He reached for his mobile from the pocket of the dressing gown and held it out at arm’s length. Beauchamp, who had been standing a polite half-step back, recognised the manoeuvre and began the smooth pivot towards the door that meant he was about to absent himself.
“No, no, no, Major. Come here. You must be in this!”
“Sir.”
“Beauchamp.The candles will not survive a debate.”
Beauchamp came round the side of the coffee table and crouched beside him. Vidal, without looking, slid an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close enough that their cheeks were nearly touching. He angled the mobile so that the cupcakes and their two small flames sat in the bottom of the frame.
He took many photographs. Mercè, sensing a moment of significance she had not been consulted on, had jumped down from the sofa and inserted her bald head into the bottom of the shot like an affronted gargoyle.
“Perfect.Perfect. Beauchamp, this is the photograph I shall send to my brother.” He set the mobile down on the table and reached for the first cupcake. He blew the candles out with a reverent breath. He pulled the candles out, licked the buttercream off the bottom of each, and handed one to Beauchamp.
“Eat. We are celebrating Adelina.”
Beauchamp took the cupcake from him and lowered himself onto the rug beside the coffee table.
Vidal peeled the paper from his own and bit into it without ceremony. He closed his eyes for a moment and let the sweetness sit on his tongue, and then he opened them again and looked at Beauchamp.
“Where did you find them?”
“Place on Marylebone High Street. Mum used to take me there when I was small.”
“And the candle?”
“Selfridges.”
“You went toSelfridges, Beauchamp?”
“Yes. For the Diptyque candle.”
Vidal began to laugh. He laughed around a mouthful of cupcake, and had to press the back of his wrist against his lips to prevent buttercream getting on the dressing gown. Vidal shook his head and took another enormous bite of his cupcake. “Beauchamp, you are an extraordinary man. I do not say this lightly. I have known a great many men in my life, and none of them have ever, on a Tuesday morning, gone to Selfridges on my behalf for a candle I mentioned once in the back of a car at four in the morning.”
Beauchamp kept his focus on his cupcake.
Vidal, for once, let him have his silence. He licked the buttercream from his thumb, picked up his mobile, and began composing the message to Fidel.
? ? ?
WhenVidal had finished his cupcake, Beauchamp had wandered off to talk to Young. He gathered Mercè off her cushion and carried his dog and his lit Diptyque candle down the corridor to his bedroom.
He shut the door behind him with his hip, set the candle on the bedside table, and arranged Mercè in the warm hollow at the centre of the duvet. Vidal climbed onto the bed beside her, propped himself against the pillows, and opened WhatsApp.
He scrolled to The Privy Council group chat, which currently showed Barnaby’s last message from yesterday morning: a photograph of Lex asleep on the drawing room rug with a half-eaten croissant balanced on his chest and the message:He just woke up fifteen minutes ago. Vidal opened his camera roll and selected the photograph of himself draped in Connor’s pawn shop gold. After a beat, he added the one of Beauchamp crouched beside the cupcakes, their cheeks nearly touching.
He typed beneath the pair of them:My favourite English gentlemen.
He pressed send, set the mobile face down on the duvet, and reached across to scratch Mercè behind one velvet ear.
His mobile started ringing inside ninety seconds.
He let it ring twice before he answered. Barnaby and James’s faces filled the small bright squares at the top of the screen. Barnaby looked like he was sitting in the back of a car, while James was unmistakably in one of the smaller drawing rooms at Kensington Palace, a cup of tea steaming on a side table beside him.
“Vidal,” James said. “Vidal, Vidal,Vidal.”
“Jaime.”
“You’ve been keeping yourself busy.”
