Chapter 15 - Secrets

After making it up to him they arrived back in Albany and went their separate ways. Tracy briefed Andy on the situation and was more than glad when he confirmed that his plan remained unchanged. He would sue the old building company and get the whole project back up and running. Meanwhile he gave her two weeks recuperation leave with full pay - which was an unexpected bonus! Andy also told her to see a counsellor - paid for by the company.

A few days later she was at Maccas, starting to feel a little bit bored and wanting to get back to work. However her counsellor had warned her against it, otherwise she could go off the deep end again in the event of unexpected stresses. Then, quite to her surprise, she saw Imogen walking up to her. The strange girl in the nut house: duh. Well, now was her test, all she had to do was keep calm. She would let Imogen make the first move.

"Hello sweetie. Hows the truckin' life?"

"Well if you know about that, then you doubtless know a few more details. Shall we get to the point, dear."

"My dad owns a building company and I would like an introduction with Andy."

"Well I'll give you marks for opportunism, but I think he's got the situation under control thank you", Tracy replied conclusively.

"I know this is a rather minor technical point of the project but how is the BNF compost coming along with the Acacia saligna instead of the Tagasaste? Not that I'm particularly desperate to know, but I'd rather ask you than ask Andy, knowing what he is like with confidentiality."

Now she had Tracy's full concentration. A biologically nitrogen fixing compost, or BNF compost for short, was to use a leguminous plant to help supply nitrogen to low grade organic waste within its vicinity. This helped lots and lots of bugs to grow which chickens could forage for. The fact that it worked with a Tagasaste was good enough. However the Acacia saligna, being native to Australia, was far less likely to be declared a weed and so there was a legal risk aspect to the experiment. Andy had never sent her an email about it, either in the body or as an attachment. Andy must have told her or told someone else. If Andy had told Imogen then this was obviously a test. If he had told someone else then there was a leak in the organisation. Either way she felt it best to tell Andy exactly how this conversation went and hope that Andy could remember telling the other person. If she didn't tell Andy then as time went by he would be more likely to forget who he had told. Also if he ever learned about today from anyone else then he would know she had been keeping things from him. "OK, that sounds reasonable. Your contact details?"

Imogen finished off, "If I viewed you as my enemy I could have just told Andy straight up what I knew about the place. While you may see that as a red herring now, keep it in mind. Ciao."

Andy sat down slowly. The fact that the secret got out was far more important than the secret itself, at least as far as the tree was concerned. But the project as a whole was pretty damn secret and if these two girls were in collusion then why would he be hearing about this. His knee jerk reaction was to fire Tracy and tell this other girl to fuck off if she ever turned up at the front door. But his gut instinct told him that Tracy was playing this straight. "As a matter of fact it was a spur of the moment thought. I haven't told anyone about it other than yourself."

Tracy was confused, and it showed. "But how can that be. I thought this was some kind of test you laid out for me?"

He caught the look in her eyes. He needed to get to the bottom of this before he did anything rash. Was the house bugged?, was his mobiles microphone hacked? If he was going to have any kind of confidentiality he needed to find out how, the process of this leak. "No, it wasn't. We are going to have to arrange a meeting to get the full story. Give her full hospitality when you meet her. If someone's going to get shitty with this bitch it's going to be me."