‘You know matinees never get the reaction they’re supposed to. It didn’t help to look out and see a row of critics sitting there making notes. I wonder if Robert really did try to bribe them. I wouldn’t put it past him.’
‘Do you mind if I sit down for a minute? I’m tired and it’s hot in here.’
‘Really? I was just thinking how oddly cold it was,’ Crofting replied. ‘There’s a draught coming from somewhere.’
‘Someone just walked over your grave,’ said Mona, raising her glass. ‘Be a darling and get me another drink, would you?’
The great glass lounge cast a buttery glow across the street. The Kramers’ duplex penthouse occupied a key position on Northumberland Avenue, the elegant, underused thoroughfare that extended south of Trafalgar Square toward the Embankment. The terraced floor of ground-to-ceiling glass was topped with a minstrel gallery and three en suite bedrooms. The views took in the London Eye and the Royal Festival Hall. There were few more desirable properties in central London.
Robert Julius Kramer, the host, was a self-made man who had come up with the bright idea of buying all the private car parks that had existed on former bomb sites around the city. The sites had made fortunes for their owners in the postwar years, until the city’s public transport system improved and London’s congestion charge kicked in.
Kramer realised that the old property rights were mostly still attached to these derelict open spaces and warehouses, so he applied for planning permission to erect office buildings, offsetting his costs with funding provided by city regeneration schemes. He had become a millionaire before his twenty-fifth birthday, and celebrated the occasion by informing his loyal girlfriend that he was now rich, and was dumping her. That was when he added the name Julius. Now he was in his early forties, and his second wife, Judith, had recently given birth to their first son.
Beneath the building’s portico, the liveried doorman glanced out at turbulent clouds and watched lightning crack the sky apart. All thirty-five of Robert Kramer’s guests had been checked against his list. No-one had failed to show up, even on a night like this. From what he’d heard, they wouldn’t dare to stay away if they valued their jobs. He settled back in the doorway to await their intoxicated departures.
Up in the penthouse, Gail Strong, the new ASM, was working the other side of the room. Robert Kramer had suggested she should come along and meet everyone, but they were all wrapped up in private conversations. She passed a broad-shouldered man with a luxuriant cascade of glossy black hair, and heard someone call him Russell, so that had to be Russell Haddon, the play’s director. Pretty fit, but he was wearing a flashy wedding ring. She spotted an anxious-looking, bespectacled but oddly pretty young man with thin blond hair and a reticent attitude, seated alone beside the food display.
‘Hi, I’m Gail Strong, do you know anyone here?’ she asked, sitting down beside him. For a moment he seemed not to hear. When he turned to study her with faraway eyes, something prompted her to ask, ‘Are you okay?’
‘No, not exactly,’ he replied, breathing out. ‘I hate being here.’
‘I grew up accompanying my parents to parties like this almost every night. My father—’
‘—is the Public Buildings Minister. I know who you are. You’ve been in the papers quite a lot lately.’ He removed his glasses and wiped them. He had tiny black eyes, like a mouse. ‘I’m Ray Pryce. Pleased to meet you.’
‘I’ve just joined the company as the new ASM?’
‘Then we’ll be working together.’
‘Cool—I’ll be the one fining you when you’re late for rehearsals. What do you do?’
‘I’m the writer.’
‘Oh, my God, I’m like so embarrassed!’ She threw hands to her face. ‘I thought you were one of the cast. You’re so young. I saw the dress rehearsal of The Two Murderers last week, I thought it was totally amazing?’
She had a way of moving her hands around her face that made him think of a deaf person signing. She had the studied elegance of a model. He fell for her, trying not to remember that everyone who met her fell in love—at first.
‘The critics don’t seem to agree with you.’ A note of annoyance crept into his voice. ‘There’s an old Chinese proverb: Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.’
‘Oh, who cares about them, you heard what Mr Kramer said, it’s a critic-proof show.’
‘He doesn’t seem to think so.’ Ray Pryce pointed through the gathering at a portly, bald man in his late thirties who was attacking a plate of salmon sandwiches. ‘That’s Alex Lansdale; he’s the theatre reviewer for Hard News. One of the critics Kramer couldn’t buy.’