All Bets Are On (17 page)

‘Cancelling the bet isn’t an option,’ John was saying. ‘You can’t just pull the plug. This isn’t some high-street betting shop—it’s a matter of honour. I know you think you’re well in there with the Ice-Queen but I’m telling you, she was all over me at Roger’s leaving do the other week and I deserve a crack at her. There’s serious money riding on this, man.’

The floor felt suddenly unsteady beneath her feet, as if it were sand.

In disbelief she rounded the corner. Harry stood with his back to her, broad shoulders she’d been cuddled into just a few hours ago. John sat at his work station. As she watched Harry forked over a few banknotes onto the desk. John didn’t pick them up. He’d caught sight of her and his rabbit-caught-in-headlights expression would have been priceless if her heart hadn’t been breaking.

Harry turned to follow John’s gaze and the colour drained from his face.

Shock slipped through her veins like ice. The need to find out every tiny, horrible, sinister detail blocked out every other thought.

‘I want to see it,’ she heard herself say.

‘Alice...’ Harry said, sounding sickened. ‘I can explain. Let’s go somewhere quiet, just the two of us—’

‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ she snapped, not looking at Harry. Her voice sounded as if it was coming from a distance, not part of her at all. She looked at John, contempt flooding through her. ‘You’ve got a copy of it, right? Unless you want to be sacked on the spot, show me the damn list!’

The open-plan office was broken up by room dividers and at the sound of her raised voice heads popped up like meercats to take in what was going on. Humiliation burned in her face at their interest and she fought the impulse to sprint from the office. Not this time. No crying in the Ladies for her any more; she was better than that.

After a glance at Harry during which he obviously decided his first loyalty was to his own pay packet, John made a few clicks on his computer and finally vacated his chair. She barely noticed him walk away as she sank into his chair and looked at the screen.

‘Alice, don’t,’ Harry pleaded.

She ignored him. Because there it was.

The official Nail-Ice-Queen-Ford Betting Ring.

She scrolled down automatically to the bottom of the page and watched as the line continued. There was a Page Two after all. And there, a quarter of the way down, was his name. She looked at it, burning it into her brain as if staring at it might somehow make it disappear.

Harry Stephens.

And next to it, his stake. Two hundred pounds.

A quick scroll showed her his was the biggest stake of all. And that prompted her next move. A quick right click, a glance through Properties, and at last she knew everything. All the sickening details. The document was created by him. He’d not only organised the whole thing, he stood to gain the most from it too.

Correction. He
had
gained the most from it. Past tense. Because he’d won this thing a few weeks ago now. His winnings had probably more than covered the hotel bill for that first perfect night. Had he got some kind of hideous kick out of knowing that? It was that thought that punctured the calm and tipped her finally over the edge.

She felt the sudden lurching roll of nausea deep in her stomach, the wrenching contraction at the back of her throat. She clutched at her mouth with both hands and swallowed hard, gasping, forcing the hideous feeling back down, as if by controlling herself she might be able in some small way to retain control of the situation.

Some hope.

This situation was way past her redemption. And because she’d harboured suspicions for so long about him and then believed herself proven wrong it was somehow a million times worse. She’d known the full sweetness of relief as she let her guard down and put her trust in him, and the agony was all the more intense because he’d outwitted her. There’d been an ulterior motive all along. More fool her.

She looked up at Harry. He shook his head at her faintly, his expression despairing. She was dimly aware of her colleagues watching, soaking up the office joke. She should be used to it by now. The humiliation paled next to the total crushing defeat of his betrayal. She pushed back from the desk and stood up on shaky feet, held her head up high and walked from the room.

* * *

Harry followed her into her office, shut the door behind him and closed the blinds. None of which meant a thing. Outside that door she was gossip-central.

‘Let me explain,’ he said.

As if there could be an explanation?

‘Explain?’ she whispered. She could hear the desperation and disgust in her own voice. ‘You organised a bet with your mates on who could get me into bed. You put the biggest damn stake of all on it yourself. You blagged your way into my life, you made me trust you, all in the name of getting the
proof required
for a cash win.’

Her voice was rising as anger began to seep in past the shock. Tears were here now, making her voice hitch. Her bag was on her desk and she grabbed it and hooked it over her shoulder, ready to leave.

