Innocently asleep in her studio, Eva knew nothing, yet, of her boss’s terrible demise. Adam watched her as the light came up, then the early April sun started to shine on the cream Velux blind in the sloping roof. In the last nine months, since they had been an item, he had often woken to that view; to the slow, guilty realisation of where he was, who he was with, what he had got himself into.
On those mornings when he had been here, it had nonetheless been a delicious pleasure rolling over in the laundered sheets and waking Eva; a pleasure that had made all the clumsy lies he’d had to tell Julie worthwhile. ‘I was up early, darling, jogging round the park.’ ‘I had to go into the office to use the work computer.’ ‘I stayed out late at a dinner, oh just a work thing, clients, bit of a bore, but you’ve got to do it.’
It was not a pleasure he could indulge in now. Should he have another go at speaking to her? Shaken though he was after his encounter with Jeff, he didn’t feel that guilty. Would he have even been charged with manslaughter, were he still alive? No. He had just been present at an alarming medical event. He’d have phoned the ambulance himself, had he been able to: ‘999. Yes, I am a ghost, that’s correct…’
Obviously it was sad that a man had died. But not that sad, because that man was Jeff, so there was one less duplicitous shit on the planet. Weirdly, Adam felt buoyed up by his success in getting through. If he could repeat the same to his beloved Eva, he could tell her what had happened. Though how shocking would she find that, even as he appeared to her for the first time?
In any case, he wanted to see how the news of their boss’s sudden death played out at work. How they all took it. How Eva took it, even. Would her new-found support for the Clerkenwell Tower be dropped as quickly as it had been offered? Would he, in fact, have to go on doubting the loyalty of a woman he had once been loved-up enough about to completely trust?
So he watched her eyes open. Then close again. He watched her turn over onto her side and snuggle back down into the pillow. Then get up and visit her tiny bathroom. She showered (how Adam had hated that shower, which had mocked his infidelity with its feebleness, ‘You don’t need to be in this kind of crappy rental bathroom, you cheat’) then walked around wrapped in a towel and fixed herself a light breakfast of Rachel’s Organic yoghurt, sliced peach and toast, like something out of a home furnishings brochure. She read the Guardian headlines on her iPad. She picked out her work clothes and put them on: a favourite little black top and skirt combo this morning. She must have a meeting, Adam thought. She dabbed her favourite Miller Harris ‘Peau Santal’ behind her ears and clattered off down the stairs. The scent hung in his non-existent nostrils like the memory of living.
He strap hung with her on the Tube. He noted the sneaky glances of the men who fancied her in that suit, randomly, as men do, the male gaze, yadda yadda. He hovered alongside her as she paced up busy Long Acre. He queued with her in Costa, where she got her usual skinny soy latte. He followed as she turned right and then left into Sheridan Street. He floated up the central staircase of the ex-warehouse that was now Albury, Atkinson, Trelawney, to be confronted, in the first-floor foyer, with a huge, upbeat display of the Clerkenwell Tower project, complete with computer-generated watercolour-style ‘drawings’ of what that monstrosity might look like. With Jeff gone, was there now a chance to save it all before it was too late?
He followed Eva to her desk, watched her sip her coffee, say hi to Reuben and a couple of others, then settle seriously to her computer and her emails. Then he slid sideways into Jeff’s dedicated glass cube of an office.
Sue clearly hadn’t phoned yet, because Jeff’s PA Asha seemed relaxed enough this morning, clearly assuming that it was going to be a late one and that Jeff would be in, at the last moment, in a crumpled linen suit, as per usual. But as the clock ticked on towards ten, and then the odious duo of Sugar and Savidge appeared, and were welcomed by office manager Lynsey and shovelled off into the conference room with Nespressos, she was visibly worrying.
What were those chancers here for now? Adam wondered. Strategy for the upcoming public ‘consultation’? Bit soon after the pre-app, but you never knew with these two, they liked to keep things moving. At five to ten Asha was visibly panicking. Hovering right behind her, Adam could see that she had been trying Jeff’s mobile, repeatedly, but to no avail. He drove in, so there were no concerns about him losing a signal on the Underground. Now, in desperation, after a hurried consultation with Lynsey, Asha was phoning his home number, something he always discouraged.
Adam watched as Asha’s expression changed. He couldn’t hear exactly what Sue was saying at the other end, but it was her all right. ‘OMG,’ Asha muttered, as she took in the news. Her eyes darted nervously round the office as she surveyed her heedless, and now bossless, co-workers. He watched her click off the phone, put it down in its cradle, and for a moment just stare, blankly, out. Then, after ten long seconds, she sprang into action, racing discreetly through the desks to brief Lynsey, Trevor, Eva and Reuben, before heading back to the conference room to tell the clients that Jeff was unfortunately waylaid.
‘Waylaid!’ Tim Savidge repeated. ‘Our first public consultation is at noon. We can’t go unprepared.’
