their British exterior until they get inside the suite, and then it’s pandemonium. They really test the limits of the soundproof walls. Wild hugs Julian so hard he reopens the cut above Julian’s eye. They scramble for the white towels to clean him up with while they continue to cheer.
“Nick will piss himself when he finds out he’s missing this, the poor bastard,” Duncan says.
The suite is large, warm, clean, well-lit, and has two baths. The blackout curtains have been drawn by the turndown maids. They peek outside. There is no river, no Big Ben, no Westminster Palace, no Southbank. There is nothing. What a mistake it was to look, they say, swishing the drapes shut. Let’s not do that again. They turn their backs on the reality outside and turn their faces to the revelry inside.
“We are five-star refugees,” Wild says. “We are going to get blitzed, as in the old days, and every glass we raise, we will raise to Swedish. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life. Jules, can I call you my best friend?”
“No,” says Mia. “He is my best friend.”
“Just because you have boobs, Folgate, doesn’t make you his best friend,” Wild says. “Swedish and I are brothers. We have lost our appendages. We have lost our brothers. Jules, who’s your best friend?”
“Why do I have to choose?” Julian says.
Duncan comes to the rescue. “Who do you want to sleep with, Jules? That’s your answer.”
“Duncan, if that was the answer,” Shona says, “you’d be calling a hundred women from Wapping to East Ham your best friends.”
“My God, where are these hundred women?” mutters Duncan.
“Where did you get the money for all this, Jules?” Shona asks. “The black-market runs, the dinner tonight, the suite. That’s a lot of cash.”
“Remember my story about a murder in a brothel? The Master of the Mint died, and left all his precious coin behind in the floorboards.”
“That was during the Great Fire. I’m talking about now.”
“Are we not living through the Great Fire?” Julian says. “A fire that’s going to last nearly five more years?”
“Fuck off, as Nick would say,” says Duncan. “This bloody war is not going to last five more fucking years. Shoot me if that’s true. But not tonight.” He grins. “Shoot me tomorrow.”
“Did you spend every last penny on us, Jules, or is there more?” Shona asks.
“Why, Shona, do you want to kill him for it, too?” Duncan says. “Or do you just want to stay here with me for five more years?”
“Yes,” says Shona.
Frankie, true to herself, takes out a small bag from her purse, spills out her puzzle pieces on the table by the blacked-out window, mixes them up, and begins to put them together. She is impervious to mockery, even Wild’s mockery. “Why even bother to trade the Underground for the Savoy if you’re just going to do the same bloody thing?” he says. Kate perches across the table from Frankie and asks her if she needs help. Frankie doesn’t say no.
Wild turns up the radio. They drink champagne, argue who is getting which room, and who’s staying in the suite, and who will use the bath first. They draw straws, curse, disappear behind closed doors. They dance and fall on beds and take off their dirty suits and dresses and put on fresh robes and slippers. They call housekeeping and ask for their clothes to be laundered and returned to them in the morning, all except Julian, who keeps his suit on because that’s where his money is. Mia curls up on the couch and drifts off. “I think I’ve had too much seduction in the form of Pink Gin,” she mutters when Julian wakes her by softly kissing her face. He helps her up as they begin to make their escape to their own room down the hall.
I will sleep with you, Julian overhears Liz say to Wild, if you agree to marry me.
Julian and Duncan exchange an incredulous stare, as in, poor fucking Wild. Duncan laughs. “How I wish our Nick could hear this,” he says. “Shona, Sheila, what do you say, my beauties? Will you sleep with me if I agree to marry you? Because I’m nicer than Wild. I’m taller. I’m much bigger”—Duncan horselaughs—“and I’ve got two of my arms.”
“If you think what you need is two arms,” Wild says, “I pity your women.”
A few doors down the hall, Julian and Mia’s room is positively a tomb compared to the revelry in the suite. Mia