to conceal. When Carl makes some innocuous remark to her, she snaps back with a viciousness that makes me wince, though he seems to accept it as par for the course.
Liz looks pale and frankly miserable, like a rabbit in the headlights, and refuses all offers of wine. At one point Rik tries to talk to her. I don’t know what he says, I don’t hear the opening, but she shakes her head violently, and when he opens his mouth again, she bursts out “Excuse me, I’m going to the loo,” pushing her chair back with a violence that makes it clatter against the tiled floor.
After she is gone Eva glares down the table at Rik, mouthing something that I can’t quite read but which I think may have been I told you so.
Even Danny’s crème brûlée fails to revive the evening, and after supper the group scatters, with pleas of headaches, early nights, and emails to send. As I pass through the lobby on my way to replenish the wood burner in the living room I notice that two more bottles are gone from the honesty bar.
The mystery of one at least is solved when I go through to the living room to find Rik and Miranda huddled in the corner of the big squashy sofa, a depleted bottle of Armagnac on the table between them, and some kind of Cuban jazz filtering out of the speaker system, presumably from either Rik’s or Miranda’s phone. Rik sees me clocking the bottle and flashes a smile.
“You don’t mind, do you? We’ll add it to the book at the end of the evening.”
“Not at all,” I say truthfully. “It’s how the system is supposed to work. Can I get you anything else? Cheese? Coffee? Petits fours? Danny makes these incredibly moreish chocolate-dipped prunes that go really well with a glass of brandy.”
Rik looks at Miranda and raises one eyebrow, in a kind of wordless exchange that speaks more about their relationship than anything physical. There is something going on here. They are more than just colleagues, whether they realize that themselves or not.
It is Rik who answers for them both.
“No, we’re fine, thanks.”
“No problem,” I say. “Just let me know if you change your mind.”
I begin to stack logs into the fire, and Rik leans closer to Miranda and recommences their conversation as if I’m not there.
“Did you see the look she gave me when I brought up the shares to Liz? I had to check it hadn’t burned a hole in my shirt.”
“I know.” Miranda puts her head in her hands. “But, Rik, honestly, what were you thinking? Eva made it crystal clear—”
“I know, I know—” Rik says. He rubs his hand over his short hair, shaking his head in frustration. “But I was ticked off by Eva acting like she’s the fucking Liz whisperer. I’ve known Liz as long as she has. We got on pretty well before all this blew up.”
“What did happen?” Miranda says. “It was all before my time, I’ve never understood.”
“You’ve got to understand, it was all just running on a shoestring in those days. It was a joke, those first six months. None of us were getting paid, not that Elliot gave a shit, I don’t think he’d spend any money at all if Topher didn’t make him. He’s been like that ever since school. But the rest of us did mind. Eva was running through her modeling savings like no tomorrow. Topher had finally pissed his parents off so much they’d cut him off without a penny, and he was sofa surfing with old school friends. I was working days at KPMG and nights at Snoop, and right at the bottom of my overdraft. And Liz was just this secretary who answered an advert online and was happy to work for a shit wage. I mean, even then, she dressed like some kind of sister wife, but she was efficient, and she didn’t make a fuss about working out of a crappy rented office with no air-con in South Norwood.”
“I didn’t mean that, I meant how did she end up being the one casting—”
“I’m coming to that. We were about two weeks off launching when we finally ran out of cash. We were just broke—flat broke—not a single avenue left. Credit cards, overdrafts, friends and family—we’d wrung them all dry, and we were about ten grand short of what we needed to keep the lights on. Topher had even sold his Ferrari, but