I say nothing.
‘Very moving,’ he continues. And then he mimics exactly what Ben did and presses the knuckle of his thumb to a dry eye. ‘Dear me. It really does make one think.’
I remove my spectacles and wipe the lenses on the edge of my jacket.
‘Yes,’ I say, putting my glasses back on. ‘Most things do.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Richard Take’s plump, pastry-fed face is blurred with confusion.
‘Make one think. Most things.’
‘Ah, yes, I see what you mean, ha!’ He gesticulates wildly with his champagne flute, liquid spilling onto his pale blue tie as he does so. ‘I’m Richard, by the way.’ He proffers a damp hand. ‘Richard Take.’
‘Martin Gilmour.’
‘And how do you know …?’
‘I’m Ben’s best friend from school.’
If human ears actually did prick, Richard’s would, at that moment, have been a world-leading exemplar of the genre.
‘Oh. Oh, I see. Goodness. So you must know Andrew Jarvis too, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s here somewhere – I must say hello.’
Richard Take scans the crowd as the spectre of Andrew Jarvis raises itself from the crypt of my memories. Jarvis bullied me at school. At Cambridge, he repeatedly tried to turn Ben against me. He managed it, in the end. He and Ben are still close while I – well, we know what happened to me.
‘Great stuff, great stuff,’ Richard Take says now, grasping for something – anything – to fill the silence. I, enjoying his discomfort, refuse to help him. ‘Ah. Yes. Hmm.’
A waitress interrupts with a tray of dark red slugs which she tells us are mini-beetroot roulades. Richard takes one and immediately his fingers are stained purple. When he adjusts his tie, a smear of beetroot makes its way onto the cheap nylon. How does a man like this end up with his flaccid buttocks pressed so firmly against the seat of power?
‘So,’ I say. ‘You lost your job.’
‘Oh. Ah. Yes. Well, not quite lost. I’m still on the, ah, backbenches.’
‘Why did you do it?’
I decide I want to make this exchange as excruciating as possible so that he leaves me alone.
Richard shuffles uneasily.
‘You mean …?’
‘The porn.’
He is glancing around now, desperate to make his escape.
‘Is that Edgar Grimes, I really must—’
‘No, that’s not him,’ I say. ‘Why would you watch porn on your work computer?’
I’m not trying to be obtuse, honestly. I just want to know how someone could be so stupid.
‘Look, you mustn’t believe everything you read in the papers.’ He emphasises each word with flattened, upward-facing palms, as if he, too, is offering a tray of canapés. ‘It was an error of judgement. One I’ve apologised for. What red-blooded man hasn’t found himself in a moment of weakness where—’
