The Favour Read online

  ‘But you work hard all day too, even with the chaos,’ she shot back.

  They stared at one another for a moment, and when Hannah spoke, her voice was calm. ‘You don’t have to like Ethan, Quinn, but you do have to respect him. He’s my husband.’

  ‘Even if he’s a dipshit?’ Quinn said lightly.

  ‘Who’s a dipshit?’ came Ethan’s voice from behind her. She hadn’t even heard him walk in.

  Quinn turned, wine in hand. ‘Just some guy at work,’ she said smoothly. ‘How are you, Ethan?’

  A sigh gusted from him. ‘Buggered. How were the kids tonight?’ He crossed the room and kissed Hannah.

  ‘Crazy as always.’ Hannah squeezed his arm. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Hectic,’ he said. ‘I didn’t stop all day.’

  Quinn watched Hannah with the same mix of affection and irritation that had coloured their entire friendship. Hannah was beautiful in that effortless, unaware way that made her almost ethereal. She’d sported the same long, dark hair since uni, the same deep fringe that never looked out of fashion on her. Her eyes, the colour and shape of sun-drenched almonds, burned with an inner fire that even life with Ethan had never quite extinguished. But her body language changed when he was there. She made herself smaller, took up less space so Ethan could fill the room in the way he was accustomed to doing at work. Quinn’s animosity crackled and spat.

  ‘You stopped for a while out there in the driveway, though, didn’t you?’ she couldn’t help saying.

  Hannah shot her an annoyed look.

  Ethan glanced over at Quinn with a distracted air, like she was a blowfly he’d forgotten was there. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Hannah interjected.

  ‘No, I didn’t get the chance.’

  ‘I heard your car pull in,’ Quinn said, unable to back down now. ‘You didn’t come in for a while.’

  His mouth smiled at her, but his eyes remained hard. ‘I was sorting out a work issue. I didn’t want to bring it home with me. You know how it is.’

  ‘I do,’ Quinn murmured.

  Ethan put his arm around Hannah’s shoulders and she snuggled into him. ‘Well, it was nice to see you, Quinn,’ he lied.

  ‘Always a pleasure.’ Her eyes sought out Hannah’s, but her friend had already shrugged her husband’s arm away and was bustling about in the kitchen, getting the plate of leftover food out of the fridge and sliding it into the microwave. Quinn understood she was being dismissed. She bent to pick up her handbag from where she’d left it on the floor. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.’

  She willed Hannah to suggest that they get out of the house and go to the pub for a drink now that Ethan was home, but Hannah just glanced absently at her and said, ‘Oh, you’re going, are you?’

  Quinn was torn between annoyance at herself for not restraining her smart mouth and at Hannah for her allegiance to Ethan. It was normal, of course, for Hannah to put her husband first, but it still stung. After what Quinn had done for her all those years ago, there was too much between them for her to be relegated to the role of amusing sidekick. Where’s your loyalty to me? she wanted to ask.

  ‘I’d better,’ she said instead. ‘Early start tomorrow. I’ll see myself out.’

  They said their goodbyes and Quinn escaped the house, disappointment sour on her tongue.

  The office was almost empty when Quinn got to work the next morning. It was only two weeks until Christmas, but while everyone else was winding down, Quinn was busting her arse to get a client to sign with the agency before the break. Total Care Insurance had been shopping around Adelaide’s PR agencies for months, trying to find someone who could make insurance look sexy, and Quinn knew she was the one to do it – not just because she worked for the biggest ad agency in the state, but because she was good at her job. Quinn could sell condoms to the Pope, and that was why she’d signed on more clients than any of the other senior staff.

  By the time she’d done a couple of hours of work on the campaign strategy, it was time for the agency staff meeting, and she was feeling high on her own brilliance.

  As her colleagues filed into the boardroom ahead of her, Quinn came face to face with Simon Mandalay.

  ‘Have fun the other night?’ He grinned as he motioned for her to go in ahead of him.

  She quirked an eyebrow and nudged his arm as she passed. ‘Jealous, were you?’

