It beggars belief how a guy this devious can have an apartment this neat. At first it makes her wonder whether this place too is a sham, somewhere he hires for show. It's impossibly tidy and tasteful, white and high ceilinged, with the odd touch of pale Georgian blue, likely chosen to set off Frank's eyes to their best advantage.
"Make yourself an acceptable corporate level of comfortable," he says when he's finished hanging her coat next to his on the back of the door.
They're continuing that banter game they started on the banks of the Seine: pretending they're not on a date. In her case pretending it's not a date isn't very difficult, what's become very difficult is pretending she's having any fun.
But she's not here for fun, obviously. She's here to attempt to separate Frank from his phone or iPad long enough to try and hack into them. To that effect she's remarked on the way over that if this were a date she'd be asking him about childhood pets and parents and siblings, but instead she's got to ask about them in the spirit of reciprocating the exhaustive background checks Jane Fairfax performed on herself and Agnes. Ha ha!
Frank gladly told her that his parents divorced when he was six, that he once had a goldfish named Valentin, and has no siblings. His long family name is only a concatenation of his father's surname and his mother's maiden name.
So Valentin might be a goer, eight characters too, convenient. But Deleglise is probably not part of his password. She's going to need his mum's birthday next – and some quality time with his iPad.
"Come and talk shop with me in the kitchen," Frank says, "it's nice and tiny in there."
She braces herself and follows him. The kitchen is indeed small, but immaculate. It smells of nothing, which is weird: Dylan's kitchen always smelt of something, be it coffee, or curry, or bleach, or pizza, or warm cinnamon and banana bread.
"Oh my God that looks amazing," she says when Frank produces a blue Le Creuset pan out of the fridge. It's the first sincere thing she's uttered since he waved at her at the gym.
"I get that a lot," he smiles, inches away from her face, "Now I've only got this one pack of green beans left to go with it, hope you don't mind? I don't really do carbs after six pm."
"Well, I'm not here for the food, this is business, right?"
She's attempting to hide a get-off-me-shudder behind a come-hither smile, while also wondering how many showers she's going to need to wash this evening off her skin.
"Just as well then," he says with a hungry, stomach-churning grin as he pops the beans into a pan next to the Le Creuset on the stove. It's not the first time he's given her that look, and every time he does her tummy responds in a desperately unpleasant manner.
She's almost certain it's pure revulsion, but a small lingering element of doubt makes it even worse because, unfortunately, being a complete and utter scumbag hasn't made Frank any less physically attractive. She's been trying to work out what he smells of, not that it's bad, on the contrary, but all she's come up with so far is that he smells too close. She's not usually a blusher but standing this close to him indoors is getting her cheeks a little hot.
She's not kicking herself about it though: Frank's probably too vain to think of her as anything but bumbling-because-smitten.
"Can I offer you a perfectly diarisable glass of wine?" he asks, pulling a bottle of white out of the fridge.
"Oh no, not on the job, thanks, but you go ahead."
He doesn't insist, but fusses over her glass of ice-and-lemon fizzy water, then pours his glass of wine before leading them back into the living room, where she makes a bee line for the photos on his mantelpiece. Bingo:
"This must be your mother, you have her eyes!"
He nods with an extra, non-diarisable spark in those very pretty eyes.
"Such a handsome woman, does she miss you being so far away? Do you go and see her often?"
"Couple of times a year. Limoges is a sod of a long way away."
"But there's direct flights, right? When did you go last?"
She mentally crosses her fingers and hopes he's not going to say Christmas, though odds are one to two that he will.
"I went in February, for her birthday."
Oh sweet lord, hallelujah! And also:
"Oh my God! My Mum was also born in February," she lies, "what year?"
"59,"
"Mine would have been four years older, what day though?"
"The fourteenth, Valentine's day: I'll leave you to imagine her first birthday after Dad left…"
For the first time this evening Frank is looking less than utterly pleased with himself.
"Oh dear, poor thing indeed."
