Chapter Five

Earlier that evening, Sorcha lay on her bed in a bath robe enjoying the feeling of being alone. The window was slightly open, which meant that there was occasionally the buzz of a helicopter going past to the heliport over the other side of the river, but mostly it just let the breeze play over her. She loved the beginning of summer, and the rush of optimism it always brought with it. And she loved even more the fact that she had stolen a few hours to herself, rather than endlessly being at other people’s beck and call - however much they paid her for it. Just this once, she had taken advantage of the fact that a meeting had been cancelled to go home and chill out properly before the big night. The slight sense of transgression made the feeling that much better.

Just this once, her toenails would be properly polished, not just hastily touched up after she had already put her shoes on. Just this once, everything would be properly shaved and exfoliated and plucked and moisturised. Just this once, her make-up would be applied properly and at leisure; not in an impressionistic flurry, in a taxi in a traffic jam. She wouldn’t be stuck in a completion meeting, or held together with safety pins, or drunk before she got there. She wouldn’t drape herself round complete strangers, burst into tears, break her shoes or abuse the retired board members. She was going to be grown-up and graceful. And funny. And intelligent too; although not so intelligent she scared him off.

Briefly she checked her own thoughts. A grown-up really ought not to think of a work do as a big night out: that would be – well, bad taste really. But she and Norman had been circling one another for months now, and this had to be their night. This had to be their summer. She’d had a couple of really quite stunningly crap ones, where she had barely got out of the office for long enough to see daylight, and she was due for a good year.

The second coat on her toenails was nearly dry when the phone rang. She was still lying on her back on the bed, but sideways on now, with her feet resting on the radiator under the window, and she had to feel around behind her to locate the phone. It was Pippa, wondering where she was and calling to wish her good luck.

“Thanks hun. I’m sure it’ll be a good night, whatever happens. And it’s not like it’s a million miles away. At least I can just stroll home when the moment seems right.”

“Just so long as you don’t do it alone. You have to get him to come back with you tonight: he’s messed you around so much already.”

“No he hasn’t…”

There was a strangled protest at the other end of the phone.

“…well, OK, a bit. But he’s a busy guy, that’s part of the appeal. I don’t want a man who isn’t in demand, do I? And I haven’t exactly been the easiest to pin down, have I?”

“Shut! up!”

It sounded like an order: possibly two. Sorcha hesitated

“You’ve been wonderful, and he’s just been an arsehole,” not quite the note that she had intended to start the evening on, “and if he doesn’t sweep you up in his arms tonight, then he’s a useless bastard and you should get off with that German guy you were talking about.”

“Lars? Sweets, he’s fabulous, but he’s the campest thing since Are You Being Served.”

“You could still try. Still make old beaky bastard features see sense. Or you could try one of the waiters?”

Sorcha couldn’t quite see what either suggestion would achieve, other than making her a laughing stock and quite possibly ending her career, but Pippa lived in a different kind of world so she didn’t try to contradict her. It wouldn’t work anyway when she was in this kind of frame of mind.

“I’ll be fine. I can feel it in my bones that something fabulous is going to happen tonight. And if it doesn’t it can happen tomorrow instead. Or the day after that. What are you up to, Pip-Pop?”

“Got to finish a couple of things before the stuff goes to print for a convention in a month or so. Stupid bloody characters wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do, so I spent most of the night yelling at the computer. They still didn’t listen, though.”

For reasons which Sorcha had never quite got to the bottom of, although Pippa claimed that her ambition was to be poet laureate she actually spent most of her time writing Star Wars fan fiction. She was a bit hazy about what it involved, but she mostly seemed to borrow someone else’s characters and make them do stuff which their original creators would never have dreamed of – although the reason why Pippa did it a lot, and even sometimes managed to get paid for it, was that what she did was only ever so slightly, ever so cleverly, off-kilter. More than once Sorcha had found herself wondering about the copyright implications of it all, but figured the less she knew the better it probably was for her relationship with Pip. IP wasn’t really her thing, anyway, and the IP guys tended to hide away in their corner on the sixth floor and not interact much with the rest of the world other than by e-mail. She was unlikely to get stuck with them and be forced to strike up a conversation.

