Just Friends (The Agency Book 1) Read online

  “So you think I’m as cold as ice too?” I know that the rest of the creative floor calls me the Snow Queen behind my back. And, no, they’re not comparing me to the Disney character with the belting voice. They’re thinking of the Hans Christian Andersen original – the evil ice-cold child-abductor.

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” he says sincerely. We sit for a minute in silence, and I spend the time wondering if he knows anything about me at all. Then he turns around to face me. His eyes are beautiful even when they’re lost. “I know that whatever chaos life throws my way, I can count on you to get me through it. You’re not cold – far from it. You understand things more clearly than anyone I know. As for those idiots who talk about you behind your back, let them talk. They aren’t your friends. You understand them, but they don’t have a hope in hell of understanding the first thing about you. You’re better than all of them, so fuck what they think.”

  I’m stunned. I know Max depends on me for my logical advice-giving, but I didn’t think Ethan did too. “And what about you? Do you understand me?”

  His smile lights up the sitting room. “I think I’m getting there . . . almost.”

  “So, if you understand me – almost – what do you think I’m going to say to you about last night?”

  “That’s easy. You’re going to tell me I wasn’t responsible for Carly even though I knew she was drinking herself into a coma. You’ll tell me it was an accident and there’s nothing I could have done. Then you’re going to reassure me that you’re not disappointed in me, even though I know you are.” His voice trails into a whisper and my heart misses a beat in response. “And when I get a handle on my guilt over what happened, the fact that you’re disappointed in me is still going to be there, and that is much harder to live with.”

  His words take my breath away. “This isn’t about me, Ethan. And I hope I’m not that judgemental. Are you disappointed in yourself?”

  His body tenses at the question he’s probably not ready to answer. He runs his hand through his hair. I love his hair. It’s usually so perfectly styled, but I think I love it more right now, when it’s ruffled and reflecting how messed up his brain is.

  “Yeah, I’m disappointed in myself. I mean, she was just there and she was throwing herself at me and I wish I hadn’t. I don’t even like her. She’s bitchy and shallow and I hate how she speaks to you. Ever since we started working on the Quest campaign she’s had it in for you. I knew that, so why did I even go there?” His gaze locks onto mine as he takes a deep but shaky breath. “I’m never doing it again, Vi. You don’t shit where you eat, right? That’s your law, and I’m going to adopt it too. I am never doing this again. I’ve done it way too many times now. You know what I’m like – I get a few drinks inside me and I just want to sleep with somebody. Anybody. I did it with Erin from Sunta Motors, I did it with Kiki . . . and I did it with Jenny in HR.”

  “You didn’t? Jenny in HR?” My face twists into an involuntary grimace which he spots immediately. He rolls his eyes at me; he knows I won’t be able to let that one pass without a dig. Jenny’s antics are legendary. She’s slept with two account execs, the guy who couriers our special deliveries, and half the media buying department.

  “See? You think I’m disgusting, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think you’re disgusting – you haven’t done anything wrong. You and Carly are both single. It’s people like Stuart Inman who should be feeling ashamed of themselves—”

  “I heard about that. I told you he was a tube, didn’t I?”

  “After the event, you did,” I remind him, before moving on to the bad news. “I . . . um . . . may have thrown a glass of wine over him.”

  “You didn’t?” he says, his eyes bright with mischief. “What did that feel like?”

  I start to laugh. “It felt pretty amazing actually, and I’d totally do it again. But – and I’m really sorry about this – he said he’s taking the Quest account off me.”

  Ethan dismisses my apology with a wave of his hand. “We’ll face that together. United front, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  At that moment his phone pings. He moves to pick it up, but then he freezes and I know why.

