I stopped working.
"Push you to what."
He looked at the regulars. Then at the door. Then at me, like the room had finally tipped him over.
"You're not stupid. You knew I was about to make MD. You're worried I'm going to leave you. So you've gone and pulled some grubby little trick to embarrass me."
The room went quiet.
Iris was at the till. Her face went red in patches. "Hugo, you absolute scrounger. She put you through your LSE postgrad. She paid your rent for two years."
His face changed colour. "Shut up."
I turned to her. "Iris. Don't."
But he'd heard what he wanted. "There. You see? You want everyone to know I had nothing. You want me to walk into Bishopsgate every morning with my head down because of you."
I'd helped him through those two years because I'd seen him on a wet evening five years ago, standing outside this same bakery, soaking through his donkey jacket, holding his only umbrella over an old woman waiting at the bus stop. His fingers had been blue. He'd given the umbrella away and walked me home in the rain.
I put my hand flat on the cold marble.
Backbone looks like gold when a man is poor and like costume jewellery when he's rich.
"Hugo," I said. "Did you come here to apologise. Or did you come here to ask me to fix it."
He took a breath.
"If you ring the agents and have the review pulled," he said, "I can pretend this morning didn't happen."
I laughed.
"Hugo. You binned the cake. I didn't."
His eyes went dark. "Wren. Don't be ungrateful."
The door chime went.
Tati came in with two men behind her. She took her sunglasses off and looked the bakery over with a professional, pricing eye.
"This is the place, then. And you think you can take on Meridian Crest from here."
Hugo turned, startled. "Tati. What are you doing."
She didn't answer him. She put a folded document down on the counter between Iris and me.
"Wren. Your shop's lease — that's with the building, isn't it."
She smiled.
"It happens that Daddy had a word with the agents this afternoon. Your lease isn't being renewed. End of the month. We'll cover the dilapidations."
Iris went pale. "That isn't possible. Our lease has three years."
Tati lifted her chin. "We'll pay the surrender premium. As for you, you'll be moving."
I picked up the document. I read two lines.
The smile went off my face quietly.
"Miss Ffoulkes-Gray. Forging a notice on a freeholder's letterhead is fraud."
Her mouth did a very small thing.
Tati got herself back in a second.
"Forging? Do you know who my father is."
I pushed the document back across the counter.
"I do. Roger Ffoulkes-Gray. EMEA chief operating officer at Meridian Crest."
She tossed her hair. "Then you understand."
Hugo stepped to her shoulder. His voice had a warning in it. "Wren. Tati's not someone you want to get on the wrong side of."
I looked at him. "Then who am I allowed to be on the wrong side of. You?"
He didn't answer.
Tati looked from him to me, and then she smiled. The smile was not for me.
"Hugo. Tell me she's not still labouring under the impression that you're going to marry her."
My fingers stopped on the counter.
Hugo's face went hard. "Tati."
She made a little wide-eyed face, all malice, no embarrassment. "Sorry — I assumed you'd told her. Daddy and your people met properly last week. You're on for the engagement weekend at Cliveden next month. You're at Wickstead on Saturday for the fittings."
Iris came round the counter. "You're talking absolute rubbish. Hugo's got a girlfriend. Hugo. Tell her."
Tati looked at Hugo. "Go on, then."
Every face in the bakery turned to him.
He didn't look at me.
"Wren," he said, low, "we don't fit."
That sentence landed colder than the one in the fire-stair.
I nodded. "When did this start."
His eyes went over my shoulder.
Tati answered for him. "From the day he started at Meridian Crest. Daddy said he had real range, he just had to stop dragging a bakery girl through receptions. It wasn't a good look."
She came a step closer. Her voice dropped.
"Do you want to know how Hugo introduces you."
I didn't speak.
She smiled. "He says you're a girl from his uni days who couldn't quite let it go."
Iris swore — a long, quiet, vicious one.
Hugo finally lost it. "Tatiana."
Tati's face fell into wounded innocence. "Did I get it wrong? That's how you describe her, isn't it."
Hugo's face went the colour of paper.
I looked at him, and to my surprise I felt very calm.
"Hugo. The money you owe me. I want it back by midnight."
His head snapped up. "What money."
I went to the drawer under the till and took out a folder.
I laid the loan agreement on the counter.
"LSE postgraduate fees and your London living costs, hundred and twenty-four thousand five hundred. Wharton exchange semester, sixty-eight thousand. Three Anderson and Sheppard suits, fourteen thousand eight hundred. CFA Level III prep and the LBS AMP, twenty-one thousand two hundred. The deposit on your Canary Wharf flat, hundred and ninety thousand. Five years of monthly maintenance transfers, four hundred and one thousand five hundred. Eight hundred and twenty thousand."
The colour went out of his face.
"You said I never had to pay it back."
I looked at him.
"When you were my boyfriend. Now you're someone else's fiancé."
Hugo snatched the agreement off the counter. His fingers were shaking.
