Wait, what?
‘Penny, Rory, this is the team from Link.’
Three men in fancy suits entered the room and took their seats opposite the two of us. It took a moment for me to realise that I recognised one of them. One of them had spent the night in my bed.
‘Hi Penny.’
It was Daniel.
31
There was a beat of silence before anyone said anything. I fixated on a speck of dust that had floated onto one of the obnoxiously red apples in the fruit bowl. The fruit bowl that literally no one except Ella ever favoured over the bowl of M&M’s.
‘Penny, Rory, this is Michael.’ Ella gestured to what she thought was a complete stranger sitting opposite me.
He gave a small wave, having the nerve to grin. Michael? Rory had turned in my direction, but I was just as in the dark as he was. What the hell was going on?
Ella ploughed on, completely oblivious. ‘Michael is a board member for Link. His dad is –’
‘Michael Broadhurst.’ I finished the sentence for her, finally meeting Daniel’s eyes. ‘So you’re Michael Broadhurst junior?’
I could not believe I’d had sex with a man who had the same name as his father. I felt dirty. What a colossal ick.
Daniel squinted. ‘Well, it’s Michael Daniel Broadhurst. Bit of artistic licence there, sorry.’ I wanted to lob one of the apples at his head, and I wanted it to hurt. That was why I hadn’t been able to find him on social media. He’d lied to me this whole time.
‘Look, Penny –’
I cut him short. ‘I really don’t want to hear it.’
Underneath the table, my hands were shaking. I was humiliated. And I wanted to run straight out of this room and all the way back to Greenwich for a hug from my mum. Instead, I cleared my throat. ‘Say what you’ve come here to say. Wouldn’t want to derail your master plan.’
Next to me, Rory hadn’t said a word, but he rose out of his seat suddenly, pointing a finger at Michael. ‘You little shit.’
Michael rolled his eyes. ‘Here we go. Defending her honour?’
Rory’s chest was rising and falling in quick succession, and he took a shaky breath in. ‘You have a lot of nerve.’
My ex-catfish-fling ignored him, turning his attention to me.
‘Do you think we could talk in private for a minute, just before we do this?’ He pointed to his briefcase, which he’d dumped on the table when he’d sat down. I pictured all of the documents in there, documents detailing how he wanted to get his hands dirty with my company, and my blood boiled. I was never dating again. I was signing up to a convent as soon as I got out of this meeting.
‘Penny?’ He tried again, ignoring the death stares from Harriet and Rory. Even Ella was looking at him in disgust, and she didn’t have the full context.
‘I don’t think that’s going to happen, mate.’ Rory said the last word with venom, and despite everything, despite our argument precisely five minutes ago, I felt his pinkie touch mine. He latched our fingers together, squeezing three times. I. Got. You. ‘You really don’t deserve one second of her time, and I should definitely throw you out’ – he looked at the other members of Level – ‘but if she’s willing to listen, then you have two minutes. Maximum.’
I could feel the anger humming through his body, just by the contact of our pinkie fingers.
Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath, and I watched Daniel’s eyes narrow.
‘Okay, fine. Let’s get to it.’ He hooked his laptop up to the big screen. ‘We’ve been watching what you’ve been doing for about a year now, and I have to say, we’re impressed.’
About a year now. I blinked back the prickling sensation behind my eyes. I’d been such a sucker.
‘At Link, we’re always looking to make forward-thinking decisions about the future of online dating. Now obviously, we were ahead of the game.’ He flicked to a slide which detailed the history of his father’s own app, dating back to 2013. ‘But times are changing, as they often do in business. We want to make sure we stay ahead of the curve. Now, I know you’re looking for investors …’
I know you’re looking for investors. My brain zeroed in on this as he bulldozed on. I’d leaked information to a snake. A tall, blonde, irritatingly charismatic snake.
‘We’ve been pitching to you for the last few months, offering our investment for a small cut of the company.’ Daniel met my eyes (I could not bring myself to call him Michael), but he was in full flow now, and I couldn’t spot any remorse. ‘And that’s still on the table. We want a piece of Level.’
Rory snorted sarcastically.
‘But we’ve seen how good your team is, and we’ve been paying attention to your audience. And now we’re interested in more.’
The slide flicked over, showing a screen that hybridised both of the apps. A pit in my stomach opened. Ella’s eyes were saucers; clearly, she hadn’t vetted this presentation beforehand.
‘What is it exactly that you’re offering?’ More than anything, I was curious. This was our biggest competitor, and they seemed to be so afraid of us that they’d do anything to be in on the action.
‘We want to offer a merger of the two companies, to put it in simple terms.’ His hands formed a frame in front of him.
‘This isn’t quite what we discussed over email.’ Ella stepped in, aware that she’d just allowed a piranha into the boardroom by mistake. ‘If I’d known –’
I clasped my hands on the table, but Rory’s hand stayed on my leg. He had my back. I took a breath. ‘It’s fine, Ella, let him speak.’
Daniel seemed emboldened by this. ‘Excellent, I knew you had a good head for business on those shoulders.’ I felt sick. This man had been in my bed. He continued. ‘This is your company, your rules. All we want to do is join efforts and be as successful as possible. Our team is bigger and has been doing this a long time. We can offer experience that you may be lacking at the moment. This is Jeremy, who can walk you through the financial technicalities’ – he pointed to the man on one side of him – ‘and this is Nick, one of our programmers. We’d love to chat a bit more with your programming team.’
It did not escape my observation that everyone sitting on their side of the table was male.
‘I’m going to say one thing, and one thing only.’ I steadied my voice, which was shaking. I would not give this man the satisfaction of knowing that he’d rattled me. ‘Get the fuck out of my office.’
