Universally Challenged Read online

  ‘Come on, no phones. I’m sure you can thank Katie tomorrow. And that way you can tell her what a wonderful night we had.’

  Jessica watched as Benjy deposited her phone on the sideboard. She couldn’t retrieve it now. She wondered whether he knew about Jake and had guessed that was who she was texting. She thought she could see him looking at her as if he was gauging her reaction.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Absolutely no interruptions,’ said Jessica, with a fake smile plastered across her face.

  ‘Right, babe, let’s go.’

  Benjy held the door open, keys in hand, waiting for Jessica to walk out in front of him.

  Jessica gave one last look at the phone before they left the apartment. She couldn’t believe that she’d stood Jake up. She hoped he would understand.

  Chapter 30 – Jess Burns

  Jess eagerly took another glass of champagne from the passing waiter and sipped a big gulp down. Roger had obviously been drinking before he arrived at the venue. She had noticed the Eau d’Whisky on his breath when they were stuck in the lift up to the ball room.

  Jess had hoped she’d be able to work the room by herself but Roger had seemed to be taking his hosting skills very seriously. Jess wondered if it was something about the way her fish-tail dress clung to her behind. Before she arrived she had hoped the look of lust she was seeing in Roger’s eyes was going to be in Jake’s.

  Jilly, Jess’ ex-work colleague, walked up to them. Although Jess didn’t think they were firm friends she was suddenly relieved to see her. Anyone would be welcome to put between her and Roger.

  ‘Hi, Jess,’ said Jilly, planting air kisses on her cheeks. ‘You look gorgeous.’

  ‘Thanks, Jilly, so do you.’

  Jilly was wearing a red silk dress with a plunging neckline that had Roger lusting in her direction. Jess was instantly relieved.

  ‘Jilly,’ said Roger, bowing his head and picking up her hand to kiss. Jess noticed that it bought him level with her bulging cleavage and she also noticed he hovered there just a little bit longer than necessary.

  ‘Roger,’ said Jilly, as if she was giving him a warning.

  ‘So you know Jess here, from your time at LMG?’ asked Roger.

  ‘Yes, Jess and I used to work in the same department and know each other very well.’

  That unnerved Jess; she hated the fact that she knew nothing about this woman other than her name.

  ‘It is too bad you’re not still working there, as the two of you must have made a dream team.’

  Jilly raised her eyes conspiratorially at Jess; clearly she’d twigged how drunk and letchy Roger was.

  ‘We were rather,’ said Jilly, nudging Jess’ elbow.

  ‘We’re pleased that she is over with us at the moment, we’re just about to do a deal which will be the investment of the year, aren’t we, Jess?’

  Jess just smiled and took a sip of her champagne.

  ‘Really, who with?’ asked Jilly.

  ‘Now, Jilly, come on, you know I can’t tell you that, can I?’

  Jess watched as something seemed to sparkle in Jilly’s eyes. Before anything more was said they were called to sit down to dinner. Jess could see the look of slight annoyance on Jilly’s face as Roger led Jess away to their table.

  Jess approached the LMG table and was relieved that her place setting was next to a man she recognised from the New York office as one of the managers. He stood up to allow Jess to sit down and introduced himself as Colin.

  Jess was relieved that Jake’s name card was next to hers and that would mean there would be an empty space between herself and Roger.

  ‘No Jake tonight, then?’ said Colin, looking between Roger and Jess.

  ‘No, there was a problem with Elodie,’ said Roger.

  Who’s Elodie? Jess wanted to scream across the table. She looked at Colin’s face as if willing him to ask, but he did the same nodding head gesture that Roger had done to her earlier.

  Did everyone else know what this emergency was?

  Much to Jess’ disappointment Roger sat down in Jake’s seat and waved over one of the waiters. ‘One of our colleagues isn’t joining us anymore.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ said the waiter. He then began to clear the place setting away and signalled to one of his colleagues to help.