"Wren. Are you really keeping accounts."
"You started keeping them," I said. "Mine just have figures."
Tati glanced at the total over his shoulder. Her face moved.
Eight hundred and twenty thousand wasn't a fortune to her, but to a man who'd just made VP and hadn't drawn his bonus yet, it was enough to be a problem.
She gave him a look I couldn't entirely read. "You owe her eight hundred and twenty grand."
"I'll deal with it," he said through his teeth.
I took out my phone and tapped the screen.
The fire-stair recording came up at full volume.
"Wren. For God's sake. Don't come here dressed like that again. It's embarrassing."
Then Tati's voice, bright as a knife: "You're a courier."
Hugo went grey.
"You recorded us."
"I keep things on the record."
Tati lunged across the counter for the phone. Iris stepped in front of me and took her shoulder; Tati's hand came up and Iris caught her wrist.
I caught her other wrist with my free hand and turned her, gently, back onto her own side of the counter. She stumbled into one of the bistro chairs.
"You touched me," she said. Her voice had gone thin. "You actually touched me."
"You came at her," I said. "Come at her again and I'm calling the police."
Her eyes filled. She turned to Hugo. "You're going to let her shove me?"
Hugo took a step forward.
My phone went off in my hand.
Pemberton.
I tapped speakerphone and put it down on the marble.
"Miss Ashcombe." His voice filled the room. "Meridian Crest's general counsel has just lodged a formal objection to the rent review. Mr Ffoulkes-Gray has also rung the head of the managing agents asking for a compliance audit on your bakery's premises licence."
The bakery went silent.
Tati's face froze.
Hugo froze.
"Pemberton."
"Yes, Miss."
"Does that name's company hold sub-leases at twenty-three and twenty-four Bishop's Yard as well."
"Yes, Miss. Phase II. Six floors total."
"Audit them. Anything irregular, send the firm a forfeiture letter."
"Yes, Miss."
I rang off.
Tati was staring at me. "Who are you."
I put the loan agreement back in the drawer.
"Hasn't your father told you."
A quiet black Bentley pulled up at the kerb outside.
The driver got out and held the rear door open.
A tall, white-haired man in a Savile Row chalk-stripe — no tie, weekend brogues — walked into the bakery. Mr Pemberton, who had come in two minutes behind him, fell in at his shoulder.
Pemberton gave a small bow.
"Miss Ashcombe. Sir Edmund would like you home for dinner. He'd like to discuss the Phase II succession at his convenience."
Hugo looked like someone had taken his throat in a hand.
He looked at Pemberton. Then at me. The shock went, slowly, into a very ugly fear.
"Bishop's Yard. Bishop's Yard is yours."
I didn't say no.
Tati's face was the colour of unbaked dough, but she went on a last bluff. "That's nonsense. The freeholder of Bishop's Yard is Ashcombe. What's that to do with —"
Pemberton turned to her, very politely. "Miss Ashcombe-Vale's full name. Ashcombe is from her mother's side."
Tati took half a step back.
Hugo's face had nothing left in it.
I'd never made any particular effort to hide it. He'd met my mother's driver. He'd seen the dresses in my wardrobe. He'd assumed they were copies, because he'd needed them to be — because if I'd really had what I had, then walking out on me wouldn't have looked like climbing. It would have looked like what it was.
He needed me to be a girl who needed him.
A small crowd had begun to form on the pavement. The four-thirty office traffic out of Bishop's Yard was passing; one of the men who'd come with Tati had his phone up trying to film, and one of Sir Edmund's two close-protection officers had already, very gently, put a hand over the lens.
Pemberton turned his attention to Tati.
"Miss Ffoulkes-Gray. The notice you produced earlier — we'll be passing that to the building's solicitors. The harassment of a tenant in trade is, in addition, a matter for the Met. Officers will be along shortly."
Tati's voice cracked. "I didn't make it. The agents gave it to me."
"Then I'm sure you'll have plenty to say to them," Pemberton said.
Hugo had his eye on me again. He stepped past Tati like she wasn't there.
"Wrennie."
"Don't."
His voice softened. "I didn't —"
I cut him off.
"You didn't know I had money. So you thought you could humiliate me."
His throat moved.
"This morning was bad. I was under pressure. Roger's been sitting on my deal for weeks. I couldn't afford to upset Tati."
Tati's head whipped round. "Hugo. What did you just say."
He didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on me.
"Wrennie. Five years. You can't end this over a misunderstanding."
A misunderstanding.
I almost laughed.
My cake was in a bin in his lobby, his arm had been around another woman in front of his entire floor, and he had told everyone for a year that I was a girl from uni who couldn't let go.
In his mouth, all of that was a misunderstanding.
Pemberton murmured, "Miss Ashcombe. Shall we deal with him."
I looked at Hugo.
"No need."
Something hopeful flickered in his eyes.
I said: "Let him deal with the loan himself. Eight hundred and twenty thousand. By midnight."