Page 26 of Behind Frenemy Lines

I couldn’t let Arthur go on like this. I pulled myself together. “Arthur, I’m sorry, but my personal life is not your business.”

I resisted the temptation to soften or caveat what I’d said further, holding his gaze. He looked away first.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

The words were right, but Arthur didn’t mean them. He was angry, already on the way to resenting me.

“That’s not what I meant,” I lied. “But this isn’t the time to talk about it. It’s late, you’ve got an early flight tomorrow.”

His shoulders slumped. “Right. I’ll let you get to bed.”

But he didn’t move.

“Good night, Arthur,” I said, and shut the door on him.

It was a heavy door. The floors were thickly carpeted, absorbing sound. But as I waited with my ear to the door, I thought I could hear his footsteps, moving away.

I locked the door and slid the chain through the track. Then I dragged a chair across the room and put it against the door, feeling ridiculous.

What did I think was going to happen? Arthur wasn’t going to come back and kick the door in. All he had to do was knock, and I’d open the door myself. It wasn’t like I could afford to ignore him. He was my boss.

I felt sick.

Why had I said I had a boyfriend? Arthur was already going to be mad at me for turning him down. He was going to be even more annoyed if he caught me out in a lie. And it was bound to happen. I spent too much of my life at work for it to be plausible that I was seeing someone. There wasn’ttimefor me to have found anyone new. I should have told him I wasn’t interested, full stop.

I collapsed in the armchair, staring at the half-eaten apple on the side table.

Who was I kidding? I couldn’t even say no to Arthur when he wanted me to cancel an evening engagement with friends so I could turn around urgent client work. I was too well trained. You didn’t say no to a partner. If you weren’t biddable and hardworking, if you got branded as a troublemaker, there was always plenty of fresh young blood to replace you.

What if Arthur decided to hold a grudge over this evening? Swithin Watkins had courted him, not me. If Arthur wanted me gone, he could make it happen easily. I was still onprobation. They only had to give me a week’s notice to fire me. My career—ten years’ worth of working long hours, handling Friday evening client emergencies, slogging through tedious documents—destroyed in an instant.

I could try to defend myself, but so far as the firm was concerned, I was an appendage to Arthur. I had no other allies at Swithin Watkins. The only two people I had more than a passing acquaintance with were Farah, with whom I’d had all of one conversation, and Charles, who mostly knew me as the person who’d tried to stick him with a bill for ninety pounds he had no intention of paying.

A chill washed over me. I’d assumed it was a spur-of-the-moment pass from Arthur—a fleeting lapse of judgment, born of exhaustion and alcohol. But was it deliberate that it had happened now? If he’d tried it before, at our old firm, I would have known who to go to, in HR and the partnership. I’d have had a sense of who would take me seriously if I confided in them, who might be willing to stick their neck out for me. That wasn’t the case at Swithin Watkins.

I didn’t have those relationships at our old firm anymore, though, so it wasn’t even like I could return. They hadn’t been happy about my departure. The split between Arthur and the partnership had not been amicable, and I had very much beenhisassociate.

I couldn’t see any good choices, any clear way out of the situation. Had Arthur counted on that?

I shook myself. I couldn’t reconcile the picture I was building up of a coolly calculating predator with the Arthur I knew. And I knew Arthur—surely I did, after eight years. He had his issues, no one knew that better than me, but he’d been good to me, over the years.

Like when Tom had broken up with me. HR had made a stink about the fact I was failing to meet my billable hour targetsin the immediate aftermath—I’d had 16 percent utilisation the month after I received that final message from Tom.

Arthur had told me not to worry: “I’ll square it with them.” And I’d heard no more of it.

That kindness, the Arthur I knew, was real. It had to be.

This evening had simply been an aberration. Arthur had had the best part of two bottles of wine and it had gone to his head. He’d go to bed and wake up with a headache tomorrow, regretting everything. The next time we saw each other, we could pretend nothing had ever happened. Things would go back to normal.

I took my long-delayed shower, dragged on my kaftan, and climbed into bed. I was bone-tired, but I didn’t fall asleep for a long time.

CHAPTER TEN

Kriya

I was alonein the office when Arthur came in, my first day back after my holiday in Malaysia.

“Morning,” he said.

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