The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan

Chapter Six

The following morning, Benjamin arrives at the office at 9 a.m. on the dot, and Fia makes a great show of looking at her watch. She has been at her desk for almost two hours already.

Benjamin, in turn, creates quite the performance of rolling his eyes in response, but otherwise he says nothing, stepping over a neat stack of her files in order to get to his desk.

Fia feels something inside her constrict. The mere sight of him there – turning on his computer, setting down his Thermos cup – just has such a sense of permanence to it. And they really are so very close to one another in here. He’s positioned adjacent to her, his side profile in her direct line of vision now. From her seat, Fia could practically reach out and high five him if she wanted to (which of course she does not). She can smell his cologne.How can she be expected to tolerate this for ten whole weeks?

Meanwhile, Benjamin has taken off his jacket and is staring resolutely at his screen, his mouth a tight line, his hand clutching at the mouse. Tension seems to radiate from every inch of him.

Fia waits for one minute.

Two.

Three.

‘Well, good morning to you, too,’ she says then, purely out of a desire to say something – and to say something arsey, at that. He just seems to bring it out in her.

‘Hi,’ he replies sourly, barely glancing in her direction.

And somehow – perhaps very masochistically – it’s his reluctance that makes her suddenly determined to pursue this communication.

‘Beautiful day,’ she adds blithely.

‘Mmm.’

‘Don’t you just love New York in the sunshine?’

This time, he looks up at her. ‘More than words,’ he answers, everything about him thoroughly unamused. Something in Fia perceives it as a tiny victory.

‘It’s not like you to be so quiet, Benjamin,’ she continues, and she takes a quick glance over at the door to make sure it’s properly closed. ‘Back at Camp Birchwood, sometimes it seemed like the only thing I heard was your voice, all day long, from morning ’til night.’

‘Well, admittedly, it was pretty difficult to drown you out,’ he snaps back, ‘but I had to try – for the sake of the children.’

Fia rolls her eyes hard. Just like that, her victory isn’t tasting quite as sweet.

‘Are we done here?’ he asks, sounding about as exhausted and put-upon as a person could possibly be. ‘Or you wanna talk about the weather some more?’

She affects an affronted expression. ‘I was just trying to be friendly, Benjamin. It can be very scary starting a new job, especially when it turns out you’ve royally fucked over the one person who might be most available to help you.’ She leans into a forced smile. ‘You’ll be sure to let me know if you need anything today, won’t you? I’m your “big sister for the summer”, after all.’

‘I won’t,’ he says shortly, and then, after a second, he clarifies, ‘be needing anything from you. Not today, not at any point. You can go ahead and take that as a given right now.’

And sure enough, Fia can tell from the look on his face that Benjamin Lowry would rather die than ask her for so much as a Wi-Fi password.

She shrugs. ‘Fine.’

He just stares at her in response, one eyebrow arching the slightest bit. ‘Fine.’

And she shouldn’t say it. She really shouldn’t – there’s just no need at all.

Of course, she says it.

‘Fine.’

With that, Fia reaches for a few files from the top of her pile on the floor, plonking them on her desk with an unnecessary thud. It is, she thinks, going to be an incredibly long summer.

That afternoon, Benjamin knocks over her pile of files with his big stupid feet. He lets out a long-suffering sigh, as though the fault lies with the files themselves, or – more likely – with Fia.

‘Don’t!’ she says sharply, as he bends down on his hunkers, begins to gather them up. ‘I’ll do it. They were in an order.’

Benjamin studies the files, taking in the yellow, pink or green Post-its that are stuck to each one of them.

‘Oh wow, colour coding,’ he says, every word mean and exaggerated. He stands up again, backing away. ‘You knock yourself out, Fia. I’m sure the only thing better than getting to organize that shit once is getting to do it twice, right?’

On Wednesday, it’s more of the same: more silence, more sniping, absolutely no mentorship on matters of the law.

By the time Thursday rolls around, Fia feels like she is hanging on by a thread. Already, she has ceased to be able to think in terms of their whole summer together. Instead, it has become a question of getting through the days – sometimes even the hours.

Benjamin’s very presence in the office is oppressive, unignorable. Even the fact that he appears also to be incredibly unhappy about the whole arrangement is of cold comfort.

Rather, it actually irritates her all the more, the way he often behaves as though he is somehow the wronged party here – as though his right to be pissed off is equal to, if not even greater than, hers.

He does, at least, appear to have accrued plenty of work to be getting on with. There’s been some satisfaction in witnessing that, if nothing else. She’d swear she’s even seen a few flashes of panic here and there, as the reality of a big boy job makes itself clear to him.

Files are mounting up on his desk now, and if he has put in place any sort of system by which to deal with them, Fia cannot ascertain it. In fact, his whole corner of the room looks increasingly like it belongs either to some sort of mad genius or to a woefully disorganized teenager. Fia knows which one she thinks is the more apt comparison. There are papers on practically every available surface, plus all manner of other miscellany – a coffee cup here, a stapler there. Her stapler, as it happens.

