It's turning into another one of those days, when there aren't classes at the gym hard enough to take Gemma's mind off Queen Bees.
Hari's not been herself today, and Hari not being herself has made Gemma realise how much she's come to rely on her assistant pulling her weight. Hari's spent almost all morning making a complete hash of the Paris expenses, a job that would normally take her about thirty minutes because whatever Dylan says about her, Hari is actually very good with spreadsheets.
Meanwhile Vikas and Frank are taking advantage of Geoff's absence to indulge in a little extra due diligence. They've been asking for another month's worth of production and sales figures, all of which need to be combed through before they are released so yes, Gemma could do with Hari getting on with expenses, and then with helping the Queens of Operations spot check wax production figures against the corresponding shipping documents.
Also there's a purchase order waiting on Gemma's desk, already signed by Agnes, who can't wait for Gemma to do the same. It commits Queen Bees to the purchase of an AI warehousing unit, and to an order fulfilment contract over three years, at a very competitive price.
To put it another way this purchase order commits Queen Bees to spending money it hasn't actually secured yet. Not officially anyway, though everyone at Montage assures Gemma that it's a done deal.
Everyone at Montage, that is, but for Geoff, who is forbidden from accessing his email while on his corporate governance blackout break.
Well may Dylan make fun of Gemma's fear of commitment, but this is one not even he would rush into. Not that he's been in touch of late: "PnL fine", my high heeled foot: the man must be losing money hand over fist.
Meanwhile Agnes is still completely obsessed with going ahead, she's been dreaming of gliding hydraulic arms at night. Even Gemma's Dad thinks the warehouse is a bargain and a great synergy that Montage are bringing to the table.
Of course it is. These French guys really are giving Queen Bees a very good price. But still, should anything derail Montage's investment, where would Gemma and Agnes find the money?
Bah, why should anything derail Montage's investment? Everything's fine and the latest numbers, if she can check them over in good time, are actually better than projected. All will be well.
x
There are two kinds of decisions in life. There are some, very rare, occasions where waiting is the best course of action, waiting to find out more about a situation, to accumulate data. Or as in Montage's case, when you have to wait for sign off for completely unavoidable external reasons, like corporate-governance-mandated email blackouts.
Gemma's current predicament is of the opposite kind. Sitting on this decision isn't going to increase her confidence in what she does, or indeed help change her mind. She already knows all she needs to know about the AI Warehousing guys – including that they all are guys. She has spent the last few days – and a few nights - poring over their insurance contracts, talking to their bankers and getting guarantees of their credit rating and liquidity reserves.
Technically, these guys know what they are doing. Legally, they have the deeds of the actual unit they are going to give over to Queen Bees. Financially, they are not going bankrupt any time soon. These are the only risks one takes signing a purchase contract this size, and Gemma has quantified these risks, and they are nil. If anything the risks are all on the French guys side: selling to Queen Bees when Queen Bees haven't secured financing yet.
There is no good reason, in other words, not to sign this purchase order, and Gemma determines that she will do so as soon as she gets back to her desk. Perhaps the gym session has helped clear her mind after all. And she bumped into Frank again, but he behaved himself this time, whilst also promising to stop behaving himself as soon as Geoff came back from his break and signed on the dotted line. Gemma's still trying to work out how she would feel about that when a vaguely familiar voice makes her stop and turn.
"Ms Woodhouse?"
Oh.
"Ms Fairfax…"
Jane Fairfax does not look well. Her skin, though still flawless, is more ashen than porcelain. Her eyes are red and her voice more croaky than sultry.
"Did you just bump into him again?" Jane says, miming sarky quotation marks. Gemma could feign incomprehension, but the pain on Jane's face stops Gemma from egging her on, tempting though it is.
"If you mean Frank then yes, we still both go to the same gym at lunchtime. But don't worry, we'll make up for it. I'm sure we'll both be working late tonight."
"Is that what they call it these days?"
"Excuse me?!"
There's never been enough pain on anyone's face for them to get this rude - or this vulgar. But instead of apologising Jane sighs, and shakes her head and pulls a vengeful hand from her coat pocket to shove her phone screen into Gemma's face. Gemma steps back and takes a look.
What on earth is that doing there?
"Nice shot, artsy, yeah? Was it your idea, you posh bird?" Jane spits. Gemma is staring at the picture of herself being kissed by Frank in front of Paris's Hotel de Ville. On Jane Fairfax's phone.
"This… Jane, you were pulled off your investigation over a week ago now, this is an invasion of my privacy! I'm not putting up with it this, I'm warning you,"
"Fuck off, Miss Woodhouse, I didn't even have to hack this. He sent it to me," Jane interrupts. Then her voice rises as she says it again: "He sent it to me. To me! That's what he did, the absolute fucking two-timing French bastard! Do you get me, fucking Little Miss fucking Woodlouse, do you get this?" she cries, waving her phone with one hand and with the other pointing at her sorry, shouty, despondent self, "Do you?"
