at university or law school. Her mother died of alcohol. Her brother went to the devil. Her humanity and good sense need no underlining as far as I am concerned, but for others, particularly my chers collègues, sometimes they do.
*
The ecstatic greetings are over. The four of us are installed in the sunroom of our house in Battersea, talking happy banalities. Prue and Ed have the sofa. Prue has opened the doors to the garden to let in whatever breeze is around. She has set out candles and unearthed a box of fancy chocolates from her gift drawer for the bride and groom to be. She has rustled up a bottle of old Armagnac I didn’t know we possessed, and made coffee in the big picnic Thermos. But there is something that, amid all the fun, she needs to get off her mind:
‘Nat, darling, forgive me, but please don’t forget you and Steff have that bit of urgent business to discuss. I think you said nine o’clock’ – which is my cue to look at my watch, leap to my feet and, with a hasty ‘thank God you reminded me, back in two shakes’, hasten upstairs to my den.
Taking from the wall a framed photograph of my late father in ceremonial drag, I place him face upward on my desk, extract a wad of writing paper from a drawer and lay it one sheet at a time on the glass surface in order to leave no imprint. It does not occur to me until later that I am observing ancient Office practice while setting out to break every rule in the Office book.
I write first a summary of the intelligence so far available against Ed. I then set out ten field instructions, one clear paragraph at a time, no bloody adverbs as Florence would say. I top the document with her former Office symbol and tail it with my own. I re-read what I have written, find no fault with it, fold the page twice, insert it in a plain brown envelope and write Invoice for Mrs. Florence Shannon on it in an uneducated hand.
I return to the sunroom to discover I am redundant. Prue has already cast Florence as her fellow escapee from the Office’s grasp, albeit an undeclared one, and therefore a woman with whom she has an immediate if unspecified rapport. The topic of the moment is builders. Florence, nursing a stiff glass of old Armagnac despite her professed addiction to red burgundy, is holding the floor while Ed dozes next to her on the sofa and periodically opens his eyes to adore her.
‘I mean honestly, Prue, dealing with Polish masons and Bulgarian carpenters and a Scottish foreman, I’m thinking, give me bloody subtitles!’ Florence announces to hoots of her own laughter.
She needs a pee. Prue shows her the way. Ed watches them out of the room, then bows his head over his knees, puts his hands between them and lapses into one of his reveries. Florence’s leather jacket hangs over the back of a chair. Unnoticed by Ed, I pick it up, take it to the hall, slip my brown envelope into the right-hand pocket and hang it beside the front door. Florence and Prue return. Florence notices her jacket is missing and glances at me questioningly. Ed still has his head down.
‘Oh. Your jacket,’ I say. ‘I had a sudden fear you would forget it. There was something jutting out of the pocket. It looked horribly like a bill.’
‘Oh shit,’ she replies with scarcely a blink. ‘Probably the Polish electrician.’
Message received.
Prue delivers herself of a capsule account of her running battle with the barons of Big Pharma. Florence responds with a vigorous ‘They’re the worst of the worst. Fuck them all.’ Ed is half asleep. I suggest it’s time for all good children to go to bed. Florence agrees. They live the other side of London, she tells us, as if I didn’t know: one mile as the bicycle rides from Ground Beta, to be precise, but she doesn’t say that part. Perhaps she doesn’t know. Using my family mobile, I order an Uber. It arrives with eerie haste. I help Florence into her leather jacket. Their departure, after the many thank-yous, is mercifully swift.
‘Really, really great, Prue,’ says Florence.
‘Fab,’ Ed agrees through a fog of sleep, spumante and old Armagnac.
We stand on the doorstep waving at their departing car. We keep waving till it’s out of sight. Prue takes my arm. How about a