"So yeah, I go back three times a year, and she calls me every evening. It's a matter of minutes now," he says with a jaded look at his watch, a nice Jaeger LeCoultre, "I'll try and make it quick but I can't promise anything."
"Oh no, that's all right, I mean, I still live with my father so…"
… so take your time, take the call in your bedroom and please leave your iPad somewhere obvious.
"You kidding? I'm going to tell her I'm in the middle of a business meeting with a singularly attractive young woman, and I can't possibly be interrupted."
"That would be lying on so many levels," Gemma says, a touch more wearily than she should. "And you should speak to your mum. She's lonely, that's all."
No, that's not all: your mother misses you because she loves you, unconditionally, for her sins, and you're so lucky she's still alive to miss you while you, Frank, you're such a jerk, please go away and talk to her so I can have some headspace.
And your iPad.
Frank seems lost in his own thoughts too, shaking his head while staring blankly at his gym bag.
"Oh crap," he says suddenly.
"What?"
"I can't – that is, will you excuse me?"
"Of course?"
Oh my God yes, yes please go away, whatever it is! But no, Frank seems to hesitate.
"Is everything OK?"
"This is embarrassing."
"Oh good!"
She means it, and surely he'll just take it as more teasing and flirting. Which it isn't.
Being Frank he does, of course, take it as flirting:
"I've just remembered I should put this away because sweaty gym kit hardly makes for a sound business-like setting…" he starts, grabbing his gym bag and, gloria and hosanna in excelsis, taking his iPad out of it!
Gemma refrains from swooning with delight as he sets it down on the mantelpiece: "…and that reminded me that I have a batch of laundry drying in the bathroom right now, and that I will literally die of shame if it's still there when you go and wash your hands for dinner."
"Don't want me to see your smalls?" Gemma asks. Inside she's doing a victory lap, while also thinking of all the ways in which she'd like to tear all of his no doubt pricey underwear to shreds, burn his entire gorgeous wardrobe, and then...
And then Frank's mouth is less than an inch away from her ear whispering:
"Oh, they're not small," before kissing her neck and vanishing into the bathroom. Gemma could take a moment to wonder whether the shiver that almost put her neck out is 100% pure disgust, or not, but there's absolutely no time to lose.
He's set the iPad face down, so she has to flip it first, but she tries to keep it in the exact same place, while talking to him through the bathroom door to try and get some warning of when he'll re-emerge.
"All nice and dry in there, I hope? Is there anything I can do to help?"
"You could talk to me about your smalls. I imagine they're very small indeed?"
Gemma refrains from retching and carefully tries 82536846, for Valentin. No joy.
"You do flatter me, Frank, my bum's a solid size 8," she says, and tries 14021959, followed by 1402, 140259 and 590214, and then flips the iPad back because nothing's worked and she doesn't want it to lock.
"Having extensively ogled at your bum in leggings, I think it's just as it should be," Frank is saying, the shameless deviant bastard. Who doesn't use their first pet or their nearest and dearest's birthday for their passcode? What an ungrateful son, on top of everything else. Gemma allows herself a moment of despair as she stares at his poor mother's photo.
"Hang on, Frank, I think I'd better go and check on the stove," she says, and goes to turn a despondent wooden spoon around the white stew in the Le Creuset pan. It has a delicious lemony smell, but she can't face having to stay and eat it now, and all for nothing. And having to put up with Frank's innuendos too - kisses even. Seriously, selfish smarmy bastard, whose birthday is he using?
But of course, his own! She pulls out her phone and opens Facebook, praying he will be on there. If he is, there can't be too many Frank Lacoline Deleglise to choose from. But hang on, how many Ls is it in Lacoline and is he using a space, a hyphen or nothing at all?
"Two Ls no hyphen," Frank says, reappearing behind her out of nowhere, and leaning over her shoulder to smell either his stew, or her hair. Suddenly it's the smell of too close that assaults her nostrils all over again, and she feels heat rise on her cheeks.
"Frankly I'm kind of disappointed you've not stalked me out before today, Gemma."
"I just remembered to check you didn't post that picture from Paris," she hastens to lie.
