got up and started to pace the floor but that made me even more anxious and I quickly got back onto the bed. I pulled out my phone and looked at some news sites and at a forum I liked, but I couldn’t think straight. That conversation with Tom had exhausted me. Confused me, too.
There was a clink of dishes and a rap at the door. Room service had arrived.
As soon as the porter had gone, I poured a large glass of wine. Rain was coming down now, lashing against the window. It was comforting, somehow, like a rainy Saturday when you wake up and realize you don’t have to go to work. I stood at the window for a long time, watching the lights of the cars, blurred through the rain-splattered window, as they drove along the road. None came into the hotel car park.
Where was he?
* * *
? ? ?
It took a while for me to realize that Harry wouldn’t arrive that night. At ten I had a bath. I propped my phone on the basin beside the bath with a towel under it so that I could grab it to read any message as soon as it came through. The phone remained silent. No calls from Tom, luckily. None from my parents or from my friend Sarah, from work. She and I often chatted in the evening if we’d been too busy to talk at work. I was glad she hadn’t called me; I had no idea what I’d say to her. And I couldn’t risk Harry calling and having to leave a voice mail message. He might need to speak to me urgently and I wouldn’t know until I’d finished my call. I drummed my fingers on the side of the bath. All I wanted was to talk to him.
I knew where he was. He was in the same position I’d been in that night, telling his wife, Emma, that he was leaving her. We’d planned it all, synchronized timings. Now all I had to do was to wait for him.
CHAPTER 5
Ruby
Harry and I met when I started working for him just over eighteen months ago. The company I was working for had relocated to Edinburgh and I’d been made redundant. I’d spent a while looking for permanent jobs when an agency got in touch just before Christmas to say there was a vacancy at Sheridan’s, a company based five miles from home. The PA to the managing director had left and her replacement had just let them down. The MD, Harry Sheridan, was looking for someone who would work there for a month on a temporary basis with a view to a permanent job. He’d felt that was a more reliable way of judging whether someone was a good fit.
He’d asked the agency if I could come in for a couple of days, just after Christmas, while it was quiet. That first morning I arrived, he and I were the only two in the office. The receptionist had sent me up to the third floor and Harry was waiting for me in the elevator lobby. He was tall with cropped fair hair, and dressed casually in jeans and sweater. He looked nice enough, pretty ordinary really, until he smiled. Then everything changed.
“Hi.” He shook my hand. “I’m Harry Sheridan.”
“Ruby Dean.”
“Thanks for coming in. I thought it would be better to bring you in this week while it’s quiet, so that I can go through some things with you. I hope it’s not spoiled your Christmas break.”
“Not at all.” Actually I was happy to be up and out of the house; the atmosphere had been toxic for days. Tom and I had had an argument, one that left me hot with shame and embarrassment afterward. We hadn’t spoken to each other for several days and when I got up to go to work, I could see he was dying to know where I was going. He wouldn’t ask, though, and I wasn’t going to tell him until he did.
Harry took me into his office suite and showed me around. His office overlooked fields at the back of the building and there was a window between his room and the outer office where I learned I would sit