‘Right, must be getting back,’ he said. ‘Lovely to meet you all.’
He turned and headed back to the kitchen, leaving Romany confused. She had a quick look round to see if the others had noticed anything odd, but they seemed oblivious. Maybe she’d talk to Maggie about it later, at a soberer moment.
Maggie began to get to her feet. She was making heavy weather of it and grabbed on to the table to stop her falling back into her seat. ‘This has been lovely,’ she said, her words tripping into one another, ‘but we should be going. Let you good people get back to your families on Christmas Day.’
‘I’ll get your coats,’ said Hope, and sashayed away to find them.
Maggie was checking under the table to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything and Leon was looking at his phone, but Tiger was just sitting there staring at the spot where Daniel had just been standing.
‘Come on, Tiger,’ said Maggie. ‘Time to go home.’
Tiger still didn’t move, his face a picture of confusion.
‘I know him,’ he said.
‘Know who?’ asked Leon without looking up from his phone.
‘That chef bloke, Daniel. I’m sure I’ve met him before.’
‘Probably,’ said Leon. ‘You must have met half the population of the world on your travels.’
Leon set off towards where Hope was standing with a bundle of coats in her arms, but Tiger stayed where he was, his eyebrows knotted together as he tried to think.
‘Tiger!’ Maggie called. ‘We need to leave.’
Tiger stood up and reluctantly moved towards the others, but Romany could hear him still muttering under his breath as he tried to work it out.
49
Maggie was in her usual place at the reception desk of Space Solutions. It was, as you might expect for a modern, forward-thinking architect’s practice, a bright and airy space with trendy but uncomfortable furniture and a lot of bleached wood. In the corner of the space was a glass box, the board room, in which important meetings were conducted. Today it was full of exasperated-looking men. Jackets had been shed and sleeves rolled up, as if the discussions that were going on were complicated and arduous. There appeared to be some frayed tempers as well and her own boss, the senior partner （who was actually a good ten years younger than she was） was looking particularly frazzled.
As she watched, his junior assistant came out, closed the door behind him and rolled his eyes.
‘It’s horrible in there,’ he said. ‘Do you think you could rustle us up yet another round of coffee? Try to break the tension a bit.’
‘Of course,’ said Maggie, lifting her phone handset to ring the order through. ‘What’s the problem?’
She looked expectantly at the junior, but he just shrugged and said, ‘Oh, you know, just business stuff.’ He turned his back on her and headed back to the glass box. ‘And if you could find us some biscuits too . . .’ And then he was gone.
Maggie sucked in a deep breath through her nose, set her shoulders and then pressed the button to link her with the hospitality department.
‘They would like more coffee and biscuits in the boardroom,’ she said when the phone was answered. ‘Yes. More! And you might want to bring a couple of extra trays to clear away the empties.’
Maggie heard the irritation at the other end of the line, where the coffee coordinating person clearly knew exactly how many cups there were to clear away, that being their job. She regretted that she seemed to rub people up the wrong way so regularly, but there was often a better way of doing a task than the way they were doing it. She should just bite her tongue and let them get on with it. Having ideas was above her pay grade.
The morning wore on, with Maggie answering the phone and dealing with visitors and emails as usual. She kept an eye on the meeting, but they didn’t seem to be reaching any sort of consensus. She wondered yet again what the problem was, and found herself wishing that she was in there to help them sort it out. That had been her favourite part about being a lawyer – solving puzzles. The law itself was all very well; it was just there, and it either worked for you or against you, depending on what you were trying to achieve, and sometimes did both. Coming up with a solution to the problem was different, though. That took creative thinking, imagination and a knowledge of which risks you could take and which you absolutely shouldn’t. Maggie had been good at that. Ironic really, considering how few risks she had taken in the rest of her life.
Around lunchtime, the glass box door opened and its occupants began to float out, rubbing necks and shoulders, replacing jackets over creased shirts. Eventually the only ones left were the senior partner Mark and the man who Maggie assumed was his client. They stood directly in front of her desk and continued their discussion as if she were invisible.