Elmo stood at the upper end of the road and watched as the front door of Ellie’s house opened and Joe Kerrigan came out.
Looking as if he’d spent the night having sex.
Zack’s jaw tightened. He felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. Was it any wonder Joe’s hair was disheveled and he looked the way he did? He was leaving Ellie’s house at eight thirty in the morning. Of course they’d had sex.
As he watched, Joe turned and gazed up at the first floor. Then he broke into a grin and called out, ‘See you later.’
The window was flung open and Zack heard Ellie say, ‘What was that?’
‘I’ll see you later.’ Joe’s grin broadened and he blew her a kiss. ‘Missing you already.’
OK, he’d heard enough. Zack moved out of sight before Joe had a chance to turn round and recognize him.
Back home now.
Served him right for having come this way in the first place.
***
Ellie arrived at the house dead on nine o’clock, her hair still damp from the shower. She was wearing a pale pink shift dress, pink and silver sandals, and a thin silver bracelet Zack hadn’t seen before.
‘That’s nice.’ Busy adding a new appointment to the diary, he indicated the bracelet.
‘This? Thanks! It was a present from Joe.’
Another sucker punch. Great. Aloud Zack said, ‘Right.’
‘Isn’t it pretty?’ Ellie was turning her wrist this way and that, so it caught the light. ‘He gave it to me last night. I love it!’
Oh, Joe, do fuck off.
‘Excellent. Well, I’m off to Monte Carlo on Tuesday, so I need you to book me a flight to Nice. The meeting’s at midday.’
‘No problem. I’ll do that now.’ Her eyes were sparkling; she might not have got much sleep last night but she was running on adrenaline. ‘Leave it with me.’
But by midafternoon the lack of sleep was catching up with her. Twice while he was in the office he caught Ellie yawning. Three times her phone chirruped to signal the arrival of a text and she stopped typing in order to read the messages and reply.
The last straw came when Zack attempted to return a call and discovered she’d written down the wrong number.
‘Look, I’m sorry if I’m keeping you up, but you need to be paying more attention.’ Marching into the office, he found her sending yet another text. ‘I’m trying to make an important call here and this isn’t the number.’ He pushed the piece of paper across the desk, his annoyance ratchetted up to the next level by the fact that Ellie finished composing the text and sent it before looking at the number she’d written.
‘OK, let me try. That’s definitely the one he gave me.’ She held out her hand for his phone and reeled off the numbers. ‘Oh-two-six-seven-three…’
‘No, you’ve written oh-two-oh-seven-three.’
‘That’s a six.’ Ellie pointed to it.
Unreasonably annoyed, Zack said, ‘It looks like a zero.’
‘It might look like one of your zeros,’ she retaliated, ‘because you don’t always bother to close yours. But I do close mine. This one isn’t closed, because it isn’t a zero. It’s a six.’
Unfairly, the figure was now looking more and more like a six.
Zack took back his phone, unwilling to concede defeat. ‘And you haven’t stopped yawning all morning.’
‘I might have yawned a couple of times.’ Ellie was defensive. ‘But it hasn’t stopped me working.’
‘Maybe not, but all the texting’s certainly managing it. I’m just saying, it’s not very professional, breaking off from whatever you’re doing every few minutes to read a new text from your boyfriend, then send one back.’
‘Hey, hang on, you’re annoyed with me because I wrote a number down correctly and you got it wrong?’ Ellie’s eyes flashed. ‘And I’ve yawned maybe twice, because I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to stop and make myself a cup of coffee yet?’
‘Don’t forget the texting,’ said Zack.
‘Fine. Here you go, help yourself.’ She reached over, grabbed his left wrist and slammed her phone into his upturned palm. ‘Have a good look, scroll through the texts I’ve sent today. Read them.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to read your texts.’
‘And I don’t care whether or not you want to.’ Ellie was breathing rapidly, her chest rising and falling as she snatched the phone, pressed a few buttons, and shoved it back at him. ‘You’re going to.’
Which meant Zack was forced to stand there and read each of the texts in turn.
None of them were from Joe Kerrigan. Instead, Ellie had been in contact with the PAs of two