‘What was the proof, by the way?’ she said. ‘Did you come into work brandishing my underwear? Or maybe you took a photo of me sleeping.’

She was crying so much now that she could hardly see. ‘What the hell kind of explanation can you possibly have?’

He sank both his hands into his hair and gazed desperately at her.

She wiped snot and tears from her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes felt swollen and scratchy.

‘When I think back to that first day here in the Ladies, you made it seem like you were some kind of solution to all my problems. Like you were
helping
me.’ She shook her head at the ceiling in disbelief. ‘I’m such an idiot, buying into all of that.’

He reached out to take her hand and she snatched it away.

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘I
did
want to help you,’ he said. ‘That was never a lie. I didn’t like seeing you so unhappy.’ A tortured frown touched his eyebrows as if he was thinking how to explain. ‘I suppose what I was thinking, if I gave it a moment’s consideration, was that it would be a win-win situation. We both have fun, you get back into dating again—’

‘You win a wodge of cash,’ she spat. ‘Certainly a win for you. Really not sure now what the hell was in it for me. Or did you think that sleeping with you might be
enough
of a reward for me—is that it?’

‘Alice, please...’

Harry clenched his fists with the sheer frustration of this because there was no way of explaining his way out of something so tacky. The fact he’d been intending to come clean would be no mitigation now.

‘Do you know why I was crying in the Ladies that day?’ she asked, her voice suddenly tinged with defeat. She didn’t wait for his response. ‘Of course you don’t, because you never bothered to press further and find out once you’d got what you wanted out of the situation. I was crying because I found the first page of your bet list in one of the spare desks.’

A pause while she waited for that knowledge to sink in.

‘Three years I’ve spent building a reputation at this company. Three years working hard and gaining respect instead of being known as a laughing stock. That’s the thing with being publicly humiliated. After it happens it’s the first thing people think of when they look at you. Doesn’t matter what you do from then on, how good or clever or successful you are. You’re always defined by that one hideous fact they have about you. That’s what it was like back in Dorset. Why do you think I moved away and started again?’

He couldn’t answer. What the hell could he say? The magnitude of what he’d done to her wasn’t going to be smoothed over with a few apologetic sentences.

‘Thanks to your pathetic, juvenile game I’m right the way back to square one.’

She paused for breath and looked at him steadily. He could hardly bear to look at the pain on her face, how pale she was, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed from all the crying.

‘Alice, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please just let me try and explain.’

She stood back and looked at him then with such coldness it tore at his heart.

‘I don’t know why you’re so dead set on explaining and apologising,’ she said. ‘You won the bet. Why the hell should you care about the fallout? Or are you afraid that I might lob paint stripper over your car or start sending funeral wreaths to your address?’

‘If it made things better I wish you would,’ he said.

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she said. ‘I’ll settle for never seeing you again.’

Sickening despair rose and sat in the pit of Harry’s stomach like a stone, perspiration crept up his neck and his throat felt dry. The thought of being without her now filled him with crushing misery.

‘We work together,’ he said. ‘You have to talk this through with me.’

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ she said. ‘And we won’t be working together. I’m going to hand my notice in the first chance I get.’

He saw with sudden clarity how she was handling this.

‘You’re going to run away again, then?’ he said.

‘It worked before, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘It was working perfectly well until you. I’ll find another new town, another new job. And I won’t make the same mistake next time.’

‘Mistake?’

‘Falling for you,’ she spat. ‘Goodness knows I was aware of the danger but I had to go and chance it anyway. Well, more fool me.’

She’d fallen for him.

The miserable ache that knowledge invoked made him gasp for breath as his throat constricted.

‘Alice, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I truly was about to tell you.’

He knew how that sounded and her cynical snort told him he was spot on.

‘I just bet you were.’

‘I was.’ He tried to hold her gaze so she would see he wasn’t lying. She stared back at him and her look was pure hatred. He dropped his eyes because he couldn’t stand it.

‘This last week I’ve paid back every last person on that list. I’ve cancelled the bet. I wanted to undo as much damage as I could before I told you, so at least you would know it was over.’

‘It’s never going to be over,’ she said.

He looked down at the floor.

