Page 55 of Below the Deck

‘Hear that, Luce?’ said Mark. ‘Shall we head below deck for a bit?’

Lucy nodded.We might as well go. There’s nothing more I can do about that phone.‘Yes, but let’s hold onto each other. The boat’s still a bit wobbly, and the light’s not the greatest over there …’

‘I’ve got you.’

They stood and Mark helped Lucy take cautious paces to the top of the stairs. Just before she placed her foot on the first step, she glanced back at Talia. She was scrolling now, her cheeks an artificial white above the glow of the phone’s screen.

As Lucy watched, Talia’s eyes scanned from side to side in impatient disinterest – but then her expression changed. Confusion, and something else – disbelief, maybe.

‘Talia – are you all right? What is it?’ she asked.

Talia frowned, eyes still fixed on the screen. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ she snapped. Lucy turned back and followed Mark carefully down the staircase.

Nothing for you to worry about.

But Lucy knew what she’d just seen.

And whatever it was, it wasn’t nothing.

TALIA

Talia tapped on the phone’s lock screen and typedAshworth2007into the password tab – chosen for the year Rory formed the company. Her husband had always been an open book – he’d happily let her log in and use his work computer several times over the years if hers was unavailable. He shared all his passwords with her. He trusted her not to look at anything confidential.

He trusts me far too much.

The phone unlocked. She moved her fingers to the Outlook icon and clicked to open his emails. Since the power outage had taken down the Wi-Fi again and so far from network range, no new emails could be downloaded – but she wasn’t looking for those, anyway. It was the ones he’d already got that she was interested in – whatever it was that he’d been worrying about before the squall started.

There were a few recent emails with Rosenberg in the subject line. She glanced through those; it seemed like everything was under control. Rory had responded to one just before the squall started, setting up a time for a meeting when he got home.

She was about to put the phone away when she remembered what Lucy had said.What was it she just mentioned – a care home?

She typedcare homeinto the search bar at the top and waited for the results to show. Nothing. She scanned down the folders in the sidebar, looking for a pertinent label – perhaps the right emails just weren’t coming up in the main search for some reason.

Nothing seemed relevant, but then something else caught her eye: a folder labelledINTERNAL DEALINGS – PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.

She hesitated; she shouldn’t really be looking at anything confidential, should she?

But the words had piqued her curiosity. And perhaps it would be helpful to Rory for Talia to be fully up to speed with any work matters, especially with an injury likely to set him back for a few days – maybe she could bring him some useful information when she went to see him. He’d appreciate that – and Lord knew, she needed to make things up to him somehow, even if he’d never know why.

She double-tapped to open the folder, and a series of emails filled the screen. Talia frowned. All of them were from the same sender, but they all had different subject lines. Some of them sounded innocuous –Following upandThanks for the meeting. But some of them sounded … unusual.

One by one, pulse quickening now, she clicked on the emails and began to read.

A few minutes later, Talia dropped the phone into her lap and stared straight ahead, frozen in muted shock.

Audio recordings … Transcripts … Inappropriate behaviour … Harassment … Young women …

The words swam in front of her eyes in a swirling, nauseating mass. Accusations – shocking, disgusting claims – made against Rory by his colleagues, female colleagues specifically, all gathered in one revolting folder of emails and used as a way for someone to blackmail him. And worse: the blackmail attempts were working.

According to the emails, Rory had been crossing the line with his co-workers for months – possibly longer. He’d asked a gay colleague if she ever missed ‘the ramming of a real dick’, among other comments. He’d told a new starter he’d give her ‘a good spanking’ if she didn’t fill in her timesheets properly. In another email, there was the claim that he’d repeatedly stared at a senior colleague’s breasts in team meetings.

Tears collected in Talia’s eyes.How could he?

And how will we ever move past this?

No; she knew it already, with horrible certainty: she’d never be able to forgive him. If it had just been a one-off, she might have found a way to work through it. They had decades of history – a family together. She could have urged him to make a public apology, perhaps, and go to therapy to work through some of his internalized misogyny. She was hardly the perfect spouse either; they’d both made mistakes. And she’d learned it from her mother:you don’t give up on a marriage. You turn a blind eye or bury your head in the sand – you just do whatever ittakes to stay together.

But this wasn’t just one time. There were a number of incidents outlined in detail, and still more were hinted at. This was a pattern. There were attachments and links in the emailsto further evidence – recordings and statements from the women involved. She couldn’t access them now without the internet, or get onto the Ashworth network, but Talia didn’t doubt her husband’s guilt, not for a second.