29. PAUL

The workday dragged by slowly. All day, bright sunlight filtered through the high windows of the office, and I let it fall on my face. It felt cleansing. My senses were patterned with the clatter of laptop keyboards and the murmur of voices in conversations both professional and friendly. I let it all swim around me, but when I next looked at the time, hardly any time had passed at all.

Yet, amidst it all, there was a notable absence – Jack. He went out to a meeting and did not return to the office. We were able to check each other’s diaries, but I did not know if that left some kind of trail of who had checked and when.

I didn’t want to check up on him. I didn’t want him to think I would do so. He was a busy guy. I was not his master. He didn’t need to tell me where he was.

But as the hours ground on, I found myself glancing expectantly at the office corridor whenever I thought someone was walking down it, half expecting to see Jack’s familiar figure appear. But he did not come back. I checked my phone to see if he had texted me, but he had not. I looked at my emails, and there was, in fact, an email marked:

JACK

I rushed to open it, but as soon as I read the opening greeting – “Hi, all!” – I realized it was not specifically for me.

Soon, the workday was coming to a close. I didn’t know if it was because Jack was not there, nor was the head of the office in London, but everyone seemed to rush to get out as close to 5:00 as they could. Long before six, the office was all but emptied of its inhabitants.

As I was thinking, too, of packing up and ready to go off, William came over to my desk.

“Hey, Paul, Laura has three gin-in-a-tins. Do you fancy sitting in Soho Square in the evening sun?”

“What’s a gin-in-a-tin?”

“It’s gin and tonic in a tin, ready mixed.”

I laughed.

“Oh, I see.”

Laura appeared with her bag slung over her shoulder. She retrieved a can from inside it and handed it to me.

“Do you have gin and tonic in the States?”

“Yes, we have gin and we have tonic. Sometimes we even have gin and tonic.”

William rolled his eyes at her.

“Dick.”

Laura shrugged. They were the sort of friends who could tease each other happily.

“The tin is cold,” I said.

Laura put a hand to the side of her mouth as if she were stage-whispering.

“I hid them in the refrigerator behind the bottles of kombucha.”

“What happens if someone takes a kombucha?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Never happens.”

***

The pale, golden sun of the very earliest part of the evening beckoned us to Soho Square. The lush greenery of the square appeared to be a tranquil sanctuary from the city’s overload, but in fact, the whole place rattled with chatter and laughter.

Big groups of young office workers and friends meeting up sat around in circles, sometimes drinking alcohol bought from local convenience stores or big mounds of shared Five Guys or supermarket sushi. The whole area echoed with their bright chatter, the sound bouncing off the four elegant sides of the square.

We settled on one of the few pieces of grass that were not already occupied. Nearby, strangers’ conversations boomed unencumbered by our arrival.

William and Laura flanked me, their faces aglow with camaraderie as Laura handed out the cans of gin and tonic.

“Shame we don’t have some lemon or lime,” I said.

William tapped the side of the can.

“Comes with it already in.”

I laughed.

“Modern science!” I joked.

“Don’t you work in AI?” Laura teased me.

“Oh, yeah.”

As we sipped the chilled beverages, the conversation was initially fairly good-natured but anodyne. They told me stories of who had said what about whom on their lunch break or which person had said something so stupid in such-and-such meeting that no one knew what to say back.

But then William and Laura started talking about Jack, asking where he had been all day. Their words danced with a knowing air, and I realized that their playful banter actually implied that I should know.

“Oh, I don’t know where he was. Did you check his diary?”

William fixed me with his eyes.

“Did you?”

“Me?” They traded glances. “What?” I asked.

William shrugged.

“Nothing.”

I looked at Laura. She shrugged, too.

“Nothing!”

I sighed. What were they hinting at?

“It feels more like something.”

Beneath the dappled light that fell through the huge trees of the square, I watched them and waited for them to say whatever they were going to say.

“Okay, I heard something,” Laura began. “And I don’t know if you care about Jack’s personal life or not.” She was prattling now. “I mean, I don’t even know if you have good reason to care about it, but if you do, I will tell you, but if you don’t—”

“Oh, just tell him!” William groaned, and she stopped and looked at me very directly.

“Okay.”

She said nothing for a moment.

“So?” I cried.

“I heard,” Laura began, “that back when Jack was in the Chicago office, there were whispers…”

“Whispers?” William added ironically.

“Okay, there was talk about Jack…about an affair.”

It felt like I had been hit round the head. What did that mean? And more to the point, why were they telling me? My mind raced, and I knew I did not want to reveal too much.

“I thought he was pretty happily married,” I said, knowing that that was not true.

Laura took a sip of her gin-in-a-tin.

“Darling, they all are, these handsome, successful guys.”

“Someone said that he is getting a divorce,” William said idly, taking a sip from his can of gin and tonic.

I sat there for a moment, unsure how much I could ask.

“So,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care too much, “what was the rumor?”

Laura’s gaze softened.

“I’m not sure,” she said, seeming a lot less confident. “It’s what I heard…”

William sighed.

“The rumor was that he had an affair with some guy in the Chicago office.”

I felt dumbstruck.

“A guy?”

“Yeah, there’s a guy who works in the Chicago office. I think his name is Ethan. Or Ewan. Or something.”

“But Jack isn’t gay.”

William gave me a very knowing look.

“Any hole is a goal, Paul,” he said. It was a joke, but it struck me very hard then.

I was in love with Jack, and perhaps I hoped that he might one day be with me. But now this seemed horrific, if true. He had made such a thing of this being his first time with a man, but if the rumor of this affair was correct, then he was lying.

“Is it true?” I asked, too urgently perhaps to conceal the truth of the situation.

William shrugged, but when he spoke, I could hear his kindness.

“Look, I don’t know if it’s true or not or if you care or not,” he began to say. His eyes moved to focus on mine. He was warning me not to get involved if I wasn’t involved already.

“I care,” I confessed.

William’s surprise mirrored my own, as if it had kind of all been a joke until suddenly it wasn’t.

“Are you sleeping with him?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Don’t ask me that.”

“Are you sleeping with him?” Laura asked, and I met her eyes. When I said nothing, she gasped. “Oh, Lord!”

“Is it true?” I asked.

William tried to act carefree.

“Probably not,” he said. “People make stuff up all the time, mainly out of jealousy or boredom.”

“Do you think it’s true?” I asked, and my London friends traded glances.

“Are you sleeping with him?” William asked.

“Yes,” I finally admitted.

He blew out through his teeth, a whistling sound of resignation.

“Then it might well be true. Do you need to protect yourself?”

For a second, I thought he was talking about condoms, but then I realized he was talking about my heart. I set my can down in the grass and moved closer to them, murmuring, “Look, you can’t tell anyone.”

William held up two fingers.

“Scout’s honor,” he said.

Laura did the same.

“Ditto.”

I could trust my new friends, but could I trust Jack?