The man at table six said he would eat in his car.
Frankie looked towards the window. Rain was coming down the glass in broad, uneven sheets. Beyond it, the gravel drive of Calder House shone beneath a lamp which gave everything the colour of old teeth.
“Have you brought cutlery?”
He looked at her.
“For the car.”
“I don't think you're taking this seriously.”
“I am. The starter's soup.”
At his elbow, June Parry lowered the seating plan by an inch. Frankie recognised the movement. It meant the duty manager was deciding whether this guest would be easier to remove than feed.
The man was Robert Keane. He had sold his share in Halden Design the year before, and the company's tenth-anniversary dinner had placed him beside a woman who apparently considered the sale a personal event.
Frankie had met him twenty seconds ago.
That was enough to learn he didn't want to leave. He wanted someone to make staying look like his decision.
“If you give me a moment,” she said, “I'll find you somewhere better.”
“I was told these were good seats.”
“They were. Then I met you.”
He considered her.
Frankie smiled as though she hadn't intended a compliment and was slightly embarrassed to have let one out. That helped. A compliment delivered too confidently gave a person somewhere to resist.
June turned away before her face spoiled it.
The Ballroom was filling. Glasses, damp coats, people recognising each other too late to pretend they hadn't. At the far end, a little platform held a piano with its lid open. The singer stood in the doorway to the staff corridor, wearing a green dress and an expression which suggested the dress wasn't being paid enough.
Frankie held up one finger.
The singer held up three.
Three minutes until the agreed entrance. Of course. Her pianist was already there, arranging sheet music with the desperate industry of a man who didn't want to be left alone entertaining strangers.
Frankie looked back at Robert.
“Come with me.”
June came too, carrying the plan.
They passed table five. Isobel Halden was standing beside it in silver shoes, accepting congratulations from a supplier who had once nearly bankrupted her and now seemed to consider himself a founder.
“Frankie.”
“In a minute.”
“There's a photograph.”
“In two.”
“The photographer says now.”
“Photographers always say now. It means they're hungry.”
She steered Robert towards a table near the piano. Two chairs were empty because the people assigned to them hadn't arrived. One was going to be occupied by an accountant who had already emailed to say he couldn't stay for dessert.
Frankie moved the accountant's card.
June looked at her.
“The left one,” Frankie said quietly.
“That's the only one with a view of the service door.”
“Yes.”
June moved the card herself. She knew where plates would come from, where elbows would spread and which waiter could pass a tight corner without turning dinner into an apology.
Frankie put Robert's card in the place he'd like best.
“Here.”
He looked at it, then at the stage.
“Am I going to be deafened?”
“Only if she's bad.”
“Is she?”
“She hasn't been yet.”
He smiled despite himself.
Frankie lowered her voice.
“Isobel's speech is quite personal. I thought you should be where she can see you.”
It was a beautiful little fiction. Isobel's speech was going to be eight minutes about ten years, with four minutes of thanks and at least two of warning disguised as a joke. Robert was mentioned once.
But Frankie could make sure Isobel looked at him.
That was often the difference between a lie which caused trouble and one which improved a dinner: whether she intended to do the work afterwards.
He pulled out his chair.
“Thank you.”
“Enjoy yourself.”
As soon as they were out of earshot, June said, “You owe me two places.”
“One and a coat.”
“What?”
She pointed towards the arriving accountant, who had brought a woman wearing a raincoat and looking uncertain enough to be an unannounced companion.
June closed her eyes.
“He confirmed one.”
“Perhaps she plans to remain imaginary.”
“Perhaps you can seat her.”
“I can.”
“Before the soup.”
Frankie went to the singer.
Tessa had her arms folded, careful not to crease the dress.
“I said seven forty-five.”
“And at seven forty-five you will walk in.”
“Through people?”
“Past people. It looks different when you mean it.”
“The room was supposed to be seated.”
“I'll give you an opening.”
Frankie turned, lifted a glass from the nearest table and tapped it with a spoon.
Nothing.
She tapped again. A few heads turned, chiefly those belonging to people concerned about the glass.
She put it down.
“Isobel's going to speak,” she said to a woman beside her.
“Now?”
“In a moment. Could you sit?”
The woman told the person next to her, who told someone else. At the other side of the room, June began drawing chairs out for people who weren't quite ready to sit, and discovered that they were.
Frankie moved the late pair towards table six, where Robert's absence had left a space and an improved atmosphere. The woman who'd refused to sit beside him looked up, saw an accountant, and accepted the exchange with the weary satisfaction of somebody who had expected more.
One additional chair.
June produced it from the wall before Frankie asked.
The room settled.
At seven forty-five, Tessa entered.
She didn't look as though she'd been delayed. That was her talent. She came through the wide door with her head lifted, one hand touching the skirt, and the pianist found the first notes as though he'd been waiting for precisely this breath.
Frankie stood beside the staff corridor and watched the room change.
It was only a song. A person singing something most of them knew. But the man who'd been reaching for his phone put it down. A woman stopped straightening the place cards. Robert sat back in the better seat and let his face become less important.
