Page 2 of Autumn at the Willow River Guesthouse
Pete chuckled. ‘I remember my little girl being upset.’
Lily sighed. She had always been a Daddy’s girl. She had pretended to be dyslexic for two years in order to keep their story time together. She had only been forced to admit that she could read perfectly well when her mother had started to suggest a special school.
‘I’ll be all right,’ Lily said, trying to sound better than she felt. She stared at herself in the mirror again, struggling to see a twenty-six-year-old staring back. ‘How’s the van?’
‘It was a good summer,’ Pete said. ‘I sold out almost every day. Thinking of getting some kind of pumpkin hot dog thing going on for the autumn, though. Be a bit seasonal, and all that.’
‘Good luck. Save one for me.’
‘Will you get down for a visit?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I’m flat out with work, even when the car’s running. And then of course, there’s the wedding….’
‘Ah, yes. Any more news on that?’
Finally, Lily had cause to smile. She thought of Steve, the way he’d gone down on one knee, and her heart felt all squishy inside. The look in his eyes … the way the sun had glittered off the ring as he held it up … she’d dreamed of that moment since she was a little girl. She hadn’t expected it to come in the middle of a day out at London Zoo, but Steve claimed flamingoes were a symbol of love, so who was she to complain?
‘We’re both so busy with work, but probably it won’t happen until the spring. Steve wants something big, loads of people, all that. He said he’s only going to do it once, of course.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
On the tabletop, Lily’s work phone began to buzz. She looked at it, recognising Jonas’s number.
‘Dad, I’d better go.’
‘Okay, dear. Just remember, whatever happens, we’re here for you. And currently so’s your old room, although your mother’s keen to turn it into some kind of craft space. She wants an art room, I want a wine store.’ Pete chuckled. ‘We’ll let you have the deciding vote. Don’t forget how I always used to pump up your bike tyres and lie to your mother about you peeing in the bath?’
‘Dad!’
‘Speak to you soon, sweetheart.’
She said goodbye and hung up. Usually talking to Dad—and even talking to Mum—cheered her up, but the little icon flashing on her work phone was like a stone poking into her back. It was nearly nine. Jonas wasn’t above out of hours contact, but by nine he was usually in a wine bar wooing some potential new client or running one of his endless late-night marathons that he insisted on telling everyone about.
She picked up the phone, her hand shaking, and pressed OPEN.
My office on Floor 13, 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. For once, don’t be late.
2
Thirteenth Floor
Jonas, I’m sorry, it was beyond my control. It was a freak problem. It’ll never happen again.
Lily repeated her apology like a mantra as the lift bore her up to the thirteenth and last floor of Davidson Tower. As the lights rose one by one, Lily stared at the plaque next to the control panel, one whose contents she had stared at a thousand times over the last four years, the bold proclamation burned into the back of her skull.
Built in 1967, Davidson Tower is the home of Davidson Financial Services, founded by Sir Richard Davidson of Norfolk, United Kingdom. Founded by a man who made his own luck from the day he came kicking and screaming into the world, Davidson Financial Services has been a world leader in loans and finances for more than fifty years. “Countries kneel at the hand of war but pray at the altar of finance.”
There was no mention of the thirteenth floor, but like Orwell’s Room 101, within the company it was legendary. Sir Richard had built the tower with thirteen floors in order to challenge fate itself, then built all the executive suites and offices there for the same reason, to laugh in the face of luck. Rather contradictorily, however, all the meeting rooms where negotiations took place were on Floor 7.
From the lift, Jonas Davidson’s office was at the end of the corridor, the wall and door that blocked her view the only part of Floor 13 that didn’t appear to be made of glass. Lily gave a polite knock, then entered on command into a vertigo-inducing office in which there seemed to be no back wall, just an open space that looked out over London. It was an impressive view, for sure, but in a place where the edge of carpet had a little downturn before it touched the glass to give the illusion that it was falling away into nothing, she wondered how it was possible to concentrate.
Jonas sat behind his desk, as usual on a call. He waved at her to sit on a sofa by the inside wall, as though he was about to give her a therapy session. Time management, perhaps, or how to know in advance whether a car has a freak fault or not. While she waited, she studied her boss and the company CEO. He looked pretty much how CEOs did on TV, handsome in a sunbed, possibly-surgically altered kind of way, but with an inwards tilt to his eyebrows and a hard set to his mouth that meant even when he was laughing he never looked truly happy. For some reason, with the cobalt grey of his suit, he reminded her of a rogue submarine, hunting through the seas for ships to torpedo without warning.
He put down the phone and glanced at his watch. ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything.’ Then, clicking his fingers at her as though she were some kind of dog, he pointed at the chair across from his desk and said, ‘You may advance.’
Lily took this to mean that she should leave the relative comfort of the sofa and sit directly across from him on the firing chair, which had sweat stains on the armrests from all the other employees who had made it their final destination on the way out of the company. At least, that was how the legend went.
‘You wanted to see me, sir?’