"Jane, Jane calm down. Do you need a drink of water? What's going on?"
"You tell me, Sweetie."
"Sweetie?"
Gemma raises a forbidding eyebrow, and Jane shuts up and looks down. Seriously, there are limits to what Gemma will take, even from a sister and therefore Queen in evident distress.
"OK, so… look, I've no idea why Frank would send that to you. As far as I can figure it was some sort of… joke, I'm not quite sure, to be honest with you. He must have sent it to you in error."
But, come to think of it, for him to send it to anyone but herself is not cricket, not cricket at all. And for Jane to get this enraged over it, why? It ties in with all those questions Jane asked about him, weekend before last, on Hampstead Heath. But it still makes absolutely no sense.
"I don't get why you're so upset about it, Jane, didn't you say you liked women?"
Jane nods at the pavement, then shakes her head, then sniffles, then says, miserably:
"Turns out I like women and him."
Gemma could repeat to Ms Fairfax what she said to Hari on the train back, about sexual orientation not being a binary thing, but there are too many questions to go into that right now, such as:
"When… how… how long, I mean when?"
"If you must know we literally met in a pub, six months ago. The Lord Weymouth, on Jermyn street. I was tailing someone there, Frank distracted me and…"
"And then he hired you to investigate us?"
Jane nods:
"And then he whisks you off to Paris and he…. I fucking knew it, that night you took us all out, I knew he had a thing for you," she sighs.
"I'm sorry, Jane. I really don't think… I mean I know this photo looks bad but…"
"It doesn't look bad, it looks fucking fantastic is what it looks like."
Gemma is of course flattered, but:
"But it really is more of a joke than anything else. Nothing happened, really, that was literally it, half a sec, if that, and obviously I had no idea you and he... I would never, I mean as I said I did not initiate this," she says pointing at Jane's phone, "but if I'd known about you and him I never would have…. I'm sorry, Jane, I really am," she says, extending a hand to Jane's shoulder.
Jane shrugs her off, then looks back at her, her eyes filled with equal doses of hatred and suspicion:
"You're saying this is all that happened?"
"Of course, Jane! I do have standards, you know. I realise this is strictly speaking in breach of them but I assure you I neither have, nor ever had, any intention to have anything but a professional relationship with Frank until the deal is signed."
Jane is still staring at her, mad-eyed. After a while she says:
"Until the deal is signed? Until your fucking deal is fucking signed?!"
A few passers-by rubber neck as they walk by.
"… and until Frank assures me he is single, obviously," says Gemma. "Sorry. And then we'll see, but I can assure you that I would never…"
"Gosh you are a fucking bitch and a half, aren't you?"
"Excuse me?"
"Queen fucking bee, hey? Queen bucking bee-otch, more like. You've so got it coming."
"What? What do I have coming?"
Jane shoots her a look that would have killed anyone made of less stern stuff, and walks off.
x
Gemma is still wondering what just happened when her phone rings. It's Dylan. Now, of all times, he's calling her back:
"You and I, the coffee shop by your building. Now."
"Wow, Dyl, some of us have…"
"I really don't care. I'm most of the way there. See you soon."
He's hung up. She stares at her screen but no, he doesn't ring back. She toys with popping upstairs first to go and gather herself and sign that purchase order, but decides to go instead and purchase-order the coffee she badly needs, before she has to deal with whatever Dylan's struggling to deal with today.
She pushes the door into London's tiniest café. It's not terribly nice inside, but the coffee's good and above all it's not a chain. Rafik, the owner, is originally from Lebanon and his children go to the French school across the park in South Ken. He's just finished pouring the oat froth on Gemma's cappuccino, and catching her up on the progress of his youngest daughter, when Dylan strides in, orders a double espresso without so much as a how do you do to poor Rafik, and motors on down to the furthest table at the back.
Gemma waits for both their drinks to be ready, and carries them to the table.
"Dylan, that wasn't very nice."
"Was it not, now?"
That "now" was pure Belfast, either Dylan's extremely pissed off or… well, who is she kidding? He's beyond irate.
What is it with people today?
"OK Dyl, what's up?"
"What's up? What the fuck, Gemma, what the actual fuck?"
"What have I done now..."
He stares at her as if she's mad. He certainly looks mad. Really mad. She racks her brains but she can't remember seeing him like this before. It's not pretty but she can't look away either. It's bizarrely compelling.
"OK have a think, Gem, go on."
"Dylan, I don't know. Believe it or not it's been rather busy since we got back from Paris so why don't you save us both time and just tell me."
He stares at her.
"You can't think of anything?"
