for certain that Luke was all right, hoped her instinct was wrong and that he was sitting in a service station with a hot meal and the prospect of a bed for the night, but there were no car lights out there, no hint of Luke, nothing but snow.
‘Blimey,’ Bridge said, pushing open the door to the pantry, switching on the light and having a proper look inside. It was like a walk-in festive hamper. There was everything anyone could want for Christmas dinner on the shelves and in the fridges: an alp of sprouts, chestnuts, turkeys, Christmas puddings, brandy butter, rum cream, Christmas cake and a lot of mince pies.
‘I’ll butter some breadcakes, shall I?’ said Jack, lifting up a bulk bag of them.
‘I’ll be on filling duty,’ said Bridge. She peeled the wax off a truckle of Wensleydale cheese and cut it into chunky slices, then she carved some ham, spooned some pickled red cabbage, onions and piccalilli into dishes and set it all on a tray. She thought an accompanying mug of soup might be a welcome addition, and tipped some tins of cream of tomato into a pan. It was cosy fare, the stuff to warm spirits as well as feed stomachs.
‘Am I in a dream or is all this really happening?’ asked Jack, searching around for a jar of coffee. He had taken one look at the large complicated coffee machine and decided that the ones who hadn’t plumped for tea would have to be grateful for instant on this occasion.
‘No you aren’t dreaming, yes this is really happening,’ returned Bridge. ‘We are cut off from the known universe, about to spend the night with a bunch of strangers.’
Jack gave a long outward breath. He’d had to accept that he was indeed here for the night and frustration was coming off him in waves as a result. He hoped Chikafuji was similarly inconvenienced. Then he thought of poor Mary who had volunteered to drive him to the meeting, and it shamed him a little that he was more annoyed at Chikafuji than he was concerned for her being stranded with all these people.
‘Can’t see any scones in the larder, but I suppose you’ll be sick of the sight of them,’ said Bridge.
‘I never get sick of them,’ said Jack. ‘I can’t say I eat masses of them myself, but they’ve given me a very good lifestyle.’
‘That a private school accent?’
‘Afraid so. St Christopher’s in Cumbria.’
A very good lifestyle indeed, thought Bridge. She knew the area. She’d bought a dilapidated church up there the year before last. St Christopher’s was a boys-only boarding school set in acres of prime ground, exceedingly high fees. There was obviously a lot of cream in scones. She imagined his factory to be one that hadn’t moved on since the 1940s though. There would be a typing pool full of young girls not allowed to wear trousers and fat old leery men who smoked at their desks.
As Jack swooshed the large teapot around to assist the brewing process, a thought came to him, landing in his brain like a bee bumping down onto a flower.
‘Do you know, this will be the first time I’ve made Mary a drink in all the years she’s worked for me,’ he said.
Bridge wasn’t in the least surprised by that. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself then,’ she said, thinking, posh twit. ‘In my office, we have a tea rota and I’m on it along with everyone else. I’ve worked in too many “them and us” places in my life and I vowed I’d never be the sort of boss who didn’t say hello to cleaners or put the kettle on occasionally for my workers.’
Them and us. That’s exactly what Butterly’s was like, thought Jack. The white collars were separated from the blue collars by a virtual barbed-wire fence. And only one side of it made the tea.
Cowed by Bridge’s verbal slap-down, Jack took a tray of drinks through to the bar lounge without saying anything else, but he was wondering when he’d ever said hello to one of the cleaners. His mind was always so full of work, he couldn’t even remember lifting his head up and registering them. Why had that never struck him before?
* * *
Robin watched Charlie pick up a cheese sandwich, part the slices and add a large spoonful of pickled red cabbage to it before squashing it shut again. He opened his mouth to warn him about heartburn but stopped