Renee stared down at her phone screen, hesitating. But why not tell Nathalie? If she’d turned to Nathalie as a confidante instead of Ket Siong, maybe she wouldn’t now be feeling like someone had torn her heart out of her chest and stamped on it.
Not feeling great, but it’ll be fine. You were right about Ket Siong. It was a bad idea.
That was going to drive Nathalie wild with curiosity. Renee added:
Going into my meeting, but I’ll tell you another time. I’ll need cocktails, though. Like six of them.
By the time Renee was alighting outside the imposing building on the Thames where Freshview had set up their London headquarters, Nathalie had messaged back a string of emojis: three knives, three hearts, and every representation of an alcoholic drink. Renee smiled and put her phone away.
The meeting room was on the top floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking down on the muddy brown expanse of the river. Autumn sunlight struck sparks off the waves and rendered the projector screen in the room impossible to make out.
Lin was by the door as Renee and Su Khoon entered, trying to figure out how to lower the blinds. She gave them a harassed smile.
There was a numerous team from Freshview in attendance, as well as stakeholders from local government and the Malaysian state investors backing the project. There were four women in total in the room, if you didn’t count the catering staff bringing in tall flasks of coffee and tea, biscuits, and glass bottles of still and sparkling water.
This gave Renee’s smile a slight edge as they went through the usual introductions. She was dreading getting to Andrew—he had been the first person she’d seen out of that sea of men, her eyes drawn inexorably to him.
The sight of him still made her body react like she was under threat, her stomach contracting, sweat springing up on her palms. Her heart thrummed in her chest. She hated that fear of him was threaded through her body, when she knew intellectually he was a gutless loser.
She wasn’t going to let him ruin this for her, either. When he shook her hand, she smiled, though it felt like a thousand tiny bugs were crawling over her skin.
“Looking forward to this,” Andrew said, nodding at the screendisplaying the slides she and Su Khoon had wrangled over for the past two weeks. “We’re having lunch, when is it, next week? Can’t wait.”
“Mmm,” said Renee. With some men it was not necessary to speak, so long as you were making more or less the right noises and faces, and Andrew belonged to this class. He smiled as though she’d agreed with him.
“We’ll start now,” said Su Khoon. This was Business Su Khoon—polished and affable, projecting competence. “I wanted to begin by saying how much we value this opportunity and our relationship with Freshview…”
As Renee looked out at the faces of their audience, she was swamped by a wave of doubt, so intense it felt like vertigo. What was shedoinghere?
Images from the articles she’d read the night before crowded into her mind. The excavators and bulldozers on churned-up red earth; the gargantuan piles of logs; the groups of protestors, tiny next to the heavy machinery against which they were arrayed. And that picture of Stephen Jembu, squinting and smiling.
How many of these men knew about any of that? How many of them would care?
She put a hand down on the lectern to steady herself, panic constricting her chest. She couldn’t do this. She was going to be sick. She’d excuse herself discreetly, go to the bathroom—
She heard Su Khoon say, “Renee’s going to take you through some examples of our experience in construction. We think they show why we’re the best partner to take this project forward.”
He looked at her, expectant. Renee drove her fingernails into her palm, willing the sensation to ground her.
What would she do after she’d slipped out? Flee the building? She couldn’t even get to the bathroom without a keycard.
Su Khoon was frowning. “Renee?”
She could just see the contempt in his face if he realised shewas wavering, considering pulling out, based on—what? Ket Siong’s unsubstantiated word and a handful of old articles.
The thought was like an injection of molten steel down her spine. She couldn’t humiliate herself like that, not when she’d fought so hard to have a part in this pitch.
She was here to do a job. She’d reconcile it with herself later.
She shoved down her qualms, pushing away the memory of Ket Siong’s eyes when he’d said,It’s not for me to tell you what to do.
He’d been right about that. Renee was committed now. She couldn’t afford to second-guess her actions. It was too late.
She breathed out, stretching her mouth into an approximation of a smile. “Thanks, Su Khoon. Could we have the next slide, please?”
At least it had always been easy to subsume her feelings in work. The script she’d prepared with Su Khoon came back to her, each comfortingly impersonal fact and figure slotting into place. Her nausea receded. Renee set herself aside and let the demands of the job take over.
“What was that about?” said Su Khoon, after the pitch. “You were zoning out when I called on you. Did you forget it was your turn or what?”
