Felix had chosen the table badly.
He'd chosen it for the view, which was excellent if one wanted to see the sea and less good if one wanted to see the person opposite without looking into the sun.
Frankie arrived to find him squinting.
“Very strategic.”
“I thought it would move.”
“The sun?”
“It usually does.”
She sat.
He had ordered water and left the rest for her to decide. On the table lay a folded sheet of paper with three names and something crossed out so thoroughly she couldn't read it.
“Work?”
“An old friend thinks I know where to find money.”
“Do you?”
“Mostly where other people keep it.”
She laughed.
A waiter came to take the order. Felix asked whether the fish was good; the waiter said it was, then appeared to remember that he was employed to say this and described it instead.
They ordered.
Felix put away the paper.
“Your Table. Is that what you do?”
“Some of it.”
“What else?”
“Events. People who need a room to feel better than the decisions which put them in it.”
“That sounds like most events.”
“It is.”
“What do you like?”
She looked towards the sea.
He hadn't asked what she was good at. There was a difference, and she'd spent so long preparing the answer to one that the other briefly left her empty.
“The point where people stop waiting to be pleased.”
“And?”
“Begin to enjoy themselves.”
“Without you?”
“Sometimes.”
He smiled.
“That must be annoying.”
“Yes.”
She liked the honesty of the answer. She disliked that it had been offered by Celia.
He leaned back.
“I liked doing that.”
“Events?”
“People. Getting them to stop wondering whether they'd been put at the wrong table.”
“Gideon said you were good.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“What an interesting day for him.”
She touched her glass.
Felix watched her.
“You're being kind. Gideon can say generous things, but usually about someone who's just done him a favour.” Felix looked pleased all the same. “I'll try not to spoil it by asking you to repeat him.”
Their food arrived.
He waited until the waiter had gone.
“Gideon made things possible. I enjoyed the things he'd made possible. Neither of us was particularly good at letting the other enjoy that.”
“Did you work together long?”
“Long enough.”
“And now?”
“We know people who know people. We have family things. We manage to avoid being alone.”
“Does that work?”
“Usually.”
He cut the fish.
She'd imagined a brother who resented not being chosen. Felix seemed to resent the terms on which he'd be chosen more than the absence of an invitation.
That made the job harder.
It also made Gideon's wish more particular. He didn't merely want Felix to want the room. He wanted him to put the desire in words Gideon could own.
“Is the Table his?” Felix asked.
“No.”
“How much of no?”
“The house belongs to Vivian. The evening is being produced by Nina Adebayo. I'm shaping the company.”
“And my brother?”
“A founding commitment.”
“Money.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
She considered.
“That's his business.”
“He'd enjoy you saying that.”
She ate.
Felix looked at the sea.
She knew Gideon had paid for a false selection and now intended to pay for his brother's exclusion. She didn't tell Felix either thing.
Instead she said, “He's not choosing everyone.”
It was a true sentence with a lie beneath it.
Felix turned back.
“Are you offering me something?”
“A conversation.”
“Then I already have it.”
“An evening.”
“Do I have to apply?”
“Not in writing.”
“Or be examined.”
“You're managing that now.”
He smiled.
“Is it going well?”
She could have answered in Celia's voice: perhaps, we'll see, you have interesting company to offer. Something which would make him want to prove the evening needed him.
“It is,” she said.
He accepted the warmth.
It cost her nothing immediately.
That was the difficulty.
On Monday Felix asked whether she was free for half an hour.
He was helping his old friend set up a small display in an empty shop for the courtyard project. The friend had expected three people and acquired one, and Felix wanted someone who could tell him why the room looked like a charity shop that wasn't willing to sell anything.
Frankie was at home when the message arrived.
Her landlord's boiler inspection was finished. The engineer had left a little piece of plastic beside the sink and assured her it didn't belong to anything important. She had two real client emails to answer and a payment from Cara which had come with a short thank-you and no promise of another party.
She replied to the emails first.
Then she went.
Felix stood in the shop window holding a poster against the glass.
“Not there,” she said.
He looked round.
“I hadn't stuck it.”
“Good.”
“Welcome.”
She took the poster.
The room held photographs, a model of the courtyard and little cards asking people what they wanted to use it for. The cards had been arranged in a perfect line too far from the door to attract anyone who hadn't already decided to enter.
Frankie moved them.
Then she moved the model, tilted two photographs and persuaded Felix to put the poster where people could read it without bending beneath a plant.
“Better?”
“Much.”
He watched her.
“I thought it might be complicated.”
“It was. You've done the complicated parts.”
“Have I?”
“Got it here. Asked people. Opened the door.”
He smiled.
The friend arrived carrying a box of biscuits and looked at the room as though Felix had acquired new skills while she was parking.
“This is Celia,” he said. “She makes us look competent.”
“You are competent.”
“She's kind as well.”
Frankie took a biscuit because she didn't want to answer.
People came in.
An older woman wanted a bench with a back. A boy wanted somewhere to put a skateboard which was not his skateboard, though Felix wisely didn't ask what that meant. A man wanted to know whether the whole thing would simply become somewhere other people left rubbish.
Felix listened without promising to solve every objection.
Frankie liked watching him work.
He could be vain. When somebody praised the display, he accepted before remembering to introduce her. When the friend asked him to carry a box, he finished the story he was telling first.
But he carried it.
He came back to find Frankie speaking to the older woman about the bench.
“Celia's organising a supper,” he said.
“Here?”
“No.”
“Pity. This could use one.”
The woman put her card in the box and went.
Felix leaned against the table.
“What do I have to do?”
“For?”
“The Table.”
Frankie looked at the little cards.
Not yet.
Not here, with no Gideon present, no warning delivered, no way to pretend the question had come from somewhere other than a person she was deliberately misleading.
“Come and see the house,” she said.
“I've seen it.”
“Recently?”
“No.”
“Then come.”
“Will my brother be there?”
“Sometimes.”
“That's very carefully unhelpful.”
She smiled.
He didn't return it immediately.
“You don't have to manage me.”
“I know.”
He held her gaze.
She didn't know. Or she knew and did it anyway.
The friend called him to help with a folding chair.
Felix went.
Frankie stood alone beside the model. One of the little cardboard trees had fallen on its side. She set it upright, and it fell again.
She left it.
Later he walked her to the car.
“Thank you.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“So did I.”
He waited while she found her key.
“Don't make the Table so important we can't have another ordinary lunch.”
She looked up.
“We can.”
“Good.”
He went back to the shop.
Frankie sat in the car without starting it.
There were two kinds of invitation in his last sentence. She'd accepted the one which didn't produce a fee.
She still hadn't told him what the other would cost.