Asha was doubled over in gracious apology. Trevor would be in in just a moment to take over.
‘Has he been “waylaid” too? We really need to get going. Where is Jeff?’
In Trevor’s office, he, Eva and Reuben were clearly in shock, urgently debating whether to relay the truth to the clients.
‘Now is not the right moment to tell them,’ Trevor was saying.
‘We have to tell them sometime,’ Eva replied.
‘It’s too sudden. We need to work out how to present this.’
‘Why?’ said Reuben. ‘They’ve got to know eventually. They might be offended if they found out later we hadn’t told them.’
‘But if we tell them, it’ll be round the houses before lunchtime,’ Trevor said. ‘People are going to be going mad. You remember what it was like when Adam…’
He paused and looked respectfully at Eva.
‘I do remember,’ she answered.
‘And Jeff delayed on that for two days.’
‘That was suicide,’ said Reuben.
‘Adam didn’t have clients waiting around,’ Eva said. ‘Waiting to go to a public consultation. It’s just not going to wash that he’s not turning up. This is Jeff’s big thing. Being reasonable and persuasive with the awkward squad. That’s probably the main reason S & S retain him.’
Trevor looked through the glass walls towards the conference room, where Tim Savidge could now be seen pacing up and down, on his phone, gesticulating wildly.
I could just drop in here, Adam thought, and take over in a ghostly fashion. Tell them that on second thoughts – Woo hoo! – Albury, Atkinson, Trelawney (Deceased Division) is recommending that they drop the glass tower and return to the altogether better idea of preserving the historic façade. Even if that did slash the Sugar & Savidge profits by ninety-five per cent and meant that Dave Purbeck might not be taking his family to Val d'Isère next year for February half-term.
‘But Jeff is – was – the Clerkenwell Tower,’ Trevor protested. ‘What am I going to say? They might take the whole thing elsewhere.’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Eva cried. ‘Would you like me to do it?’
Trevor’s curly dark mop was in his hands, his blue specs flat on the desk. ‘Okay,’ he said, surfacing. ‘Let’s do it your way. You come with me, though, please, Eva.’
It was a pathetic attempt to reclaim some authority, which Eva was visibly unimpressed by.
Adam hung around. Did he enjoy watching the commotion when the clients received the shocking news? As Tim Savidge did his best to look upset about Jeff’s heart attack, his brain was visibly computing what he should do next. Trevor was a competent architect, but no replacement in the persuasion stakes for Jeff, they all knew that.
When the clients had left for the public consultation, with a scared-looking Trevor in tow, Reuben called the entire office into the conference room and formally told them what had happened. They all already knew; the news had licked from desk to desk like wildfire.
Eva made a speech. It was a terrible shock, she said, but they had to weather it. They had survived Adam’s recent death (she didn’t say suicide, he was glad to hear) and though Jeff was, had been, central to everything, they would be able, bottom line, to survive that too. Albury, Atkinson, Trelawney was them, all of them, working on the projects they were working on, and that creativity would continue, whatever. The structure of the firm might have to adjust a little, but that wasn’t important. What was important were the imaginative solutions people were coming up with for often challenging problems.
Adam was proud of her, rising to this challenge like this. She was, whether she liked it or not, putting herself up there in the firm’s unspoken hierarchy, up with Trevor who, though notionally her superior, was slipping, surely, down the credibility pole with every hour.
Adam’s private yearning to speak to her was stronger than ever. He wanted to take her through what had happened to Jeff, and yes, to him too. Was her rejection of his plan for Butcher’s Yard for real? Had she just been posturing with Reuben in the pub after the pre pre-app meeting? ‘Life moves on. Adam’s gone.’ Ditto with Matilda in Tea and Sympathy?
Ridiculous though it was, after all that had happened, Adam wanted, if just for a short while, to be back with her again. He wanted to hear her say ‘hey’ in that soothing, deeply intimate way that she’d done when they had first got together; and again, sometimes, when he’d been away or not been able to see her for a while. Why had he failed to get through to her post mortem? Could that change?
He imagined that with the shock of Jeff’s death the workers might all pack up and go home for the day. He was wrong about that. If anything, they seemed to be beavering away harder at their individual projects. Would Jeff, who liked to think he was the motivating kingpin of the firm, have wanted to see that? Of course the news had to be broken to clients, jitters calmed. But who was going to take charge now? It was all up in the air.