"I can't, no, but you usually can," she says, checking her watch and starting to get more than a bit annoyed. It's not like she didn't have enough on her plate already this afternoon, without Jane and then him having a go at her: "So what have I done this time?"
"OK, OK well let's start with Martin: he's been a right moping pain in the ass all morning and I finally got him to spit out why. Turns out Hari went and dumped him last night, but something tells me this is all your doing."
Gemma can't help but laugh.
"OK Dylan, flattered though I am that you'd give me the credit for this, how can Hari have dumped Martin when they never got together in the first place? He's never even kissed her for God's sake!"
"And you know this because?"
"I know because she told me, because I listen."
"Oh I bet you do, Gemma, I bet you do. I've seen you listen to people. Never to me, of course, but... did you or didn't you tell her to friend-zone him?"
"OK first of all Dylan, I don't think people their age use the term friend-zone anymore. Don't ask me what they use instead but anyway, again, I don't see how someone as nice as Hari can have said anything to hurt someone who was only ever her friend in the first place."
"Martin did not want to be her friend and you know it, Gem. Like you said, your radar's pretty good when you want it to be."
"Thank you."
"That was not a compliment, Gemma. You are the most snobbish, manipulative, meddlesome b-" he stops himself, "person I've ever met. I don't even know why…"
He stops, shakes his head at his coffee and pushes it to one side.
"I really don't know why you'd think I had anything to do with it," Gemma says, "not that I would have advised Hari against it, mind, if she had indeed asked for my opinion."
"Yeah right, you had nothing to do with it. Is that why she went on to Martin about respecting all forms of non-binary sexuality and a-sexuality?"
"That sounds rather enligh…."
"No, Gem, that sounds like the kind of woke bullshit you'd come up with."
"I'm glad Hari feels that way, that's all. Why you have a problem with…"
"I don't, OK?! I have no problem, no problem at all with anyone's sex or non-sex lives but Martin is very much not gay, OK? He's not a-sexual either and you know it. How could you have made her think that?"
"Look, when a single woman wears that dress and then shares a cab home with a single man and nothing happens, then the woman's within her rights to conclude the man's not interested."
"Oh, so now we're supposed to jump onto you ladies based on how much you wear? I'm sure sorry I missed that memo."
"I was not referring to the length of her skirt," Gemma hastens to correct, "merely to the fact they coordinated their ridiculous outfits." Phew, good catch, Dyl almost had her there.
Almost.
He stares at her, an intense, angry stare, but she returns it as calmly as she can, and she can. Her heart may be dancing the most dreadful syncopated jig right now, while her stomach is busy tying itself into knots but her face, unlike his, is calm. He opens his mouth to speak and closes it again two or three times. In the end he dials the anger down a bit and goes with:
"Look, Gemma, you know perfectly well that Martin's shy. He's just a shy guy with a very big voice, that's all it is. Hari's pretty and he thinks that he's not, and so he's shy generally but even more so around her. I don't see what's so wrong with that. Isn't that what Darcy's supposed to be all about in the end?"
Gemma laughs. Actually laughs, which she realises is a mistake but seriously?
"Oh Dylan! I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, but Martin's no Mr Darcy. Martin's the wrong side of plain, if you ask me."
"I see. So being plain and a ginge would have made Darcy an idiot not worth marrying?"
Gemma really hates it when Dylan throws a killer argument in the middle of a perfectly good fight.
"Look, if we can leave Fitzwilliam Darcy out of the equation here for a minute, you can't blame Hari if she thinks her prospects are better elsewhere."
"Do you mean with Vikas? And whose suggestion would that be?"
"Her own conclusion entirely, I assure you."
"Nothing to do with you being there on the train back from Paris to help her reach that conclusion?"
"I listened, that is all, but I'm rather proud of her for…"
"Jesus, Gemma!" Dylan shouts, slamming his hand down onto the table.
Gemma sits back and freezes, while Rafik tactfully decides to pump up the volume on Oum Kalthoum and get on with steaming out his espresso machine. Nothing to see here. Dylan briefly locks eyes with him before turning back to Gemma:
"Jesus, Gemma, just because you've decided it's OK to chuck me like some old dishrag doesn't mean you have to ruin everyone else's chance at happiness, you know," he says between gritted teeth.
"That is so unfair! I'm not spoiling anything for anyone! In so far as Hari's confided in me I do support her in her decision, that's true. Having seen them together I'm sure she can be very happy with Vikas, when the time comes. Would you rather she strung Martin along?"
Also there's another thing that's unfair, though she doesn't say it because now's not the time to remind Dylan. But last time Gemma checked it took two people to argue, and therefore it wasn't just her who had "chucked" Dylan, and certainly not like an old dishrag. It was also vice versa, for crying out loud!
