At the beginning, at the television company, he had wanted and expected to be a star, a virtuoso, to awe his peers and astound his bosses. When he first joined the Civil Service, and he and the other fast-streamers gathered in their Whitehall pubs to gauge each other’s progress, they would debate how much good they were doing in the world, in their hearts never countenancing their rhetorical doubts. Now, like some meek but well-coached hostage, Adam wanted only to be the grey man, inoffensive and set fair to be overlooked when the violence began.
After Leisure Services he went back to his desk. For want of a better way to seem occupied he scrolled through his spam filter. Did he want to chat with a Russian woman? Did he want to satisfy his wife tonight? Did he want to buy a replica Rolex?
A stray message from Harriet (he promoted her to Approved Sender). The subject was Stefan walking!!!! There was a video attachment: Stefan wasn’t walking, he was hauling himself along the side of a coffee table. The video lurched and ended when the child banged his head on the table’s edge. Harriet was happier in Munich. She had been happier since the truth about their father came out, once the shock wore off, at least: it took away his entitlement to judge. She had visited with Stefan a few months before, and over dinner she and Adam had sung their number from Lady and the Tramp. Harry and Ruby sat and watched, agape at this glimpse of their daddy’s childhood.
He frowned at the screen in ersatz contemplation as Laurel passed his desk again. This time he wasn’t looking at Adam, or didn’t seem to be. Laurel crossed the floor to Hardy’s office, opened the door without knocking and closed it quietly behind him.
The contracts had started to trickle in again. The government had discovered that you needed to spend money to save money: somebody had to work out whom to sack and whom to keep. ‘Creative destruction,’ Hardy called it. ‘Friction costs,’ according to Laurel. They still needed to say — more than ever, they had to be able to say — It wasn’t me. Only trouble was, they were being screwed on price. In the end they would get what they paid for, Hardy was muttering.
They had rolled over Adam’s contract for one more year. Between his salary and what Claire and Poppy had begun to pay themselves, they were okay. He eschewed his old ambitions and his universal rivalry, left them behind him like a naive summer romance. They could have dropped their struggle by now, he and Neil — though, on the other hand, the struggle had started at the very beginning, in California, in the hostel yard. So perhaps the struggle was the point.
He was strapped in. He was safe.
The bucket sailed past him, going down again, fast. The men had turned away, looking out towards the sky. This time Adam couldn’t see their faces, but their hands, he noticed, were almost touching on the outer rail.
Wind chimes. Frosted glass in the beginning, delicately jagged rose-coloured shards and cobalt icicles, and later bamboo pipes and miniature Japanese bells. Claire and Poppy pinged their design sketches between High Wycombe and Colchester.
Manners and goodwill had kept them in touch since they overlapped in the gallery. They weren’t close enough to count as friends, not really, but nor were they indifferent or ruthless enough to drop each other entirely: an email or two a year, later a couple of chaotic outings with their kids to London museums. As a student Poppy had designed jewellery; as the children careened around the Turbine Hall, Claire suggested that she scale up to ornaments. The wind chimes were manufactured in a workshop in Dorset and sold through garden centres, craft and furniture shops and the rudimentary website made for them by Poppy’s husband (he was more than the single trait Adam had ascribed to him in their lazily competitive twenties).
You never knew, Claire and Adam said to each other. You never knew what might come of your past, who might shimmy out of it to catch up with you. They were hopeful of cracking the accessories list of one of the department stores. They were thinking about wind spinners and babies’ mobiles.
By late afternoon Adam couldn’t concentrate. He left his computer on, a half-drunk cup of tea on his desk, his jacket draped tactically on the back of his chair. He ducked through the emergency exit and skipped down a flight of stairs, lest the bosses spot him waiting for the lift. The elevator doors opened several times on his way to the lobby, admitting other heliotropic skivers and early-doors drinkers. Adam enjoyed these fractional, five-second glimpses of alien floors, strange companies, unknown lives, currency traders and oil traders and the vendors of medical insurance. He had visions of the doors retracting one day to reveal an illicit poker game, or an elephant rearing on its hind legs, or a masked orgy.
Adam was early — much too early, no way he would be going home this early — but it was as if, having decided, he had to get on with it. Bizarre, having decided, to do anything further that afternoon. Adam wanted to ambush himself, too, to minimise his opportunities to change his mind.
He would have to cross the river to Embankment for the District Line. He strode along the passageway at the side of the Royal Festival Hall and up the steps to the pedestrian walkway. The wheel rose behind the railway bridge — toweringly close, but the base occluded — looking, from Adam’s angle, as if it might spin free and crush him. A newsstand sold papers in a dozen languages. The tarpaulins of the restaurants stretched along the riverfront; the overpriced tourist boats glided on the grey water. A tide of money had washed across London since Adam worked at the television company a short hop along the Thames. The tide was going out but the city was still soaking in it.
Just below the bridge, on the small riparian beach (plastic plates and broken bricks and washed-up electrical wires among the pebbles), someone was shouting. He looked down to see a child, a girl — four or five, he estimated — standing alone at the water’s edge. The shout came again, and a man ran from the bottom of the steps that led to the beach and snatched the girl up, reprimanding her lovingly.
Adam took out his BlackBerry and dialled as he made his way onto the bridge. Two rings and she picked up.
‘No,’ Claire said. ‘Not on the mantelpiece… Yes. Adam.’
‘Just, hi, to say I won’t be home for dinner.’
‘Absolutely not… What? It’s our takeaway night. I thought we’d have Japanese.’
‘Sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘Can’t help it, you know.’
‘That’s it — both of you. I said, that’s it… Sorry. Adam.’
He had always been faintly afraid of this bridge, ever since he saw a news item about two posses of muggers who, late at night, had trapped their hopeless victim in the middle. But this evening it was beautiful, festive, the discreet power of the ministries on one side of the river, the carousel and promenaders on the other.
‘Anything new today? Orders, I mean.’
‘Three from the Cotswolds,’ Claire said. ‘Two from Brighton. One from Dartmoor. Oh and that man from Habitat called again.’
‘That’s great, Clezzy.’
‘It’s just an enquiry.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Harry wants you.’
Her palm over the receiver, then Harry’s, muffling it differently, then his son’s quick breath.
‘How many did you score today?’
‘Only two, but one was a header.’
‘That’s great, Harry. Wonderful.’
‘A header!’
‘Wonderful, Harry. What did Miss Franks say about —’
‘Bye, Daddy.’
‘Your mother called,’ Claire said. ‘She wants to come round with Godfrey. Sunday, she said.’
His mother was okay, too.
‘Sorry,’ Adam said.
‘It’s all right. I’ll do fish pie.’