The Girl Before(62)

Thank you for your email. I don’t discuss Emma Matthews. Not with anyone. Saul.

I try again. I’m actually going to be near your office tomorrow evening. Maybe we could have a quick drink?

I attach my Messenger details. From the little I know about Saul Aksoy, I can be reasonably sure he’ll check me out on Facebook. And, perhaps immodestly, I’m guessing he wouldn’t mind having a drink with me.



This time the answer’s more positive. Ok. I can spare you half an hour. I’ll meet you at the Zebra bar in Dutton Street at 8.

I get there early and order a lime and soda. My breasts are bigger now and I’m needing to pee more often. Otherwise, you’d barely suspect I was pregnant, although Mia claims I’m looking unusually well. Glowing, she says. It doesn’t feel like that when I’m throwing up in the mornings.

My first impression of Saul Aksoy is jewelry. In addition to the ear stud, he wears a thin gold chain tucked into the vee of his open-collared shirt. Cuff links are visible under the sleeves of his suit, and there’s a signet ring on his right hand as well as an expensive-looking watch on his left. He seems upset that I already have a drink, particularly a soft one, and tries hard to press a glass of champagne on me before giving up and ordering one for himself.

Saul is as different from Simon Wakefield as it’s possible to get, I find myself thinking. And Edward Monkford is utterly different from both of them. It seems incredible that Emma could have had relationships with all three men. Where Simon’s eager to please, but also touchy and insecure, and Edward’s calm and super-confident, Saul is pushy and brash and loud. He also has a habit of saying “Yeah?” aggressively at the end of his sentences, as if trying to force me to agree with him.

“Thank you for meeting me,” I say after some preliminary chat. “I know it must look odd, given that I didn’t even know Emma. But it seems to me that almost no one really knew her. Everyone I speak to has a different version of what she was like.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t really meet you for that, yeah? I still can’t stand to talk about her.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because she was a bunny-boiler,” he says bluntly. “And she cost me my job. Not that I miss the job—it was shit—but she lied about me and I don’t take that from anyone.”

“What did she do?”

“Complained to HR that I’d got her drunk and pressured her into sex. Said amongst other things that I’d offered to help her move into marketing if she’d sleep with me. She claimed she’d said no and I couldn’t handle the rejection. As it happens I did have a word with the marketing director, tried to do her a favor, but that was before we slept together, not after. But she made this allegation before it all came out she’d been busted for crying rape, yeah? And it just so happened there were a few girls in that company who were a bit upset when they found out about each other, plus my wife—my now ex-wife—looking to stitch me up, so I was screwed. Best thing that ever happened to me, as it turned out, but she couldn’t have known that at the time.”



“So you and Emma had—what? A fling? An affair?” There’s a bowl of salted nuts on the bar and I’m finding it hard not to eat them all while he’s talking. I push them away.

“We had sex a couple of times, that’s all. A training awayday with an overnight in a hotel. Things got out of hand on the free booze.” He grimaces. “Look, I’m not proud of it. Simon’s my friend—or at least, he was before all this. But I’ve never been good at saying no and it was her who kept coming on to me, believe me. In fact, she wanted to go on with it even when I decided we’d had our fun and it was time to finish. I reckon the risk was a big part of it for her. She definitely liked the fact that we were doing it behind Simon’s back. Amanda’s too, for that matter. If you ask me, I ended up doing Simon a favor, although he never saw it that way.”

“Are you and Simon still in touch?”

He shakes his head. “We haven’t spoken in years.”

“I have to ask you this…someone who looked at the video on Emma’s phone told me it was quite rough.”

He doesn’t look embarrassed. “Yeah. Well, she liked all that, didn’t she? Most women do, when it comes down to it.” He gives me a direct look. “And I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

I feel my skin crawl, although I try not to show it. “But why make a video at all?”

“Just fooling around. Everyone’s done it, yeah? She told me later she’d deleted it but she must have kept it. That was Emma—she’d have enjoyed knowing she had something like that, something that could blow her whole f*cking life and mine apart if it came out. Her little bit of power. I probably should have double-checked. But by then I’d moved on.”

“Did you ever notice her lying about other things? That seems to be something else people say about her—that she didn’t always tell the truth.”

“Who does, yeah?” He leans back, more relaxed now. “Though I did notice she’d say these stupid things sometimes. Like, Simon told me she’d almost been a model—some top agency had been desperate to sign her but she’d decided modeling wasn’t for her. Yeah, right—she was saving herself for a career as a PA in a water supplies company instead. Anyway, she told me a local photographer had approached her once in the street, but he seemed a bit pervy so she hadn’t done anything about it. And it got me thinking: Which version was the real one? Like, sometimes she just exaggerated a little bit for effect and sometimes she went all the way and created this whole fantasy world for herself.