Elegance

Then we climb up to Nicki’s Victorian study and she sits in front of her computer, which folds out from a unit made to look like an antique dressing table, and I sit on the daybed. The daybed is an original, painfully uncomfortable and obviously designed to keep Victorian ladies very much awake.

‘OK. Right.’ Nicki turns on the computer, clicks into our file and pages down to where we left off.

‘Here we are, page fifteen,’ she announces triumphantly.

No matter how much work we do or how often we meet, we’re always on page fifteen.

‘OK, so how did we leave it then?’ I try to gather my enthusiasm.

‘Jan was just about to reveal to Aaron why she’d left home.’

‘Oh, yeah. Good. And what did we decide about that?’

Nicki checks through the notes we made at coffee.

‘You know, I don’t think we came to any firm conclusions about that one.’

‘Did we have any ideas?’

She flicks through again. ‘I’m not really seeing anything that can be called a solid idea.’

‘Oh. OK. Never mind.’ I haul myself out of the sagging centre of the daybed. ‘Right. Let’s get brainstorming!’

The room goes dead. A dog barks somewhere in the distance. Nicki gnaws at a hangnail.

Suddenly, like the voice of God, the sound of Dionne Warwick singing ‘Walk On By’ floats down the stairs. Nicki’s on her feet in a flash.

‘My God, I can’t believe he’s doing that now! The bastard!’

‘Doing what?’ I ask.

‘He’s playing Dionne Warwick!’ she shrieks. Flinging the door open, she screams up the stairs. ‘I know what you’re doing, you bastard! I know what you’re doing!’

‘My God, Nicki, what’s he doing?’ I’m missing the point badly.