  ‘Couldn’t have you sat on your own now, could we?’ said Roger. Her stomach sank. That was all she needed. Jess just hoped that she’d be able to talk more to Colin. The last thing she wanted was Roger being able to lean in close and whisper in her ear. Just the whiff of his breath made her feel like she could get drunk sniffing it.

  The meal passed by pleasantly: the food was delicious and Colin had made polite conversation about his travels in Europe. The biggest problem Jess faced was wondering if she’d be able to finish all four courses, as her dress became tighter and tighter with each bite she took.

  Roger seemed to have turned his attention equally to the young blonde waitress refilling his wine glass, and the singer on stage dressed in a shiny sequin number. Jess was just pleased that he’d finally taken her hints. She’d spent the night leaning further and further away from him every time he’d leaned in to talk to her.

  Jess couldn’t get thoughts of Jake and the mystery Elodie out of her head. By the time they came to the coffee course, Jess couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to do some digging about Jake.

  She desperately wanted to ask Roger who Elodie was. He’d continued drinking the wine on the table, and he was well and truly wasted. She wondered if she could do some subtle digging, as she didn’t think he’d remember in the morning.

  A little part of her didn’t want to know who Elodie was, in case she was Jake’s wife or girlfriend. She wanted to cling on to the idea that she was an elderly relative or his mom, or maybe his daughter.

  ‘So,’ Jess struggled with how she’d drop it into conversation. ‘Does Jake have these emergencies a lot?’

  What the hell, Roger was so drunk there was hardly any need for subtlety.

  ‘Yeah, now and then, it depends on Elodie.’

  Helpful, thought Jess. ‘So who is Elodie, his daughter, his girlfriend?’

  Jess’ voice wobbled on the word girlfriend. But before Roger could answer the room erupted into applause as Serena Brook took to the stage. The room went so silent that you could have heard a pin drop, and then she launched into her most famous hit, Always will.

  Roger was never going to answer now. Jess looked around the ballroom and everyone was transfixed by the amazing live vocals. The moment of asking Roger had well and truly passed.

  Jess started to feel sad. Always Will had been one of those songs that she’d played over and over on repeat when it had first come out. She remembered trying to explain to Katie how the lyrics to her were like they were written for her and Benjy. Just like the lyrics in the song, she ‘always will’ love Benjy, no matter what. It was the reason she couldn’t walk away from him after she discovered he’d been unfaithful with Rachel, or when he always on insisted on going on tour with his dead end band.

  Jess excused herself from the table and took refuge in the nearest toilets she could find. She forced herself not to cry. For years she’d been willing her life with Benjy to change, and now it had she was pining for it.

  She couldn’t take it anymore; she had to get back to the hotel. She decided that no one would miss her now that the main act had started; certainly not Roger in his drunken state.

  Jess slipped out of the ballroom. She cursed under her breath as she noticed Roger hanging around the Silver Corridor outside. He was the last person she wanted to see, and especially when she was on her own. And then she saw Jilly at his side.

  Her body language was totally different to earlier. She was practically hanging off his arm and rubbing his chest. Jess sidestepped behind a pillar, hoping they wouldn’t see her.

  ‘Roger, you can tell me about this deal; it will be our little secret.’

  ‘Jilly, you tease, you kn
ow I can’t tell you,’ said Roger as they passed by. He opened the ballroom door for Jilly to go through and he patted her on the bottom as she passed. She gave a coquettish giggle and Roger chased after her, looking like the cat who had got the cream.

  Jess shook her head in disbelief at Jilly. But then she realised that with Jilly occupying him, at least Roger would never notice she was gone.

  Jess sighed loudly with relief when she got into her hotel room. She picked up the snow globe, shook it and watched the snow fall. She tried to hold back her tears; it was all too confusing. What she needed was a long hot soak in the tub. She needed to forget all about Jake and Benjy.

