Zac had no idea why he did what he did next. While his dad reached into the cupboard for a mug, he slipped the strip of photos and the card into the front pouch of his hoodie.
‘Och, just old photos and cards that Mum must have kept. Some pretty handsome ones of you in there, Dad. No wonder she couldn’t resist you.’
‘Aye, it was a curse being as handsome as me,’ his dad fired back, with typical Cillian Corlan humour. It was only when the coffee was poured and his dad joined him at the table that Zac could see the exhaustion and grief in every line of his face.
He wasn’t in the habit of keeping secrets from his old man – in fact, Cillian was as much of a mate as he was a father. But this discovery? No. And the questions that were now in his mind? Another no. This wasn’t the time.
Whatever secrets he’d just stumbled over were going to have to stay buried… at least for today.
10 A.M. – NOON
5
KARA
At 10.15a.m., Kara climbed out of her fifteen-year-old, custom-painted Tiffany blue, battered old Mini and ignored the slush on the ground that seeped into her suede boots as she stared at the Clydeside Studio building in front of her. Okay. She could do this. She brushed away the snowflakes that were now falling thick and fast on her shoulders, straightened her jacket, adopted her very best determined expression and began striding towards the door.
‘I am a strong, badass woman. I am a strong, badass woman. I am a strong…’
‘Kara!’
The yell was immediately followed by a scurry of feet and then two arms being thrown around her.
‘Tress!’ Kara exclaimed, thinking that if the circumstances were different, she’d be overjoyed to see one of her favourite people right now.
Tress was the set designer for the studio, and one of the loveliest, kindest people you could ever meet – a miracle considering the blows life had thrown at her. A couple of years before, on the day her son was born, her husband had died ina car crash, and Tress had been devastated to discover that the passenger in the car that day had been his mistress. It was the worst kind of tragedy, but somehow Tress had picked herself back up, and she was now in a relationship with a hot doctor, and they were bringing her son up together. If Tress could get through that, then Kara could get through a HR meeting to discuss the ins and outs of why she was no longer employed.
‘Oh honey,’ Tress blurted, ‘I heard what happened at the Hogmanay party. Are you okay? What’s going on? You know if I’d been there, I’d have totally had your back.’
Kara didn’t doubt that for a second. Tress was a true woman’s woman – as was she, and some could argue that’s what had got her into this mess in the first place.
‘I know and thank you. I wish you had been there too. Honestly, it was a shit show. I still can’t quite believe it all.’
Tress pulled open the huge glass door to the studio and let Kara go through first, then followed behind her. ‘So tell me exactly what happened.’
Before Kara could respond, she was interrupted by a gentleman in a security uniform – not someone she recognised from the normal security team – and one of the assistants in the HR department. Kara grappled to pinpoint her name. It wasn’t someone she knew well, but she’d once asked Kara to run her up a Scooby Doo costume for Halloween and Kara had grafted on for four hours after the end of her working day to make it happen. Although, her and Scooby might as well be strangers given the way the woman was looking at her now.
‘Miss McIntyre,’ the security guard stated, and it wasn’t a question. ‘Could you come with us please?’
Kara exchanged eye contact with Tress, and she knew what they were both thinking – this was like every spy movie where the FBI showed up, and ten minutes later the good guy was having to crawl out of a bathroom window and slide down a fifty-storey-tall drainpipe, before disguising his identity, lifting false passports from under a floorboard and then stealing a Grubhub delivery moped to escape.
Actually, Tress probably wasn’t thinking that, but Kara definitely was.
‘Erm, sure,’ she answered, thinking how ridiculous this was. She’d worked here for ten years, it had been home to her, her dream job, and now she was getting treated like a suspicious stranger.
‘Did you bring a witness?’ the HR assistant asked, deadpan. Clearly Scooby took her job very seriously.
‘A witness?’
‘It was in the email we sent you. In cases of a personnel dispute, you’re entitled to bring a witness.’
Damn, she hadn’t got past the bit in the email where they told her they wanted to meet her this morning. She could have dragged Drea away from her premarital packing and brought her. Or called Ollie and asked him to come – she was pretty sure he’d landed in Glasgow last night.
‘Yes, I’m her witness,’ Tress jumped in, obviously reading the panic on her face. If Kara hadn’t been so intimidated by the whole situation, she’d have hugged her again.
‘Follow us please,’ Scooby demanded.
This was so unnecessary. She knew exactly where the HR office was and would have been perfectly capable of making her own way there. What did they think she was going to do – spray paint ‘Corbin Jacobs is a sleazy tosser’ along the corridor on the way there?
