So many of Laurie’s childhood memories involved Dad urging her awake, carrying her downstairs, practically forcing food into her mouth as he tried to get her ready for school, it was strange having to tiptoe round him in the morning. She could hardly remember seeing him asleep before. All of a sudden, she felt unexpectedly grown-up, flashing forward to a future when she really would be the one in charge, the one looking after him. She took extra care to shut the door to the flat as quietly as possible.
At the office, things had settled back into the usual routine. Michael was his usual monosyllabic self, head down as he got on with implementing the trading strategy she’d helped him model. And Henry was – well – the same as he’d always been, entirely capable of generating enough work to keep a person busy with mundane tasks requiring little or no thought. A few weeks ago, Laurie had really believed that she preferred it this way: a job that she could leave behind each day, a life unhampered by ambition. Now, however, she had to admit she was bored.
So it felt like a welcome break when Henry came over to Laurie’s desk and asked if she could ‘come in for a word’. Unusually, the glass partition that separated his office from the rest of the floor was opaque. Clearly, this was ‘a word’ that required some privacy. Nevertheless, Laurie was taken aback when she entered the office to find Tom Spencer there too. As Fitzalan’s director of administration, he was nominally Laurie’s boss, although she had worked out within a few days of arrival that it was the partners like Henry who really ran the show.
Tom didn’t waste time on niceties. ‘I’ll get straight to the point, Laurie. You know the rule that we send no files out of the office.’ He didn’t wait for her nod. As far as he was concerned this was a straightforward case. ‘Well, our email records show that a large attachment was sent from your terminal to your Gmail address at two thirty-four yesterday afternoon. I assume you’re not going to say it wasn’t you? We can always check the CCTV footage.’
Laurie shook her head and looked at Henry. He was avoiding her eye.
‘In that case you are suspended without pay while we investigate the security breach. I will accompany you to your desk while you collect your things. I’d remind you that you remain under a duty of confidentiality under the terms of the employment contract you signed when you joined us. If you attempt to discuss your case with anyone outside this room then we will regard it as a breach of contract and pursue you for it.’
Laurie could feel herself flushing with the shock. She was to be treated like some sort of criminal? Where was the justice in that? When she finally spoke, it came out almost as a shout. ‘But it was only a photograph!’
This time she did catch Henry’s eye, but she could detect no response or answering empathy. An air of disdain hung about him. Mentally, he was already moving on.
Laurie was angry now. She deserved better treatment than this. She raised her voice, conscious that she could probably be heard outside, but too far gone to care, ‘Henry, I’ve just worked all weekend for you. The least you can do is talk to me.’
But it was Tom who replied. ‘You’ll be paid any overtime due to you.’ Then he stood up, and took hold of Laurie’s elbow, attempting to steer her out of Henry’s office. Shaking herself free with a muttered, ‘Watch it, you pervert,’ Laurie stalked over to her desk, gathered her phone and cycling bag and left the office, followed by Tom and what felt like a hundred pairs of eyes.
Laurie stood in the street, dressed in her cycling gear, holding her bicycle. Her immediate anger had just about subsided, to be replaced with low-level resentment at the injustice of it all. Even that was hard to maintain as she stood in the summer sun, acknowledging the pleasure that came from being outside in the middle of the day. What was she going to do now? Phone the agency? Not for a day or so, at least. The flat would harldy be a refuge at the moment – she couldn’t face having to explain what had happened to Dad - but London was no place to cycle round aimlessly without a destination. She had got as far as wheeling her bike in the direction of Oxford Street, looking for a stand where she could pick up a copy of Time Out, when she remembered the hour she’d spent in the British Library. She’d felt at home there. How hard would it be to get a reader’s card and have access to all the world’s knowledge, or at least such of it as had been published in Britain since 1852 or whenever it was?
In just over ten minutes Laurie had arrived at the Euston Road entrance. Once there, she followed signs to bike racks that were so full that she could only stand there, uncertain of what to do. It was another cyclist who unconsciously led the way, wheeling his bike up and round the back of the permanent racks to a set of temporary stands close to the main entrance, where some space at least remained. The two of them locked up their bikes next door to each other and walked into the library together, never exchanging a glance or a word.
Laurie was feeling more confident than she had on her first visit. No one here knew her background. Here she could be the Laurie who’d been predicted a set of straight A stars for GCSE s, who had imagined herself following her father and mother to Cambridge, not the Laurie for whom school had suddenly ceased to hold any interest, who had been heading for God knew what kind of future before her father removed her to Somerset. The feeling bore her on and past the information desk, into the office for reader registration.
Laurie had prepared herself for some kind of grilling: why she wanted access to the library’s collections, where else she had tried, what were her qualifications? So, remembering something she’d heard Michael say to Henry, she volunteered that she was researching interest-rate movements and the effect on the yield curve. The man who interviewed her might have been impressed, or might just have been in a hurry. At any rate, his only comment was, ‘So you’ll be wanting the Business and IT Centre, then.’ All he demanded from Laurie was some ID. Her driving licence – the one real qualification she had to show for the Somerset years but almost irrelevant in London – was good enough for that. Two minutes later, she had her newly minted reader’s card, complete with photograph, valid for one month. The whole experience had been uplifting: confirmation that she had some worth, some rights, despite the way she had been kicked out of the office only an hour before. Laurie had a spring in her step as she went to leave her things in the locker room, which even the need to queue for a locker did little to dispel.
That brief conversation in reader registration had decided Laurie on one thing: she would not be basing herself in the Business and IT Centre. She could just imagine what that was like: full of people like Michael huddled over computer screens. But where should she go? Rare Books and Music? She wasn’t sure she was ready for that yet. Most of the people her age were heading for a door marked Humanities I; she followed them.
Well, there certainly wasn’t a party going on inside. Even here, Laurie realised, laptops were almost essential. The room was vast. There must have been two hundred people, each with their own desk, but she could hear only a few low voices, and those came from the enquiry desk in front of her. It made Laurie ache to see it; if she hadn’t fucked things up so badly after Mum died, would she have ended up somewhere like this? Then she noticed something else: a tension underlying the overall air of studiousness. Heads had risen at her entrance; some eyes attempted to meet hers; others seemed almost too determined not to break away from the page. The sense of being on show, of judgements being formed, was both flattering and unnerving. Laurie did her best to ignore it. She found an unoccupied computer terminal and started to surf her way around the library catalogue. The complete works of Georgette Heyer were there and at her disposal; which ones hadn’t she read? Two minutes later, she found herself looking up, keen to check out the Reading Room’s latest arrival.