"Oh no, that's only gone onto my Insta."
"What?!"
He laughs his marvellous, confident laugh. One day, she promises herself, she will wipe that smile off his stupid gorgeous face for good.
"Don't worry I'm not on Insta and no, it's not on here either. I mostly use Facebook to laugh at my country cousins' posts and thank my lucky stars I left."
"Haha! Is this ready?" she asks, keen to change the subject now that she's got a hold of his Facebook page – and his birthday.
"Wow, you really have no clue about cooking do you?"
"None whatsoever."
In fact I am almost as clueless with a stove as you are in a medical emergency, she thinks as he rubs his chin against her temple. The smell of too close is now quite overpowering and the hair on her neck is standing on end.
"C'est mignon…"
He's back to whispering again, so she swivels on her heels and moves sideways and manages to re-establish almost a foot of distance between them. He's looking at her, but no longer smiling. Well, that's a result.
"You're right, Gemma," he sighs, "what are we doing?"
She stares at him thinking Me? Hey, I'm only trying to hack into your work emails. Hence she fails to come up with something sexy or even merely flirty to say to him.
"It would never work anyway," he says, shaking his head and stepping back a bit. She's relieved, but she still can't think of anything to say. Other than perhaps: too right it wouldn't, you lying crock of shite - which just wouldn't do. Frank leans back against the doorjamb.
"Sometimes I wonder whether it's me working for Montage you've got a problem with, or just me," he says to his glass, then drinks the last of it.
Again, there's not much to say other than: where do I even start?
"You've no idea how many times I've wondered whether you'd be letting me kiss you, if only I'd never had to go and step into your bloody office."
It's not a bloody office, it's a very nice one, and the dreadful thing is, it's entirely possible that yes, she would be letting him kiss her, even though he'd still be a complete shite and an utter bastard, only he'd be busy destroying a different company instead of Queen Bees and she'd be none the wiser about it. In fairness to Frank he does look quite put out about not kissing her right now, but it'd take a lot more than that for Gemma to feel sorry for him.
"Ah fuck, what do you know?" he says as his phone rings. "That woman! Trust me it's better if I take this now," he says, and walks off.
She presumes he means his poor mother and nods, and waits for the door to his room to close behind him, then makes a new beeline for his iPad. One go at his day and month of birth and what do you know: it unlocks. Add narcissistic to deviant lying two-faced and… and never mind the full list of epithets for now. His email is open. She keeps an ear on the muffled French coming out of his room and starts searching for Queen Bees.
But it turns out even that is too much of an ask. Montage knows them as QB. She's got to listen out for au revoir maman or bonsoir or bonne soiree while also going into Frank's sent emails and starting with those to Geoff.
It's not pretty. She takes pictures of his screen as she scrolls. Next door Frank is raising his voice, and then going aha, OK, aha... On his iPad there are tales of downsizing, cost cutting, sacking and rehiring, the same analysis she looks at every month, of what production centres are least and most profitable, some back and forth about how long, not whether, to hang on to herself. Some back and forth on whether it would be better for the brand to keep Agnes on the board, but make sure to "keep her from running anything". Another thread is about who they're going to sell the brand to when they're done stripping it of anything that makes it Queen Bees, and at what EBITDA multiple.
Frank is still talking next door. There's Jane Fairfax's invoice in there as well. Gemma's heart suddenly sinks with a thud and she stops snapping. This is real: all the horrible things she's been imagining day and night since Friday evening, here they all are, in glorious black and white, 12 point Helvetica.
She comes back out of Frank's Sent Items and scans his Inbox. Not much else sticks out there. A couple of incendiary personal emails from Jane Fairfax, referring to Gemma both by name, and by the most unrepeatable metaphorical language. She takes a picture of that too, for a bit of comic relief, then she switches the iPad off again, flips it back face down, and puts away her phone. There's a tear at the corner of her eye, which she hastens to wipe off. Well, what was she hoping to find there? Denial? Some kind of miracle?
She hears OK, a demain, and repairs to the kitchen to stir at the white lemony stuff again.
