There’s another silence, a longer one.
For a moment Thomas looks as if he might be about to say something else.
He doesn’t though.
“I think you should leave now,” István says quietly, looking down at his cigar.
And then, when Thomas doesn’t move from where he is, István looks at him again with an expression that definitely encourages him to get the fuck out of there, which after a few more seconds he does.
Later Jacob asks István why Thomas was so upset.
“I don’t know,” István says.
“Is he angry with you?” Jacob asks.
“He seems to be,” István says.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, darling,” István says.
“Mummy said—” Jacob stops and looks worried.
“What did she say?”
Jacob shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“What did she say?”
Even though he presses him for a few minutes, Jacob won’t tell him what Helen said.
István finds Helen and asks her.
“I told him that Tommy has never liked you,” she says.
“You told him that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
“He sees it. It’s obvious. I wanted him to know that Tommy has never liked you, that it wasn’t actually about anything that you’d done.”
She’s half-drunk and upset.
It seems there was some sort of scene after Thomas left his study.
“Where is he now?” István asks.
“He’s left,” she says.
“Yeah?”
She nods.
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. Mathilde’s place?”
“I’m sorry,” István says.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I know you wanted him to be here.”
There’s quite a long silence and then she says, “Actually I feel terrible because I don’t.”
After Christmas they do a fortnight’s skiing in Verbier. The snow is disappointingly thin and patchy when they arrive. Then more falls on the second day. The mountains are hidden in gray fog through which the tiny swirling flakes fall. They sting your face as you go down, and accumulate on your goggles, obscuring the view. Jacob complains of that, and also of being cold. He has a private instructor who spends the day with him on the artificial snow of the nursery slopes while István and Helen and Helen’s sister Sarah and her husband tackle more difficult trails. István makes an effort and is mostly able to keep up, even though he only started skiing in his mid-thirties, whereas the others all learned to do it on school trips and family vacations when they were Jacob’s age.
Jacob himself doesn’t seem to be a natural. He keeps falling over, and snow gets into his boots and the sleeves of his suit. On the morning of the third day he even says, after breakfast, that he doesn’t want to go out at all, and while the others are getting their stuff together, István sits him down and asks why.
“I just want to stay here,” Jacob says.
“And do what?” István asks him.
“I don’t know.”
“There’s nothing to do here.”
“There is.”
“Like what?”
“Play Minecraft.”
“We’re not here to play Minecraft,” István tells him. “We’re here to ski.”
“I don’t like skiing.”
“Why not? It’s fun.”
“No it isn’t.”
They have a chalet that sleeps ten.
As darkness falls outside István and Jacob play Monopoly in front of the fire. Helen and her sister and Mike are already on the wine. Sarah and Mike’s kids, teenagers, are looking at their phones somewhere.
The chalet is fully staffed. There’s even a professional photographer who pops in to take photos for them to use on Instagram.
There’s also an excellent chef. István and Helen have developed a shared interest in food—unlike his interest in tennis, or hers in art, eating well is something that they are able to enjoy together.
About a week after they get back to London, Helen’s friend the artist has a private view. It’s her first show for some years and apparently a major event on the London art scene. That’s what Helen says on the way there anyway. Then she looks at the time on her phone and says, “We’re going to be late.”
“Is that a problem?” István asks.
“I promised I wouldn’t be.”
She tells him that even now that she’s internationally famous her friend gets very nervous before openings and private views. “I promised I’d be one of the first to arrive,” she says.
“Her wife will be there, won’t she?” István says. It still feels strange to say that.
“Yes,” Helen says. “She will.”
“So?”
“She wants me to get there early,” Helen says. “I said I would.”
“Okay,” István says. Forcing it out of its foil sleeve with his thumbnail, he extracts a pellet of chewing gum and transfers it to his mouth. Then he wordlessly offers the pack to Helen, who just shakes her head and turns to the window on her side.
A minute later he says, “Will Thomas be there?”
“I don’t know,” Helen says. And then, “She will have invited him. I don’t know if he’ll be there.”
She hasn’t spoken to Thomas since Christmas.
“Probably not,” she says.
For a moment they’re in Berkeley Square, and a minute after that they arrive at the Gagosian Grosvenor Hill.
While Helen finds her friend to apologize for being late, István accepts a glass of champagne and has an initial stroll through the place.
For him this is an important evening too. With the agreement of Helen’s friend, he has invited some of the potential investors in the Rainham project—it’s the sort of prestige event, not open to the public, milling with members of the political and financial elite, that he hopes will impress them.
He hopes, anyway, that his personal connection to an event like this will persuade them that he’s someone they can have confidence in.
Spotting an American banker who works for the Canadian pension fund that Roddy is negotiating with, István approaches him.
“Hey,” he says, patting the man on the shoulder.
The American is looking at one of the artworks.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“Interesting,” István says, after a pause.
“I’m not sure I understand it,” the American tells him.
“No,” István agrees.
Still looking at the work in front of them the man says, “Did you see her show last year in New York?”
István admits that he didn’t. “Was it the same stuff or?”
The man looks around, as if to see what’s there. “Sort of,” he says. He has a sip of his drink. “How are you?” he asks.
István nods. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You?”
The American at first offers only a weary shrug. “You know,” he says. “Surviving.”
István laughs in friendly solidarity. “Yeah,” he says.
“No, I’m fine,” the man says. “Good to see you again.”
“You too.”
They talk some more, mostly avoiding direct discussion of the Rainham project, and then István excuses himself and sets to working the room. As Roddy told him to, he makes an effort to spend a few minutes in small talk with each of the potential investors who have showed up.
Then he looks for Helen.
He finds her with her friend, who does in fact seem very nervous.
“What do you think?” she asks him.
“I like it,” István says.
“Honestly?”
“Yes,” he says.
They shake their heads at some finger food and then Helen introduces him to someone else who’s standing there with them, so far silently, a much younger woman with a slightly weird haircut. Not very weird. Just slightly weird, as if she cut it herself and tried to make it look normal and just didn’t quite succeed.
She turns out to be Danish and her accent sounds almost Australian when she says, in answer to a question of István’s about what she does, “I make aaht.”