a time of unity at the University – ‘we are all in this together’ – everyone sympathetic to everyone else’s pressures and self-imposed expectations. It was a short semester and the campus was often deserted during that time. Abbey was dressed ridiculously inappropriately for such a warm day, stonewashed skinny jeans and a white crochet jumper, not a pretty white either, a white that’s gone slightly grey in the wash. Her outfit did nothing for her rosy cheeks or her mousy hair, under all the clothes she had a better-than-average body, but you would never know it to look at her, her attire was more suited to a WI meeting.
‘Abbey, wait up.’ Christian was rushing towards her as she walked away from her room and she became aware of how ridiculous she must have looked, she wished there was a phone booth nearby so she could run in and out like a superhero, so that when he reached her she would be standing there in something pretty, something fashionable or attractive, but it wasn’t going to happen.
‘Hi,’ she muttered, unsure what else to say, I think I love you seemed a little extreme given the circumstances.
‘There’s a party tonight at my place, Dani’s coming, you should come too.’ A personal invitation, she couldn’t say no, she wanted to but she knew she wouldn’t allow herself to, so better just to accept it now.
‘Cool.’ She struggled to get out anything meaningful, one-word sentences were as much as she could muster.
Abbey stared at herself in the mirror, she could be dressed in nothing but a bikini, her presence would still be dwarfed by the supernova that is Danielle. She hated herself for being jealous but just once she wanted to know how it felt to be desired, to be special.
‘Wear this.’ Dani flung a purple dress at Abbey. ‘Trust me, it’s my lucky dress.’ Abbey felt the fine silk between her fingers and wondered how it would feel against her chunky thighs. She was the same dress size as Danielle but there is something about confidence that makes everything fit better. The purple dress was backless and shorter than anything Abbey would usually dare to wear.
‘You don’t think it will make me look like …’
‘Like what?’ Dani looked at her. Abbey was aware she should choose her next words carefully.
‘I don’t know, like I’m trying to be you? Single white female and all that.’
‘Do you honestly give a shit what any of those people think?’ Abbey loved how Dani referred to her friends as ‘those people’, it was part of what made Dani friends with everyone, she knew how to make you feel like you mattered, even if you really didn’t. Abbey first saw Dani as one of those seemingly transparent people who were exactly the same on the inside as the outside, but the more time they spent together the more she realised Dani was a shrewd politician who liked to keep her options open, never upsetting anyone, never taking sides. It was probably a characteristic Abbey should pay attention to as she was always tipping her hand, showing all her cards and leaving herself open to attack.
Abbey slid the dress over her head conscious of the fact that this particular style of dress didn’t allow for a bra, she felt her nipples press against the fabric, aware that with movement and friction she would not only be buoyant and full but leaving very little to the imagination.
‘Jamie is totally going to lose his shit over you.’ Dani beamed.
Jamie. Great. There’s one thing Abbey knew for sure and that was that Jamie would never see her as anything more than a consolation prize. She was trying to ignore the hypocrisy of the fact that she wasn’t interested in Jamie because he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t Christian. Abbey still felt pangs of guilt as his name popped into her head. She wondered if Dani would still lend her the dress if she knew what Abbey was thinking, and she reckoned she would. Dani didn’t worry about anyone stealing her man, least of all Abbey.
The Businessman
Ian looked on nervously at the auditing team huddled together in the glass conference room, they were pointing out numbers to each other with puzzled faces as they clearly struggled to make sense of the accounts, this was their second week in the building and it wouldn’t be long before they found the root of the problem, before they realised how bent Ian really was. Ian was good with numbers, really good, maybe a little too good as he believed in formulas, in a mathematical loophole for every situation, which is how he got into this mess in the first place. He was actually surprised how much he had gotten away with for so long. He had pushed the boundaries so many times and when no one noticed, he pushed more, until he was out of control.
He tried to read their lips, to see how close they were to pinpointing the exact accounts that were faked. One of the men looked up and over to him, he nodded at Ian and then huddled protectively over his pile of papers. Ian’s property business had been on the brink of failure for several years now. Ian spotted an opportunity and he took it. Although he was the owner of the company he still had shareholders to answer to and they weren’t too fond of the company money being used to take risks, small or big. He took out loans against the business and gambled the money away on pretty much anything. Believing he had worked out a system with which to triple his investment and put it back before anyone noticed it was gone. He had a couple of successes but infinitely more failures, and so he borrowed money from friends and associates to make the loan repayments. If it had stopped there he might have been able to make his way out of this somehow, but of course he hadn’t, because Ian was too clever for his own good.
‘Mr Markham?’ His six-months-pregnant secretary was standing next to him, resting a document box on her bump. He looked down at it, feeling the blood drain from his face.
‘What is it, Emma?’
‘I found this one in the back of Don’s old office, he must have left it there by accident; do you want me to take it through to them?’ Ian grabbed the box with a big smile.
‘No, you go for your break now, you’ve done enough heavy lifting for one day. I’ll take it.’
‘Brilliant, thanks.’ He watched her waddle off back to her station to get her nutrition shake. He could feel the panic rising in his throat as he walked towards the conference room. Instead of walking in, he entered the stairwell and made a break for the car park.
He clutched the box full of incriminating evidence and went down the stairs as fast as he could without falling. A year ago he had started a build in Malta, beach-front holiday properties, luxurious apartments with a place to dock your boat at the marina thrown in for good measure. A bargain at half the price, which is a ridiculous saying that he had never really understood, but it seemed to do the trick when he told people about it, he would show them the plans, the papers and the official artistic impressions of the stunning complex. He sold the apartments off plan and then the proceeds would go towards paying for the completion of the project, or that was the idea. The trouble was not only did Ian sell the apartments, he had already sold the land along with the planning permission, so he was basically selling something he didn’t own any longer. Even with all the demands for answers, by the time they had waded through all the bureaucratic nonsense overseas it would be months before anyone would know what happened. Ian had funnelled that money through a ghost company and then used it to buy stock options, several bad decisions later and he was back to square minus twenty, owing a lot of people a hell of a lot of money.
He looked at the poster in the dingy car park. ‘Say no to drugs’ it said. It had been put up after a stint of muggings by crack addicts
