B00BCLBHSA EBOK (6 page)

The chef pointed to a side door at the end of the shabby corridor that would take Emily outside the hotel, the long way round to the door at the back.

“Are you sure?” Emily asked. “Where does that go?”

“Shortcut. British Museum,” he said, and laughed nastily.

Behind him, another of the kitchen staff—a pot washer or porter—stared at Emily curiously as he passed. He didn’t look friendly. The chef shouted furiously at him in a foreign language Emily recognized: it was Portuguese (she lived near Stockwell, a part of London that claimed the largest Portuguese-speaking population in the UK; it had the custard tart shops to prove it). But then, deeper within the interior of the kitchen, Emily heard other, shouted exchanges in a language she didn’t understand or recognize. Emily had heard—or read, perhaps, in the Sunday supplements—about intrepid young people who crashed private parties in fancy hotels by creeping in through the kitchen. She just couldn’t imagine wanting to go to any party badly enough to try to make her way through the hostile men in this kitchen, not knowing if the people around her were threatening to kill her or asking each other if the soup needed more salt.

“A man,” said Emily, “the man who delivered the chocolates—he said I should come through here.”

The chef shook his head, pointed again to the side door and then folded his arms. There was no way Emily would be allowed to walk through the kitchen. How on earth had M. Loman managed it? Perhaps he had put up his two fists in his gloved hands and threatened the chefs until they let him in. Or perhaps he had just walked round the long way, as she was going to have to do.

She opened the side door and stepped over a pair of polished men’s shoes that had been left there, neatly lined up side by side. She was now outside in a smelly courtyard area where the rubbish bins and recycling bins were kept. Emily walked past chest-high, color-coded plastic bins containing empty glass bottles, or kitchen waste, or paper and cardboard. There were cigarette ends on the ground near the door, where people had sneaked out here to smoke. In contrast to the spotlessly clean interiors of the public areas of the hotel, you wouldn’t consider eating your dinner off the floor out here.

A chain-link metal fence ran along one side of this ugly, unseen part of the hotel premises; leafy climbing plants had been trained up the fence to disguise it from anyone passing by outside. At the end of this area was a low brick wall, and beyond that Emily saw a housing estate that had been built in the 1970s from gray concrete, now streaked with greenish mossy slime. It rose above the hotel like a malignant ogre that had risen from a swamp and was trying to work out how to take its first few steps; an ogre that wanted to get close enough to swat the pinkish, beautiful brick-built hotel out of its way before stamping off to ruin the beauty of everything else in its path.

The function of the low wall was to delineate the boundary between the hotel and the housing estate, rather than to keep people in or out. There was a gate to the side of the courtyard that could be unlocked for deliveries, and to allow the refuse trucks to collect the bins. Since it was easy enough to walk in through the front door of the hotel, and more difficult to get in to the courtyard, Emily amused herself by speculating that the rubbish in the bins had a higher status or was more valued than the guests. But she knew that it only seemed that way because most of the security in the public areas was more discreet. Subtlety was not important at the back gate.

She thought that security must be an odd business in a hotel because the management
wanted
people to come in and spend money in the restaurant and bar. Visitors were free to come and go. It wasn’t a hospital or a prison or a school. But the hotel management wouldn’t want members of the public just wandering in and unwrapping a packet of sandwiches and soaking up the atmosphere; it wasn’t a public park. Despite attempts to recreate the ambience of a rich person’s country house, with Wi-Fi and decent plumbing, a hotel wasn’t a rich person’s country house and guests were not really guests so much as customers. Security in a hotel like the Coram was bound up with snobbery. It involved letting the right sort of person come in. The people who lived on the estate next door—though it would never be put quite like that—were not the right sort.

Emily was just thinking that no one would ever come this way unless they had to—and it certainly wasn’t a shortcut to the British Museum, that had been the chef’s little joke—when she saw a pale, graceful woman walking toward her. She had a face Emily recognized but couldn’t at first place. Had they met? The other woman was a few years older, around thirty. Was it someone she had seen on TV? Then she knew who it was. There had been several newspaper articles recently about her wealth and success, no doubt timed to coincide with her new book release: it was Polly Penham. “Polly!” Emily shouted, strangely relieved not to be alone here; it was a bit creepy. “It’s Emily. From the conference? Were you looking for me?”

