‘Charlie Avery’s place?’
Alex closed his eyes. So it was true. It felt like a door slamming shut. An innocent person would have immediately replied, ‘But I’ve never been to Charlie’s house.’ Or ‘At eight o’clock, I was on my way to work.’ Alicia was playing for time, sipping her wine, presumably thinking of a strategy, a way out. Alex wasn’t in the mood for playing games, but he was curious to see where Alicia would run with this.
‘Alex, I have no idea why Lara would say something like that,’ she said finally. ‘I do know she is in a dark place right now. She’s been fired, she’s grieving over the death of her best friend. Those sort of emotions can do odd things to people. Make them behave in strange ways.’
‘So you weren’t at Charlie’s this morning?’
She paused a beat.
‘No,’ she said, meeting his gaze. ‘If Lara saw someone, it certainly wasn’t me.’
Alex nodded.
‘She has a photo of the two of you together,’ he said. ‘You were wearing that blue jacket I bought you.’
Alicia’s eyes flashed.
‘What the fuck was she doing taking photos?’
And there it was – all the confirmation he needed. The innocent Alicia would have been furious with him for believing such crap and demanded to see the photos. Instead she was angry with Lara for catching her out.
There was a long silence. The scented candle flickered and sent long shapes up the wall. The sense of an ending was palpable in the room. Despite everything, Alex felt a wave of sadness, that he would not come to the small, neat, sweet-smelling space again. He’d been happy here. A version of it, anyway.
‘It’s over, Alicia,’ said Alex. ‘Why don’t you just tell me the truth?’
She didn’t speak for a second, then looked at him, her expression hard.
‘You want the truth, Alex? We’ve been together for nearly two years and I’m sick of there being no forward motion. I’m sick of never seeing you. Sick of being an afterthought in your life.’
‘Alicia, you knew about the demands of my job when we met. I need to put in long hours in the office. That’s just how it is at a newspaper.’
‘Yeah? Well Charlie is managing director of that very same newspaper and he doesn’t feel the need to put in half the hours you do.’
He looked at her.
‘And how would you know that?’
The room fell quiet.
‘How long has it being going on, Alicia?’
She looked away and took a long drink of her wine.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, not even bothering to deny it anymore.
‘
It matters to me.’ And it did. Even though the relationship was over, even though knowing the details would not change the outcome, Alex still wanted to know.
‘How long?’ he repeated.
He wondered if they had met at the Chronicle’s 100th anniversary party, but Charlie’s name had been absent from Alicia’s guest list for Alex’s birthday dinner compiled two weeks earlier. At the time, he thought it had been a thoughtful omission. He knew that Alicia’s default position would be to invite the glamorous people, the useful people but instead of including Charlie Avery she had asked Alex’s dad and Chris and Peter from the subs department, colleagues he actually liked. He had loved her for that, but now he realised that she simply hadn’t wanted Charlie there, fearful that either of them might give away their affair.
‘A couple of months,’ she said finally. ‘We’ve been seeing each other a couple of months. Happy now?’
Alex tried to think back that far. What had he been doing? What had they been doing? But it was futile: they went to the same parties, moved in the same circles. It could have been going on the whole time and Alex would never have known.
Alicia was staring at him now, her eyes hard and defiant.