Why Does it Taste so Sweet? Read Online Free Page B

returned to their previous conversation. Thom. It was Thom who had called.
    “Really? Are you still in his little black book?”
    “Fuck off.” Marcia reached for the bottle and used it to gesture at Emily’s glass.
    “What did he want?” Emily leaned over for a refill.
    “You.”
    “Me?”
    “He’s desperate to fix things. He wanted me to persuade you to go back to him.”
    “He still thinks that’s on the cards?”
    “He does,” said Marcia. “Poor bastard. Doesn’t get it at all, does he?”

4
    When she walked back into the office at just after nine the next day, it reminded her of walking through the airport with Ray. They weren’t exactly gathering around her and taking photos on their phones, but it wasn’t far off that.
    Liz and Suchita on Reception fixed their eyes on her and leaned together, their heads almost touching, talking softly. In the big open plan office people broke off in mid-conversation to watch her thread her way through to her desk. In the glass-fronted offices suited men peered up from their computers.
    All this attention, and she didn’t even have an international rock star at her side.
    For a moment she thought she must have tucked her skirt into her panties, or spilt coffee down her blouse, but no: they were just looking at her. Exhibit A. Ray Sandler’s girlfriend.
    She quite liked that. It made her smile. Made her head fill with a rush of memories of the weekend and before. Made her chest swell with all those positive vibes, the confidence he instilled in her, the knowledge that someone like him saw something in someone like her.
    She said a few hellos, but nobody seemed to want to be the first to strike up conversation. That initial moment of novelty shifted quickly into freakshow awkwardness.
    She lost herself in her inbox. So much rubbish to delete, but also so much to catch up on. She’d only been away for a few days... She had no meetings lined up for this morning, which was good for now. She’d need to schedule some for later in the week, though: time to catch up on a number of projects she’d let slip.
    Douglas Hamilton didn’t give her long.
    He’d been on the phone when she walked in. He’d held it, a hand over the mouthpiece, as he paused to watch her find her way to her desk, then he’d looked back at his monitor and resumed his conversation. Now, though, he caught her eye through the glass wall of his office, raised an eyebrow and then raised a finger as if summoning a waiter.
    She nodded, pressed Send on an email, and then went through.
    He didn’t indicate that she should sit, so she stood awkwardly by the door, suddenly realizing that this was not right, that things had changed.
    “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon,” he said.
    Was that all? Should she have messaged ahead to say she’d be back today?
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have let you know. I have a lot to catch up on, so I thought–”
    “This isn’t working, Emily.”
    Those words were fatal, she knew. Irreversible. The work equivalent of a lover’s It’s not you, it’s me . She swallowed, but said nothing.
    “Last week I advised you to take some time out to get your life in order. I didn’t think I needed to spell it out for you. I didn’t think... Well, shall we say that being plastered all over the papers with a prospective client’s husband is not what I had mind? Ms Flaherty is not happy.”
    Ms Flaherty . He meant Róisín. She’d come to the office once before and made things difficult for Emily. “The papers,” said Emily. “I didn’t know.” She remembered the press photographers gathered outside Kayleigh’s wedding, but she hadn’t seen anything in the papers. She’d been in France; she’d been ignoring her phone. “I... I didn’t know Ms Flaherty was a prospective client.”
    “Does that matter?” Hamilton always presented himself as a slightly bumbling, very middle-class Englishman, but now there was a real steel to his tone. “We have our