‘Morning, guys, sorry we’re a little late,’ Greg said, pulling Rachel in for a quick hug as Isaac paid their fare. ‘You’re going to be brilliant,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘I have every faith you’ll impress the snooty old bastard.’
Rachel smiled as Greg turned to Jack, nodded his head and greeted him – a polite but comparatively cool acknowledgement, Rachel noted. She felt warmed by Greg’s loyalty, and her smile widened a fraction.
‘Are we ready, then, Dream Team?’ Isaac gushed, his boyish cheeks apple-red and round, shining with open excitement. ‘It’s time to go and win this account!’
‘It is,’ Jack agreed, checking his watch. ‘Five minutes until showtime. We’d better head inside.’
Isaac pushed open the heavy, glazed front door of the building with Greg close behind. Jack made way for Rachel and she followed them, her feet heavy as breeze blocks – clearly reluctant to walk towards another encounter with Humphrey.
Delicately, as if to steady her nerves or steer her in the right direction, Jack placed a hand at the base of her spine. Rachel froze, shocked – not sure whether she wanted to lean into the touch or jerk away in horror.
Before she could decide on an appropriate reaction, he’d moved; Isaac had turned around and was hissing something at them frantically, clearly needing to make his point before they were within earshot of anyone who worked for BHGH.
Rachel stepped further forward, straining to hear him and struggling to push her heart down from her mouth, back into her chest where it belonged.
‘Don’t forget,’ Isaac was saying, grim-faced. ‘I answer toAbrahamhere. So try to avoid calling me by my actual name this morning, if at all possible.’
Sir Humphrey Caldwell looked more walrus-esque than ever this morning, in a jacket that was so tight under the armpits it made his short, chubby arms seem to flail when he moved them, independent of the rest of him.Flippers, Rachel thought, and stifled a smirk. She assumed this suit must have been made especially for him on Savile Row – some years and many indulgent dinners ago.
He took her hand when she tried to shake his, turned it over and kissed it wetly, then allowed his eyes to meander downwards from her face to take in the rest of her. She fought the urge to cry, ‘Eyes UP, you old perv!’, instead sitting down and discreetly mopping her moist knuckles against the fabric of her dress.
Rachel had expected Humphrey to be flanked by one or two other BHGH bigwigs – one of whom might even be a woman. He was alone, though; clearly the decision to appoint a new digital agency rested only with him. She realised this shouldn’t have surprised her.
The room they were in was large but sparsely decorated, and cold. The walls were painted a bog-standard magnolia and the floor was carpeted in some dark synthetic stuff. There was no furniture except for a large antique-looking table and the six matching chairs that surrounded it. A single, lonely picture stared down from one wall: a portrait of the Queen from sometime in the 1970s.
It was a waste of gorgeous space, Rachel thought; the light in here was beautiful, flooding in through a huge sash window bordered by traditional wooden shutters and looking out over the street towards the river. It was the perfect room for an intimate wedding ceremony, she mused – then realised that her mother’s endless marriage chat must be getting to her.
After a few moments of pleasantries, and while Jack was setting up his laptop to project, a young woman with long blonde hair, caramel-coloured skin and long, designer-jean-clad legs brought in tea, coffee, milk and sugar.
‘There’s a good gal, Cressy – thank you.’ Humphrey leered. The woman, who Rachel thought must have been twenty-two at the outside, retreated from the room without reacting. ‘Cressida is one of our volunteers,’ Humphrey said. ‘What d’you call them these days?Interns. Graduated from St Andrew’s last summer, according to her grandfather – old friend of mine. Just getting some experience in the charity sector before going on to have a glamorous career as a Kensington housewife, I should think. HA!’
Isaac and Jack chuckled courteously, Greg pretend-coughed to cover his disgust and Rachel stared so hard at her coffee cup she feared her eyes might bore holes through the china.
‘There,’ Jack muttered, after plugging a final twisted lead into the nest of wires and sockets in the centre of the table. He sank down into the chair next to Rachel, evidently relieved.
She wished their seats weren’t so close together; there must have been no more than three inches between them. She also wished he didn’t smell so good, or feel so warm next to her bare, goose-pimpled forearm.
‘Shall we begin?’ Humphrey said, addressing Jack. It seemed to have passed him by that Rachel’s name was also on the opening slide of their PowerPoint deck.
‘Absolutely, Sir Humphrey,’ Jack replied. It had become clear during their few weeks’ acquaintance with Humphrey that he liked to be addressed as ‘Sir’ whenever his name was used, which Rachel thought was absurd – indicative of a need to elevate himself above the plebeians he so evidently despised. She’d resolved early on to avoid addressing him directly if possible, fearful that the temptation to refer to him as plain old ‘Oi, you’ would prove irresistible.
Jack launched into their preamble, setting the scene for the new strategy he and Rachel had devised. His style was engaging and familiar, but deferential – respectful of the client/agency relationship in just the right way for a stickler like Humphrey.
Rachel took over from him to explain the rationale for the storytelling approach they’d taken. As planned, she showed off the content she’d mocked up for Hartwell Abbey; she’d had it designed and animated so that she could model how a visitor might click through an interactive app. Humphrey nodded soberly, and Rachel wondered how much of what she’d said he actually understood.
Jack picked the presentation up again as it neared its end, pointing out the particular appeal of their strategy to younger people and the potential for a linked programme of events that could build partnerships with schools and colleges.
Humphrey, genial and smiling, clapped his hands together the moment Jack finished speaking. Aside from questions about the likely cost of developing some of their more high-tech ideas, there was nothing he felt the need to discuss further.
‘Well, you’ve done it,’ he said, leaning across the mahogany tabletop to shake Jack’s hand. ‘I knew a man of your calibre would come up with the goods. Inspiring stuff, just excellent.’
Rachel, apparently irrelevant to the proceedings, pressed her lips together and balled her hands into fists.
‘Truly an exceptional idea,’ Humphrey went on, addressing only Jack, ‘tohumanisethe houses – certainly I can see that the masses need direction to appreciate these fine old places. Not everyone hasourinnate appreciation for tradition, art and architecture, of course.’
Rachel stared at a crack in the ceiling, fixing her eyes on it so she wouldn’t roll them. She’d expected to be in the back seat when it came to driving today’s pitch, but this felt like being cast out of a moving vehicle partway up the M6.
Isaac and Greg were silent, though Greg’s face wore an expression that Rachel decoded as ‘aghast with a sprinkling of appalled’. Jack was nodding and smiling as if nothing were amiss, and Rachel felt a fleeting urge to stab him in the thigh with her biro.