Frankie loved that moment.
The room becoming a room.
June passed with a tray.
“Soup's still hot,” she murmured.
“Then we are gods.”
“We are underpaid.”
That was also true.
Calder House had the kind of grandeur which looked best just after dark. Pale walls, a ceiling higher than anybody required, long windows facing a view which guests assumed must be worth seeing in daylight. A repaired patch in the wallpaper showed near the door if you knew where to look. Frankie had noticed it while the florist argued over a vase.
She hadn't been here for ten years.
In 2016, she'd used the name Anna Reed. She'd persuaded the owner that she could bring prestigious touring groups to the hotel, fill the awkward weeks, make the house appear in the right conversations. There had been brochures with flattering photographs and conversations about deposits which became conversations about confidence.
Seventy-four thousand pounds.
She remembered the amount.
She had taken the money and delivered none of the guests.
Coming back under her own name hadn't been an accident. Halden Design had hired her, the date was free, the fee was good, and Calder House was a venue rather than a person when you looked at it on a work schedule.
She had looked at it that way for as long as she could.
The owner wasn't here tonight. June had said so while explaining which door stuck and which telephone number could be called in a disaster. Mrs Holt was away. Frankie had accepted the information with appropriate professional indifference.
Then she'd gone outside for a minute and breathed sea air through the rain.
Now Tessa was finishing her song and people were applauding.
Real pleasure, paid for honestly.
Frankie checked the service corridor, nodded to June and went to remind Isobel to make the speech shorter.
It wasn't.
The speech had become eleven minutes by the time Isobel reached Robert. Frankie caught her eye, glanced towards his table and lifted her chin slightly.
Isobel understood.
She looked at Robert and said, “And to those whose contribution we still feel, even when they've sensibly decided to stop listening to my instructions.”
He laughed.
The woman at table six didn't, but she was eating the soup.
That would do.
After dinner the photographer finally cornered Frankie.
“Next to Isobel.”
“I work better at the edge.”
“So does she.”
Isobel caught Frankie's arm.
“Come on. You saved the seating. Look as though you knew what you were doing.”
Frankie stood beside her in front of the Ballroom doors. Behind them the flowers were a little too large for the urn and one of the hotel lamps had been turned off to conceal the shade's scorch mark.
The photographer told them to move closer.
Isobel squeezed her arm.
The flash went.
Frankie was still smiling when he checked it.
“Good,” he said. “One more.”
She gave him one more.
By eleven she had lost track of the number of people who'd asked whether she did weddings. She did, if they paid enough and hadn't already decided their family feud was a creative brief. She handed out cards, collected a promise from Isobel for the balance of her fee and persuaded a tipsy supplier that the beautiful vase belonged to the hotel.
“It would look wonderful in your house,” she told him. “Unfortunately, they know where you live.”
He relinquished it.
Tessa was in the corridor putting her shoes into a bag.
“You owe me an entrance.”
“I gave you one.”
“With soup behind it.”
“Atmosphere.”
“Steam.”
Frankie smiled.
“You were very good.”
Tessa glanced up, testing the compliment. Then she accepted it.
“Send me the next date.”
June came through carrying the final tray of glasses.
“Can I have my tables back?”
“You can have every inch.”
“Wonderful. I might put them in different places just to see what happens.”
Frankie helped clear the flowers from one. She was wearing heels which had ceased to be an aesthetic decision an hour earlier. June took the heavy urn and made her carry the smaller vase.
At the office Frankie signed the sheet confirming the room was handed back. There were scuffed pens in a chipped mug, a bowl of wrapped mints and a photograph of Calder House in better weather.
Her phone showed the beginning of an email from the landlord. Boiler inspection. Friday, between eight and twelve. He seemed to believe everyone who lived in a flat also worked in that flat, permanently waiting for plumbers.
She put the phone away and took a mint.
“Good night,” June said.
“You too.”
“Eventually.”
Frankie went out through the lobby. The rain had thinned to a mist. She drove home with the heater on her feet and the radio turned down, enjoying the residue of the evening: the moment Robert had sat, the first note of the song, the room listening.
The next morning, Isobel sent her the photograph.
The hotel had shared it too. Frankie opened the public post, read the thanks, saw her own name attached to her own face.
For a few seconds she considered asking them to take it down.
Then she looked at the boiler email, the unpaid half of her fee and the card she'd given Tessa.
Publicity was useful when you weren't supposed to be hiding.
She liked the post.
At half past four a message came from the hotel business office.
Would Ms Voss be available for a small private dinner on Saturday evening? They wished to discuss a possible commission connected with the house.
There was no photograph attached. No personal greeting from Vivian Holt. Just the place, the time and the prospect of work.
Frankie read it twice.
Ten years was a long time. People changed. Hotels changed less, but their owners acquired other things to remember.
She could ask who would be there.
She wrote that she would be delighted.
Then she deleted delighted and put very pleased.
It sounded more like a woman who charged for her time.