Love Me, Love Me Not: An addictive psychological suspense with a twist you won’t see coming. Katherine Debona
doing what it was we both loved and finally, finally sharing our bodies as well as our minds. But there was always this doubt in my mind about whether it could last. Always the fear he was becoming jealous in some way of what I had achieved, that he knew the awe I had for him was slowly fading.
So I did what any dutiful girlfriend would. I slipped into a gown made of midnight satin, painted my face into a smile and walked into a room screaming with money.
Hedge funders. Even more ostentatious than investment bankers, with an extra layer of gloss on everything. My boss may have had a house in Chelsea and an extra one in the country just for weekends, but this was a world of private jets and Swiss bank accounts. They were like the cool kids at school. Sleek, polished and completely untouchable. It was what I wanted, what I was aiming towards, but it was Patrick they had invited, not me.
I found him at the bar, deep in conversation with one of the fund’s managing partners.
‘Hello,’ I said, placing a kiss at the edge of Patrick’s mouth. ‘So sorry I’m late. I’m Jane.’ I turned to his companion, offered him my hand in greeting, and he lifted it to his lips, held on to it a moment longer, then let me go.
‘There’s two of them?’ He was looking at me with amusement from behind a pair of frameless glasses.
‘Two of who?’ I asked, taking a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.
And that’s when I saw her. Wrapped up tight in scarlet sequins that glittered with every tiny movement. I saw her head thrown back to expose the line of her throat as she laughed at what someone next to her was saying. I saw how everyone around her was unable to look away, unable to focus on anything else in the room.
Including him. Including Patrick.
‘What’s she doing here?’ I held tight to my glass, tried to use it to stop my hands from shaking.
‘Apparently she’s screwing my business partner. But better keep quiet as his wife’s here somewhere.’ The fund manager was watching her too, a predator stalking its prey. One more prize for him to collect. One more sign that he was better than everyone else and it made my insides curl. She wasn’t some trophy men could compete for. She wasn’t some symbol of their success.
‘Patrick, give some thought to what we discussed, but I’ll need an answer before the end of the week. Pleasure to meet you, Jane.’ Then he was gone. Gathered up by someone else who wanted a piece of his fortune.
‘He offered you a job?’ I attempted to sound nothing more than surprised, but we both knew my words were laced with jealousy.
‘He did.’ Patrick tapped his signet ring against the stem of his own glass. ‘Apparently he read my paper on the role of information in debt crises and thought it was masterful.’
A paper I helped him write, but that little detail seemed to have escaped my boyfriend’s attention. Everything but her. Even then, even when he was supposed to be sharing his news with me, he couldn’t help but let his eyes drift back to her.
‘You can’t work for him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Since when have you wanted to do anything other than prove to the world how incredibly clever you are?’ Since when was he willing to sacrifice his whole moral code, become the very person he claimed to despise?
‘I thought you’d be pleased for me.’
‘I am, it’s just…’
‘Just what, Jane? We’re turning into some kind of ridiculous Fifties’ sitcom, except I’m the housewife sitting at home, waiting for her husband to come back and enjoy the dinner she’s made.’ He didn’t even bother to hide the contempt in his voice. Didn’t bother to conceal the bitterness behind his words. Bitterness aimed at me, at the way I had made him feel.
‘It won’t be for much longer. Everyone knows the first year is a killer, but once I’ve closed this deal, once I’ve proved myself…’ I laid my hand on his shoulder, but he stepped aside.
‘Because you always have to prove yourself, don’t you? Prove how much better than the rest of us you are.’
He drained his glass, slammed it down on the nearest table and walked away. As he manoeuvred his way through the crowd she noticed him, raised her hand to beckon him over, and he changed direction, went instead to her. She stepped back to let him into her circle, stepped back to find me watching.
The time-space continuum crap everyone goes on about. That we all begin and end at a certain point. And here was my defining moment in all its fucking glory. The second I realised it was pointless even to try and compete with her because, really, why bother when all the odds are so stacked against you? Mathematical probability at its finest. But understanding something doesn’t make it any easier to accept.
So I left. Went back to the office in my beautiful gown. The same one Elle had gifted me for a school leavers’ ball. The same one I had worn the night I first kissed Patrick.
‘Are you okay?’ I lifted my head from my desk to see one of my fellow graduate trainees standing over me.
Carter. A man with eyes as dark as his intentions and hands that looked as if they could keep me up all night.
‘I was about to make some tea,’ he said, and I imagined him trailing those hands along the length of my spine. ‘Can I tempt you with yet more caffeine?’
I sat back in my chair. Crossed and uncrossed my legs, watched him watching the movement. ‘Did you know the Chinese often offer tea as an apology.’
‘Are you saying I’ve done something wrong?’ He perched on the edge of my desk, close enough for me to taste him in the air between us.
‘I’m saying that maybe I want you to.’
His eyes narrowed, but there was a wrinkle of lips that told me what I needed to know.
‘So what’s really going on? Why are you sitting here looking ever so delicious in that dress instead of being appreciated by whoever you put it on for?’
I stared at him. Tried to concentrate on the scar above his top lip. Tried to imagine what it would be like to wake up next to someone other than Patrick.
‘What if the Universe showed you the one thing you’d always wanted, the one thing that would make you happy, then refused to let you have it?’ I swallowed my tears, didn’t trust them ever to stop if I let even one of them go. ‘Just dangled it in front of you like some fucking carrot but never let you get close. Kept it there in your peripheral vision. The very epitome of look but don’t touch.’
‘I bet no matter where you were, you still wouldn’t feel like you fitted in. But who wants to, really?’ He reached out, traced a finger along the back of my arm as he bent down to kiss me just behind my ear. ‘We’re all alone, but some of us deal with it a whole lot better.’
I liked him. No pretence, no bullshit, no trying to impress. He was comfortable with who he was yet had no desire to flaunt it. And he wanted me.
Two hours later I walked into the place I was supposed to call home with the stench of Carter between my legs. Patrick was waiting for me, holding on to a bunch of yellow roses already beginning to wilt in the fetid atmosphere. A kind of symbol, as it were, of how rotten our relationship had become, because I chose to leave instead of staying, instead of laying claim to what was mine.
‘I slept with someone,’ I said as his eyes slid over mine.
‘Well,’ he replied, his face slackening. ‘I guess that changes things somewhat.’
Ivy: Eternity, fidelity and strong affection
New Forest, six and a half years