Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,17

She couldn’t think of anything that she needed to say right now, especially to this man hunched down in front of her.

The door opened and Annabel brought in a tray with a cup of tea, sugar and a cup of coffee for Vaughn. She looked like she was about to say something but clearly seeing the state of Elise, she thought better of it and left the office as quietly as she had come.

Vaughn busied himself with the drinks, adding plenty of sugar to Elise’s tea as an antidote to the shock. “Here,” he said, “try to drink this.”

Elise took the cup from his hands, grateful of the warmth on her frozen fingers. Taking a sip, she looked at her surroundings and realised that they were at the far end of the first floor, away from most of the other offices and secretaries. She was suddenly struck by how private this all was.

“I’m surprised you didn’t take this as your office?” she found herself saying, “More privacy.”

Vaughn chuckled, no doubt taken aback that she should choose this moment to comment on the position of his office. “Maybe you’re right.” he replied and then they both fell silent again, the only sound in the room the gentle slurping of their drinks.

Eventually Vaughn spoke, his voice loud and echoing in the empty room.

“Elise, do you mind if I ask you something?”

Not having a clue as to what he could possibly want to know, Elise nodded her head in acceptance. He was her boss anyway so there wasn’t much he didn’t know or couldn’t find out if he wanted to.

“Why do you not use your married name?”

Elise gaped at him in shock. That was probably one of the last questions that she had expected him to ask. She had been thinking more along the lines of “Why did your drunken husband turn up here and why was one of the senior partners involved in a brawl with him?”. The question that he had selected to ask had not been on her radar at all.

Realising that he was waiting for her answer, she considered and then looked down at him, propped as he was against the sofa on his knees.

“I don’t know really.” she replied “Just never got around to changing everything, I suppose.”

That wasn’t entirely true. When they had first got married, she had had every intention of changing her name but when she found out precisely how many forms she would need to fill in, she had kept putting it off and putting it off until neither of them really thought about it anymore. She still had all the forms and had intended to sort things out once and for all when they started a family. However, once that had been taken from them and Dale had become the person that he now was, she found herself less and less inclined to take that step; feeling that by changing her name, she would maybe in some way be condoning the way that he treated her.

Maybe that wasn’t the right decision, particularly if it caused certain men to question the state of her marriage - but it really just hadn’t seemed important. If she was honest, she liked still having her own identity and she had always thought that using Breedon ruined the natural acronym of her initials; Elise Geraldine Grayson, EGG. Her parents had come up with the idea after their first ante-natal scan. Elise’s mother had taken one look at the blob on the screen, decided it looked like an egg and so it had been decided; boy or girl, they would forevermore be branded an EGG.

Vaughn was shifting on the floor, trying to get more comfortable. He had obviously listened to her answer but looked like he didn’t believe her and Elise braced herself for the inevitable questions that would follow. Instead he surprised her for the second time in the space of a few minutes by changing the subject.

“So,” he said evenly, “that was your husband. Interesting character. Is that his usual behaviour or are we particularly honoured today?”

She bristled. Despite Dale’s actions he was her husband and she still felt some loyalty to him.

“He isn’t normally like that” she defended “he had just had a bit too much to drink and didn’t know what he was doing.”

Again she braced herself for further questioning but surprisingly Vaughn let the matter drop for which she was relieved. She didn’t believe that he was completely satisfied with her answer but as