Gideon had the toothpaste on his phone.
He didn't play it immediately.
He put the phone on Vivian's desk, beside an invoice for laundry, and waited until Frankie had shut the door.
Nina was already there.
Duncan stood near the filing cabinet. Vivian sat behind the desk, with nowhere useful to put her hands.
“Celia.”
Frankie looked at the phone.
A still image: Estelle in the bright bathroom, her smile caught at the precise moment when money had made it reliable.
“Ada,” she said.
“Estelle Park.”
“Yes.”
Gideon looked up.
“You know.”
“She works.”
“She does. Quite publicly.”
He pressed the screen.
The little commercial began. Estelle smiled, spoke, lifted the product. Nobody in the office laughed this time.
He stopped it before the end.
“I thought I knew the voice. Then the face. It wasn't difficult.”
Frankie glanced at Nina.
Nina's expression didn't change.
“What else?” Frankie asked.
Gideon leaned back against the edge of the desk, taking a space which made Vivian look further away from her own papers.
“There's no Ada Selwyn. At least no Ada Selwyn who sold a publishing company and decided I should have supper with her.”
“We didn't say she sold it.”
“You implied considerably more than a woman earning an evening's fee.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Duncan.
“And Lorne?”
Duncan didn't answer at once.
“Duncan Mercer. The shop's in Brighton. If you've found Estelle, there's no point giving you another name to check.”
“Doing what?”
“Eating.”
Gideon's mouth twitched.
“That's quite a service.”
“I try.”
Frankie could feel the old pleasure in a room turning dangerous. Not because she enjoyed being caught. Because the choices became immediate; everything unnecessary burned away. Gideon knew the actors. He didn't necessarily know the victims. He knew the authority was false. He'd paid enough to make the distinction matter.
She had to find the part of the truth he could use before he chose what to do with the rest.
“There's a real history,” she said.
“Of course there is. I looked at it.”
“A real evening.”
“I attended.”
“The people—”
“Were being paid to make me feel interesting.”
No one spoke.
The room shrank around the sentence.
Frankie hadn't wanted him to say it quite that way. She'd wanted him to talk about authority, membership, invented biographies: things which could be argued over while the evening itself remained intact.
Gideon looked towards Nina.
“Not all of them badly.”
She didn't smile.
“Some of them weren't acting.”
“I'm sure. Duncan appears to have found it pleasant to let me pay for his dinner.”
Duncan looked down at the desk.
“Yesterday was pleasant.”
“Thank you.”
“It doesn't make this pleasant.”
“No. It doesn't.”
Vivian moved the laundry invoice away from the phone.
“What's your proposal?”
Frankie heard the courage in it. Also the recklessness. Vivian wanted to skip to the bargain before Gideon had finished showing them why he could dictate one.
Gideon looked at her.
“You've spent some.”
“On actual work.”
“How much?”
“Thirty,” Nina said.
Frankie turned.
They had agreed the amount. She didn't like hearing Nina give it without asking.
“Sixty remains,” Vivian said.
“Untouched?”
“Yes.”
“Very disciplined.”
The praise made Frankie feel more exposed than an accusation would have done.
She could return sixty today. Find the other thirty somehow, with the hotel and Nina and Duncan looking at her while she discovered how much legitimate work she'd have to do to replace one convincing supper.
Or Gideon could want something else.
He did.
She saw it in the way he left the phone on the desk.
“Who are you?” he asked her.
“Frankie Voss. That's the name on my invoices. You can reach me.”
“Does Celia know?”
“No.”
He laughed once.
It didn't warm the room.
He looked at Vivian.
“You went to some trouble.”
“We wanted the relaunch.”
“You wanted my money.”
“Yes.”
Vivian said it without looking at Frankie.
“I would have discussed a launch.”
“We know.”
“But that wasn't the thing you sold.”
“No.”
“You could take the invitation to the police,” Frankie said.
“I could. I have it. And the payments.” He lifted the phone. “I would have to explain rather a lot about the company I thought had selected me.”
“That doesn't stop you.”
“No. Remember that.” He put the phone down again. “You managed to make me wait for an invitation to my own supper. I have someone in mind who usually leaves that sort of waiting to other people.”
Frankie watched his hand. He hadn't come to show them something and leave. He'd come to keep the room.
“Did you enjoy it?” she asked.
Duncan looked at her.
Gideon stayed still.
“Very much.”
“Then we can—”
“Don't.”
The word was quiet.
“Don't tell me that makes it fair.”
She closed her mouth.
He looked at Nina.
“I asked you to call.”
“Yes.”
“You did.”
“Yes.”
Frankie turned towards her.
“When did you know?”
“About Estelle?”
“About him knowing.”
“Last night.”
Outside the office somebody knocked on a door further down the corridor. The ordinary life of the hotel continued choosing rooms to enter.
Nina put her phone on the desk beside Gideon's.
