mutual satisfaction.

I suppose from his perspective the sex was just a slightly more structured version of what was an everyday occurrence for him, but I’ll readily admit that, after he’d put me in a black cabwith a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and handed over a wad of notes to the driver, I sat and stewed the entire way home.

I’d achieved my goal. Secured Tabby’s future.

But I’d enjoyed the process far too thoroughly, and I wasn’t sure what to make of that at all.

The next morning, when Athena called me for a debrief so lengthy and detailed it had her declaring she might never be able to look Brendan in the eye again, she warned me not to catch feelings.

I mean, I get where she’s coming from. I’m massively out of practice, and I don’t have casual sex, especially not with guys that loaded and attractive and eligible.

I won’t lie. A shameful, secret part of me is turned on every time I think about how hot it was when his head was between my legs or how deeply he fucked me. And that same part is partially terrified and partially titillated by how it will be next Monday when I rock up for my first day on the job.

Like, will it be awkward seeing him for the first time after we’ve fucked?

No. No, I can’t imagine a guy like Brendan being awkward about sex at all.

Should I wear underwear? Will he touch me immediately? Will he push me straight to my knees? ShouldI pre-empt him and just get straight on my knees anyway? After all, Athena said she went down on Gabe within minutes of arriving at his office. She totally blindsided the poor guy with some kinky priest fantasy.

I am not Athena, and I have no clue what to expect, except that anything and everything is fair game. But honestly, her concern made me laugh. I don’t have feelings for Brendan Sullivan. What I do have is many, many feelingsabouthim, and what he represents.

Possibility.

Power.

Pleasure, it seems, judging from my slutty performance the other night.

And definitely danger. Danger that he’ll get bored, that he’ll chew me up and spit me out before I’ve assembled the funds I need, and, more than anything, that he and his heady, hedonistic existence will suck me into a whirlwind of excess and luxury and debauchery. He’s taking the morning off on Monday so he can take me to Selfridges and get me kitted out, for goodness’ sake.

Like I said, I’d do well to remember that none of it is real.

Keep your head down, Marls, and your eye on the prize.

There’s only one prize. And, no matter what every other person out there with a vagina seems to think, it isnotBrendan Sullivan.

CHAPTER 15

Marlowe

‘Ihave some amazing news,’ I tell my parents, Tabs, and Daniel the Spaniel at dinner. ‘Well,twoamazing pieces of news, actually.’

They—my folks and Daniel—usually pick her up from school and keep her until I’ve finished work, but I’ve been on school run duty since I got sacked, so they haven’t seen her as much. I know they miss their afternoons with their granddaughter, but God, have I loved seeing her huge smile every afternoon at the gates as she hurls her slight frame against me. I’m treasuring these brief times together, because my job at Sullivan Construction will be a whole other level of commitment and intensity.

Tabby squirms in her seat, her wide smile showing off the two huge adult front teeth making their slow descent into her mouth. I try to keep things positive around her, but we’re not exactly drowning in good news these days, so it’s no surprise she picks up on the excitement in my tone. ‘What kind of news?’ She’s not so interested that she can’t forage in the depths of her stir-fry for a piece of chicken and feed it to Daniel, who is sitting by her chair with all the wide-eyed, vibrating intensity of a hunting dog in the presence of a high-value treat.

I shake my head at her firmly, because he’s a fucking nightmare if you encourage him, before grinning at my parents’. I can feel my eyes filling with tears even as I prepare to lie to the three people I love more than anything else in the world. The lies are necessary, but I’m intent on keeping them to the bare minimum, for practical purposes as much as ethical.

The tears aren’t because I’m lying.

The tears are because this news will change their lives.

We’re sitting in my parents’ small flat, which is a five-minute walk from my flat in New Cross. When I got the job at the RA, they gave up a pleasant suburban home and downgraded to an underwhelming ex-council flat so that they could support me in raising Tabs. Even worse, they gave up their beloved garden in favour of hanging baskets on their dingy balcony and a share in an allotment a mile or so away.

They’ve never uttered a word of complaint.

I’ve never stopped feeling guilty.

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