Read an extract from Payday: Nicole

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Nicole

Nicole had always enjoyed her dealings with Rupert. She was aware that he had logged her attractiveness, but only
in the objective, passing way one does a person’s sex or ethnicity – not with a view to profiting from it, like most
men. Softly spoken, punctual and polite, the hotelier also wore his success lightly, which was rare in the brittle, competitive world she inhabited, and something Nicole liked to think she would be able to do when she finally got where she wanted to be.

‘I’m going to need a coffee,’ announced her client once they’d finished the tour. ‘Urgently. How about you call Jamie
and get him to meet us at Lytton House in ten?’ One of Rupert’s boutique clubs, she remembered, was just down the
road. ‘I’ll get them to sort some refreshments in the upstairs dining room, if you can tell him to meet us up there?’

As her client gave out instructions down the phone, Nicole tapped the ‘shortcuts’ key on hers and watched her thumb
hover over ‘Jamie’, hoping against hope that her boss would pitch up before she had to make the call. Why did he even have to be here today? The theatre was Nicole’s project.

‘All good?’ Rupert raised an eyebrow at her and, reluctantly, Nicole pressed the little green phone.

‘Hell- o?’

Hate shot up like a firework inside her.

‘Jamie,’ she kept her voice level. ‘We’re done at the Vale, and Rupert was thinking we could meet at Lytton House to run through the details.’ Nicole threw her client a smile. ‘The man needs caffeine.’

‘Sure. In traffic but should be with you in twenty.’

Jamie made it in less than that, pushing through the double dining room doors with a whole host of explanations nobody could care less about – least of all her client, surely? And yet there they both were, immediately engrossed in
their London traffic woes. You’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. Nicole dug a nail into her thigh beneath the table,
waiting for it.

‘Well you know what they say,’ Jamie concluded with a click of the tongue against the upper palate. ‘ “You’re not
stuck in traffic, you are traffic.” ‘

Boom. Predictable as cancer.

British journalist Celia Walden’s bestselling debut thriller is a thrilling, searing examination of sexual harassment and the messy nuances of justice. Payday is out now in hardback, ebook and audiobook or you can pre-order your paperback copy below.