  “Do you want me to get it?” I ask. He nods, his face tense. I reach for his phone, hoping it isn’t bad news, and see a text from Stella. “She says that Quentin’s heart attack was his fourth, and Carly is on life support.” Ethan sighs deeply and bows his head. “Then she says, ‘I’m livid with Violet’ – oh crap, that’s not good – ‘Couldn’t have picked a worse time to—’ wait . . . Assault a client? That’s a bit extreme. She ends with, ‘If we lose a two-million-pound contract because of her then I’m going to fire both of you.’” I place the phone back down in front of him, my blood pressure raised to boiling. “She wants to see us first thing on Monday morning.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Look, don’t worry. This is on me; I’ll think of something to get you out of it.”

  “It isn’t just you, Vi, don’t you see? We could get past you throwing a drink over Stuart Inman, but if they find out about Max giving Carly drugs and me screwing her, our careers will be over. Why did I do it? It’s like . . .” He stands abruptly and starts pacing the floor. “I can’t stand this. It feels like I’m losing my mind. Why did I have sex with her? I knew she was off her head and I still fucked her. What does that say about me?”

  He stops pacing and runs his finger along a patch of bare wood on my windowsill where the paint has chipped away. I walk over to him and rest my hand on his arm. “You’re a good person. You have to believe that.”

  He rests his back against the wall, his gaze fixed to the ceiling. “I’m not a good person, Vi. I didn’t give her safety a second thought. I knew she was wasted. I used her, screwed her and then I left her.” The veins in his neck pulse with tension. “She could have died. What if she does die?” His breath rattles in his chest, and tears fall quietly from his eyes. “This is my fault. I’m not a good person . . . Jesus Christ, I’m not . . .”

  My own eyes cloud as his anguish washes over me. “I’m not letting you blame yourself for this. It was an accident. Carly is a grown woman who made a series of choices that had a terrible consequence, but none of that is your fault.”

  He lowers his head and half-smiles at me. “You know I shouldn’t have done it, Vi.”

  “We all make mistakes, Ethan. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t.”

  “Not you. You always do the right thing.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” I say, choking on my own regret.

  He turns to look at me, his eyes searching my face for answers. “Are you talking about Stuart again?” I shake my head. “Your American guy? That wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid when that happened. He was the married guy with a family.”

  I don’t like talking about Ryan. Ethan and Max both know the bones of what happened in New York, but there are still parts of it I’m not ready to share. I’m not sure I ever will be.

  “No, I’m not talking about Ryan either.”

  “Enlighten me, then.” His smile grows wider; I can see he’s sceptical. A brief thought ignites in the darkest corner of my mind, and I wonder if revealing the catastrophe I have carried around with me for the past eleven years is a good idea. This is something I’ve never spoken about to anyone, but all of a sudden my heart is screaming louder than my brain. I know I started this dialogue for a reason. After eleven years, dare I share it to help a friend?

  I sit back down on the sofa and he sits next to me. “There’s a quote I think is relevant. ‘In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.’”

  “Nice. Who said that?” he asks.

  “Francis Bacon.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He was a sixteenth-century philosopher. And a scientist and writer.”

  “How the hell do you know so much about everything? I don’t have to Google anything when I hav
e you.” He smiles at me and takes hold of my hand, bringing it into his lap. “So, what does it mean?”

  “Hmm? Oh, the quote? Well, in this context it means we all have a dark side, and we all have to accept it as part of who we are. If you run and hide from your past, you’re fighting a battle you can’t win. Our dark can make us better and stronger people if we embrace it.”

  I meet his gaze again and his grip on my hand tightens. Suddenly self-conscious, I nervously tuck a stray clump of hair behind my ear. We sit and we wait, and I know we’re both wondering where we’re going next.

  “You don’t really share much, Vi. Are you telling me you’re running and hiding from something in your past?”

  My stomach dips in fear. Am I really doing this? “No, I’m telling you that I prefer to confront my demons in private.”

  Ethan folds his fingers tightly through mine, intensifying his hold, and I start to shake. “Hey, what is it? You can tell me,” he says softly.

  I open my mouth but nothing comes out. My throat is dry and my heart is beating so fast I can feel my blood surging through my veins. He notices my knees are trembling and places his other hand on my leg, trying to still me until I’m ready to talk.

