Come Again

Chapter 2

Kate pushed her hands into the pockets of her baggy jeans. Her eyes flicked to the window behind Charles and focused on the rooftops of West London. She said, ‘That’s very good of you, Charles et cetera.’

Her job was to rewrite history. That’s not how she described it to Luke when she first took the job and it wasn’t how Charles Hunt described it now as he swivelled in his chair and considered exactly how to fire her.

He nodded gravely for slightly too long. It was as if Charles had studied doctors in TV medical dramas and had decided this is the thing you do with your head when you want to signal compassion. He had an angular, pale face with permanently flushed cheeks and a side-parting of thinning blond hair which needed no maintenance, although he swept a hand across it frequently. His private office was a large room with homely touches–an antique sofa his mother had given him, a toast rack he affected to use for incoming mail. He liked to give his clients the impression that his work was a hobby. Kate faced him across an impressive mahogany desk, the one he used to say was a gift from Harvey Weinstein but which he now claimed he had personally whittled from the bark of the Mary Rose.

She watched him working out what to say next. Was it her imagination or was her chair two inches lower than usual? Or was his higher? She’d never noticed before. Nine months ago, Charles had given her a fortnight off and then had called to say… what had he said? She had been drowsy with lack of sleep and a permanent hangover.

A voicemail: ‘Kate, I’m really sorry as usual about Luke et cetera, but we could really do with you back here ASAP. Obviously you’re a woman and therefore natch need a bit longer than normal. I get that. Take as long as you need… I mean, the sooner the better if you ask me because with my mother–I mean, Christ, widows just collapse, don’t they? Like windows. Click on the top-left cross of an Excel sheet and the whole thing goes [croaking sound]. No offence. Anyway, take as long as you need. You’re a woman. I get that.’

In the office Kate smiled pleasantly and waited. She knew what was coming: the idiot had put ‘Sack Kate’ in the e-calendar he thought she couldn’t access. It was a pity she hadn’t got in there first and resigned. Where was her moment with her co-workers gazing on as she strode out of the office with an Aretha Franklin soundtrack and a big smirk on her face?

She wasn’t going to get that and she had reason to believe that she didn’t deserve it. But at least she had something else to take away with her. She crossed her legs and her right hand fingered the memory stick attached to her bunch of keys.

Charles had founded Belgravia Technologia with nothing more than his own merit, flair, hard work and £394,000 from his father, a former defence minister in a Conservative cabinet. Kate had met Charles in the same first term she had met Luke–as students at the University of York. But over the years she had heard him start to describe that place to clients as ‘New York’. In his mind, the simple addition of ‘New’ was a harmless embellishment and Kate was sure that the man himself had come to believe it. His company was an early and leading exponent of ORM–Online Reputation Management. Kate was the IT manager but Charles owed her work much more than the title suggested and considerably more than the salary he paid her. She designed and edited the website; she had built and optimised the impregnable firewall; she created and continually upgraded the software architecture that kept the whole thing running smoothly. And, of course, she told the rest of the staff how to turn their computers off and on again.

In 1992, Kate had laced her boots and set out to arrive early for her first Computer Science lecture. If someone had told her she was about to devote most of her working life to revising the online histories of powerful men, she would have laughed. Well, life is long and full of surprises. And what is this ‘internet’ anyway? But if you’d told her she’d be doing it in the employ of Charles Hunt, the amusement would have turned to incredulity.

Charles was a walking punchline. Bart Simpson had a Charles Hunt duvet. Charles DeMontford Alphonso Hunt, the remarkably wealthy, fully oblivious, invincibly complacent prat. Charles who had attended Matthew Chatsworth College, a boarding school devoted to the advancement of the less gifted boys of the English upper-middle class. Kate could almost feel sorry for Charles if he were not such a committed and promiscuous liar. He could scarcely part his lips without spilling forth an unstoppable stream of instantly disprovable bullshit. His Jaguar was a Bentley. His surname meant ‘royal’ in Latin. In the Cadet Corps at school he had driven a tank. In fact, he had done so with such proficiency that he had been ‘seconded by the Territorial Army to Northern Ireland’ (where he had killed a man). He had an IQ of 176. The Richard Attenborough character in The Great Escape was based on his great-uncle. His father was a Tory cabinet minister (that was actually true) but had previously been, at various times, a renowned fencing instructor, Martin Luther King’s speechwriter and the Ambassador from the Court of St James to North Korea. His mother, by contrast, had merely invented the card-game bridge. Hers was an achievement affectionately admitted by Charles to be ‘actually pretty impressive when you think about it’.

