Chapter 5

"Nova."

"I'm going."

"Just listen to me for one second —"

"Liam, I'm going to be late."

"You don't have to do this." He was in the doorway of the bedroom, arms folded, wearing the face he wore when he'd already decided how this conversation was going to go. "You don't have to prove anything. There are other jobs."

"I know there are other jobs."

"So why this one?"

I picked up my bag. Checked my phone. 8:31. The Tube from here was twenty-two minutes if I left right now and ran slightly.

"Because it's the one I have," I said.

"Nova —"

"Liam." I looked at him. "I'm going."

Something crossed his face. Not anger — something quieter than that. The specific expression of a man who had just realised that the usual tools weren't working and didn't know what to do about it. He was used to me folding. We both knew it. I had folded consistently and reliably for three years on things that mattered and things that didn't and somewhere between last night and this morning I had apparently run out of fold.

I picked up my keys.

"Don't wait up," I said, which was a ridiculous thing to say at eight thirty in the morning but it was what came out.

I left.

In the stairwell I allowed myself exactly four seconds of standing completely still with my eyes closed. Then I went down the stairs and out the door and started running for the Tube.

I was late.

Not massively late — 9:14 by the time I pushed through the revolving doors of Holt Industries — but late enough. Late on my first day. In a building made entirely of glass and purpose where everyone moved like they had somewhere to be and had known about it for weeks.

I looked like I had been somewhere else entirely.

My blouse had come untucked on the Tube. My hair, which I had put up with genuine intention this morning, had staged a partial collapse somewhere around Bank station and was now occupying an unclear middle ground between style and incident. I had spilled nothing on myself, which I was choosing to count as a win.

I found the lift. Found the eleventh floor. Stood outside the door that said R. HOLT and thought, briefly, about just going home.

Then I knocked and went in before I could finish the thought.

He was at his desk.

He looked up.

He took in the full picture — the hair, the blouse, all of it — with the expression of a man doing a rapid and not entirely favourable assessment.

I opened my mouth.

"I know I'm late and I'm so sorry, the Tube had a signal issue at Monument which added eight minutes and then I couldn't find the right floor because the lift buttons are not clearly labelled, I pressed eleven but it went to ten first which I don't understand, and I know this is not — I'm aware this is not the impression I wanted to make, I had a whole plan for this morning and it looked nothing like this, I just need two minutes to sort myself out and then I will be completely —"

"You look like your problems followed you here," he said.

I stopped.

He stood up. Picked up his bag from beside the desk, set it on top, pushed it toward me.

"Bathroom. End of the hall." He walked around the desk, past me, toward the door. "Follow me when you're done."

He left.

I stood in his office alone and looked at the bag on his desk and then at the door and then at the bag again.

I grabbed it. Found the bathroom. Stood in front of the mirror and did emergency repair work — blouse tucked, hair pinned back into something that looked like a decision, face arranged into the expression of a person who had their life together and had definitely not just sprinted from the Tube.

The mirror was not convinced. The mirror had seen things.

"Fine," I said to it.

I went back out.

He was already moving when I found him — heading into a meeting room on the floor below with two men I didn't know and a document he was already reading. He didn't look up when I came in. He didn't explain my presence or introduce me. He just continued talking and I found a chair and the notepad in his bag and a pen and I started writing.

The meeting was a supplier contract. A clause dispute. Rhett resolved it in four sentences and neither man on the other side looked like they'd ever been planning to argue.

When it ended I followed him back upstairs and he went into his office and I sat at the desk outside it and looked at my notes.

They were good. I knew they were good. I had been completely present despite everything — despite the morning and Liam's face in the doorway and the Tube and the mirror and the four seconds in the stairwell.

I put the notepad down.

I looked at the door to his office.

Maybe the bakery would take me back.