‘James – you’re receiving the highest quality advice from both the public and private sector. I hope you’re finding it illuminating.’
‘And what’s the consensus?’ said James.
‘I’m not sure there is one,’ said Rachel.
‘Well, whatever happens, I think the main thing is that the process is a very good one,’ said Felix. ‘You can be confident that you’re going to make the right decision. And I’m confident that you’re not going to go.’
‘Deputy Director,’ said Rachel. ‘If you don’t fuck it up, you could be Director in four years. They must really like you up there. It’s a unitary authority, isn’t it?’
‘Yep, it has been for about ten years.’
‘That’s very good,’ said Rachel. ‘Deputy Director at a unitary at the age of thirty-two. It normally takes people a lot longer than that.’
‘Obviously I’ve only got a limited understanding of what you’re talking about,’ said Felix, ‘but it tallies with everything I’ve been saying: James is a talent.’
It hadn’t been James’s intention, but they had been talking about the job in Nottingham. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, after all, Felix and Rachel were his advisors and they were giving him advice. There were some difficulties with this, for they had different worldviews and conflicting values and priorities. The overriding problem, though, was that until this evening Rachel hadn’t been aware that there was a job in Nottingham.
‘You’ve clearly been discussing this together for a while,’ said Rachel. ‘But Felix – I’m not sure you’re really aware of what a good opportunity it is.’
‘That might be true, but my advice has been of a different kind,’ said Felix.
‘Well, yes, but rather an uninformed kind.’
‘James, sorry to speak as if you’re not in the room, but I think we have to accept that he has made great progress over the last two months.’
‘You mean that you’ve taken him out clubbing and he now likes football.’
‘Well in the modern world, those aren’t trivial achievements.’
‘You know, Nottingham wasn’t that bad,’ said James. ‘I was pretty happy there.’
‘That’s my point – you were happy. No one ever does anything of significance when they’re happy.’
‘I’m worried that you’re not taking this seriously,’ said Rachel. ‘This job is a big deal. You don’t get offers like this very often in town planning. You could spend years in London trying to get to this level.’
‘Do you know your accent is a total delight? I could listen to it all day. You sound like a 1980s Labour MP.’
James looked out of the window, slightly wishing that he wasn’t in the room. Across the road was a crescent of Victorian red-brick houses, all with white sash windows and blue wooden doors with brass letter boxes, and none any higher than the permitted three storeys. There were mature plane trees planted at regular intervals, and broad pavements with black railings and high kerbs.
‘Sorry about the pub,’ said James. ‘I haven’t been here for ages and I’d forgotten what it was like.’
‘Yes, it is a bit gloomy here. You don’t often get to see walls this colour any more.’
‘The pub’s fine,’ said Rachel. ‘But I’ve never liked Bloomsbury. It’s so dead. Give me Southwark any day. Nothing ever happens round here.’
But James knew otherwise – lots of things happened here, or at least they had. For up the road and over the square, on the edge of the conservation area, was his old student hall of residence. As with everything else, it looked exactly the same. It was here, in the last months of the twentieth century, that James’s parents had driven him from Leicester, his sister feeling carsick and the boot filled with everything they could possibly imagine he would need, little of which proved to be useful. His mother had been excessively anxious, and his father had got lost twice on the North Circular.
James himself had been no more than a proto human. A skinny eighteen-year-old whose bones hadn’t yet stopped growing, with naive hair, a face that was too soft and optimistic, eyes stuck behind terrible glasses. He might have fled if it hadn’t been for the fact that the first person he had met, Carl, had looked even less impressive, with white plasticine arms and an outcrop of spots on his chin that would stay with him until he turned twenty-one.
‘So do you want the usual?’ said Felix, holding up his glass.
James nodded, and Felix went to the bar.