  She somehow managed to unzip herself from the amazing dress and stepped out of it. She wiped the make up off her face, before scrubbing it with soap and water. She carefully removed the pins from her hair and tugged the matted hairsprayed mess down.

  As her bath was running she went back into the bedroom and saw her Blackberry flashing. She had a sudden rush of butterflies that it might be Jake. And then she suddenly hoped he didn’t want to see her now as she’d undone two hours of getting ready time in the space of five minutes.

  She unlocked the screen and saw it was a new email; it was from Eric.

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: 09/08/ Time: 21:56

  Dear Jess,

  Nice to hear from you. Glad you are getting on well in the UK. Things are great with me. I’m married with two kids and live in Madison.

  What a good memory of yours to remember my aunt and uncle were from Jiangxi province. They still live there and we go probably every couple of years to visit them. As far as I know there isn’t, and there are no plans to put, a dam on Poyang Lake. I skyped my uncle just to check.

  Also the Google maps are usually pretty accurate with their maps, too. Just Google the Gobi Desert Google maps to see!

  Do let me know if you need any more information.

  All the best,

  Eric

  Jess stopped and stared at the screen. There was no dam. She shut off the bath and slipped on the robe whilst she dug out her SinoDam files and flashed up her laptop.

  She read the company information again, and there plain as brass was the Jiangxi province dam; it was one of their largest projects. It had recently been completed and was about to start producing a huge amount of electricity powering thousands of homes and businesses. It had been seven years in the making, apparently. It was all there in black and white.

  Jess couldn’t believe that no one at LMG had checked the details. She could see from her notes that she had visited one of the smaller plants outside Shanghai on a recce, but how could she have not checked on the existence of the other plants? Surely this had to ring alarm bells with someone.

  She looked at the clock: 11pm. Another four or five hours and she could phone the offices at LMG Global in the UK. All the people she knew from the New York office were at the ball, and judging by the state that Roger was in when she’d left, he’d be in no fit state to help. She didn’t think she would get very far in her dishevelled state trying to convince him not to invest in SinoDam whilst he was busy schmoozing Jilly and listening to Serena Brook.

  She tried Jake’s number on the off chance, but she got his voicemail message. She decided instead to do her own research. Compile all the information she knew about SinoDam and cross check it with information on Google Maps. Jess was convinced that Clarity were going to bring down SinoDam. If she could just convince her LMG colleagues not to go to the meeting, and therefore not invest in SinoDam, there was just a chance they’d keep themselves out of whatever Clarity were going to publish.

  Chapter 31 – Jessica Anderson

  Jessica hesitated outside the door of the apartment. She wondered if there was anything she could have pretended to have left behind, that would give her a reason to go back in and pick up the phone. She couldn’t leave Jake hanging round waiting for her. Even if she had to sneakily text from the toilet of the restaurant, that had to be better than not sending anything at all.

  ‘Come on, we’ve got a reservation to get to.’

  ‘I might just grab a cardigan.’

  ‘Why? It’s boiling outside. Plus we’re only going a few blocks to Angelo’s. And you know they don’t really do air-con.’

  Jessica couldn’t come up with another suggestion that would have sounded believable. She resigned herself to the fact that she would be going to the restaurant without her phone.

  Jessica hurried out of the apartment block, flinging the door open and desperately scanning the street for town cars. She knew deep down it was too early for Jake to pick her up, but bumping into him with Benjy in tow would have been a disaster.

  Even though she didn’t feel married in her head Katie had been right; she had cheated on her husband. And she didn’t really want Benjy to find out.

  Walking down the street, Jessica was rigid with fear as cars passed them; she was terrified that it would be Jake and that there would be some sort of confrontation.

  Benjy went to take Jessica’s hand and she practically jumped out of her skin.

  ‘What’s gotten in to you?’

  ‘Nothing, why?’ she said, trying to put some calm into her voice.

  ‘You’re acting really weird.’

