‘Well, I’ll be off then. The station’s just there,’ said Rachel.
‘I really like your hair,’ said James.
‘Yes, you told me that earlier.’
‘Oh yes. Well, see you in the office tomorrow?’
‘I’ve got some days off. I won’t be in again until Wednesday.’
‘Oh? You didn’t say. Are you doing anything exciting?’
‘No. No plans. Maybe I’ll do some spring-cleaning. I’ve still got unused holiday that I have to take before the end of the month.’
‘Oh, okay. Well, have a great weekend then.’
They moved closer to say goodbye, and as they did so, James kissed her. It was a hesitant and incoherent kiss – technically poor and open to misinterpretation. He was too tall, and he needed Rachel to raise her face up to his, but either she was unwilling or was no more skilled than he was, for her lips did no more than brush ineffectively against his. Alcohol wasn’t going to help either – they had drunk just enough to get into this situation, but not enough to do anything about it. It was no good – somebody had to take the lead, just like Alice had done all those years ago. But there was no one chairing, they had no agenda or PowerPoint to guide them. James turned one way, Rachel turned the other and in two seconds they were apart again, facing one another as if nothing had happened.
The traffic on Euston Road had picked up, and a double-decker bus drove past at speed. Rachel shivered in the breeze and took a step back from the road, and also from James.
‘Goodnight then,’ said James.
‘Yes, goodnight.’
Rachel turned towards King’s Cross station. James went the other way, back into town, walking headlong into a Thursday night. In the countryside, as James knew, you were up against the weather, which amplified your mental state and physically obstructed and buffeted you. But it was so much worse in the city, where the whole economy was against you. Every interaction and regulation made things difficult to progress, and unlike Felix he had no natural talent for attracting taxis. He stopped at street corners, he waited by road junctions, he held out his arm against the oncoming traffic and wondered why nothing happened. The gin and tonics were starting to work at last, but only to make him bold enough to feel bad-tempered.
It was a full fifteen minutes before he was in the back of a taxi going south and checking his phone again. He had two text messages. The first was from Felix: ‘Am making my peace with the doorwoman here. Suggest you stand down.’
Well, it was fucking inconsiderate, but maybe it was for the best. James had to go to work tomorrow, and not in an advertising agency. Did he really want to stay up late, drink more gin and listen to Felix make prophecies about Western civilisation? Besides, if he was really doing something with the doorwoman, then so much the better – it would certainly make things easier all round if Felix was sleeping with women rather than touching his knee.
The other message was from Rachel: ‘Sorry to be dopey, but was that meant to be a KISS kiss??’
Before he could think of a reply she had sent another one: ‘Whatever it was meant to be, it was nice. See you next week xx’
14
26 March
In estimating provision from private residential or mixed-use developments, boroughs should take into account economic viability and the most effective use of private and public investment.
– The London Plan, Section 3.71
The office of Galbraith & Erskine was in Canary Wharf – the land of the developers, built by the private sector for the private sector. All that government had ever done was decontaminate the land, build an underground line, hand over the property rights and then get out of the way. It was the biggest thing to have happened in London in thirty years and James had written an essay about it for his A levels. But again, somehow, he had never actually made it here before.
It was now quite important that something happened here, for the night before he had sent Graham Oakley an email telling him that he didn’t want the job in Nottingham. It was a friendly, direct, well-written email, and had taken only three minutes to write, read once over and send. He was learning to be more decisive, that most attractive of male qualities. He was changing, he was becoming a more successful human being and a less effective government administrator, but he needed to do it faster – his kiss with Rachel was proof of that. For what it was worth, he was probably becoming less nice as well, but in truth that should probably have happened a long time ago. The private sector, working with developers, meetings in Canary Wharf – these were all logical next steps.
He had arrived early, and found a coffee bar at the top of the square. But unlike everyone else there, he wasn’t studying his phone, he was sitting on a stool by the window and making a survey. Around him were some of the tallest buildings in Europe and none of them were more than twenty-five years old. With no small-minded local authority to get in their way, cheered on by investors and the Docklands Corporation, the architects had done whatever they wanted. They had taken the blueprints from Hong Kong and built upwards – it was all they knew how to do, it was the only way anyone could tell if a building was good or not. And now, or so he’d been told, they were all going off to the Middle East to do the same thing there, to build gigantic towers that couldn’t be corrupted or damaged by the people who lived there. By the end of the century, every city in the world would look like this. Well, maybe he should just accept it – become one of the people who got well paid for making it happen, rather than badly paid for failing to stop it.