have slipped by. It’s early evening. Prue and I are back under the apple tree, she at her iPad, I with an ecological book Steff wants me to read about the forthcoming apocalypse. I have draped my jacket over the back of my chair and I must have entered some kind of reverie because it takes me a moment to realize that the squawk I’m hearing is coming from Bryn Jordan’s doctored smartphone. But for once I’m too slow. Prue has fished it out of my jacket and put it to her ear:
‘No, Bryn. His wife,’ she says briskly. ‘A voice from the past. How are you? Good. And the family? Good. He’s in bed, I’m afraid, not feeling his brightest. The whole of Battersea is going down with it in droves. Can I help? Well, that will make him feel much better, I’m sure. I’ll tell him the moment he wakes up. And to you, Bryn. No, not yet but the post here is haywire. I’m sure we shall come if we possibly can. How very clever of her. I tried oils once but they weren’t a success. And goodnight to you, Bryn, wherever you are.’
She rings off.
‘He sends his congratulations,’ she says. ‘And an invitation to Ah Chan’s art exhibition in Cork Street. I somehow think we shan’t make it.’
*
It’s morning. It has been morning for a long time: morning in the hill forests of Karlovy Vary, morning on a rain-drenched Yorkshire hilltop, on Ground Beta and the twin screens in the Operations room; morning on Primrose Hill, in the Haven, on court number one at the Athleticus. I have made the tea and squeezed the orange juice and come back to bed: our best time for taking the decisions we couldn’t take yesterday, or discovering what we’ll do at the weekend or where we’ll go on holiday.
But today we’re talking solely about what we’ll be wearing for the great event, and what fun it will be, and what a stroke of genius on my part to suggest Torquay because the children seem quite incapable of taking any practical decisions of their own – children being our new shorthand for Ed and Florence, and our conversation being a precautionary return to our Moscow days, because the one thing you know about Percy Price is, friendship comes second when there’s a telephone extension right beside your bed.
Until yesterday afternoon I had assumed that all weddings took place at ground level, but I was abruptly corrected on the point when, on my way back from the Dog & Goat, I undertook a discreet photographic reconnaissance of our target area and confirmed that the Register Office of Ed’s and Florence’s choice was on the fifth floor, and the only reason it had a slot at such short notice was that it boasted eight arduous flights of cold stone staircase before you reached the reception desk, and another half-flight before you entered a cavernous arched waiting room got up like a theatre with no stage, with soft music playing and plush seats and a sea of uneasy people in groups, and a shiny black-lacquered door at the far end marked ‘Weddings Only’. There was one minuscule lift, with priority given to the disabled.
I also established in the course of the same reconnaissance that the third floor, which was leased in its entirety to a firm of chartered accountants, gave on to an overhead Venice-style footbridge leading to a similar building across the street; and better still, to a lighthouse-style stairwell that descended all the way to an underground car park. From the insanitary depths of the car park, the staircase was accessible to anyone fool enough to want to climb up it. But to those wishing to descend it by way of the footbridge on the third floor, access was denied to all but certified residents of the block, see the lurid ‘NO ENTRY TO PUBLIC’ sign plastered across a pair of solid, electronically controlled doors. The chartered accountant’s brass plate named six partners. The one at the top was a Mr M. Bailey.
The next morning, in near silence, Prue and I dressed.
*
I will report the events as I would any special operation. We arrive by design early, at 11.15 a.m. On our way up the stone staircase we pause at the third floor, while Prue stands smiling in her flowered hat and I engage the woman receptionist of the firm of chartered accountants in casual conversation. No, she says in answer