Chapter Three #3
I hadn’t thought I needed to feel better, or rather, I knew I would feel better when I was on my way home, but I thought I would just have to wait for that moment to arrive.
Yet as soon as I stuffed a canapé with some kind of paste in it into my mouth, to my surprise, I did feel better.
At least, I felt like the man was giving me permission to eat, when James would have said the four I’d already had were four more than enough.
I ate the whole plateful.
“Who are you here with, then?” the man asked as he chose the next canapé. “You’re not with that yuppie-type, are you? The whipper-snapper in the dinner jacket?”
“All the men here are in dinner jackets.”
“The one with the virtual money. The cryptocurrency. Right piece of work he is.”
“Yes, I’m with him,” I said.
“Don’t you get involved in that cyber money.”
It was a bit late for that.
The man nodded at the glass in my hand. The wine was still untouched, but after all that food, a mouthful wasn’t going to hurt. A mouthful mind, not a whole glass. So I took a mouthful, but a mouthful isn’t much and it’s true you can have a drink when you drive, within the limits; that is the law.
So I finished the glass and it was chilled and delicious and the man had been right, I did feel better, but I shook my head when he refilled it and I put the glass down on the table.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Let your hair down. Most people here are having a miserable time.”
It was nice to know no one here was enjoying themselves, but even so, I told him no thank you. Instead, I fetched a fresh glass and filled it with water.
I wanted to ask him about James—most people thought James was wonderful—but I was stopped in my tracks by a banshee howl.
I jumped a mile in the air and looked around to see who was being killed or where the monster was attacking from, but the man calmly put his hand in his pocket and took out his phone. The noise was his ringtone. “Better take this,” he said, and he left as my heart rate began to return to normal.
He was gone for now, but I resolved to find him later and ask him more about James. Maybe he’d like to join me in plotting murder.
I’d had enough of canapés, and I couldn’t stay in that room all evening. I prepared myself to go back into the fray, but who would I speak to? What would I say? How much longer did we have to stay here? The night seemed discouragingly young.
“Oh, there you are!” Margery was at the door. “Do come through, Lennie’s about to make a speech.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to miss that,” I said, whoever Lennie was.
Margery vanished and I eyed the glass of wine I had declined. Nobody would know. But I walked away.
Lennie, it transpired, was the man I had just met in the refreshments room and what he had to tell us about—at length—was that he had been leading a campaign to raise funds for a nearby hospice, and they had finally reached their target.
He pulled one of those enormous checks out from behind a screen and handed it over to one of the other guests.
There was much applause, although it was for just over ￡1million, an amount that most of the people there could have handed over without a second thought.
With the presentation over, everyone, except me, arranged themselves into groups: huddles of business men and women and separate cliques of their partners arranged in some kind of hierarchy I couldn’t decipher and couldn’t penetrate.
I roamed from group to group, looking for my tribe, but no one paused in their conversation and said, “Oh, hello, Daisy, come and join us.” No one moved to let me in.
James was in the center of a group of middle-aged men, laughing and speaking with loud voices; they were all holding their wrists out, comparing watches.
“Nearly two hundred thousand,” I heard James saying.
“Two hundred and fifty,” the man next to him said, rotating his wrist so everyone could get a good look.
“Four hundred,” said a third, and I put a curse on him: May your watch always run five minutes late.
Clearly that group wasn’t where I was meant to be; my watch was worth just under a grand.
I stood alone in the middle of the room, ignored by everyone except the waiting staff, who had to walk around me.
I was uncomfortable, I was nervous, I was wondering how I was going to get to the end of the evening.
It takes approximately an hour to process one unit of alcohol.
It must have been at least an hour since I had that drink.
At least. I made my way back to the room, where the food had been taken away, but the drink I had declined was still on the table.
I glugged it down, but it wasn’t cold anymore, so I tipped a splash in from the bottle in the chiller, just a taste, so I could have the memory of that first glass.
My head was still as clear as day, but I didn’t feel better, the way I should have done. I looked at the bottle of wine again, just one last gulp? I tipped the neck toward my glass, but then, no, maybe I needed more food, that was a better idea. I went to look for some.
As I turned to leave the room, I saw James in the doorway, watching me. He walked away.