It’s midmorning when Brett Sallinger – a junior partner in Mergers and Acquisitions – swings by. He gives the doorframe a perfunctory little knock.

‘Benjamin,’ he says, ‘can I grab those disclosure schedules from you, buddy?’

Fia looks up to offer Brett a nod of greeting, and out of the corner of her eye, she can sense a bit of a scramble. Excellent. This, she thinks to herself triumphantly, is what happens when you don’t have a system.

‘You mean the ones from the, uh, the Sonex merger?’ Benjamin asks, amid much rustling of papers.

‘No. The Goldsberry merger,’ Brett corrects, a tiny furrow appearing in his forehead. ‘Didn’t we talk about you taking first pass at the mark-ups?’

‘Right, I remember now,’ Benjamin replies, sounding much more at ease than Fia can remember feeling in her entire first year at the firm, never mind her first week. ‘Any chance I could get ’em to you this afternoon? I’m just a little, uh … under the gun right now.’

He offers a self-effacing little chuckle, and in response, Fia senses her own silent intake of breath. Her body tenses vicariously for the dressing down that will now surely follow.

Except, it doesn’t. After a few seconds’ pause, Brett just smiles. ‘I get it,’ he replies. ‘End of day’ll be fine. Let me know if you want to bounce anything off me, ’kay?’

And as he strides down the corridor away from them, it takes everything in Fia to bite back some choice commentary.

She supposes she kind of understands Brett’s response. Kind of. The odd thing about the summer associates is that they are here to be tested and wooed, at once. The point is not only for the firm to suss out every detail of the professional and personal capabilities of their prospective hires; it is also to give the prospective hires – many of whom will soon have their pick of job offers – an impression of the life they could expect to lead as a fully fledged lawyer at ZOLA. And everyone knows that there are larger firms out there: firms with higher salaries, more secondment opportunities, a dry cleaner in the building. What ZOLA must offer, instead, is the sense of a slightly better work-life balance. It is important, therefore, that the summer associates leave at the end of August feeling that the expectations here are reasonable, that support is available, that the partners are human.

Still, Fia can’t help but think that Benjamin’s just been let off the hook pretty damn easily. And it is so frustratingly familiar – hadn’t he always been able to gloss over his own shortcomings, pull something out of the bag when forced to, wangle things exactly how he wanted them? Brett might as well have said sure thing, champ. Would he have done the same with a female summer associate? Fia doesn’t know. Logic tells her that not every positive interaction between men in this office is evidence of the boys’ club, alive and well – but neither does it do much to disprove that possibility.

All this circles in her brain as she drafts an unrelated email – one she knows she’ll have to reread when she’s done, to ensure that none of her internal rage has somehow crept in. She’s at warmest regards when she senses the force of Benjamin’s stare, and she glances up to meet it.

They blink at one another.

‘Oh no, please,’ he says, all sarcasm. ‘Type louder, Fia – really. There might be someone up on the fifty-ninth floor who can’t hear you.’

Fia bristles immediately. ‘I’m sorry,’ she fires back. ‘Am I disturbing you in my office?’

She supposes she tees him up to contradict her there, and contradict her he does. He has always been, if nothing else, reliable in that way.

‘Our office,’ he replies, and she hisses out a sigh in response, not caring that she sounds – even to her own ears – like a petulant teenager.

‘Oh my God, you’re such a melter,’ she mutters, halfway under her breath.

‘What was that?’

For a moment, Fia says nothing. She’d sincerely been talking mostly to herself – just an instinctive urge to let off some steam. But since he’s asked …

‘A melter,’ she replies, each syllable enunciated deliberately. ‘Alternatively, a head-melt – someone who is so incredibly annoying that they make you feel like your brain is actually starting to melt.’

He takes in the explanation, before barking out a grim laugh. ‘Well, back at you, Irish.’

And, for reasons Fia could never quite explain to anyone, that final word out of his mouth is it. Her very last nerve, well and truly stricken. She thought she’d be able to handle this whole thing with Benjamin very much on a solo basis. Why reveal to her friends or family the doing of something that is ultimately going to be undone? That has been her thinking for most of the past decade and certainly for the past few days.

However, she can see now that such a strategy just isn’t going to work any longer. It cannot – not when she has to look at Benjamin’s face every minute of the day. She will explode.

She cannot help but wonder what George would make of all this. George is, after all, the one person in her life to whom Fia has ever confessed everything that happened in Las Vegas – the one person she might have readily turned to, this past week, for wisdom or for comfort.

Of course, that’s a fool’s game, though. Asking George is not an option anymore.

Instead, she reaches for her phone, opening her group chat with Annie and Kavita.

Are you both home tonight?she texts. Or can you be? I will need ALL the wine.