She shrugs. ‘If he finishes book.’
‘What about you? How are your … travel plans?’
She shrugs again, though not without a smile. ‘We’ll see. For now, everything is good.’
‘No more volleyball.’
‘I pay off boss.’ She waits a moment after relaying this information, then says, ‘Don’t you want to know how?’
‘Hmm, Paul mentioned that you’ve sold the apartment?’
She looks amusedly into my eyes, and for a moment our gazes criss-cross, glancing off one another like bright swords in a duel. Then she takes my hand. ‘Come, before you leave, there’s someone I want you to meet.’ She scans the partygoers, then locates the one she is looking for, beside the refrigerator: a small, olive-skinned boy, with a blue stripe on the bridge of his nose and pink daubs on his cheeks.
‘This is one of Remington’s friends from school,’ she says. ‘Tell Claude your name, darling.’
The small child looks up at me. He does not speak: he does not need to. His eyes are a brilliant, luminescent green, like light through the trees of some Olympian forest.
‘I think maybe you know his mother,’ Clizia says innocently. ‘She works in a café near your bank?’
‘Ah — oh — is that right?’ I stammer.
‘It closed … but then it opened again.’
‘I see.’
‘Someone gave them a whole lot of money.’
‘Is that so? Good for them.’
‘But they don’t know who he is.’
‘Well, that’s the business world, so impersonal …’
Clizia touches my arm, leans in to me and says, ‘You’re a good man, Claude.’
‘Me? Oh, you mean the ant farm?’
‘There are not many good men. So few that sometimes we forget even to look for them. We are too busy trying to pick out the best of the bad men.’
I continue to make fish-out-of-water gestures of incomprehension, which Clizia continues to ignore.
‘Oscar’s mother will be coming to collect him in about half an hour,’ she says absently, stooping to pick up a little girl who has collided with the dustbin. ‘If you are still here, you can all walk back together?’
Ariadne? Here? With no more tricks, or ploys, or misunderstandings? For an instant it seems that life and story are merging at last into one, everything I hoped for coming true … but then my phone begins to ring, and I remember it’s already too late for that.
‘Where are you, Claude?’ Rachael’s secretary is at the other end of the line.
‘I had a meeting.’
A compact, merciless hammering of keys. ‘I can’t see anything in your diary.’
‘Yes, it was … unscheduled.’
‘You’re needed back at the office.’
‘With regard to something in particular … ?’
‘Just get back here,’ she says.
I step out of the lift to find the office submerged in a kind of silent panic, a frantic gloom that envelops everything like a fog. Through windows, around corners, senior management can be seen having agitated conversations, then hurrying off in different directions. I go to my desk, moving calmly, as if I am being watched.
The man in black is in Liam English’s office, interviewing staff.
‘One of the accounts got tapped,’ Gary McCrum says in a low voice.
‘Whose?’ Jocelyn Lockhart says. ‘How much was taken?’
Gary McCrum shrugs.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Kevin asks.
‘They’re talking to everyone,’ Gary says. ‘But I reckon they already know who it was.’
‘Who? And … how?’
‘And how’s he supposed to’ve done it?’
‘I heard there was some security fuck-up the night of the margin call,’ Brent ‘Crude’ Kelleher says. ‘A bunch of doors got left open. Including back office.’
‘They think someone went in there?’
‘They found something on the floor the next day.’
‘I heard that too,’ Terry Fosco joins in huskily, spinning round in his chair. ‘I heard they found a Goldman Sachs business card.’
‘I heard it was a USB key,’ Dave Davison says from the water cooler, ‘and on it there was a virus the IT people had never seen before.’
‘It was a sweet wrapper,’ Thomas ‘Yuan’ McGregor says. His eyes are bleary: he has been summoned from his bed.
‘A sweet wrapper?’
‘What, back office don’t eat sweets?’
At that moment, the office door opens and everyone falls silent. An apparatchik from Sales emerges, looking pale and traumatized. He glances at us, then steps quickly away, fingering his collar. Liam English comes to the threshold with Rachael and the man in black. Rachael is holding a clipboard, in a cursory way that makes it look like a prop. The man in black looks over the room; his eyes, quite without life or expression, pause on me …
‘David Davison,’ Rachael calls.
‘Fuck,’ Dave mutters, getting to his feet.
‘You think it was him?’ Kevin says breathlessly, once the door closes. ‘Dave?’
‘They’re talking to everyone, you tool,’ Gary says.
‘Well someone’s in for it,’ Jocelyn says, then rolls back to his desk.
The others follow suit; I turn to my terminal, where the numbers scroll across my screen, twittering among themselves like birds, amidst a general silence so taut you could punch a hole in it –
The lift doors open. Ish bounces across the floor, autumn air clinging to her coat. ‘Hey, guess what! The Ark’s reopened!’
‘Oh yes, I saw that,’ smiling at her queasily.
‘Want to come and have a look?’
‘I don’t think anyone’s supposed to leave.’
‘They’re interviewing alphabetically. They won’t get to us till midnight. Come on, Claude, a coffee at least …’
My limbs are heavy as stone; I don’t think I have the strength to go anywhere, except maybe to hide under my desk. Ish, however, won’t take no for an answer.
‘Pretty mental, isn’t it?’ she says in the lift. ‘You think it’s true? Someone’s pulled a Pierrot?’
I shrug, burble nothings.
‘I heard it was the Dublex account,’ she says, and then, ‘Where’d you go earlier?’
I tell her about the birthday party, and Paul’s good news.
‘For real this time? He’s not trying to knock the place off again?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sounds like someone’s beaten him to it, anyway,’ Ish remarks.
I thought I’d feel better once I got into the fresh air. Instead the dread only seems to intensify, sparking in my hair and teeth and fingertips.
‘Claude!’ Ariadne throws her arms around me when we step through the door. ‘We’re back! Can you believe it?’
‘Yes, it’s very good,’ I stammer at her weakly.
‘An investor comes out of nowhere, give us everything we needed. We don’t even know who he is! I thought maybe it’s someone you called?’
‘One of my clients? Hmm, no, no, I don’t think so …’
She seats us, gives us menus, scampers away again. Ish gives me a long look. ‘All coming up roses for your mates today, isn’t it?’
I wrinkle my forehead perplexedly. ‘ “Coming up roses … ”?’
She laughs. ‘All right, never mind.’
The Ark is aglow. The light seems warmer, the smells sweeter than ever before; the waitresses beam at each other as they pass with their trays. Even the customers seem enlivened, swiping their phones with a flourish, adding winks and grins to their presentations, treating themselves to an extra sachet of artificial sweetener. But the celebratory atmosphere only makes me feel more remote, like I’m a hole that’s been cut out of the page.
‘So tell us about this book, then,’ Ish prompts. ‘It’s the same set-up as before? All about you?’