He snorts, his shoulder rising and falling lazily in a shrug. ‘As well as you know anyone you see three times a week and exchange a couple of sentences with,’ he says. ‘Look, there they are.’
I follow his pointing finger. There, across the banks of heavy wooden tables, I see a corner banquette, tucked tastefully on to a slightly raised level, allowing those seated there to have a view of the whole restaurant. The best seat in the house. Seated at the banquette, talking privately to each other, are two figures; my vision suddenly blurred by panic, I can’t take in anything about them. I move forward, guided by Jonathan’s hand. When we’re up closer his father lays the menu aside and stands up. He must be around sixty, but he’s extraordinarily well preserved, as if he’s been kept on ice for a decade or more. His silver hair is smooth and immaculate, and for a moment I find myself wondering whether it is a wig and have to drag my eyes away. His face is alert and aquiline, a sharpened version of Jonathan’s. Immediately I can sense that same hardness in him; the hint of a threat that fascinated me so much when I first saw his son. With his father, though, it’s more than a hint. I sense straight away that it runs right through him like fault lines through rock.
‘You must be Violet,’ he says to me, piercing me with imperturbable blue eyes. ‘I must say, this is the first time that a summer secretary has made quite such an impression.’ He smiles genuinely enough, despite the dismissive undercurrent to his words. For a brief moment I shake his hand; firm, dry and enclosing.
‘This is my father, Harvey,’ Jonathan says, ignoring the snub, if snub it was. ‘I expect you’ve seen him around the offices, anyway.’
I nod, but the truth is that I have never seen this man before. I am sure I would have remembered. I have heard his name, of course – whispered deferentially and fearfully by administrators, cited lordly over the telephone to clients. Now that I can put a face to it, I realise that there is no other face that could fit.
‘And this is my mother, Laura,’ Jonathan continues, indicating the woman sat next to Harvey. I look at her for the first time. She has the palest skin I have ever seen, stretched tight like cling film over a finely modelled face. Her strawcoloured hair is tied in a chignon at the back of her neck. She wears an understated black dress, but her fingers are heavy with gold and sapphire rings, which she is twisting round and round automatically. She raises her eyes to mine and nods. Before, I never would have expected anyone to rise when they greeted me, but now it feels strange that she has remained seated. I sit down myself, slipping quickly into the nearest chair. For a full twenty seconds there is absolute silence as they all peruse the menu. I glance down at it, but the words jump before my eyes, shaking themselves together like dice so that I can barely make them out. Unfamiliar French phrases leap out at me: filet mignon, sole meunière. Underneath the table, I can feel my legs twitching. For an instant, the thought of sitting here with these people for another hour or more is almost too much for me, and I shift in my seat, glancing at the exit. Jonathan doesn’t look at me, but he puts out his hand under the table and rests it on my thigh.
‘So, are you thinking of pursuing the law?’ Laura asks. Her voice is such a soft drawl that I have to bend forward to hear it, and yet she doesn’t seem shy, just very confident that what she says deserves to be heard.
Harvey and Jonathan both snort with laughter, glancing at each other with easy complicity. ‘Rather a strange way of putting it,’ Harvey remarks, pouring the wine. I have never been a big drinker, but I let him fill my glass up to the brim. I don’t want to do anything that calls attention to myself, or to my youth. Tentatively, I smile too, trying to share in the joke. Laura seems unmoved. Her eyebrows are still raised in polite enquiry.
‘Well, I wouldn’t rule it out for the future,’ I say, and am almost instantly conscious that somehow it has been the wrong thing to say. It isn’t even true: I’ve never thought about law as a potential career path. At Manchester, I was going to study philosophy. I’m not sure what career options might have arisen from that – probably none. ‘But no, I doubt it,’ I backtrack, taking a large gulp of white wine. It tastes bitter and dry, raping the back of my throat.
‘Violet is more of a homemaker,’ Jonathan says. ‘She wants to settle down and get married and have lots of babies.’ His light tone tells me that he is teasing me, and yet there is a flicker of hopeful sincerity in his eyes. I suddenly can’t think of anything better than to do those things, and with him. I smile radiantly across at him, and see Harvey watching me, and slowly nodding.
‘Right.’ Harvey snaps his menu shut, and within seconds a waiter is hovering attentively at his side. ‘I’ll have the sweetbreads, and my wife will take the sole, please.’
Jonathan glances at me. ‘The sole, too, please,’ I whisper almost at random. Was I supposed to have somehow made him aware of my choice in advance, as Laura has obviously done? Or perhaps Harvey has simply chosen for her, and I should have kept quiet and allowed Jonathan to do the same. I feel my cheeks warm and know that I am blushing, stare down at the table. This is not the world I have been used to.
‘It’s very good here,’ I hear Laura say, rather kindly. I force myself to look up and smile. I have never felt so shy, and it doesn’t feel like me at all.
The wait for our meals passes in a blur; Harvey and Jonathan talk briskly about office matters, sharing details of some case. I vaguely remember the main players’ names from a letter I typed under Jonathan’s dictation several days ago, but the niceties of the matter completely elude me. Laura is quiet, but watchful. She tops up Harvey’s glass when it is empty, passes him the butter when he splits open his roll. I take note, marking down her little gestures as ones that I could replicate with Jonathan, some other time.
‘We should stop talking shop,’ says Jonathan as our lunch arrives. A huge sole is placed in front of me, its eye gleaming blankly up at me. I force my gaze away from it. ‘Violet is probably bored stiff,’ he elaborates unnecessarily, grinning.
‘Quite right,’ says Harvey smoothly, looking at me. ‘Tell us about you.’
My mind empties. There is nothing to say, nothing that could possibly be of interest to him. I think of the things that, up until a matter of weeks ago, occupied my time. Hanging around the local shopping centre with my school-friends, going to the multiplex and eating popcorn noisily in the dark, dressing up and going to our town’s excuse for a nightclub, where we would sip lurid fizzy cocktails and dance unenthusiastically with slurring teenage boys. I have always felt mature for my age, but looking back at these things now, they horrify me. Harvey would think I was nothing but a child.
The silence threatens to become uncomfortable. I take another large gulp of wine to buy myself a few more seconds. ‘I come from Sussex,’ I say. ‘I’m an only child. I like art a lot.’ This is even worse – extracts from a primary school essay.
‘Looking at it, or creating it?’ Harvey asks.
‘Well, both.’ I search for words. ‘I sometimes go up to galleries – the Tate, the National. But I like painting in my spare time.’ Harvey waits. ‘Modern stuff, mostly,’ I say. ‘Abstract.’
‘Yes,’ Harvey says thoughtfully. His cool blue eyes sweep my face. ‘Well, it’s always nice to have a hobby.’
I put a forkful of sole into my mouth and swallow. A tiny bone rakes the roof of my mouth, bringing a smart of pain to my eyes.
‘And what about your parents?’ Harvey continues. ‘What do they do?’
I contemplate inventing something, turning my family into something other than what they are. As I run through the possibilities swiftly in my head, I feel suddenly defiant. I will tell them the truth. ‘My father works in a garage as a mechanic,’ I say. ‘My mother used to work in a shop, but she stopped that a few months ago.’
‘An honest crust,’ says Jonathan, seemingly to fill the silence. He is looking