A Woman of Our Times. Rosie Thomas

it in luxuriously. She felt light-hearted, now that she was released from the strain of the meeting, and Robin became a part of the lightness. When he smiled at her they were almost co-conspirators. They shook hands, still smiling.

      ‘Try to come to the fair, Harriet repeated.

      ‘I’ll do my best for you,’ he said. Harriet wasn’t sure whether he meant the Toy Fair or persuading his father to back Conundrum. She went down the steps into the street, knowing that he was watching her go.

      The glow of powerful well-being only lasted as far as the corner. By the time she reached it she was out of the patinated smoothness of the Landwith offices and back in the real world. And in the real world there were no Chinese Chippendale cabinets, no silk rugs, and no empty taxis either. It was nearly lunchtime, and every cab that passed was occupied by men, singly or in pairs, on their way to clubs and restaurants. Everyone else in the real world was on the pavement with Harriet, pushing and jostling.

      She paused for long enough to look back at the stucco-fronted terrace. She wondered what the father and son were doing behind the tall, shining windows. She doubted that they were studying the copies of the plan that she had left for them. She didn’t even think they were urbanely agreeing that their visitor had been unfortunately flat-chested. She imagined that they were in some mahogany and silver washroom, ivory-brushing their beautiful haircuts ready for separate lunches with identically rich men in twin trendsetting restaurants.

      The fantasy didn’t make her smile.

      ‘Smug shits,’ Harriet murmured. ‘I hate you.’ But she said it mechanically. She didn’t hate them enough not to long to join them.

      There were still no taxis, and Harriet was due to meet Jane in five minutes’ time at the Earls Court exhibition hall main entrance. They were going to work on the stand together. Clearly there wasn’t going to be a taxi for the rest of the day. Harriet hoisted her heavy case under her arm and dived for the tube.

      ‘Harriet? Where have you been? They wouldn’t let me in without an exhibitor’s pass.’

      Harriet was hot and flustered and guilty. Jane, loyal Jane, had freed herself from school for an afternoon in order to help her and she had kept her waiting for three-quarters of an hour. She gasped her apologies, waved her pass at the security man, and they were inside. She took Jane’s arm and steered her forward.

      ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Landwith Associates took longer than I thought, then there were no cabs. I thought I’d never get here.’

      They were half-running, half-stumbling down a long aisle. On either side there were stands where giant teddy bears reared up, where ranks of dolls smiled sweet persuasive smiles, and the rattle and whirr of mechanical toys mingled and multiplied. The dim roof-space overhead was noisy with the drilling and hammering and sawing of last preparations.

      ‘Slow down. Calm down,’ Jane ordered her, but Harriet rushed them faster. At last they reached a bare rectangle of space with packing cases tipped haphazardly in the centre. Harriet consulted a docket, looked at the number fixed to the stand frame, and back at the docket again.

      ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘This is ours.’ She couldn’t keep the flatness out of her voice. The space was so bare, and dusty, and uninviting.

      ‘Not even a giant teddy to lend a hand,’ Jane said. Two young women in red and white Queen of Hearts costumes were eyeing them curiously from an apparently complete display across the aisle. ‘Come on, we’d better get started.’

      It seemed impossible that they could ever make the stand look like anything. When she unwrapped the parachute silk and draped the creased swathes over the chipboard walls, Harriet thought she saw the Queens of Hearts covertly smiling. If it had not been for Jane, she would have turned tail, even at that last moment, and run away from the exhibition hall, right away from Conundrum itself.

      But Jane raised her eyebrows by a fraction and twitched the corners of her mouth, conveying her opinion of the Queens with such perfect economy that Harriet laughed, and instead of running she climbed a stepladder with a staple gun ready in her hand.