But Gemma makes a herculean effort not to cry out loud and Dylan, for once in his male privileged life, where both shouting and slamming tabletops are perfectly acceptable ways to vent, Dylan also makes an effort:
"Look, I'd just rather you let them work things out for themselves, instead of writing Martin off on looks."
"And dress sense. Come on, Dylan, that whole dressing up thing, don't tell me you condone…?"
"I don't give a shit, OK? I don't give a flying fuck, or a rat's arse, or a monkey's fart or a… for fuck's sake live and let live for once in your life, Gemma! He's a great guy, Hari would be lucky to have him!"
"What? She would not! I may be snobbish at times, Dylan, but you've just been extremely patronising towards Hari and believe me that's not a good look either."
He shakes his head at her, then looks down at their coffees. Both have long turned cold: what a waste of Rafik's efforts, of the coffee beans he sources especially, God knows where. What a waste of conversation, of time together. What a waste of years of friendship and…
"Hey, come on now, is the fund losing a lot of money?"
"What? No it's fine."
"Good."
"Nice try, Gem. Now are you going to talk some sense into Hari?"
"What? No, of course not. I told you, this is her decision. A decision I fully support but…"
"So you don't care that Martin's crushed?"
Gemma thinks about it and shrugs.
"That's hardly my fault, is it? It's not as if I can do anything about it."
"Can too: you can talk some sense into Hari. Please. She worships you and she still likes Martin, and you know it. You and I may not get it, but they do like each other."
Gemma shakes her head. Of course Dylan is right and Hari still likes Martin. In hindsight, that's probably why she's been so useless all morning. But that does not give Dylan the right to tell her, Gemma, to tell her assistant who to friend-zone and who not to friend-zone.
"I don't see why I should. I'm sorry."
"Gemma?"
"Dylan?"
"Gemma Woodhouse?"
"Yes, Dylan Mann: you can full-name me all you like, I'm not in the business of telling people what to do. Unlike you. I thought you knew that about me by now."
It's Dylan's turn to laugh, and Gemma's turn not to like it much.
Not that Dylan's is a happy laugh, mind. It's a laugh more bitter than cod-liver-flavoured tears.
"Yeah, well I thought I knew you once, Gem, but you're right, turns out I didn't. I always knew you were snobbish, and manipulative and pig-headed with it too, but I never thought you were mean."
"What?!"
There's leaden silence while she stares at Dylan, horrified, and he stares at his hands on the table. He won't even look at her.
Well, no wonder, after what he said: how dare he? Mean? She had nothing but Hari's best interest at heart and he knows it, and this is all… this is all wounded ego on his side, because he can't get her to kow-tow to him on this either. It's the old story all over again, Dylan likes her provided she agrees with him but sometimes she won't and now he's confusing Martin's pain with his own pain and whatever he thinks of her no, she does not enjoy causing any of that pain, to either of these men, but she's not going to betray who she is or, more importantly, who Hari can be, in order to appease either of them.
Gemma is well past despairing of Dylan when he does the last thing she'd have expected of him at this juncture, and especially given the number of times he's mocked her symbiotic relationship with her phone. He pulls his out of his pocket and starts swiping away at it.
"Dylan, can I ask what's suddenly so pressing on your phone?"
"Wait."
"Since you ask so nicely..."
"There," he says, shoving his screen into her face. What is it with people doing this today? She moves her head back and his hand away until she can read the screen: there's her name and number there, and both her work and personal emails, and her address with a little square map with a red pin on it where Heath View Lodge is, and the icon is a picture of an ice gem cookie, or sweet, or whatever they are at about a million delicious E-number-infused calories per packet. And way down the bottom there's a line that says, in red:
Block Contact.
And Dylan's thumb is hovering over it. He's got beautiful hands, she noticed that straight away about him, as soon as he extended one out to grab her backpack on Helvellyn. He has long oval nailbeds that glow pink on his dark skin and she knows what those hands are capable of doing to her but now he's using his thumb to, what? Scare her? Threaten her?
"Is this it? Is it what we've come to? You're going to ghost me over this?"
"All I know is I can't do this anymore, Gem. Call it ghosting if you like but I'm not… this isn't working for me anymore, OK? You Whatsapping me at the end of your perfect evening strolling round Paris snogging your poncey hot French wanker isn't working for me. So shoot me."
He stares at her and then, before she can decide whether there is anything to explain and if so, how, before she can say anything at all, he does it. Blocks her. Ghosts her. Like that. Done.
"Bye, Gemma," he says, putting his phone back into the back pocket of his jeans, "Have fun with your French tosser and don't call me, OK? Don't call me or email me or contact me in any way when it all comes crashing down."
"Oh please, isn't that a little dramatic?"
"You tell me, Gemma. Or rather don't. Have a nice life."
He pushes against the table to stand up and walks out, this time greeting Rafik on his way out.
A Bee in her Bonnet is Copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved.