“You will open it later.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause in which neither of them did anything, and then Vidal extended his good hand. Beauchamp put his own out to meet it. He pumped Vidal’s hand up and down once, and that was that.
“Captain Wallis has my mobile if anything comes up.”
“Yes, Major. Thank you.”
Carlos turned a page of the newspaper. Anne did not look up. Fidel kept patting the baby’s back and walking the length of the drawing room at a slow, steady pace.
“Ma’am. Sir.” Beauchamp gave a nod towards the sofa. Carlos lifted the espresso cup an inch in acknowledgement without raising his eyes from the paper. He let himself out of the flat for the last time.
On the landing he stood for a moment with the envelope in his hand, then went down the stairs at his usual pace and out through the front hall. Hassan was at the kerb with the engine running.
In the back of the car he sat with the envelope on his knee and didn’t open it, just sat and looked at it for a while.
He knew what he wanted to be in there. He had known from the moment Vidal had crossed the rug with it, and he was professional enough to be embarrassed about it. A line of sentimental Catalan that he would have to look up on Google. Something in Vidal’s full-pelt register about the sadness of goodbyes. Maybe an apology for the past week, written out with all the feeling Vidal had carefully held inside him.
He slid his thumb under the flap and found a John Lewis gift card for two thousand pounds, and a folded note:
Major Beauchamp,
With sincere thanks for your professionalism and good humour over a difficult three months. I wish you the best in Her Royal Highness Princess Caroline’s employ.
V. Montcada
Beauchamp read it twice. Then he slid the card and the note back into the envelope, put the envelope into the inside pocket of his jacket, and gave Hassan the address of his flat.
? ? ?
Beauchampstood in the hall of his flat with his keys still in his hand, taking it in. Three months of being in someone else’s space had loosened his grip on his own.
He hung his coat on the hook by the door, set his keys in the bowl, and went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. He had two weeks before he was due to report at Clarence House. Princess Caroline had sent a kind note via the Private Secretary’s office: she was glad to have him back, she’d heard the secondment had been demanding, and she suggested he take the fortnight to himself.
Beauchamp fully intended to take her advice.
The kettle clicked off and he made himself his tea. He took the mug through to the sitting room and switched on the speaker on top of the bookcase, and after a moment’s deliberation he put on the Fleetwood Mac record that had been Hunter’s twenty-first birthday present to him.Rumours, the original pressing, sleeve worn soft at the corners from being moved between seven different postings. He set the needle down and let the openingbars ofSecond Hand Newsfill the room, then went back to the kitchen to think about lunch.
There was a chicken breast in the fridge, and a bag of mixed salad leaves, half a cucumber and a tomato. He took them all out and lined them up on the worktop. He’d been feeding himself for years before he’d ever set foot in the Mayfair flat where Vidal had been territorial of the kitchen. He could make himself lunch now without needing a running commentary on the quality of English produce.
He seasoned the chicken, got the pan hot, and laid it down to a satisfying hiss. He stood at the hob with the wooden spoon in his hand and let Stevie Nicks work throughDreamsbehind him. By the time he flipped the chicken, his shoulders had come down a fraction from where they’d been all morning.
He took his plate through to the sitting room and put the BBC iPlayer on. There was a Tom Baker episode he’d been saving for a quiet day —The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the one with the giant rat in the sewer, which Hunter had let him watch from behind the sofa when he was seven and which had given him three years of occasional nightmares about the London sewer system. He pressed play and settled into the armchair with the plate balanced on his knee.
The chicken was good. The bread he’d toasted alongside it was good. He ate steadily through the first half of the episode, vaguely tracking the plot, mostly letting the colours of seventies Doctor Who wash over him.
He started on the salad about the time Leela was being abducted by the henchmen.
The first forkful went into his mouth. He chewed and noted that the olive oil he’d used to dress it tasted of nothing. The leaves underneath it were watery. The vinaigrette, which he’d whisked together without thinking, was a thin sour smear with no body to it at all.
He sat with the fork halfway back to the plate.
The supermarket olive oils are pressed from olives that have given up on themselves, Beauchamp.
He set the fork down on the rim of the plate. He looked at the bottle of Tesco’s Finest extra virgin olive oil sitting on the kitchen counter where he’d left it after dressing the leaves, its label cheerful and green and entirely unaware of the indictment that had just been levelled at it across months of monologues he had pretended not to listen to.
He put the plate down on the side table. He paused the Doctor at the moment that he was being threatened by a ventriloquist’s dummy and was at the front door pulling his coat on before he’d talked himself out of it.