  “Eleven years ago my life changed forever. There is before and there is after, and nobody in the after knows about the before. It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you about it, it’s just that I haven’t told anyone.” Silence fills the space between us until all I can hear is the sound of our heartbeats. “I had a sister.”

  Had. It still pains me to speak in past tense. It still feels like it was yesterday. When she died, I hoped my memories of her would stay with me forever: Christmas mornings, holidays to the Med, watching Dirty Dancing on repeat, sharing our clothes . . . sharing everything. After she died, I tried so hard to keep all of my memories safe in bottles, sitting on a shelf in my brain. But, as the years go by, too many of them are breaking, their precious contents dissolving with the passage of time. It hurts that I can’t remember her smell or her touch or the sound of her laughter anymore.

  Ethan blanches. “What happened to her?”

  “She drowned. She was eighteen, I was seventeen. We were on a family holiday in Menorca. I knew she wasn’t a strong swimmer, but I wanted to go further from the shore. I wasn’t thinking about her, it was my fault, and I want to tell you about this because I need you to understand what happens when you allow guilt to consume you.”

  “Vi, I can’t believe this . . .” he says, his eyes cloudy. “Why haven’t you told me before? It’s like I don’t know anything about you at all.”

  “I don’t like talking about her.” I withdraw my hand from his so I can hug my arms around my body. “Laurel was so full of life. She was everything I wasn’t. Outgoing, sweet, popular . . . She was the sun, whereas I was the moon. My parents used to say they’d named us wrong. Laurel was the beautiful flower, and I was the dull shrub.”

  “That’s a shitty thing to say to your kid,” says Ethan, his breath hitching in his throat.

  “I did everything I could to make my parents notice me. I excelled at school, I made myself interested in the things they were interested in, but I couldn’t come close to being like her. Laurel was their world, and I don’t blame them for loving her more than me. I loved her more than me too.”

  The silence is thick with words waiting to be said. It seems as though hours pass and I will him to speak, but he just sits in silence. A thin, watery veil covers his eyes, and his skin is pale.

  “Please say something, Ethan.” My voice breaks as I speak.

  “I don’t know what to say. I always respected that you didn’t talk about your family, but I assumed you just didn’t get on. I never imagined this . . .” His voice is a whisper, and I can tell he’s struggling to process everything I’ve told him. “Why didn’t they help you?”

  “Everyone, except my grandmother, blamed me. We all knew Laurel couldn’t swim well. I shouldn’t have persuaded her to go further out to sea. She died because of me.”

  “But for fuck’s sake, you were only a kid.” He takes my hand back and holds it tight. And I cry, because after a decade, I’m finally talking to somebody about Laurel, and that someone is him. “You’re all they have. Surely they want a relationship with you.”

  “They don’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was listening when my father said he wished I’d died instead of her.”

  His face is crushed with sympathy. I block it out. I don’t want him to pity me.

  “I don’t know what to say, I just . . . Vi, I can’t believe this. How do you get over something like that?”

  “You don’t. I miss her. I miss her every day and I wish I could tell her I’m sorry for what I did, but those feelings don’t help. I’ve had to kill them so I can live. That is the simple choice I’ve had to make so I can move forward. It happened and I could easily let it hurt me forever, but instead I’ve accepted it as part of who I am.”

  His eyes flicker as he lets my story bring meaning to his own. “Thank you.” His hold on my hand turns into a gentle rub that makes my skin prick with goosebumps. “I know why you told me this, and . . . thank you.” He looks ready to say something else, but instead he reaches his arm around my shoulder and pulls me towards him. He stretches his legs out, lies down, and I’m right there next to him, cuddled in beside him. His arm is still wrapped tightly around me as he jiggles about to get comfortable. I don’t know how to respond at first, but as he holds my head close to his chest and starts twirling my long hair around his fingers, I find myself wrapping my arm hesitantly around his middle.

