"Well, I assumed that he had a good reason, I had no idea that ..."
Again, she cut in. He was not used to being interrupted by underlings and she could see him struggle not to get annoyed. She realised that he really was rather frightened, caught between a potential scandal and the wrath of Urquhart-Drago.
"You had no idea because you didn't want to know. You told me that it was only a week and that in that case I should simply not tell my husband ... and I was stupid enough to do that. Only then you put it on the fucking company website that I was working for him."
He flinched at the word 'fucking' coming out of her mouth. Before he could come up with a response, she continued.
"Well, I took one for the team."
He was almost comically at a loss. Then Julie added,
"It looks like my marriage has taken one for the team as well."
In the past she had sometimes been annoyed when Jake had talked about men with managerial jobs being 'suits', secretly wishing that he could be more like that. Now she knew what he meant. Holland was nothing without his suit. Losing patience, she simply closed the door, not slamming it but sending a clear message all the same.
Looking troubled he left. He scuffed one of his polished black leather shoes against the gatepost, marring its perfection; a fact that he noticed with annoyance as he got into his BMW.
Julie watched him drive off. The interaction had stirred her to action but now the apathy returned, and she went back to sit at the kitchen table. Nothing more of note happened in her day and there was no further communication from her office.
Tuesday morning found her in the same state, the same pose and at the same kitchen table. Her phone pinged, waking her from her misery.
It was a message from her mum. Apparently, Jake had agreed, last minute, to perform at a concert in London with his former bandmates. He had been in a group with them at the time they had first met. The concert would be on Friday evening.
Without giving it any conscious consideration, Julie new that she would be going.
***
In the near silence of the dressing room, his bandmates having already gone out on stage, Jacob Greville felt the familiar nerves. In the past this had shown up in physical trembling before a gig. However, the noise of the audience, being whipped up by the MC, began to penetrate and he made the transformation into Jake the rock musician.
He strode to the door and out through the dingy corridor towards the brightness of the stage. An observant watcher would have seen a transformation in those few metres, his posture shifting so that he seemed taller, his walk becoming a blend of confident stride and dance, something akin to the movements of a master swordfighter in days gone by and then he was stalking out on stage in front of the audience.
As an introvert Jake was not great with larger numbers of people, even a handful could be awkward, and he loathed parties, but he was more than fine with an audience. There was only one of them and he knew how they worked.
Julie watched the stage anxiously, waiting to see her Jake. She had seen the surprisingly petite drummer come out first and take her place behind the drum kit, then a rather stocky looking guy arrived and picked up the bass guitar. A skinny man with arms that looked a little long for his body shambled on stage and took up his post at the keyboards.
She began to wonder if she had got it wrong and Jake would not be appearing after all, or perhaps he just was not in good enough shape to play and had dropped out at the last minute.
The MC appeared on stage and began to speak. At first Julie ignored him as an irrelevance. Then his words began to filter through to her,
"... ladies and gentleman, you are truly privileged, for one night only, to hear a man who is mostly to be found in the recording studio or writing hits for other stars. Here he is ... the man himself ... the one and only Jake Greville".
The audience went crazy. The noise they made became almost a physical entity in its own right. And then he was there at the front of the stage, picking up his guitar, casually throwing the strap over his head and quickly adjusting the microphone.
Julie was struggling to get her head round this. She had just assumed that he was a guitarist in the band, happy to cede the limelight to the frontman. But ... he was the frontman!
Jake was dressed as she remembered him from when they first met, in jeans, boots and leather jacket. God did he look good. She recalled with shame how she had lectured him that grown men wore suits, and even bullied him into wearing one for a formal function at her office, and then been a little embarrassed at how awkward he had looked in it. She looked around and realised how many women in this audience were looking at him with undisguised lust, and in some cases even with the appearance of adoration.
And then they began. The drummer launched into the first number, surprisingly aggressive for such a small woman, and then Jake was playing and singing, and his voice was a revelation. This was not her husband's quiet, diffident voice. It had a rough strength to it, and it seemed to Julie that her more sensitive parts were vibrating in sympathy with the deeper notes as he sang, and her pussy was slowly liquifying.
Soon Julie was lusting after this rock star on the stage like a teenage fan, and she could see the funny side of the fact that she was his wife. Then it struck her that some of the other girls here might have more chance of spending the night in his bed than she did, and she shivered at the thought of him bedding a groupie. If you had asked her a week or so ago, she would have laughed at that idea. but seeing this confident version of her Jake, strutting on the stage, she knew that the opportunity would be there, and it would be his choice to make.
The remainder of the concert passed for her in an altered state of consciousness, and at the end she had arrived at yet another revelation. This was not some act. In a way this was the real Jake. Julie had never let herself see him in his natural element and had then judged him for failing to measure up in what was not his world, for looking awkward in a suit, for not being able to make urbane small talk with executives.
She had a moment of self-loathing and found herself almost hoping that he might take one of the sexy girls she could see around her into his bed. He deserved at least that comfort, and if she could no longer be the one to provide it then maybe she should be willing to make that sacrifice. He deserved someone better than her. But in truth she shuddered at the thought, at the idea of some other woman having his hands run over her naked body and knowing the wonder of the unselfish pleasure he could deliver.
Once all the encores were done with and it was finally over, Julie was in an unthinking daze and made her way on autopilot to the backstage area. Of course, there was a line of autograph hunters, mostly women, and Julie quietly joined the end of the line.
For a moment she contemplated trying to jump the queue, telling everyone she was Jake's wife. And then she imagined the likely result of her being escorted out as some kind of deranged stalker.
The two girls in front of her had clearly had a bit to drink, certainly enough to lower whatever inhibitions they might have had. They were young, perhaps the age she had been when she first met Jake. One of them, called Kitty by her friend, was in tight jeans, a silky green shirt and sneakers, but her friend, Mel, had pulled out all the stops. Julie had to admit she was gorgeous, a natural blonde with a voluptuous figure. She was a little overdressed for the event in a figure-hugging blue dress and wearing black stiletto heels. Julie had tuned out their conversation at first but then she took notice on hearing Kitty say, slightly incredulously,
"You mean you're wearing stockings under all that?"
Mel, answered, looking completely unrepentant,