BelTech had all started innocently enough. Because Everyone Deserves a Second Chance was a principle Kate could sign up to, despite the wanky italics above the reception desk. A nurse unfairly accused of negligence here; a Rotarian who lost his head and punched a traffic warden there–imperfect humans who needed the historical mud to stop sticking to their search results. Unfairly accused or guilty as charged, they needed to move on. In either case, Kate had managed to convince herself that she was just a techie who went around fixing photocopiers. But in her more honest moments she knew that her entanglement was far knottier than that. As the digital security expert and key-holder of every password in the building, Kate had access to any file received by Charles. She had, from time to time, taken an unsanctioned peek at what the company was up to. Restless and greedy, Charles had recently begun to exploit his father’s contacts in the delightful world of arms procurement. Kate told herself that she was there to keep him honest. The fact that she knew perfectly well that Charles was the least honest person she’d ever met was a nuance to be set against the other thing she knew about Charles: he was a chump and a nitwit. Guys like Charles, she thought, were never the problem.

‘Kate, as you know, I didn’t always see eye to eye with Luke and his amusing ideals or whatnot. But you liked him, which must count for something, and he was obviously a perfectly all right guy.’

Kate nodded sympathetically. ‘Wow, Charles. If I’d thought you felt that strongly about him, I’d have asked you to deliver the eulogy.’

‘Well, as you know I missed the funeral because I was advising Prince Andrew on a certain matter. You wrote a card to say that you understood.’

‘I certainly understood.’

‘In fact I scanned it and I have the copy right here…’ Charles opened a drawer and started to look for the piece of paper Kate knew he had just invented.

‘Charles, don’t worry. I remember the card.’

Charles slammed the drawer shut. ‘Good.’

She watched as he tried to remember the speech that he’d rehearsed. There had been times, in the early years, when she could walk into his office without knocking and interrupt Charles Hunt in his only creative moment: acting out his part of the telephone call he was about to make. The unnaturally deep voice for clients, the cajoling bonhomie, the CBeebies-level empathy, the name-drops audible from orbit.

She picked casually at an imaginary piece of spinach between her lower teeth. He was going to have to be nice. Very nice. He needed her to find the Nestor Petrov file but still hadn’t worked out how to ask for it.

Charles said, ‘Your colleagues insist that the quality of your work has remained unaffected by the Luke situation, so I’ve tried to turn a blind eye to your timekeeping. Sometimes you don’t come in till after four o’clock.’

Kate said, ‘Right, yes. Just to check–the “Luke situation” being that my partner of twenty-eight years recently dropped dead while unloading the dishwasher? That situation?’

‘Bingo. And then obviously there’s the matter of your dishevelled appearance.’

For the first time in nine months, Kate nearly laughed. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror that lunchtime. She looked like Suzi Quatro after two months on a desert island being chased by dogs. She said neutrally, ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘But that’s not the issue.’ Charles produced a plain Manila folder from his drawer and left it on the desk, significantly unopened. He looked at her as if he had just landed a royal flush.

Christ, he’s going to do this like he’s in a Bond movie. Not yet. Keep it together.

Kate took her nail out of her teeth and peered at the folder. ‘What have you got there, Charles? Not your latest rejection letter from the MCC, I hope.’ Charles didn’t even like cricket but she knew it bugged him that there was at least one club in England that considered him beyond the pale.

‘A-ha, no, something even more depressing, I’m afraid. It’s the message you sent to Mr Petrov.’

She kept her voice steady. ‘So many Petrovs. The tax evader?’

‘You know which one.’

‘Oh! The paedophile. I thought I did quite a good job there.’

‘You’re a techie. It’s not your job to talk to clients. And where did you get his contact details?’

‘Hmm. Lucky guess?’

Charles kept a lid on his rising temper. Kate could see that he’d worked out that she’d been spying on him for years but could scarcely admit it to himself, never mind say it out loud. He opened the folder and took out a single page of A4, handling it as if wearing surgical gloves, then placed it before him and launched into his speech.