Polly stared back at Emily in frank bewilderment for a few seconds. She looked like a fox that has been caught rootling among household rubbish and doesn’t know whether to run into the road and risk getting killed by the traffic, or stay put and keep digging until it finds something to eat. “No,” said Polly. “I wasn’t looking for you. I came out here for a cigarette.” She opened her right hand to reveal the long stub of a barely smoked cigarette. It was white tipped, probably menthol. Emily was impressed that Polly hadn’t just thrown it on the ground—all the other smokers were much less scrupulous. “Don’t tell anyone,” Polly said. “I’m supposed to have given up. Did you see that article in
Women’s Health
magazine?”

Emily had not. She didn’t read
Women’s Health
magazine.

Polly shrugged and smiled, a little guilty. “I was paid quite a big fee. I made a fuss about giving up smoking and how wonderful I feel…Is that awful? It was true at the time, but I keep relapsing. Thank goodness my livelihood comes mostly from fiction. Let’s get away from this hideous, stinking place.”

“I have to get some chocolates from the kitchen,” said Emily, pointing in the direction she had been heading.

“Oh, nonsense! You can get one of the porters to do that for you. Or, look, let’s ask the manager.”

Considering how unpleasant it was out here, it was certainly getting crowded. But here was Nik Kovacevic, walking slowly toward them from the kitchen end of the courtyard, head down, swinging arms covered hand to elbow in grubby gauntlet gloves. His gait was strange. He was wearing galoshes, and he had a cabbage leaf stuck to the sole of his left boot, but it wasn’t that. He exaggerated each step, as if he was trying to remember how to put one foot in front of the other. Emily wondered if he had a drink problem. He had almost reached them before he even noticed them. His face was greenishly pale, his lips pressed together as if there was a bitter taste in his mouth.

“Ladies,” said Nik when he eventually noticed them. “This is no place for guests. Are you lost? Please follow me.” He began to make small but vigorous circular motions with his right arm: a small boy churning up his bathwater to make bubbles. They walked with him back toward the door that would take them into the shabby corridor, and then into the hotel dining room.

“I don’t know,” said Emily, feeling guilty now for neglecting her duty just so she could get away from the smell of the bins. “The chocolates? They’re in the kitchen. I really ought to—”

“They will be delivered to the conference area,” said Nik, removing his gloves and galoshes, and slipping his feet into the polished black shoes that had been left by the door. “Allow me to arrange it.”

Emily hesitated. She had promised Morgana, after all. But Nik put his arm up to bar her way. He said, “I insist.”

“I’ll get my books and help you with the gift bags,” Polly said. Emily left her waiting in the lobby for the elevator that would take her up to her room, its teasingly slow progress toward the ground floor tracked by the lights on an art deco brass panel. It seemed to hint that guests might have been waiting for the elevator to arrive since the 1930s.

“Don’t you wish you had a private elevator that could whiz you up and down really quickly between floors?”

Polly laughed. “Is that all you want? If there’s ever a vacancy, I’ll be your fairy godmother, Emily.”

Emily walked downstairs to the basement conference area where uniformed staff were setting up for the private dinner in the Montagu room later that night, the waiters and waitresses whispering and discreet as they brought in cutlery and glasses on a rattling trolley, the porters shouting instructions noisily to each other as they set up the tables. She looked in and smiled and waved hello. They nodded, smiled or ignored her.

“Yes, miss?” said one of the waitresses, clearly half expecting some daft instruction to break it all down and set it up differently. Her name badge said she was called Maria.

“No, it’s fine. Just having a look,” said Emily. “Thanks, Maria.”

The conference area was a place of low ceilings with no natural light. There was a cloth-covered table on one side of the room, and under it there was a row of gilt-colored paper gift bags with gold ribbons for handles. A big, brown cardboard box had been set on the table. It was stamped all over with branding for Zhush!, a company that made sexy lingerie—presumably its contents were also intended for the gift bags. Emily went up to it and tried lifting it. Whatever was inside weighed next to nothing. Either it was filled with the emperor’s new clothes, or something expensively wispy. Emily had lived long enough to know this: the smaller the lingerie, the more expensive it is. So it was probably something wispy.