“I’m sure that they’ll come round eventually. They always do, don’t they?”

“I suppose. It’s just that the convention guys said they wanted one of them to be funny, and it doesn’t seem to be turning out that way.”

“You’ll be fine, hun. I’m going to have to go now, given how long it usually takes me to do eyeliner and stuff properly. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

“Ooooh. Yes, do. Get beaky features to call with you if you can, I’d love to finally talk to him.”

Sorcha laughed as she hung up and got up off the bed, even though she couldn’t imagine any situation, at all, in which Pippa would speak to Norman. Even if they got married, it wasn’t going to happen. She would make sure that they did it on a beach somewhere hot. That way she wouldn’t have to deal with her mother either, and she could tell Pip all about it when she got back.

The rest of her preparations went far more smoothly than she had expected. Her skin was clear. Nothing smudged or clumped or ran that wasn’t meant to. Every little detail felt like a good omen. Only at the very end did she hit a snag. Her dress was classic black: simple, spaghetti straps, but quite closely cut. Even with the sun shining and her most optimistic mindset on, she knew she looked ever so slightly lumpy. She stared at herself in the mirror from every angle, even squinting in the hope that it would make those few extra pounds disappear, but it was no good. It really wasn’t the weather for them, but she was going to have to dig out her Bridget Jones knickers to keep everything in its place. And concentrate hard on not telling herself that this was the flaw that would bring the whole plan, the whole fabulous evening, crashing down around her.

Killing time, she turned the TV on. Yet more Marty King. She didn’t even wait for the sound to come up before starting to flip through the channels and settling on a documentary about the history of the Gutenberg bible. She’d had enough of Marty King, and really didn’t know what all of the fuss was about. There were a couple of his songs that were OK, but that was about the limit of it. She and Norman had taken clients to see one of the BackBeat concerts a week or two earlier, which had been a first for her. She had been surprised at how professional it was, but all at sea as to the point of it all. Both of the client’s wives had showed up wearing normal looking jeans with what were probably Chanel tops, which was odd enough. Then one of them had kept on screaming, while the other kept on trying to tell her about the time she had breakfast with Duncan Woods in a hotel in Barcelona. It had taken Sorcha over an hour to figure out who Duncan Woods was, and about the same length of time to get a cab to take her back to Fulham when it had finally ended.

Her mobile rang, and she could feel her heart wobble when she saw it was Norman.

“Hello, is that Sorcha?”

He was always so formal that she had to constantly restrain her instinct to send him up, but she could listen to his voice forever: it was like honey on rocks. And maybe something fruitier and more organic than rocks as well. Actually, it was like nothing on earth, but she was sure that she would come up with a better description once she had a couple of drinks inside her.

“Who else do you think it would be? What can I do for you this fine evening?”

“Where on earth are you? I’ve been looking for you all over. I even went traipsing down to the meeting rooms, but your secretary must have messed up your diary.”

“I’m at home.”

Don’t explain, don’t apologise, and certainly don’t let yourself start to feel like a seventeen year old who has been caught skiving off the afternoon before the prom. She made a mental note to make sure that her secretary was appropriately rewarded for her discretion: a bonus, probably. Less paperwork and fewer questions than a pay rise.

“Oh… oh, that’s OK then. Are you still coming along this evening?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’ll need to bring your Goodman corporate ID with you, and go in the back entrance round by the function suite. The hotel is apparently being besieged by hundreds of journalists because of that ghastly band. It’s been a complete bloody nightmare getting them not to cancel the whole shebang, I tell you. I’ve spent a lot of the past hour on the phone to various bits of the metropolitan police explaining to them that a couple of hundred lawyers were hardly likely to represent a security risk. Now we’re having to call round everyone to make sure that they don’t get turned away at the door.”

He snorted. Not his most attractive feature.

“That’s fine. I’ll make sure that I pick it up on my way out.”

“I will see you later then. All dolled up, no doubt?”

Another snort. He almost tried to cover up the second one, but wasn’t wholly successful. And it wasn’t exactly what she had hoped he would call to say either, but at least he called her himself. That had to be a good sign, right?