  His other arm moves around my waist, and we lie on the sofa together until the early hours turn into mid-morning. He falls asleep, but I don’t. I listen to the rhythm that his heart is beating into my eardrum. I enjoy the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes peacefully under me. I inhale his scent and it’s different to usual – smoother and richer and tinged with a mix of wine and beer – but the distinction is unique to tonight and I want to remember it.

  This doesn’t feel like “us”, but it feels good. The shift I sensed in our relationship last night has brought us here, and I don’t know why or how it happened, but I don’t feel scared – I feel safe. We’re not “just friends” anymore. We’re more than that. But I don’t know what that is.

  7

  MAX CRASHES INTO MY SITTING room at ten thirty on Sunday morning, muttering incoherently about turning himself in to the police. Ethan goes home to “get his shit together”, and I do my best to calm Max down. After half a day of crying, drinking, freaking out, then crying some more, he finally settles.

  By early evening, Max has found a cable channel showing endless reruns of Star Trek and made himself comfortable on my sofa. I join him, but my brain doesn’t because it’s too busy overthinking every tiny detail of the last two days. I stare up at my ceiling, one part of my brain failing to shut out Captain Kirk’s latest foolhardy mission, the other part trying desperately to silence the voices in my head.

  I miss him. He only left a few hours ago, but I want to talk to him, hold him again, hear his voice, smell his cologne and feel his breath on my skin. I want to stop replaying and analysing his words, but I can’t.

  At 10 p.m., I finally manage to send Max home in a taxi with his arms full of Dickens novels I know I’ll never see again and a Tesco’s tuna pasta bake ready meal for one.

  ***

  I’m at my desk ready for work at precisely 7.43 a.m. on Monday. I am tired and irritable and my eyeballs feel like they’ve been scraped by a rusty potato peeler. Normally, the office would be full of chatter at this time, but today the floor is eerily quiet. There are a few members of staff holding subdued, hushed conversations whilst an aura of the macabre clings to the air. Half an hour later, Malcolm Barrett sweeps over to my desk bearing a face that looks like it’s been hung out to dry in a thunderstorm.

  “Where’s your partner in crime?” h
e asks, his Adam’s apple vibrating the crinkly loose skin around his neck. This isn’t how he usually speaks to me. He looks stressed to hell, and I feel a swirl of panic twist through my stomach.

  I look at my watch to signal that it’s still early. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

  “You left the party early on Saturday. Have you heard what happened?” His silvery moustache is damp, and I can smell the aroma of early-morning espresso on it. Moustaches can’t be hygienic. They retain taste and they retain smell. I remember a heavy work night out a couple of years ago. I vomited on my hair, and every time the wind blew, I could smell and taste what I’d had for dinner four hours previously. It would be worse with a moustache. It would be right there, under your nose, constantly wafting the aroma of regurgitation up at you.

  “Yes, I heard what happened. I’m sorry about Quentin Hibbard. Had you known him long?”

  Malcolm pulls up a chair and wheels himself to the desk next to mine, which I now notice is empty of Mohammed’s things. “I met him for the first time at the awards show. Apparently, the stupid old fool had been at death’s door for years. He should have retired long ago.”

  I offer the usual platitudes, but I can tell there’s more on Malcolm’s mind than the surprise passing of one of our clients. He wheels his chair closer and I brace myself.

  “I want to know two things: what’s going on between you and Stuart Inman, and what’s going on between Fraser and Carly Hayes?”

  I feel my face flush red with embarrassment. No way am I entering into a discussion with Malcolm about Stuart Inman’s defective man-parts. “We had a disagreement. Don’t worry, I’ll apologise for the wine incident.”

  Malcolm’s eyes lock on to mine. “Make sure you do, Violet, because if we lose Quest over this, heads are going to roll, and I want to make sure those heads don’t include yours. You don’t want to let me in on the deal with Stuart? Fine. Let’s talk about Fraser and Carly Hayes instead. A little bird tells me he was sleeping with Carly. Was he? And before you answer, I need the truth. If you lie to me I’ll know.”