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But no one stands to gain anything from it now, least of all me. I know that doesn’t wipe away the fact that the thing existed in the first place but it’s the best I could do. If I could go back and change things I would, but when it started I was up for a laugh, nothing more. That was the person I was then, the person I thought I wanted to be who didn’t have to take anyone else’s feelings into account.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘But then I got to know you. And now the thought that I’ve caused you so much pain is killing me. I was going to tell you about it. After you told me what your ex did I knew how much it would hurt you but I thought you would want me to be honest.’

She looked at him for a moment, then turned for the door.

‘Alice, I love you,’ he called after her, hearing the crack in his own voice.

She paused. A faint shred of hope lifted his heart. Maybe she would change her mind, give him the chance to talk her round properly.

Then she turned back to face him. Her face was pale and blotchy from the tears she’d shed but her expression was utterly resolute.

‘I never want to see you again,’ she said, and slammed the office door so hard on her way out that he almost felt the building shudder.

TWELVE

‘A nunnery it
is, then, Sister Ford,’ Tilly said.

Alice stared at the cup of coffee and the sandwich she didn’t want, lying between them on the coffee-shop table. Normally she would have eaten lunch at her desk but the feeling, real or imagined, of being stared at in there was suffocating. Her declaration to Harry that she’d simply hand her notice in had been a heat-of-the-moment luxury. The reality was that she simply couldn’t afford to walk out of her role at Innova, not without another post to go to. Tilly’s offer of coffee was a welcome time-out.

She could have done without the side order of advice.

‘Don’t joke about it,’ she said.

‘I’m not joking. Well, not really. You’re basically denouncing men for the rest of your days.’

‘Not men
.
A man.
’

‘The one who says he loves you.’

She fought the urge to clap her hands over her ears and sing loudly to drown this out. She didn’t need to hear Harry’s declaration of love repeated by Tilly. She was having enough trouble squishing it out of her head as it was.

Oblivious, Tilly carried on, fighting Harry’s corner when she was supposed to be in Alice’s.

‘OK, so what he did was terrible, but he was already doing everything he could to fix it, even before you found out about it. He paid back everyone who contributed to the pool—right? He said he was going to come clean to you. He’s sorry. You’re miserable without him. Where’s your sense of forgiveness?’

‘Simon used it up.’

Tilly threw a hand up.

‘And there we are again. Simon’s name comes back up. You’re still letting what that moron did control your decisions.’

Alice flung exasperated hands up.

‘You make it sound so easy. Let’s all move on, never mind that the entire office is talking about me and laughing.’

‘It’ll be yesterday’s news before you know it. The only person still dwelling on it will be you.’

‘That’s so easy for you to say, isn’t it? Because you don’t have to work there.’

Tilly shrugged.

‘Neither do you. Look for another job. Take a sabbatical. Sweep it all under the carpet and run away from it like you did with Simon.’ She leaned forward. ‘Or you could ring the changes, stay put and brazen it out.’

‘You’re meant to be my friend—you’re meant to be on my side.’

‘I am. That’s why I’m telling you this. I’ve never seen you as happy as you were those few weeks with him. It was like getting the old Alice back.’ Tilly’s gaze was gentle. ‘Isn’t that worth a second chance? You can come out of this situation in one of two ways, honey. You can carry on being the victim or you can rise above it.’

Alice stared into her coffee. She’d thought herself so empowered, making a new life after Simon’s betrayal, controlling every tiny corner of it, reinventing herself as a single professional with no time for relationships, carving herself a niche where she could finally feel safe. Yet all the time every aspect of what she was doing was being driven by the very thing she wanted to put behind her. Moving to London had made no difference. She’d stayed the butt of Simon’s joke for three years because she’d brought the effects of it right along with her.

Now she had Harry’s betrayal to replace Simon’s. A whole new nightmare to pick over, maybe for three more years, during which the thought of letting another man in filled her with dread.

And when you got past all the anger about the bet pool, lurking underneath was the aching, miserable loss of Harry and it took her breath away. She hadn’t counted on enjoying his company so much, laughing with him, talking with him, making love with him. He had completed her one-sided life in a way she hadn’t anticipated. And doing without him left a gaping, miserable emptiness that bravado simply wasn’t enough to fill.

Tilly was right: becoming a nun was a pretty comparable alternative future.

She could let it go.

