The next day,I planned to make it into the office early to check in with Jenni, but my plans were put back by a strong bout of morning sickness.
“What’s up with you, Maria? Is your work really that exhausting?”
“Yes, Grandmother.” I’d had to leave my room to make ginger tea, and thus had of course invited questioning. “Starting a new business is categorically hard.”
“Well, don’t make yourself sick. I barely see you at all these days! Out at all hours of the night!”
“It’ll get easier eventually.”
When I finally made it to the headquarters of Brock Technology, it was almost the afternoon. I wasn’t looking my best, but that was okay. Who did I need to impress, anyway?
“Hey, Jenni. When do you finish? You wanna get a drink after?”
“Y-you... me? Erm, I finish at three. Early shift. You want to go for a drink?”
“Yep. You. Me. A drink. At a bar. Three PM. How about it?”
Jenni perked up. “Sure! I never get to go for ‘work drinks’.”
“You don’t get invited?”
“Well, I do, but...” She pulled a face. “They all talk about computer stuff.”
“Yeah, I get you. I know as much as I ever need to know about computers already. Well, I’ve got some business to do, and then I’ll swing by, yeah?”
“Great!”
I went to a café and pulled out my laptop. Swept up in the Brock drama, I was getting behind on my emails, and I was continuing to get enquiries following the successful community fair. It was annoying that I had Forest to thank for that – and, actually, Apollo originally – but I knew that my service was good enough to deserve the attention. I just had to carve time in my busy fake-dating schedule to actually see some clients of my own.
When I arrived back at Brock Technology’s reception, I’d been writing emails and fielding calls for several hours and was now thoroughly in need of the promised drink. Except, I remembered, I was pregnant, so I’d be having sparkling water or something non-alcoholic. Sigh.
Jenni was waiting for me, visibly excited and ready to depart. She scurried out from behind the desk and linked her arm with mine and started to jog us out of the building. “Let’s go!”
I laughed and let myself be pulled along by her. I’d done shift work before, so I knew well that end-of-the-day feeling.
At the bar, we chatted and laughed like old friends. I liked Jenni a lot, and hoped my intuition about her was correct. Eventually she was a few drinks down and I managed to broach the subject.
“Jenni, can I trust you?”
“Oh gosh. You’re getting serious all of a sudden. I don’t know if you can trust me. I suddenly feel very responsible!”
I laughed. “Okay, I’m going to trust you, anyway. I think I met your twin the other day...?”
Jenni pulled a face that was remarkably similar to the one her sister had pulled when I’d asked her a similar question. “Ugh! Helli? What’s she up to these days?”
I lowered my voice. “She’s working the same job as you. But for Apollo Brock.”
Jenni looked at me in horror. “You aren’t... you aren’t in league with Apollo, are you?”
“What do you know about the Brock family drama, Jenni?” I was surprised. “But no, I’m not. You’ll need to trust me on that too.”
Jenni looked sad and tense, which I didn’t like being the cause of after we were having such a nice time. She started talking, with the air of it being the start of a lengthy explanation. “Helli and I weren’t always enemies. We were like, creepily similar growing up, like the twins inThe Shining.”
“I can imagine it.”
“Our mom worked in one of Apollo’s warehouses. She was an engineer. One day, a man turned up at our home and told us that our mother had died in a warehouse incident.”
Oh no. I hadn’t expected anything like this at all. I touched her hand across the table. “I’m so sorry.”