‘Now,’ Peterson said, ‘about the dinner tomorrow night. I have to tell you that it’ll be the Lady’s birthday — did you know? — so there is a change of plan, alas, and she will not in all likelihood be attending.’
‘Not …’ Moose swallowed to steady his voice. Baker? Price? ‘Not attending, did you say?’
‘There’s actually something else planned now, at the Metropole. There’s a preference for the dining room there.’
Behind Edward Peterson, champagne was being poured. It surged right up to the rim of each flute, full of cocksure fizz, only to subside back down into a single meagre gulpful.
Someone was holding his hand, he realised. Freya was next to him now and holding his hand. Warm. He wasn’t feeling well.
‘The dinner?’ Freya said to Peterson. ‘You’re saying she can’t make the big birthday dinner in her honour?’
Peterson made a clicking noise with his tongue, sucked in some more saliva. ‘If by she you mean the Lady, then yes. Who’s in charge here, actually?’
‘You’re saying the Prime Minister can’t make it,’ Freya said.
‘I’ve said it now at length, yes. People here seem to have a talent for repetition.’
‘Just like that. Can’t come.’
‘Excuse me?’ Peterson said. He looked around as if to ask if this latest outrage was being recorded. The answer was yes. A security camera had its boxy gaze fixed upon them.
‘Do you know how much work goes into these things?’ Freya said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘This has been planned for weeks,’ Freya said. ‘People’s work. All this food, basically. This changes a lot of things, so it would have been good — polite — to have known sooner.’
‘Sadly,’ Peterson said, ‘there are pressing national and international issues. Things going on beyond your plans.’ He touched the tip of his chin.
‘You’re not even sorry.’
‘Extraordinary,’ Edward Peterson said, laughing. ‘Perhaps I should be speaking to the new manager.’
‘The who?’
‘Mr Baker. The new —’
‘You could have told us in a different way,’ Freya said.
‘I don’t think I know who you are.’ He blinked. ‘Now, Mr Finch, second issue. We could do with that human with the tattoos from Kalle Infotec back here, to set up three further fax machines in the temporary office, and my own recommendation would be, let’s see, that we start by —’
On and on Edward Peterson went. Moose, if not quite having an out-of-body experience, was definitely having an out-of-joint one. The GM job had gone to someone else. Could it be true? He knew it was. It was over.
There was a fold-out table he’d positioned against the wall several hours ago. A dozen laminated name badges remained. They were arranged in three rows and the spaces between the rows were exactly right.
‘Mr Peterson,’ he said, squeezing his daughter’s hand, ‘we’ll sort everything out. You needn’t worry.’
‘Good,’ Peterson said. ‘I’m glad we’ve reached an understanding. I look forward to seeing the coffees you have to offer.’
Before turning away from this exchange, Moose took a final look at Edward Peterson. There was something about his sly expression. Something about his reiterated request for caffeination. Something about the sharp, damp, satisfied pout that cost its owner so little effort. Something about Peterson’s pleased brown eyes moving from him to Freya, from Freya back to him, as if deciding which of them he was most inclined to deride. There was something about all of this that caused a guy rope in Moose’s professionalism to begin to creak and twist, and murderous thoughts to begin to blossom.
He thought of the Captain talking to Sir Keith, and he thought of his daughter having to put up with this young man’s rudeness. He thought of the hopeless promotion he’d put so much energy into, and of the possibility that his promised advancement had been nothing but a dangled incentive, a way to keep things ticking over while the current GM eased into a notice period. He thought about these things and the cancelled dinner tomorrow and about whether he’d been pushed out because of his health, or had simply never ever stood a chance at becoming GM, and felt he needed to say something, to convert some of his thinking into words, not just for himself but for his view of the world — a view which had no room, he realised now, for careless people like Edward Peterson. After a dozen long seconds in which a variety of semi-clever insults were considered and dismissed he said, ‘Mr Peterson?’
‘Yes?’
‘Second thoughts, go fuck yourself.’
He came close to following this up with a punch but was worried he might hurt his hand.
XII
FREYA WAS IN the ladies’ loo, crying and applying make-up, staring into the mirror. The door opened. Marina.
‘What are you doing, darling?’
‘I’m crying and applying make-up,’ she said.
Marina stood in the doorway, absorbing this remark. Then she blinked and said, ‘It is best to divide this into a two-stage process. Otherwise you look like a melted panda.’
Freya sighed. The slab of grey stone in which the basins sat had a theatrical shine tonight. She put the eyeliner down. Earlier in the week someone with over-plucked eyebrows had complained that the lavatory lighting was insufficient for the proper plucking of eyebrows. Bulbs of greater wattage had been installed above the mirrors. Every natural pattern in the stonework showed, skylines and trees and thin and thick clouds.
‘We can talk,’ Marina said.
‘I’m fine. It’s nothing.’
‘The quality of nothing has not such need to hide itself.’
With a pink tissue Freya blew her nose.
‘I’ve been seeing a Shakespearean,’ Marina said. ‘It’s finished now. His toenails scratched me in bed. He’s very successful at everything, but there were the toenails — scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch. It’s very boring, also, to be around someone so pleased with themselves.’ She glanced at herself in the mirror. ‘Your love life, Freya. Is that what’s making you so sad and messy?’ She placed her handbag by a basin. She took a hairbrush out. ‘Shall I?’ she said.
There was an awkward moment — it seemed a strange offer — but Freya didn’t have the energy refusal might require. There was a single chair against the wall. The toilet attendant they used for events had already left for the night. ‘Here,’ Marina said. She turned the chair to face the mirror. Freya sat down and Marina moved behind her.
‘I know you saw me,’ Freya said. ‘Coming out of the room the other day.’
Marina began to run the brush through Freya’s hair in long and even strokes. She separated sections. She eased the brush through knots. The brush made a scuffing electrical sound that came straight out of childhood.
‘I’m such a cliché.’
Marina looked up.
‘A big fat cliché. He’s with Sasha now.’
Marina laughed. ‘John?’
‘Yeah.’
‘If anything, darling, I think you are … Yes, under-clichéd. It is Sasha who is the cliché. It is John.’
Freya stared at her own reflection, and at the face of Marina floating above it, and for a moment thought she could smell the too-strong perfume of Wendy Hoyt, hairdresser ordinaire.
‘You could do with being a bit more whingeing,’ Marina said. She rested the palm of her hand on Freya’s head. ‘I mean, you look a bit pathetic now, yes. But generally, a bit more emotional — it would be good. You are more like what a man should be, but isn’t.’