Polly arrived promptly in a service elevator with a porter, he carrying the chocolates, she carrying a stack of her new paperbacks,
She Knew Too Much
, which were also to go into the bags. Stickers on the front of each copy of Polly’s book proclaimed that it had already been chosen for discussion by a television book club.

Emily wondered if any of the other authors ever got jealous of Polly’s success. But Polly was too young, too practical, too unshowy, too unpretentious, too helpful to inspire jealousy. Not many people would have stood there and helped Emily pack bags when they weren’t being paid to do it. Not many people would have come down in the scruffy service elevator with a porter, carrying her own books. Emily had helped out at enough events like this to know that people’s status as a conference delegate was usually too important to them to compromise it by being seen to help with the admin or carry anything that belonged to them.

“Emily!” There was a silvery, jangling sound, and Morgana appeared. She looked anxious. “Darling, any sign of Winnie? Lex is here, and we want to get the tea party underway.”

Emily shook her head. “She must be in London by now.”

“I’ll go and look,” said Morgana, with the vague good intentions of someone oblivious to the fact that London was too vast an area to cover with a search party of one.

“Winnie?” said Polly, after Morgana had left. She frowned. “Most of the time I have no idea what Morgana’s talking about. I hope Winnie is the name for one of her hats.”

Emily laughed. “Winnie’s one of the bloggers. She uses the name Tallulah.”

“Oh, I see! Tallulah’s Treasures? Yes, she’s one of our special guests. Should we be worried that she hasn’t turned up?”

“I hope not.”

But Emily must have looked worried because Polly said, “Do you have any contacts in the police?”

Emily thought of Constable Rory James, whom she had met when she’d helped out at her neighbor Victoria’s stage school recently. He had given her his phone number and suggested they meet one night for some Thai food in Brixton Village, which was an engagingly quirky network of covered alleyways with stalls, shops and restaurants in Brixton town center, and not a village at all. He’d had a pleasant manner and soccer player’s hips, so she’d said yes. But she had never got round to meeting Rory James for dinner, and anyway he was hardly influential. Not in the way that Polly would mean it. If Polly was going to be an MP and she owned a swannery, she was probably related to a chief superintendent at least. Emily shook her head.

“I have a relative in the police force. Flying Squad but he’ll be able to pull a few strings with Missing Persons. I’ll give him a call if this woman doesn’t turn up by nightfall—put Morgana’s mind at rest.”

“Is it true you’re thinking of going into politics?” Emily didn’t want to seem impertinent, but it wasn’t something she’d consider doing in a million years, and she’d never before met anyone who’d been tempted by the power/sacrifice trade-off. “Aren’t you worried the newspapers will try to dig up some scandal—or find something in your past and make it
seem
scandalous?”

“I’ve thought about that, and talked it over with Pete—my husband. The kids are too young to consult, so I’ll just have to trust that I’m doing the right thing for them. And I’ll try and keep them away from the press while they’re growing up. I’ve done stupid things. I used to get drunk when I was younger. I liked to go clubbing. But so what if some reporter digs up a ten-year-old photo of me staggering out of a gay club at five o’clock in the morning? I’m not going to deny anything or hide anything. It’s crazy to pretend that other young people—voters—don’t do what I did and grow out of it. Making mistakes is a healthy part of growing up. What about you, Emily? Are your wild days behind you?”

“Well…” Emily suddenly felt awfully dull. She always had to get up for work in the mornings, and she valued her precious weekends too much to waste them on headaches and hangovers. “I’m not one for clubbing. I have a little garden I’m really proud of. I grow most of my flowers and a lot of my vegetables from seed. I work in it most evenings if I can. It’s really peaceful. Just me and the squirrels and the birds.”

Polly laughed. “You’re adorable. If you ever go into politics, I’ll vote for you, Emily.”

“Can I help you girls?” It was Cerys, lipstick on, coat on, carrying her handbag. She didn’t look as though she’d come to help.