  ‘Am I? Sorry, I guess perhaps the champagne went to my head.’

  ‘Are you sure there isn’t more than that? You didn’t have plans this evening, did you?’

  Jessica looked at Benjy curiously. She wondered just how much Katie had told him. Had she told him about the kiss with Jake? The whole idea of Katie and Benjy being good friends was slightly unnerving as she now didn’t feel that she had a confidante in Katie.

  ‘No, no plans. I’d just been out for a run this afternoon and was showering before you came home.’

  ‘A run? Wow, this week you really have had a personality transplant.’

  Jessica’s cheeks flushed red; she was such a bad liar. She could have said anything other than running. Not only was it almost 100 degrees in the heat, but she didn’t run, either. At least it was reassuring to know she didn’t run in this life, either.

  ‘Well, I won’t be doing it again in a hurry.’

  ‘You don’t need to go for a run anyway, you look beautiful as you are.’ He leant over and placed a kiss on the top of her head.

  Jessica willed herself to relax. She took Benjy’s hand and she tried to push all thoughts of Jake and their magical night to the back of her mind.

  Jessica allowed the waiter to pull the chair away for her before she sat down, and thanked him as he pushed her towards the table. The restaurant looked perfect for a cosy romantic meal.

  It was a small Italian-American restaurant and was just how she would picture it from that description. The tablecloths were red-and-white checks, with wine bottles for candle holders. The lighting was dim and there were trees covered in fairy lights twinkling in corners. Painted murals of rustic Italian hills and Tuscan houses covered the walls. The music was clichéd, playing rat-pack classics. But somehow it didn’t feel like a cliché.

  In normal circumstances, Jessica would be moved by the romantic ambience. But she couldn’t relax. She knew that Jake would be stopping by the apartment any minute now to pick her up. It was miles out of his way to do so, but he’d said his company had allocated them all town cars and that he might has well get his money’s worth.

  She fiddled nervously with her wedding ring, something she’d noticed she’d been doing over the last few days. It was as if she thought it had magical powers to wind back time or somehow give her back her memories that she’d lost.

  ‘I can’t believe we haven’t been back since our first anniversary,’ said Benjy, peering over the top of the menu.

  Jessica smiled and nodded, unable to lie about it. She wondered what they had done for their other five anniversaries.

  ‘I walked passed here the other day and saw i
t hadn’t changed. I love that. Everything’s always changing in the city, and this place is exactly the same. There’s something comforting in that.’

  Jessica knew exactly what Benjy meant. She would have taken comfort in something being familiar and unchanging, too, based on the week she had had.

  ‘What are you going to have?’ he asked.

  Jessica had been scanning the menu for minutes, but in reality had been too busy thinking to have read it.

  ‘I think I’ll just go for the chicken parm,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Just like the last time. I better have the linguine del mar,’ he said, laughing.

  Jessica wondered if this was what the rest of her life was going to be like. Everyone around her knowing about her life and her having no clue. Whenever she passed people on the street she’d never know entirely if they were complete strangers or if she’d encountered them before. Or she’d never know whether she’d been to a place before, or what she’d done there if she had been. It was a thought that scared her.

  The waiter set down the bottle of wine that Benjy had ordered, and after Benjy tasted it the waiter poured them two generous glasses.

  ‘Here’s to us, going back to how happy we were on our first anniversary,’ said Benjy, raising his glass to hers.

  ‘To us,’ said Jessica, chinking his glass and taking a small sip. Benjy was looking at her and a feeling washed over her; it was the same feeling that washed over her when she watched him on stage. ‘We were happy then, on our first anniversary?’ Jessica wasn’t sure whether she meant it as a statement or a question.

  Benjy’s head fell to the side and he looked almost sad. ‘I know, it seems a million miles away sometime, doesn’t it? I mean, we’d just moved into the apartment and I guess it was before we got the band back together. We were talking about living there for six months and moving out of the city.’ He laughed and shook his head.