  ‘Always.’ He gave her a wink before taking the closest seat at the long table.

  Quinn crossed to the other side of the room and sat directly opposite him. She’d always felt a kind of rough fondness for Simon. They’d worked together on countless campaigns, and although Quinn sometimes suspected that he’d ridden on her success for years before leap-frogging her altogether, she swallowed her resentment with good-natured banter. Simon was a bit of a dickhead, but their camaraderie prevented her from kicking up too much of a stink when he got the credit for her hard work. And besides, the man had abs you could grate cheese on. With his salt-sprinkled hair, Simon was exactly the kind of guy she’d usually go for. But not only was he her boss, he was also married, putting him well and truly out of the running. Quinn didn’t mix business with pleasure, no matter how tempting it might be.

  Alistair Shepherd, managing partner of Big Sky, came in last and took his usual position at the head of the table. ‘Good morning, everyone,’ he boomed. ‘This won’t take too long … I know you’re all busy, and a quick meeting is a good meeting.’ He paused to look around the table before continuing. ‘Now we’re on the downhill slide to Christmas, I know you’re all keen to get into the holiday spirit, but we’ve got a big couple of weeks coming up, and it’s never been more important to maintain our synergy.’

  Quinn caught Simon’s eye across the table. Alistair was overly fond of corporate buzzwords and used them without a trace of irony, which never failed to crack them both up.

  Synergy, Quinn mouthed, and Simon smirked.

  Alistair droned on for another ten minutes, leaving little room for anyone else to speak, as was his custom, before finally beginning to wrap up.

  ‘That’s all for today, folks,’ he said. ‘Let’s circle back early next week’ – Simon mouthed circle back and Quinn stifled a laugh – ‘and revisit all our big campaigns. And remember, we work as a team in this agency.’

  As everyone got up and began to leave the room, Simon signalled to Quinn across the table. ‘Quinn, could we have a chat about the Total Care presentation? I need to have a word with Alistair, but I’ll see you in my office in a few minutes.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Quinn left the boardroom and went down the hallway to Simon’s office, mentally sharpening her claws in preparation for the power play that often followed some of her best work. She waited in the doorway, but when he didn’t show after a few minutes, her curiosity got the better of her and she wandered into his office. Placing her notebook down on his desk, she inspected the photo of his family on the wall, then rifled through the papers in his in-tray and played with his novelty kinetic desk toy. After a minute, her eyes turned to his desk drawer. Quinn loved to snoop; it was a temptation she could never bring herself to resist.

  Glancing over her shoulder to make sure he hadn’t arrived yet, she leant over the desk. The drawer slid open quietly, and she peered inside. A few pens, a box of paperclips, a phone charger, earphones, a polka-dotted hankie (unused), deodorant, and, right up the back of the drawer, a little stack of individually wrapped condoms. Quinn’s eyebrows shot up. Not quite the family man he was so fond of presenting to the world.

  Footsteps approached down the hallway and Quinn hastily closed the drawer and turned to face the doorway, her face hot with the near miss. Simon walked in. ‘Sorry about that. Alistair is in fine form this morning. Took me a while to escape.’

  ‘No worries.’ Quinn snatched up her notebook from the desk and plonked down onto the grey couch against the wall.

  Simon perched on the edge of his desk and clasped
his hands in his lap. ‘I was hoping we could chat through the Total Care strategy. How’s the presentation coming along?’

  Quinn crossed one leg over the other. ‘Swimmingly.’

  His eyes flickered along the lines of her legs, before returning to her face. She liked the way Simon looked at her. She liked walking in front of him and swinging her hips, knowing he was looking at her arse. She liked that Simon’s wife referred to her as his work wife, and she liked to imagine that Simon fantasised about her on occasion, as she sometimes fantasised about him.

  ‘Fantastic,’ Simon said. ‘Share it with the rest of the team when you’re done.’

  He grinned and they recited Alistair’s personal mantra together: ‘Don’t forget we work as a team in this agency.’