"Those beans are going to be cooked to death now, we might as well puree them."
"Can you do that to beans?"
"I was joking. Seriously, you're so cute."
"How was your mum?"
"A pain, and now she's ruined our dinner. As I kept telling her she would."
Frank looks genuinely annoyed about the beans. And he's standing too close to her again. Not touching, but still smelling too close.
"I should have stopped them, sorry. The stew looks OK though, right?"
He looks at her like he's trying to smile, but can't quite. It's by far and away the best look she's ever seen on him. She'd go as far as to call that look heart-breaking, if her heart weren't already broken by all the horrible things he's written to Geoff about her company, her life's work.
So if she had to call Frank anything at all right now, it would be a nice smelling, good looking, even better at cooking complete and utter two-faced tosser. And the sooner she can finish having dinner with the bastard the sooner she can get out of here:
"Surely you've got a bit of old bread somewhere we can reheat in the oven? Ditch the no carb rule for one night?"
"You're right."
It's a strange dinner. The stew is probably the best she's ever had. It tastes as light as it feels rich once it hits her stomach. And the warm bread is a real treat, because even re-heated, gluten-full bread is so much nicer than gluten-free. And yet she can hardly stomach any of it, and neither can Frank, by the look of it.
She's complimented him on his cooking a number of times, but for the rest conversation between them has all but dried up. He stares at her a lot, while she stares at her plate and rearranges small pieces of meat around the sauce and occasionally puts one in her mouth. Eventually she thinks to compliment him on his plates too, which are pleasantly wide flat things with a geometric trim in light blue and gold.
"Yeah, Limoges, obviously," he says.
"Obviously?"
"Kind of known for porcelain? No? Anyway they were part of my parents wedding set. The only two I managed to save from the great Valentines Day Plate Massacre of 1991."
"What a shame."
"Naah, what was I thinking? They're cursed, most stupid plates I could have thought to use on a date."
"Good job this wasn't a date then."
He tries to smile again, doesn't fully manage again, and again doesn't manage to rouse in Gemma a sympathy unmixed with white hot hatred. He may have given up on the banter game but she's still playing, and winning too, and there's more satisfaction in that than there should be, because she's about to lose just about everything else to him.
"I… think I'd better head home soon, Frank: it's a school night, isn't it? I'm sorry I couldn't quite help you finish the stew. But we certainly annihilated those beans."
He nods and almost smiles again, and they stand up and walk to the door. He picks up her Burberry's and makes a show of standing too close to her to help her put it on, of hanging on to its lapels for too long. But she's pretty sure his heart's not in it - in so far as he does have a heart.
"Good night, Frank," should be enough to make him let go.
He doesn't. This is getting awkward.
Well, awkward-er.
She's wondering what to say or do next when he lets go and pulls back and says:
"Well bonne nuit then, ma jolie Gemma. Thank you for coming over."
"Bonne nuit."
"That's right," he says, and grabs the sides of her face.
It's such a surprise that it's only god awful for a very short time: the time it takes her to make it stop after she's realised that he's actually kissing her. How long it took her to realise that, she doesn't care to think, but there's not a shred of doubt in her mind that she's not enjoyed it. Not at all, not even a little bit, not even for a second. There was shock at first, and then there was sheer horror. There was no fluttering in-between, and there was certainly no gravity defying, and no time-stopping either. On the contrary, the time it took to make it stop felt like forever and a day, though it can't have lasted more than a shove and a hmmph.
She finishes pushing him away and opens the door.
"Gemma?"
She stares at him.
"I'm sorry, I just had to know," he says, breathless.
"Aha, yes, so did I. Now we do."
Blanquette de veau – fancy French veal stew, the sauce is made by thickening the stock from boiling the meat first, together with butter, wine and sometimes lemon juice.
C'est mignon – that's cute
au revoir maman or bonsoir or bonne soiree = goodbye Mum, or good night or good evening.
A demain = see you/speak to you tomorrow
Bonne nuit = good night
A Bee in her Bonnet is copyright Mel Liffragh 2021, all rights reserved.