London – once they’d been convicted, however unjustly, no one wanted to know. ‘What do you think he wants?’
‘Beats me.’ He looked closely at his wife, unable to tell what she was feeling. She didn’t like surprises, which must have made the fact that they had got married almost by accident unsettling.
The back door slammed, feet slapped on the vinyl tiles, and the accident burst in. ‘Hello, spider monkey,’ he said, still allowed to use nicknames at home, though never within a hundred yards of teachers or school friends.
‘Hi, Dad,’ Sophie said. After nine months her voice had gone entirely American. She was wearing khaki shorts with big pockets, a pink T-shirt, and trainers on her feet. Already she was concerned about looking cool, which made him miss the uniform she’d had to wear in London.
He contemplated his daughter with a sense of wonder he did his best to disguise. In summer her hair was strawberry blonde, in winter almost downright red, explicable by a great-grandmother on Robert’s mother’s side. Watching Sophie watching him, he realised yet again that she was stunningly, yet still unknowingly, beautiful. This was not parental fatuousness, but the simple truth: the first time he and Anna had been asked to let their daughter model, Robert had laughed in unanxious amusement; the fifth time they’d been asked he had grown alarmed.
Now she flicked her hair back in a smaller replication of her mother’s tic, and asked sarcastically, ‘What is the Important Man going to read today at the office?’
‘A History of Impertinent Daughters,’ he said, batting it back. She was quick for her age, her tongue precociously sharp. If he’d been half as lippy with his own father he would have paid a price, but even when piqued he was wary of crushing her – he couldn’t bear the prospect of her fearing him. Her emotional development seemed in any case strictly normal for nine years old – a withering remark she made could be followed within seconds by the tantrum and tears of a toddler.
‘We’d better get going,’ Anna said to the girl. Ordinarily they would have all left together, since Anna’s job at the consulate was only a few minutes’ walk from his own office off north Michigan Avenue. But today she was going out near the state line for a meeting with some Wisconsin businessmen, and she would drop off Sophie on her way north.
‘Good luck with the presentation. Will Philip be there?’ His voice was teasing, but held the hint of an edge.
‘Of course. Why?’ She gave him a don’t start that look.
‘Just wondered. Anyone else?’
‘Maggie Trumbull.’
Maggie was a lawyer, too, but American-trained. ‘Well, at least you won’t get sued. I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ he added in a gentler voice, since he knew she hated public speaking.
Anna leaned down and kissed Robert goodbye lightly on the lips. ‘Cheese makers don’t sue. Now you take care with this Duval chap.’
‘He may not call.’
‘I bet he will. Why else bother you in the first place? Especially after all these years.’
But Duval didn’t call that day, or the day after. Robert’s new job, which had brought him back to Chicago after years away, was still novel enough to preoccupy him utterly during the day – and, as Anna and Sophie sometimes complained, occasionally at weekends as well. So by the end of the week, thoughts of Duval had receded, if not quite disappeared altogether.
He came out of the Friday staff meeting in a good mood. Dorothy Taylor, his publishing director, who was stroppy and combative and seemed to have trouble accepting him as her new boss, was away on holiday, so it had been relaxed. He found Vicky, his assistant, waiting for him outside his office. ‘Your lunch appointment rang to ask if you could meet him at twelve thirty,’ she said.
‘Anything else?’
She followed him into his office, a high-ceilinged corner room with a view of a small playground, which filled up in the afternoon with mothers, nannies and their upper-middle class charges. Robert liked hearing the children’s shouts and make-believe screams, since the only other external noise audible above the hum of the office air conditioning was an occasional horn blast from a driver on Lake Shore Drive.
‘You’ve got Andy Stephens here at three.’
The accountant from the university, to review the quarterly results. They’d been good so that would be easy enough.
‘And that’s it?’ he asked. He’d learned to check: Vicky was a young graduate from Michigan, an English major who wanted to