Will shrugged.
‘Don’t ask me. I’ve worked here for four years but I wouldn’t say I knew him. This is the closest I’ve got to knowing anything about him. This here.’ He waved his hand at the boxes.
I had opened another. It contained things I had never seen in my life before, silicone things that were a little bit like dildoes but with an outward flare halfway along the length.
‘What the hell are these?’
Will snorted.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’ve never done anything kinky,’ I defended myself.
‘Butt plugs, my love,’ he said, picking one up.
‘Oh, don’t touch it!’
‘Why not?’
I shook my head. I knew I was panicking, but I couldn’t seem to rein myself in.
‘Fingerprints,’ I mumbled.
He burst out laughing at that, waving the butt plug in the air.
‘You’re funny,’ he said, between fresh gusts of mirth.
‘You’ll have to share the joke.’ A third voice spoke from the doorway.
I fell backwards on to my arse, my hand clamping my mouth so hard and fast I almost knocked a couple of teeth out.
I watched through wide-stretched eyes as everything seeming to crash into slo-mo. Will dropped the butt plug and raised himself to his feet, shoulders back, squared for combat.
The man in the door was, presumably, Jasper Jay, though he wasn’t the way I remembered him from that medical soap he used to be in when I was a girl. Of course, a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then – fifteen years’ worth. He wasn’t a fresh-faced bright-eyed youth in a white coat now. He stood with one arm braced against the doorframe, in an expensive suit, its light biscuit colour accentuating his dark looks. He had that famous-person thing of looking somehow bigger and shinier and brighter than a real man. I hadn’t fancied him in the medical soap, or in the many news clips of him accepting the Palme d’Or, but now I could almost see the vortex of charisma inside which he existed.
But now wasn’t a good time to be ogling my boss.
Now was about the worst time ever for that kind of thing.
‘Shit, I thought you were in France,’ was Will’s pretty dreadful attempt at defending his actions.
I remained silent, cowering on a Turkish rug of early nineteenth-century vintage, concentrating on keeping Will’s bathrobe tightly wrapped around me.
‘Shit, you’re fired,’ replied Jay laconically.
‘You can’t just –’
‘Yes, I can. Pack your things. Load up your car. Get out of here.’
‘But my rights …’
‘In what universe isn’t this gross misconduct?’ He stepped into the room, unfolding his arm grandly to usher Will through the door. ‘Not ours, at least. Goodbye. I’ll forward any holiday entitlement you had outstanding on to you.’
‘Mr Jay, please … four years of good service.’
‘Ruined in the space of one night.’ Jay shook his head. ‘Like a film script, isn’t it?’ There was a pause. ‘I can’t help noticing that you’re still here.’
Will looked at me, as if expecting me to leap to his passionate defence. Seeing this wasn’t about to happen, he made as dignified an exit as he could muster.