‘I’m so sorry—’
He put a hand under her elbow to help her to her feet.
‘Are you unwel ?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I’m fine. I – I – this is just an impulse, you know. I found myself outside and I just thought —’
He began to steer her towards the door. He said, ‘Goodnight, Teresa,’ to the receptionist, and leaned forward to push the door open to al ow Chrissie to go through ahead of him.
‘I’m due home soon,’ he said to Chrissie, ‘it being a Friday. But there’s time for a coffee first. It looks to me as if you could do with a coffee.’
‘I’m sorry, so sorry—’
‘Please don’t apologize.’
‘But you’re a solicitor, you’re not a doctor or a therapist—’
‘I think,’ Mark Leverton said, holding Chrissie’s elbow, ‘we’l just pop in here. I often get a lunchtime sandwich here. It’s run by a nice Italian family
—’
The cafe was warm and bright. Mark sat Chrissie in a plastic chair by a wal and said he was just going to cal his wife, and tel her that he’d be half an hour later than he’d said.
‘Oh, please—’ Chrissie said. She could feel a pain beginning under her breastbone at the thought of Mrs Leverton and her children, and maybe her brothers and sisters and parents, sitting down to the reassuring candlelit ritual of a Jewish Friday night. ‘Please don’t be late on my account!’
Mark said something briefly into his phone, and then he made a dismissive, friendly little hand gesture in Chrissie’s direction, and went over to the glassed-in counter of Italian sandwich fil ings and ordered two coffees.
‘Cappuccino?’ he said to Chrissie.
‘Americano, please—’
‘One of each,’ Mark Leverton said, and then he came back to the table where Chrissie sat, and slipped off his raincoat and dropped it over an empty chair.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Chrissie said again. ‘This isn’t like me. I don’t know what I’m thinking of, bothering you like this —’
‘It’s not a bother.’
‘And it isn’t,’ Chrissie said unsteadily, ‘as if I can afford to pay you for even ten minutes of your time—’
‘We’re not ogres,’ Mark said. He was smiling. ‘We don’t charge just for picking up the phone. You wouldn’t have come to find me if you didn’t need help now, would you?’
The coffee was put down in front of them. Mark looked at his cappuccino.
‘Europeans would never drink it like this after mid-morning. But I love it. It’s my little vice. Ever since I gave up chocolate.’ He grinned at Chrissie.
‘I was a real shocker with chocolate. A bar of Galaxy a day. And I mean a
She smiled back faintly. ‘I wish chocolate was the answer—’
He dipped his spoon into the cushion of foam on top of his coffee cup.
‘D’you want to tel me, Mrs Rossiter, or would you like me to guess?’
‘I’m not Mrs Rossiter, Mr Leverton.’
‘I’m Mark. And you are, in my mind and for al practical purposes, Mrs Rossiter. OK?’
Chrissie nodded.
‘And I’m guessing that the shocks of the last couple of months have now segued into anxiety about the future.’
Chrissie nodded again. She said, ‘Got it in one,’ to her coffee cup. Then she glanced up and she said, ‘I can’t believe I was so stupid. I can’t believe I let us rely so heavily, in such an undiversified way, on his earning power. I can’t believe I didn’t see how that earning power was diminishing, because even if he stil had a huge fan base it was very much women of a certain age, and getting good gigs was harder and harder and no one seems able to stop the rip-offs and il egal downloading of CDs. I can’t believe I didn’t see that I’d put al my eggs in one basket and that basket turned out to be – to be—’ She stopped, took a breath, and then she said, ‘You don’t want to hear al that.’
‘It’s background,’ he said.
She took a swal ow of coffee. She said simply, ‘And now I can’t get work.’
‘Ah.’
‘I’ve been to seven interviews. It’s a waste of time. Everybody seems to want to be an agent, so there’s an infinite supply of cheap young people they can train up like they want to. They don’t want someone like me who managed just one talent for twenty years. They say come in and we’l talk and then they take one look at me and you can see them thinking, Oh, she’s too old, too set in her ways, won’t be able to adapt to our client list, and so we exchange pleasantries – or veiled unpleasantries – for twenty minutes or so, and then I get up and go and you can hear the sighs of relief even before the door is shut behind me.’
Mark Leverton put his hands flat on the table either side of his coffee cup.
