He glanced at his watch and his heart sank. Already they had gone way over the hour originally agreed. Every time one person finished speaking, or even paused for breath, a sudden forest of insistent, indignant hands would shoot up around the room. Every point someone made, someone else would announce ‘Exactly!’ or turn half around in their chair to nod along vigorously with the person speaking. Every time Adam said anything, someone would announce, ‘Not good enough,’ or demand to know why they should believe him.
They had a point. It was a pretty village, Littlesea. Nice green, nice pub （the one the locals were still allowed in）， nice church, nice tea shop. If he’d lived here all his life, if he’d retired here to concentrate on his gardening, he would probably resent exactly the same things they did. ‘What should I tell them?’ he had asked his brother. ‘Tell them anything you fucking want,’ had been the answer.
The thing was, once upon a time, Adam would have thought of this kind of assignment, this sort of special bloody project, as a chance to impress his brother, to show how useful he could be. And he had made himself consistently useful, he hoped. On several occasions he could name, he had made himself very useful indeed. But then something had changed. And instead of getting ever bigger, the tasks, the responsibilities had started getting smaller, more demeaning. It was something he found hard to talk about, even with Laura. It was something he wondered how much Ned himself was conscious of. How consistently now the sensitive assignments, the delicate stuff, went to someone else. How often the jobs he got were the ones that either no one could fuck up or it didn’t really matter if they did.
Tell them anything you fucking want.
Once upon a time he might have taken Ned’s words as a vote of confidence, an offer to back him whatever terms he wanted to offer, a gesture of faith in his ability to respond to the situation on the ground. Adam was a shareholder, a director of the company, after all, even if no one including himself was ever quite able to explain concisely what exactly he was directing.
Nowadays? Well, the whole point of sending Adam – as half these people had clearly surmised – was that he could say anything because nothing he said had any weight behind it. He was not here as a negotiator. He was here as a punching bag. He was here as a fucking pi?ata.
Adam Groom did not want to be a pi?ata any more.
‘I have an idea . . .’ he heard himself saying. Then again, louder, in a firmer voice, which prompted a few more of the people to stop talking.
Ned was going to hate this. The one thing Ned had always been completely obsessed with was not letting people from the village onto the island for any reason – not for a placatory Sunday afternoon film screening, not for a monthly ramble even along set routes, not to count salamanders in the pond. And yet, before Adam had even had a chance to think about it, before he had even had a chance to finish the thought, he was inviting everyone in the room over on Saturday evening to watch the fireworks from The Boathouse.
‘Of course,’ he added immediately, seeing at least five hands already creeping up, ‘if there are things we haven’t got around to discussing tonight then please, do put them in an email . . .’
Sure they would come, and being the kind of people they were, they would make a point of not being impressed or overawed by anything about Island Home. But if they were watching the fireworks from The Boathouse, glass of champagne in hand, at least they would not be calling the police with noise complaints, hassling the fire brigade. At least they would not be blockading the causeway or picketing the jetty, or circling the island in boats with loudhailers. First thing tomorrow Adam was going to find out whether it was possible to order ear defenders for dogs.
All in all, under the circumstances, Adam was proud of how he had acquitted himself this evening. This might not please or impress Ned, but maybe that was not always the most important thing in the world.
It was at precisely the moment Adam was thinking this that the brick came through the window.
Annie