If they weren’t leaving early, they weren’t at least going to stay late. Adam was wrong about that too. At five thirty, as soon as the day was technically over, Eva and Reuben led a move to the pub. The Prosperous Parson rather than the New Deal. Even though Adam was frustrated that Eva was still in company, hadn’t slunk home to be alone with her thoughts (and, yes, surprise, surprise, him!) he was heartened that she and Reuben and the gang had chosen his pub over Jeff’s swankier favourite. Culturally, if not actually, they were on his side with the old-fashioned bar stools, the scuffed tables, the crisps and the pork scratchings, the familiar jugs of bitter; not the glass and chrome tables, the swanky rows of overpriced European lagers, the preposterous and expensive snacks, including of course the oversized Scotch egg that was Jeff’s favourite (‘a meal in itself’)…
At one level he felt sad that he couldn’t join them; that he could see them crunching down on the scratchings and not know that familiar, lardy, gross-but-delicious taste again, nor sample on his lips the creamy head and malty, hoppy body of a Timmy Taylor’s, here on draft though not even known about over at the New Deal.
As they sat down with their drinks, the gathered gang of almost twenty-five were shocked, that was for sure. But after an initial, almost studied period of respectful calm, raucousness broke out. As the second and third pints and large glasses of wine went down, they were laughing and loud. They were remembering Jeff. In a good way? Sort of. But as with Adam at his not-so-long-ago wake, Jeff’s foibles were coming out too. His love of fine food; his passion for detective fiction, in both books and TV miniseries; his taste in expensive suits, Paul Smith, Armani, Reiss, particularly of the linen variety. Did Jeff crumple them up deliberately to produce the laid-back effect he wanted? Didn’t Sue have an iron? Don’t be so sexist. Did Sue even exist? Oh, for fuck’s sake! I’ve seen her. When? Once. Really? Sure it was her?
Wasn’t it all a bit too soon for this kind of thing? Apparently not. Then, suddenly, in describing in more detail Jeff’s work, and his approach, they had got on to his relationship with Adam. Hadn’t Adam brought him into the firm? Hadn’t they fallen out, creatively, with Jeff pushing for ideas that were increasingly antithetic to Adam’s more regenerative approach? Wasn’t it true that Adam had brought in Butcher’s Yard as a conservation project, that Jeff had totally monstered him, that that had been one of the things that had driven him to suicide? No, it was the other way round, Eva said. Jeff had brought it in. And it was Stanley who had brought in Jeff.
Simone, decidedly tipsy now, thought all these deaths had started with Stanley.
‘What are you saying, Simone?’
‘It just seems a bit odd. Ping, ping, ping, all three of them “dead” within two years.’ She mouthed the word with heavy meaning. ‘The partners.’
Then the word ‘stuffy’ was being bandied about. Jeff had been the moderniser, for sure. But was Stanley stuffier than Adam?
‘I don’t think you could say Adam was stuffy,’ Eva parried.
Thank you, Eva, my darling, you are still on my side.
‘If anything, he was more forward-thinking than Jeff,’ Lynsey said.
‘Is preservation forward-thinking?’ Pete, one of the juniors, asked.
‘I think in a way it is. Anyone can build a steel and glass box. And what are you left with after a hundred years?’
‘An old steel and glass box,’ Asha joked.
‘Ha ha.’
‘Anyone who’s spent time in the US appreciates what we have here in Europe,’ Reuben said. ‘I mean, Chicago, have you even been there?’
‘I love Chicago,’ said Simone.
‘And you’ve got the sticker to prove it. D’you know what? They should send all those vandalistic local councillors and planning officers on a tour of America just so they realise what they’re doing, trashing our heritage.’
‘Not just America,’ Lynsey said.
‘But we can’t stay still,’ said Pete.
What did Eva think, Reuben asked, after a little more of this chatter. She had been close to both the partners, he added, mischievously.
‘I was,’ Eva said, ‘as you know. Particularly Adam.’ The group’s din subsided into sudden silence, and across the pub a trio arguing loudly about the rights of eco-protesters to block major arterial routes could now be clearly heard.
It was a measure of their respect for Eva, Adam thought, that none of the gathered group mocked her statement, even though there were a few tight smiles visible among the younger contingent.
Actually Eva thought it was sad, she went on, that those two, Adam and Jeff, had developed this rivalry, after many years of working closely and productively together. It had got to a point where Jeff decided he didn’t want to be thwarted, or held back, anymore, about anything, which meant he was actively trying to push Adam out: of the firm that he’d founded, that still bore his name. When in fact the two approaches could easily have been contained within the firm, horses for courses and suchlike.
‘So it was lucky for Jeff,’ Simone said, ‘that Adam…’
‘Passed on?’ said Asha.
‘Yes.’
‘Lucky and convenient,’ said Pete.
‘What are you saying?’ asked Eva.
‘There were rumours, weren’t there?’
‘That?’
‘Adam didn’t actually kill himself.’
‘So, what… Jeff was a murderer?’
‘No, I wasn’t saying that. I was asking, really.’
It was interesting to Adam that as this discussion continued, and got noisier again, drowning out the other pub chatter, Eva was emerging as his defender. However much she had been swayed by Jeff and his approach, while he was still alive, she seemed to have reverted to Camp Adam now that he’d gone.