‘As you know, the allegations have been made by women interested only in money and publicity. Mr Petrov came to us in good faith and, as always, I set out a comprehensive ORM strategy. His charitable works would be emphasised. Personal testimonies of his good character would become prominent through all platforms. His website would be remodelled and links to it would increase by five hundred per cent via the usual methods. Original copy would be produced in both Russian and English, focusing on Mr Petrov’s impeccable business record and exemplary family life. All allegations of sexual conduct with minors would be cleared from at least the first three pages of any search engine enquiry, except where the integrity of his accusers was called into question. The moral character of these women would be brought into legitimate disrepute. Unfortunate information about the personal lives and questionable mental health of those journalists pursuing the story would be disseminated through the usual channels. Mr Petrov would be given a clean sheet, or as close as is possible. That’s what he paid us to do.’

Kate re-crossed her legs and cocked her head to one side. ‘Did we not do that, then?’

Charles picked up the sheet of paper and read. ‘“Dear Mr Petrov, I only work here but I’ve had a few thoughts. You clearly belong in prison. I can’t guarantee that’s where you’ll end up but if you do, I hope you get bum-fucked by burly Cossacks on a daily basis. My considered reputational advice is as follows: try not to be such an appalling shit in future. Love, Kate. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.”’

Kate looked out of the window and frowned. ‘I agree it lacks a certain lightness of touch.’

‘Mr Petrov is extremely unhappy.’

‘Not enough kisses?’

‘Kate, don’t be so—’

‘I know the bum-fucking thing is a bit homophobic but I thought he wouldn’t mind, what with his thrillingly right-wing views on the subject. If you like, I could—’

‘Kate!’ Charles slammed his hand down on the desk. She waited for him to regain his composure, which wouldn’t take long because he was already rubbing his reddening palm on his trousers. In a second flurry of violence he tried to toss the page at her but it flapped across his sleeve and landed in front of him again, face down. He looked beyond her, calming down and visibly recalling a line that he had practised. ‘You know, it surprises me that a woman of your intelligence would do something so very stupid.’

Kate nodded. ‘That’s funny, because it surprises me that a man of your intelligence doesn’t live in a skip.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Charles, smiling thinly and swivelling his chair again. Somehow he regarded Kate as his intellectual equal and put this kind of thing down to ‘banter’. She could say literally anything to him and he would contrive to take it as a compliment. For years, this had suited them both very well.

Kate took a breath and waited for his next move. At the same time, she remembered how her hand had trembled as she stole the Petrov file.

Last week, as was her habit, Kate had idly hacked Charles’s inbox and scrolled through his correspondence. But then something in her attitude had changed. She’d felt a numb, out-of-body understanding that her life was about to end. What was she doing here? What had she ever been doing here?

There was something new. There was one particular man in the emails–a London-based billionaire. She recognised his celebrity: Nestor Petrov was a Premier League football club owner and a regular fixture on comedy panel shows where his fiftysomething good looks and hokey eccentricities had endeared him to millions. Or at least to a couple of TV producers and the board of a struggling football club.

The more she read, the more curious she became. By its nature, BelTech relied on discretion but the two men were having a veritable secrecy jizz-off.

Petrov: ‘the deeply sensitive matter we discussed in person’, ‘the heinously missing file’, ‘the urgent need to rectify this delicate aberration’.

As for Charles, Kate had to concentrate to get past his usual feat of making his own English sound like it had gone through Google Translate: ‘our deepest regret vis-à-vis that the matter remains hitherto unresolved’, ‘our most talented people operating 24/7 to alleviate the discomfiture’, ‘the file will be located with premium haste’.

What file?

Kate opened Petrov’s first contact–his original submission to BelTech.

His lawyers complained that he had been recently accused of historical sexual harassment and assault in the early 1990s when he first moved to London. He wanted a skin-job and a make-over. He wanted to be on the right side of fake news by employing Charles to create it.

There wasn’t much in her stomach but Kate very nearly threw up. Hiding in the dungeon of her grief, she hadn’t turned on the news for months. But now she read the reports and testimonies of the women accusing Petrov. She believed them. She was no judge or jury but she was entitled to a private opinion: this man was a menace. He needed to be arrested, not protected. That Charles could countenance working for such a person was a new low. But there was more.