She was hungry.
The dining room was quiet, and most people had skipped the delicious array of food laid on by the hotel, free of charge of course, as if that would erase the memory of what had happened here. They’d lost their appetites. She had a table to herself and devoured her food.
The vision of Jamie’s broken body was still fresh in her mind. If he was planning on ending it all, then he could have done it privately at least. Her decision to cast judgement on his selfishness helped with the guilt. Could they have done more? Could they have seen it coming? Addictive personalities were beyond help. She should know. She’d studied them for long enough.
Her work with Hampton-Dent had afforded her the luxury of reading the most up-to-date literature on human behavioural science years before the rest of the world became aware of it. The drugs that followed were fed to mass populations via various routes like medicines, food and supplements and it was all perfectly legal. Hampton-Dent had been part funded by the World Economic Forum since 1971 – the year of its inception – but they didn’t boast about it.
She was an advocate of preventative medicine. Prevent the public from knowing.
She chuckled, but soon became serious again.
The atmosphere of excitement surrounding the products on offer had gone from life affirming to life ending, with one wrong step. Sandy reckoned Jamie must have been drunk, deranged or murdered. She never saw him drink more than one glass of champagne and she’d certainly never witnessed him lose his cool. To her, he wasn’t the jumping type, but neither was he a saint. This was all part of chewing over what she would tell the detective when they got round to interviewing her.
She looked up to find Lee staring at her like a forlorn puppy. She gave him an‘if only I could talk to you about this’type of glance and went back to her food.
She felt his gaze on her body as she went back to the buffet for dessert. Puddings were thin on the ground, as they always were at these damn conferences, but she loaded her plate with air-light flan covered in fruit, as well as pouring a strong coffee.
She was in the mood to get inebriated on booze but that wouldn’t help anyone.
‘Sandy?’
She looked up into the perfectly taut face of Tilda Dent grinning at her. Her heavies stood behind her. Fat lot of good they’d done.
Suddenly, she lost her appetite.
She felt sympathy for Lee, who’d put so much labour into the catering only for it to end like this. The smell of cooking meat filled the atrium, and she couldn’t help thinking about Jamie’s flesh, smashed apart on the floor. The smell made her consider fleetingly that they were serving up the memory of Jamie already, and he was barely cold. Life went on. Bodies functioned, people needed to eat and to sleep and to talk. But at the same time, the smear of blood and the blue tent reminded them what happened only hours ago, which perhaps explained why Tilda wasn’t eating at all.
She smiled insipidly at Tilda, who seemed maudlin but that was her normal state; it had nothing to do with Jamie’s death. But the panic in her eyes was real. The conference had ended in disaster. Sandy asked her to sit, which she did, and Tilda fiddled with the skin around her nails. Tilda had spent thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars on tightening her skin, rejuvenating her body and replacing what God had given her with what men wanted in magazines. To Sandy, it wasn’t worth it. If you got a man – or woman – in your bed, the last thing they wanted was plastic, except if it ran on batteries.
She studied the CEO of Hampton-Dent.
They’d first met years ago when Tilda had become the new hotshot of Daddy’s company, after she graduated from college and took over the family business in New York. Sandy’s opinion of her hadn’t changed much since then.
‘Don’t worry, everything will work out. Are you thinking about our stock?’ Sandy asked.
Tilda looked at her as though she’d stubbed a cigarette out on her hand. ‘No! I was actually thinking about Jamie’s family.’
‘He hasn’t got any, remember?’ Sandy said.
‘His sister?’
Sandy raised her eyebrows. ‘More importantly, what are you going to tell that detective? The one with legs up to her armpits and skin that smacks of long runs in the countryside?’ Sandy enjoyed winding Tilda up.
Tilda eyed her. Their youth was behind both of them. Tilda was forty but showing signs of loss of skin elasticity that Sandy recalled vaguely from her distant past. The detective on the other hand was one of those old-school types who breathed real air. She was not the target audience for pharmaceuticals.
‘I’ve just been speaking to her. She’s clever.’
Sandy smiled. ‘Look, after a short period of loss, due to the shock, the company will rally and we’ll continue as normal. Jamie’s value will remain. This is business, remember.’
Tilda nodded.
They were very different women. Sandy spent ten minutes getting ready each morning, forgoing expensive moisturiser she knew didn’t work, and instead downing a few waffles and a double espresso. She had worked too hard to surrender her cynicism now. Everybody died some day and nips, tucks, Botox, fillers, whatever the hell else Tilda was full of, didn’t make one damn bit of difference.
She could see the younger woman was struggling with how to handle the fallout of such a shocking event, but this was what she was here for. To manage expectations and steer the ship. She’d been doing it for long enough.
‘What do you think?’ Tilda asked.
‘What do I think about what?’ Sandy asked, finishing a mouthful of lemon-tasting fluff, her appetite returned.