“He told me he'd found the reel. He asked whether I'd made the evening.”
“You said?”
“That I'd produced it.”
“Not alone.”
“No.”
Gideon watched them with interest which Frankie resented more than his anger.
Nina continued.
“He has work. Actual work. Regional events, a programme he's been trying to make less like a sales conference. He offered me a paid development job.”
“Last night.”
“Yes.”
“And you took it.”
“Yes.”
Frankie looked at the phone, as though the details would be more acceptable if she could read them.
“On what condition?”
“That I deliver a proposal. Under my name. With a fee, and a budget if it goes forward.”
“And what about this?”
“This is still here.”
“You let him come—”
“He would have come anyway.”
“That doesn't mean—”
“No,” Nina said. “It means he offered me work and I decided whether to take it.”
Frankie could feel the others watching. Vivian very still; Duncan with his hands loose by his sides; Gideon pleased to have made Nina's choice visible.
It was not a betrayal she could name simply. Nina hadn't sold them. The commercial had been public. Gideon had found it himself. She'd accepted something he could really give.
Frankie wanted to tell her that money from a man who wanted obedience always carried another invoice.
She had very little standing in that conversation.
“Did you tell him anything about us?”
Nina looked at her.
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“I told him I wanted producing credit and control of the work I'd be paid to produce.”
Gideon nodded.
“That was fairly clear.”
Frankie looked at him.
“She's good.”
“I know.”
The answer deprived her of one more useful thing to say.
They left the office for the Ballroom because Gideon wanted to look at the table without the lights.
It seemed smaller by daylight.
June was putting menus into a drawer. She looked up when they entered.
“Are you using this?”
“For a few minutes,” Vivian said.
“I need the staff meeting at eleven.”
“It won't take long.”
June glanced at the clock and continued putting things away.
Gideon went to the dais.
The photograph was still there. So was one leaf holder which Vivian had left out, as though the room should not be completely without its history overnight.
He picked it up.
Vivian nearly moved towards him.
He noticed.
“This matters.”
“Yes.”
“More than the rest?”
She didn't answer.
He set it down, chipped tip facing the room.
Frankie watched Vivian look at it.
He could have broken it. He hadn't. The fact that she noticed the restraint was another thing he now owned.
Duncan stood near the open doors into the Morning Room.
Gideon looked towards him.
“You're all very good at making somewhere look difficult to get into.”
“It was easier with three people,” Duncan said.
Gideon smiled.
“Four.”
“Four.”
Frankie went up onto the dais.
“What do you want?”
Gideon looked at her.
“I'm considering.”
“Consider out loud.”
“Would you prefer that?”
“Yes.”
“You might not.”
“I'd still prefer it.”
He stood opposite her with the old table between them.
“My brother.”
There it was.
Not a new fact about a dangerous man. An old sore place made useful.
“He was your guest?” Frankie asked. “The one you wanted.”
“Possibly.”
“Does he know?”
“About the Table?”
“Yes.”
“Not enough.”
“And you'd like him here.”
“I'd like him to ask.”
Duncan shifted his weight.
Frankie kept her attention on Gideon.
“For a place.”
“An invitation. A proper one. The sort of invitation he thinks comes to him without having to pay for anything.”
Nina looked towards June. June had begun carrying chairs towards the side of the room for the staff meeting.
Gideon lowered his voice, though the lowering made it more deliberate.
“He used to arrive at an event I'd spent six months making possible, stay two hours, and go home having been told what a lovely evening he'd given everyone.”
“Perhaps he had,” Duncan said.
Gideon turned.
Duncan didn't look away.
“For two hours.”
Gideon smiled.
“Yes. Perhaps.”
He returned to Frankie.
“I want him to want it.”
“And then?”
He looked at the table. He didn't have to imagine it; they'd shown him how wanting a chair felt.
“Then we'll decide whether there's room.”
Frankie understood.
She felt Nina understand beside her.
Vivian looked at the old leaf holder.
Gideon put his phone away.
“We can talk tomorrow. You'll want to consider it.”
“What happens to the ninety?”
“That remains a conversation.”
“A conversation with an amount in it.”
“Yes.”
Frankie glanced at Duncan. He was no longer performing anything Gideon could use.
Gideon took his coat from a chair.
“There's real work here. A real launch. You might still be able to earn something.”
Nina's face hardened at the implication that she'd been paid for nothing.
He saw it.
“Your offer stands,” he said to her. “Separately.”
She nodded once.
He left before June had to ask.
For a moment none of them moved.
Then June came to the edge of the dais.
“Eleven.”
Vivian picked up the holder.
Duncan went into the Morning Room.
Nina took the photograph down before the staff chairs could knock the stand.
Frankie remained by the table until June looked at her.
She stepped aside.
In ten minutes the room would be full of people discussing laundry, service, things that had actually happened and what to do about them.
She had been caught.
She was also being offered another room to run.
The wanting had not gone away.