A few weeks ago that would have been unthinkable. But a few weeks ago she hadn’t known Harry. Hadn’t fully comprehended how destructive holding a grudge could be. Hadn’t known the joy she was depriving herself of in the name of caution. OK, so she hadn’t shredded Simon’s clothes or filled his curtain rails with frozen prawns, but maybe if she had she might be in a healthier place now. Instead she’d turned her anger and hurt inwards and had carried it with her instead of getting over it.

She could do it all again. She could be the perpetual victim. Or—shock-horror—she could rise above it all and follow her own dreams instead of letting the past squash them. The idea of being aloof and deprecating suddenly felt vaguely as if it might be very classy and grown-up.

She just wasn’t sure if moving on and forgiving Harry could be the same thing.

* * *

Straight home from work yet again and then in for the evening.

For over a year now staying in had been pretty much unheard of. Even on weeknights. When he wasn’t dating he was out with friends or colleagues, soaking up every social vibe London had to offer.

The thought of going out had no appeal whatsoever. He hadn’t the remotest interest in the new intern who’d started this week at the office and whose skirt length should be illegal. What had Alice done to him?

All he could think about was what he’d lost. The feeling, suppressed so hard that he’d almost forgotten it, of being part of a team, of looking after someone and earning their love and respect. Of loving someone and having them love you in return. Being with Alice had felt like coming home.

The idea that he needed to be needed came as a shock, and the solution was never going to be found in London, not when seeing Alice every day reminded him what could have been.

He opened his laptop and drafted his resignation.

* * *

Pouring everything into work had been Alice’s way of surviving after Simon’s betrayal. Fourteen-hour days had leeched so much energy from her that she’d had little left for anything else. She didn’t even have that this time—how could she lose herself in work when everyone she dealt with there had been in on the joke? She withdrew back to keeping all her workmates at a completely professional distance. No room for small talk or friendly conversation.

She kept out of Harry’s way—not that it was difficult. He seemed to have ceased all socialising. There were no more crying assistants. He came into work, did his job, went home again. And avoiding him like the plague seemed to be helping, right up until she saw his job advertised on the internal notice board.

He was leaving.

As he opened the door of his office in response to her knock her heart, steeled against any rash impulses, turned softly over. Up close he didn’t look like someone who was living it up on a diet of no-strings flings any more. He looked a bit like she felt. Tired and pale. Sleep hadn’t been a friend to her these past days.

‘Alice!’

Genuine surprise.

‘Can we talk?’

He opened the door wider and stood well back, careful not to be in her personal space, yet still she was acutely aware of him as she stepped past him into the room. A quick glance sideways showed a resigned expression in his blue eyes.

‘Coffee?’ he asked her, as if they had never been anything more than colleagues. She shook her head and sat down by the desk.

‘I heard you handed in your notice,’ she said.

He closed the door and crossed the room to sit behind the desk as if this were some work meeting.

‘I’m moving back towards Bath. Thinking of doing some freelance work for a while.’ He paused. ‘And I thought it might be easier for you if I’m not around.’

He was thinking of her. London party animal Harry was prepared to exit his life so that she might breathe a bit easier in hers.

‘I thought this was your big escape route,’ she said. ‘Now you tell me you’re going back home.’

He was looking downwards and she saw a smile touch his lips.

‘You’re right, I did move to London to escape. But it turns out you can’t just chop chunks out of your life and become a different person. I spent so long looking out for Susie and my mum it must have become ingrained. I’m not sure what my purpose is here any more.’

‘You could still stay in London,’ she said. ‘Even if you left Innova you could find another job. You’re great at what you do. I’m sure it wouldn’t take you long.’

He looked up at her then, the blue eyes clear, and shook his head.

‘I miss it,’ he said. ‘I was so busy resenting the way my family tied me down and made demands on me that I overlooked what
I
was getting from
them.
Having someone to care about and look out for, that feeling of belonging. I didn’t even realise I missed it until I got to know you. I’d convinced myself the single life was so great. Then I met you, I fell for you, and now I’ve lost you. And I feel...’ he looked up at the ceiling as if searching for the right word ‘...rootless. There’s nothing here for me any more.’ He shook his head wonderingly. ‘I was so afraid I was like my father deep down because all I used to think about was getting away. Turns out, getting away wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.’