  Quinn laughed, though she had stopped finding this joke quite so funny when she’d heard Simon had got the promotion and, overnight, they’d gone from colleagues to manager and subordinate. She knew she was better at her job than Simon was, and she’d blindly assumed she had the promotion in the bag. For a while afterwards, she’d thought maybe she’d been over-confident, arrogant even, but as she’d watched Simon step in and take over every one of the big clients she’d won, she came to realise that brains and sheer hard work weren’t enough to make it in the boys’ club that Big Sky had always been.

  She shoved down her irritation and they talked through the presentation she’d been working on, until Quinn once again began to feel like she had the upper hand.

  ‘I’m feeling good about this one, Quinnie,’ Simon said when they were done. ‘I think we’re going to get them on board.’

  ‘Of course we will.’

  ‘And we’ll be celebrating right into Christmas,’ he said. ‘You going away?’

  ‘Yeah, you remember Amal? She started here around the same time as us. I’m staying with her in Melbourne for a couple of days, then we’re going to Torquay for New Year’s. What about you?’

  He nodded. ‘Noosa. We’re flying out on Christmas morning when the flights are cheap.’

  Quinn scoffed. ‘Like you need to save on flights, Captain Moneybags. Where are you staying?’

  ‘Some horrid resort. It’ll be overcrowded with screaming kids, but Karen and the girls can’t wait. At least it’s only for five days.’

  Quinn uncrossed her legs, watching as Simon tried and failed to keep his eyes above her waist. ‘Well, I’ll be sure to think of you when I’m lying beside a pool in a bikini sipping on a cocktail.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘And I’ll be sure to think of you too.’

  A pleasant warmth suffused her. She stood up and stepped towards him. ‘Oh, I know you will.’ He swallowed hard as she drew closer and put a hand on his arm. ‘Well, thanks, as always, for your fearless leadership.’ Then she turned and swanned out of his office.

  But the brief power she’d felt over him withered as she sat down at her desk. It wasn’t enough to cover up the fact that he commanded a far heftier salary than her for only doing half the work. The novelty of answering to him had well and truly worn off.

  Quinn finished the presentation for the insurance firm that morning, emailed it to the rest of the team, then went out to grab some sushi from the place around the corner. But no sooner had she resumed her place behind her desk than there was a knock on her office door. Simon leant against the doorframe, arms crossed over his broad chest.

  ‘What did you think of the presentation?’ Quinn said.

  He gave her a magnanimous smile. ‘I changed a few words here and there, but otherwise it was pretty good.’

  Quinn resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He always had to put his own brand on the work his staff did, as if to prove he was in charge. She allowed herself to imagine what kind of manager she might be if she were in his place; whether she’d want to make her mark too, or whether she’d give her staff the freedom to soar and make their own mistakes.

  Simon walked into her office and sat down in the little square armchair beside the wall. ‘Actually, there’s something else I’d like to talk to you about.’

  He rested one ankle on his other knee and leant back in a position Quinn recognised as his casual power stance. She frowned. He’d never used it on her before. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to pry into your personal life …’ There was a strange kind of smugness to his expression, and Quinn felt the dynamic between them shift. It was disorienting, as if she’d just stepped off a merry-go-round and hadn’t yet regained her balance. ‘It’s none of my business who you sleep with … but the thing is, I’ve seen you pick up at the Historian a couple of times now.’

  Quinn’s blood went hot. The idea that Simon had been watching her without her knowledge made her feel exposed, like a child caught doing something naughty. She forced out a laugh. ‘What, are you stalking me or something?’

  ‘Seems you go home with a different guy every week,’ he said, his expression unchanged.

  Quinn was starting to get a bad feeling about this. She turned her gaze back to her computer screen with an affected nonchalance. ‘OK, well if you’ve finished not wanting to pry into my personal life, I’m kind of busy here.’

  ‘It’s just that some of us are becoming a little … well, concerned.’ He grimaced as he said this last word, as if he’d rather use one far less delicate.

  Quinn removed her hand from the mouse and met his eyes. ‘What’s going on here, Simon? What does that have to do with you?’

