Soon Read Free Page B

house, and after that he lay on the beach, or took one of his abrupt drives out to sea on the throbbing jet ski. He did have a treadmill in his office and sometimes stood on it when he was on the phone, but Simon had never seen it switched on.
    It would be nice to go down to the beach. It was a beautiful evening, the sky clear and faintly greenish over the calm sea. He wanted to swim a long way out and look back at the shore, the lights coming on in the houses and the stars appearing.
    He started to get up. But David leaned close and said, ‘Ed makes choices for me, and they work. Ed would know what you mean about instil and imbue. I don’t, necessarily. Not instinctively.’
    Sudden laughter from the ladies, who had drawn their chairs around Ed. ‘Ed. You’re terrible!’
    â€˜I need Ed. Maybe I need you too.’
    They were looking at each other and Simon held his gaze; for a moment they were competing and then David dropped his eyes.
    David said, ‘Let me get you another drink. And I’ll have one too.’
    Simon leaned back in his chair. He was strangely thrilled.
    A nanny arrived to take Johnnie to bed. They were summoned for dinner but David and Ed were called away to a phone conference. Now they dawdled through the garden paths towards the house, Simon and the women: Karen and Juliet and Roza.
    Simon was thinking about his staring competition with David. He had won it; he kept coming back to that. David made him feel he mattered. All his life he’d run from his shaming childhood and his father’s rejection; he had succeeded and yet . . . always the sense of impermanence, unease.
    He’d been wary of David at first, unlike Karen, who was em­barrassingly thrilled by the association, but he’d been drawn into the Hallwright circle to the point where he and David were regarded as close friends. Simon was acknowledged to have David’s ear even though he had nothing to do with politics. He thought of it as a weird twist of fate, a curiosity, but (admit it) he’d come to value the position, to flatter himself he’d earned it. The thing was . . . The thing was, he was straight with David, never asked for anything, had never pursued him. Which contrasted with the sycophantic treatment the PM received elsewhere.
    It would hurt if he lost Hallwright’s favour. David could withdraw and become inexplicably cold, but Simon had discovered that if he politely ignored the coldness, David would come back all smiles, almost as if he’d been teasing. If David played games, Simon was a match for him, although it cost him effort. He puzzled over conversations, trying to understand nuances, and there were still the bad dreams: his father Aaron checking in to remind him he was worthless.
    Juliet was saying, ‘It was when I injured my hand. I was pregnant, and had the two other children, so we got her in. She came from ACC, a sort of nurse aide. Anyway, as soon as she arrived she said she was used to caring for people in not-so-nice suburbs, and she was thrilled to be in such a lovely big house. She was an amazing housekeeper. So after my hand was out of the cast and the baby was born we kept her on. And now, it’s just getting weird.’
    â€˜Does she steal things?’
    â€˜Go through your drawers?’
    â€˜Try on your clothes?’
    â€˜She’s just sort of turned . She’s quite sharp with the cleaner and the gardener’s scared of her, and she completely freaks out the au pair. The other day she locked me out of the house. I had the baby and all his things and I was calling through the letterbox. I was furious, I remonstrated with her and she opened the door and gave me this look, I can’t describe it. And now she’s . . . changed. She looks at me strangely. And there’s a tattooed man, some sort of friend of hers, who waits for her outside the house in the afternoons. Peering in. Sort of glaring in at the