‘I told you before, you’ve always been different from your father. You might have felt like you were being held back but you didn’t act on that. You made a choice to stay and look after your family. You’re not him. You’re better than that.’

He offered her a small smile.

‘Thanks.’

‘So it really will be over, then, once you’ve gone.’

The thought of that finality, of knowing that she really wouldn’t see him again, brought a wave of regret. All that potential happiness just gone in one fell swoop.

He nodded.

‘Yes, it will be over. I’m so sorry, Alice, for what happened, for the way I treated you. I’ve done as much as I can to put it right but without turning back time it was never going to be enough, was it? I just hope you can be happy going forward and maybe one day you can forgive me.’

The tortured look in his eyes wrenched at her heart.

He was moving away. He’d disbanded the bet pool so no one would benefit from it and now he was leaving his job, leaving London. She would never see him again. She searched again for the satisfaction in that and found none. The hideous ache of losing him hurt far more than the stupid bruised pride the bet had caused.

She was through caring what people thought of her. Where had it ever got her?

‘I was over the bet weeks ago, Harry,’ she said. ‘In a way I began to see it as a positive thing—I was floundering along living half a life, pouring everything into work and spending my evenings like some recluse. I’m only twenty-seven, for goodness’ sake. Life was passing me by. It was the kick up the butt I needed to get me out of that rut.’

‘I still don’t get the feeling you’re about to thank me for it.’

She grinned ruefully at that.

‘Don’t push your luck,’ she said.

She saw the tiniest spark in his blue eyes interrupt the flat defeat of his gaze.

‘I carried on working with all the people on that list, knowing I was the butt of gossip. At the beginning I had no idea if you were on the list or not. It really didn’t matter then. What mattered was that by dating you I was proving everyone wrong and building up a bit of a social life for myself.’

She looked across the desk at him. ‘You weren’t the only one with a hidden agenda.’

She watched him frown as that statement kicked in.

‘What do you mean a hidden agenda?’

‘When you offered to take me out as some kind of integration back into dating, my first instinct was to turn you down flat. But then I thought it over and I decided it might be a good thing. You were the exact type of guy I wanted to avoid. So I came up with a list of rules that I thought would define a player. Traits that I remembered from when I dated Simon. Like the fact a player would move things on to the physical as fast as possible because getting laid would be his main aim. And a player wouldn’t really be interested in getting to know me, just in getting his hands on me. I thought I could come up with some kind of profile and then I’d be equipped to avoid that kind of relationship in the future. I could weed out the dross.’ She paused. ‘And I thought I could test the theory on you.’

The look on his face was incredulous.

‘You were using me to come up with some behaviour sketch? What kind of ludicrous amateur psychology is that?’

She could hear a twinge of indignation in his voice and defensiveness immediately kicked in. He was
so
not having the moral high ground. Not now.

‘I know it sounds a bit off the wall. But I liked the idea of having some concrete rules to follow instead of just relying on my own judgement of character. Let’s face it, I hadn’t exactly had great success at that in the past.’

‘But still...’ He pulled a face. ‘A list of rules?’

‘It turned out to be my downfall,’ she said. ‘You started out proving my point with that tried-and-tested boating-lake date but then somewhere along the way you started flouting the profile at every turn. Walking away after kissing me when my rules said that you should be falling over yourself to get me upstairs to bed. Letting me paint your face and stepping in at a kids’ party when my rules said that you should have been steering way clear of anything outside your comfort zone. And the more rules you bent, the more I began to believe you weren’t really a player after all. You were a keeper, you just didn’t know it.’

She sighed.

‘And that was why it was so devastating, Harry, finding out
you
were behind that stupid bet. Because you’d proved me wrong again and again and again. And then, when I’d finally let myself be convinced you didn’t deserve your awful reputation, began to believe we might have a future, it turned out that the entire relationship was underpinned by this big lie.’

He was shaking his head.

‘The rule thing is totally crazy,’ he said.

She smiled a little.

‘Maybe it is. It didn’t do me any good. Growing up I felt so dispensable. Neither of my parents ever really needed me. If I’m honest, really honest, I tried to turn my relationship with Simon into more than it really was because I wanted that feeling of belonging somewhere. To him it was just a light-hearted fling but to me it was about being needed. After I moved here I couldn’t face another relationship so I tried to make myself indispensable at work instead. I like that feeling of being wanted.’