Agency

In Which the Great Void Opens Up Before Him and Berry Keeps Right On Walking

two weeks later

Berry was adrift in the rumpled sheets of Allegra's bed. He watched the midday sun make shapes on her dark, artless walls and waited for her to emerge from the shower.

He felt guilt. He felt fear. He felt the inexorable weight of fate bearing down on him.

It had been almost a month since the night of the speech, which seemed to Berry to have changed the course of everything.

***

He did not enjoy having an affair (this was his first and, if he escaped the experience unscathed, would most definitely be the last). If he'd tried to explain it to anyone -- which of course he didn't, not even Otto -- Berry might have said the feeling was a bit like walking on a warm, Caribbean sandbar: the water around you clear and shallow enough that you can be miles out and still only be up to your waist. Logically, you know the great void is looming out there somewhere — that the bottom will eventually drop out, and you'll be surprised to find yourself in over your head — but you keep walking and marvelling that it hasn't yet.

And speaking of looming voids, that morning, the signed papers to start work had arrived from Atrabax. He'd tucked them away in his email as insurance but didn't want to raise flags by submitting it to the file.

He didn't need to. As it turned out, Otto's suggestion was working brilliantly.

Using money drawn off the account by the Starfluence invoice, he'd been able to clear Papa's first payment and skim a little more to pay Margot's overtime on Diapers. He hadn't quite figured out how or when he would return the money to the account but hoped the answer would reveal itself in due course.

Let's pause here for a moment, lest you start to picture Berry as the type of person to take illicit endeavours lightly. That really would be an incorrect assumption. Not everyone who does bad things is a bad person. Not absolutely. There is some wiggle room when we consider agency or the perceived lack.

Even as he was lying in Allegra's bed or skimming funds from the client's account (borrowing, he called it), be assured, he wasn't enjoying any of this. In a state of perpetual anxiety, his stomach was almost certainly incubating an angry ulcer. He frequently woke in the middle of the night gasping and sweating, convinced he was having a heart attack. He even had to manage through the occasional course of vomiting when the weight of his wrong-doings happened to seep through the thick wall of his moral reasoning.

Astoundingly, the water was still shallow as far as he could see, and it felt as if he just kept walking a while longer (maybe until bonus time) everything would right itself in due course.

***

He heard the shower turn off and wondered whether Allegra would promptly get dressed (a signal that she had a meeting back at the office and that he was dismissed) or if she would come back to bed as she sometimes did and make him late for Fraser's accounts meeting.

She emerged from the bathroom, damp and wrapped loosely in her Marks & Spencer Egyptian cotton robe that no longer smelled like home. She pulled the drapes shut against the afternoon sun and climbed back into the sheets.

Seemed like he'd be late then.

"I want to sleep with you," she murmured into his armpit.

"You just did," Berry replied.

"No, I mean, I want you to stay and hold me while we take a long afternoon nap." Allegra purred and snuggled her cold, wet hair into his side.

"Ah," he said. He didn't like it when she tried to blur the lines between what they were doing (just having sex together) and something more romantic (doing relationship-y things together). "I need to get back for Fraser's meeting."

"No, you don't," she replied sleepily. "I'll tell him you're working on a special project for me."

Berry shook his head. He didn't like lying to his affable, friendly boss. He pushed the covers off and moved to get out of the bed.

"Wait!" she stopped him. "Stay. Stay, and we'll discuss something I've been thinking about for you. A promotion."

Her words hung across the soft sheets like the bribe they were.

Berry sat up but didn't leave the bed yet.

"A promotion? To what?" he asked doubtfully.

"Well, I was going to discuss this with you, but I've decided to create a new division. Just for pharma, because that's where the money is. That's where our future is. And it needs a Head. I believe it should be you, Bertrand. Head of Accounts, Pharma Division."

Berry watched her face. Her words were decisive and professional, but her expression was cloying.

"It would come with a big increase. And an office of your own on the fifth floor. Right away."

Berry felt the blades of anxiety twisting in his stomach again.

"But, Allegra," he said. "There aren't any free offices on the fifth. You remember, they had to convert a boardroom when you arrived."

She waved her hand and pulled Berry back down under the cover.

"Leave that to me. I've been thinking about reorganizing the team spaces anyway. I think the art department is much too big. Niall can move down there and be closer to his team. You can have his office."

Berry suppressed a small smile. Niall would be furious.