“Maybe I did,” Corrigan retorted. “And that would put a hole through your whole paranoia theory right there, wouldn’t it?”
And he had a point. Now it was Lilly’s turn to feel less sure of herself. “Why? . . . When did it finish with Evelyn?” she asked.
“Oh, it all came to a head about three weeks before Oz was due to go live. She split.” Corrigan sighed. “She left me for being too pushy and ambitious. Muriel left me for being the opposite. It’s true what they say about women, you know: there’s no pleasing them.”
“Tell me what happened,” Lilly said.
Chapter Thirty
Evelyn stared across the living room at Corrigan, shaking her head disbelievingly. Her eyes were wide, her body taut like a threatened animal, her face a mask of someone he didn’t know. All of the resentment and anger that had been pent up for months was pouring out with the adrenaline flush.
“How could you?” she shouted. “A man that you’d worked with for years . . . after the friend he’s been to both of us. How could you let them just walk all over him like that? What did you do—just stand there? Didn’t you say anything to stand up for him?”
Tom Hatcher had told her over lunch about Corrigan’s part in the Shipley affair—but in a distorted way that made it sound as if Corrigan had asked Pinder to dump him. Apparently that was the version that Tyron had been spreading around the company. But Corrigan was in no mood to quibble over details or have to justify himself.
“What did you expect me to do?” he snapped back. “Their minds were already made up. . . . And anyway, they might have had a point. Eric would never have fitted in at Xylog. If the truth were known, he wanted out of it anyway.” Shipley had been offered a mundane position in the general CLC research facility, but turned it down and quit the company.
Evelyn looked at Corrigan contemptuously. “Who are you to say what Eric wanted? At least he could have been given a chance to say so himself, instead of being discarded like worn-out shoes. Don’t things like people’s pride and dignity mean anything to you anymore? It’s a shame, because they used to.”
“Yes, they do,” Corrigan answered, marching in front of her. He jabbed at his chest with a thumb. “And so do my own, for that matter. All I’d have succeeded in doing would be to make a sacrificial lamb of myself. And wouldn’t Tyron have just loved that! Can’t you see? It’s exactly what he was hoping I’d do.”
Evelyn hooked a wisp of her hair with her finger and whirled away savagely. “God, if you only knew how sick I am of hearing about Tyron, Tyron, Tyron . . . the whole pack of them.”
“One of us is going to end up as the technical head of Xylog,” Corrigan said. “It’s down to that: either him or me. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“No, it doesn’t. I told you, I’m sick of all of it. Maybe Eric knew exactly what he was doing. Perhaps you should have walked out too. At least you’d have stayed the person you were.”
“And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” Corrigan demanded darkly.
Evelyn turned back with a pained, sarcastic face. “Oh, don’t start acting as if you were stupid, Joe, on top of everything else,” she implored. “When I fell in love with you, it was because I admired you for what you stood for: knowledge, honesty, the worth of people as people. But that’s all changed. I loved you because you were what you seemed to be. You were genuine. Now you’re turning into what I never thought you’d be: a phony.”
“Grow up, little girlie,” Corrigan said. “It’s called getting on in the world. You don’t expect people to stay as techs in labs all their lives, do you? Anyone who called herself a wife would be appreciative. Will you listen to yourself and hear what I get?”
Evelyn shook her head. “Getting on in the world? Is that what you call it? Getting on would be doing better what you do. Becoming a better person. But you’re trying to ape these freaks that you idolize, who have taken over the project. You’re trying to be one of them. That’s what’s so sickening.”