She didn’t see him go. She couldn’t see anything, only a dirty, gritty film over the world, like he?
??d taken her sight when he took his leave. She heard his car start. She felt Barrett’s arm around her. She stumbled on the stairs and nearly fell. She has no feeling in her body. But she’d done it. She’d freed Reece. She’d restored her own independence. She was back in control.
It was all mechanical then. Eating the bacon sandwich Cameron pressed on her, doing her hair, putting on lipstick. She drove to work and parked. She bought coffee on the way to her desk. She had back to back meetings on new projects she was keenly interested in. And the memo about her promotion went live, her inbox filling with congratulatory notes.
At 11.30am she thought about how Cameron would be ready to come home from the park to get Mia’s lunch. This was the old Wiggle time. She went to her desktop, she could disable the nanny cam software now. She opened it up and glanced at the file listing, the visual icons showing her a still from what’d been recorded. There was one of Etta, Flip and Mia. She played the file and smiled. Mia was having fun, calling Etta and Flip, sister. There was one of Reece and she hovered over it. Playing it was a stupid idea. She was fragile enough without beating herself up.
She played it. Of course she played it.
Reece stood in front of the hidden camera in the TV, deliberately facing it down. It was the day he’d discovered the nanny cam had been recording him. He was furious. He had the gear he’d ripped out of its housing in the kitchen in his hand. She could almost see steam rising from his shoulders. She half expected him to attack the TV to find that camera too, though she knew he’d done no such thing. What he had done was recognise his anger and try to keep it out of her way.
“You could’ve told me about this,” the Reece on her screen said. “About why you needed it. About not trusting me. You could’ve stopped it.”
Well, she didn’t trust him, and she had stopped it. And that should’ve made her feel safe in the face of his capacity for anger, in the aftermath of letting him go. But all she felt was numb and a rising sense of dread about having to answer Mia’s questions, having to answer her own.
When Les came to her office later that day, Audrey intended to fob her off. She wasn’t ready to talk about this yet, and not in the office. “No.”
“No, what? I’m here to talk the River Expressway contract.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“What did you think I wanted to talk about?”
“Things I don’t want to talk about.”
“All business. Except.” Les fished in her jacket pocket and put a key ring on the desk. Reece’s keys.
“Right, thanks.”
“Sure you don’t want to talk?”
Audrey nodded. She’d missed lunch and she felt light-headed.
“You know you owe him a face to face discussion.”
“We had that discussion this morning. He showed up out of nowhere and Mia treated him like her private treehouse and he—I can’t talk about it. I really can’t talk about it.”
“Okay.” Les’ eyes went to her notes. “I’ve got an issue with part two, clause four, c, plus the payment terms pegged on the US dollar.” She looked up, reached across the desk and put her hand over Audrey’s.
That’s all it took to break her resolve. “Tell me something good. Tell me I’ve done the right thing. I fell in love with a man who has a violent past and I don’t want that in my life or my daughter’s. He was a drug taker and a heavy drinker and he enjoyed hitting people in an illegal betting ring, he almost killed a man, took his eye, and he lied by keeping that past a secret.”
“Hooh.” Les sat back. “I like your not talking about it style.” She pushed her notes to the side and put her elbow on the desk, her chin in her hand. “I think you fell in love with a man who got lost and made a mistake and has spent years being someone different. I think he was a little wild, a lot wild for a short time, and it was partly substance abuse and partly the result of his childhood, or lack of childhood. But he might have continued down that path and he hasn’t. He’d not a violent man, Audrey, and I know you know that in your heart.”
Audrey closed her eyes. It was hard to look at Les’ truth. “I can’t trust that.”
“You trusted him every day for almost a year.”
She glared at Les and tapped the desk for emphasis. “But it was a lie.”
Les continued to slouch, continued to be the one in the right. “Apart from that one event, what did he do to make you think he wasn’t worthy of trust?”
“He’s an enormous hulk of guy who wants to work with children.”
“And you know as well as I do that’s a big dumb stereotype that makes every good dad suspect.” Les dropped her casual pose and straightened her spine. “Reece is a more natural father than you are a mother. I know you know all this, Aud.”
Yes, she knew it, but people you knew well could surprise you, they could do something you never expected from them. They could deny a daughter, leave her for dead. They could suddenly take an interest in the welfare of a child they fathered, or turn out to be capable of beating a man till he lost an eye. “He ripped a spy camera from my kitchen ceiling and he was so angry.”
“Well, yeah. Don’t you think that was reasonable? It was a violation of his privacy, even without you knowing about his hot button for being recorded.”