  He interlaced his fingers behind his head. The movement sent a wash of his cologne over Quinn: sandalwood and money. ‘I guess I’m a bit worried that it’s only a matter of time before you sleep with one of our clients. You can see how that could make things a bit uncomfortable for the agency.’

  Quinn wasn’t normally ashamed of the way she lived her life, but sometimes, an off hand comment would send a prickle of shame through her limbs like pins and needles. That said, she’d rather parade starkers down Hindley Street than give Simon the satisfaction of seeing he’d got to her, so she held his gaze, drumming her fingernails on her desk and forcing her expression to remain impenetrable. When Quinn felt ashamed, she got mean; she could feel it bubbling inside her, the desire to cut him down warring with the need to remain professional.

  ‘How about you think of me as a bit like a cat?’ she said. ‘When I have an itch, I scratch it, and I never shit in my own backyard. Does that help clarify things for you and our concerned colleagues?’

  Simon chuckled and looked down into his lap. ‘You do have a way with words, Quinn.’

  ‘And that’s why I’ve brought in more clients than anyone else here, including you. I’d say that’s made the agency rather comfortable, wouldn’t you?’

  Simon stood up and ran a hand through his silvering hair. ‘No offence intended. Just thought I’d raise it.’

  ‘You’ve raised it. Now, are we finished here?’

  He chuckled. ‘Well, if you ever need that itch scratched, you know where I am.’

  Quinn fumed as Simon left the room. He often threw comments like that at her when no one else was around, but when she hooked up with someone completely separate from work, she was the one getting pulled up on it? The double standard raked across her brain with steel hooks. Simon had gained – and kept – his senior position with two things: the possession of a penis and a largely unjustified belief in his own abilities. Even though Quinn had coveted his job for the last few years, she hadn’t wanted to do anything to mess with their working relationship. But hadn’t he gone for the job without thinking twice, without stopping to consider her feelings? Maybe it was time to leave her stupid sense of honour behind. And after that conversation, she was ready to go into battle.

  She picked up her phone, her first impulse to text Hannah. She and Hannah had first bonded when they’d taken the same creative writing elective and were forced to withstand the overinflated egos of several young men who believed they were gifts to the literary world and hogged most of the time in the
tutorials talking about their Important Work. Hannah would get a real kick out of what Simon had just said to her.

  But then she remembered the way things had ended last night, and self-reproach of a different kind needled her. She knew she’d pushed Hannah too far by baiting Ethan. It was hardly Hannah’s fault her husband was an ungrateful dickwad. She probably wouldn’t want to talk to Quinn for another month now. On the other hand, maybe the story about Simon might remind Hannah of why they’d become friends in the first place.

  Just had a bit of a run-in with my boss, Simon, she typed. He told me he was worried I’d start sleeping with our clients! Ha! But the joke’s on him, because what he should be worried about is how I’m coming for his job.

  CHAPTER TWO

  HANNAH

  Grace whinged from the back seat of the car as they waited outside the school for the boys to come out. Hannah scrolled listlessly through the photos she’d taken at the playground that morning. Grace had been grumpy for most of the visit because there’d been too many other children on the play equipment, so she was scowling in most of the photos. But there was a good one: she was looking off into the distance, her silky brown hair raised slightly from her face in the breeze, her big brown eyes soft in the sunlight, a half-smile touching her lips.

  Hannah opened Facebook and uploaded the photo with the caption, Another perfect morning with my girl. Immediately, she felt foolish. She hated this brand of performative parenting, those hand-selected moments that made up an unrealistic highlight reel of family life. And yet she continued to participate in it. She was about to delete the post when two of her friends liked it at almost the same time. Her finger paused over the screen at the familiar buzz of validation, then she withdrew.

  She could spend half an hour crafting a well-thought-out post about a real political issue that affected the community, and it would get a single like (usually from Quinn). But post a cute pic of her kids and forty people who were barely acquaintances would like it within minutes. Is that how little her brain was worth in comparison with her children?