It Had to Be You

She’d go ape-shit.

‘I don’t say she’d be thrilled, Dwight, she’s a London lady through and through, despite her farming background, but she’d accept it without complaint if it was necessary.’

Dwight stood up. James rose with him as if they were tied together.

They got a taxi back to Globpack. The two men stood outside the main entrance for a moment, in the stifling sunshine.

‘My very best to the marvellous Deborah,’ said Dwight Schenkman the Third, shaking James’s hand ferociously.

‘Thank you. And my very best to …’ Oh, God. What was it? Ah! Cake. That was the clue. And ending in an e. Got it. ‘… Madeleine.’

‘Madeleine?’

Oh, shit. That was Proust.

He could feel the eyes of Dwight Schenkman the Third, those piercing yet strangely unseeing eyes, boring into his back as he strode towards the car park.

The man in the white linen suit cancelled his room.

‘We not charge. You not use,’ said the Hungarian receptionist.

‘Thank you.’

‘I hoping you finding your wife very all right, Mr Rivers.’

‘Thank you.’

As he walked slowly, sadly, exhaustedly to his car through a wall of heat, the man who had called himself Mr Rivers realised that he had indeed been hoping that this lunch would be the first stage in the long process of finding a wife, and that Deborah as his wife would indeed be very all right, although the whole thing was so very all wrong.

What on earth had happened to her? He found it almost intolerable that he had no idea.

‘That was a twenty-three-stroke rally. I wonder when there was last a twenty-three-stroke rally at Wimbledon on the twenty-third of June,’ said the commentator.

‘Do you really? How sad is that?’ called out James.

‘Interestingly enough—’

James pressed the button. He smiled internally at the thought that he would never know whether the commentator’s remark would have been interesting enough. He was already far away, on Radio 2, listening to Steve Wright in the Afternoon.

His phone rang almost immediately. Sadly, Steve Wright spent only twelve seconds in James’s afternoon.

It was Marcia, his PA. At the sound of her posh Benenden voice his heart sank. Dwight wanted him to sack her tomorrow. He wasn’t sure if he had the power to sack her any more. Didn’t he have to give her a warning, maybe several warnings? He didn’t want to sack her, but he didn’t want not to have the power to sack her if he wanted to. It was odd being a boss these days.

‘Hello. It’s me.’ So bright and warm and innocent and naive. She hadn’t been to Benenden. She’d been to an obscure private school, now defunct, where they taught you to talk as if you had been to Benenden. James sometimes thought that it was the only thing they had taught her.

‘Hello, Marcia.’

‘How did it go? Do I still have you as my boss?’

Marcia, that really is a little bit forward.

‘Sorry. Am I being a bit cheeky?’

‘No. Not at all. It went well. You still have me as your boss.’ Not for long, though. Poor girl. ‘No, we just have to make savings. Fifteen per cent across the board.’

‘Heavens.’

‘Quite.’

‘And we have to produce a report stating why we shouldn’t move all our production to Taiwan.’

‘Oops.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Are you coming back in?’

‘No. The traffic’s terrible. I’m crawling at forty in the fast lane.’

‘Oh, poor you.’

‘Always nice to hear your cheerful voice, Marcia, but was there any particular reason for ringing?’

‘Yes. There was.’

Silence.

A Vauxhall Corsa pulled into the space between James and the car in front. He hooted angrily. It happened all the time if you tried to keep your distance. Keep two chevrons’ distance? Impossible. Had anybody in the government ever driven on a motorway? No, they had chauffeurs and slept, dreaming of their expenses.

It was yet another irritation on an irritating day.

‘Are you still there, Marcia?’

‘Yes. Sorry, it’s gone. Oh, lorks, maybe I’m going to have to be a bit more on the ball if you’re having to make these savings.’

It’s too late, darling.

‘Oh, yes. It’s come back. The police rang.’

‘The police?’

‘Yes. Sorry. I should have written it down, ’cause I usually do, but I thought it was so important and unusual that I couldn’t possibly forget it.’

‘Quite. What did they want?’

‘He didn’t say. He sounded nice, though. Quite young, I think.’

‘Yes, I don’t care what age he was, Marcia, but didn’t he say anything?’