‘Sure. No bother.’ I delivered a warm, confident smile. This was the way to proceed – warm, warm, warm. Then sensible, sensible, sensible. No drama, no heightened emotion, just two grown-ups having a grown-up conversation in a grown-up way.
He took a seat and looked like he wasn’t planning on staying long, but I sensed that if I could get him on-side we’d be home and dry. Hard to say what it was about him – his hair was an ordinary mid-brown, his eyes an unremarkable grey – but he had something, perhaps a strong sense of himself coupled with a hint of humanity, that marked him out as special.
‘So what is it?’
‘Marie Vann,’ I said.
Instantly his face shut down. He watched me in silent assessment.
‘Premilla Routh is my client,’ I said gently.
Still he said nothing, just watched me with his hangdog face and one-way eyes.
‘Don’t run it,’ I said. ‘Please.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s mean.’
He barked with laughter.
‘She’s a decent human,’ I said.
‘Marie?’
‘No,’ I spluttered. ‘Premilla.’
But I laughed at the idea that Marie could be described as decent. It had bumped me out of my groove. He didn’t laugh again but we locked eyes, the tension between us unwound somewhat, and in that moment I felt everything might be okay. ‘I know you’re in a hurry,’ I said. ‘And this is confidential but –’
‘Maybe I will have a drink. What can I get you?’
‘I love your accent,’ I blurted. ‘Geordie’s my favourite.’ Blood rushed to my face. ‘Sorry.’
There was a tiny exasperated eyeroll. ‘So, to drink?’
I reached for my bag. ‘Let me.’
He gave a sharp shake of his head. ‘I’m buying.’
If he got the drinks I was surrendering all control. But there was no way of insisting without making a thing of it.
‘Okay. Thanks. White wine.’ I wanted alcohol and was too tired and strung-out to second-guess him. ‘Anything. Sauvignon blanc. Whatever they have.’
‘We’re pretty sophisticated down here in Canary Wharf.’ Hard to tell if he was being ironic. Although he probably was.
‘Sauvignon blanc is grand.’
He went to the bar and I checked him out properly. He was tallish, but not one of those absurd heights, like six four or six five. Call me old-fashioned – or short – but anything over six one is unnecessary, unless he’s Ashley Banjo and, sadly, he never is.
Josh Rowan wore a pale cotton shirt, open at the neck, and it gave the impression that he’d be totally at home in a fast-moving newsroom. All he needed were those funny, elasticated sleeve garters around his guns to complete the picture of classic newspaper man.
He looked fit but some intuition told me he’d scorn the gym. Five-a-side football on a Wednesday night would be more his thing. Or maybe he’d got those guns from shifting furniture around at the weekend to please his wife.
Because there was definitely a wife – he wore a wedding ring and, although my recall was hazy, I’d seen some sort of familyish pictures on social media.
I was too far away to hear what he was saying to the barman but it was clear he was being pleasant. This shouldn’t be worthy of comment but so many people aren’t nice, and it gave me hope. Then he was back with my wine and some beer-style drink for himself.
‘Canary Wharf’s finest.’ He drew up a chair to the table.
‘Thanks.’
With perfect synchronicity we picked up our drinks and automatically clinked glasses. Then there was a weird pause. We locked eyes and I felt myself colour.
After an awkward moment he said, ‘Go on, then. Tell us.’
I gave him a speedy run-through of Premilla’s troubles. He listened without comment.
‘She’s tried very hard,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t deserve the bad stuff she’ll get if Marie runs her piece.’
‘I’m not promising,’ Josh Rowan said, ‘and I mean it. But I’ll see what I can do. Now I’d better get moving.’
We both got to our feet. I looked up into his face. ‘Thank you, Josh Rowan.’
‘I mean it, I’m promising nothing.’
‘But you’ll do your best?’
An exasperated half-laugh. ‘Aye.’
We stepped outside the pub into the wall of early-evening heat and I started scanning the streets for a taxi.
‘Where you off to now?’ he asked.
‘Heathrow. Flying home.’
‘You live in Ireland?’
‘Dublin.’
He raised a hand to flag down a taxi, closed the door once I was installed and stood watching while we drove away.
As soon as we’d turned a corner and he’d disappeared from view, I breathed out, a long, nervy exhalation, then called Premilla and made cautiously optimistic noises. She launched into effusive thanks, which I shut down immediately. It’s always best to dampen the expectations of clients, but some instinct told me I’d probably pulled it off.
My flight was long gone but there was a seat available on a later one. Adrenalin was still coursing through me and I wanted to have all the drinks on the departure-lounge menu, but managed to stick to mint tea.
To pass the time I did a deep background on Josh Rowan, which I should have done long ago. Really, it was very remiss: a features editor in a British national and I didn’t know his dog’s name. (A springer spaniel called Yvonne, I now discovered, via a mutual friend on Facebook.) He had two kids, both boys – perhaps ten and twelve from their photos, but hard for me to know as I didn’t really do boys – and a wife, Marcia. I switched over to her feed, which made for more rewarding spying.
I studied her avidly, keen to know how other people managed the tricky, tricky business of being a woman. She looked early forties, attractive but no stunner. Interesting.
Every life event of the Rowans seemed to be documented by Marcia – they’d gone to Portugal, the previous July, to a resort Hugh and I had been to three years earlier. First I marvelled at the coincidence, then slumped into sudden gloom as I understood I was merely a middle-class cliché.
Here came a shot of Marcia in a bikini, then another – Jesus, fair play to her, you wouldn’t catch me in a bikini ever again, never mind posting photos on the internet for anyone to see. If I absolutely had to do beachwear, I went for a halter-necked one-piece, preferably with a little skirt. I pretended it was because of my retro-look but really it was just to camouflage my wobbly mid-section. And speaking of wobbly mid-sections – I wasn’t being bitchy, merely factual – Marcia could have done with knocking off the bananas. (Or was it only me who had those ads popping up on the internet? They were very effective because I now couldn’t even glance at a banana without feeling like I was overspilling my waistband.) But, modest amounts of belly-fat or not, Marcia looked very body-confident.
I kept scrolling down through her feed – then my heart leapt at pictures of Josh with a squad of mud-spattered men. He was at the semi-finals of a five-a-side tournament! I felt wild with joy at my accurate assessment of him. This was a good omen – a great omen!
Automatically, I almost liked it and managed to whip my hand away just in time – couldn’t have him knowing he was being stalked.
My attention was split between spying on the Rowans and monitoring the Herald site, and by the time my plane was on the runway, nothing about Premilla had appeared online. The steward told me to switch off my phones. Superstitiously, I felt that while I was keeping an eye on things, nothing could go wrong. However, I complied in case the plane crashed. (Even if I was never convinced that mobile phones really do interfere with the plane’s instruments, because a few times one of my phones had been left on accidentally for the entire flight and no harm had befallen us. You had to wonder if the airlines only made us turn them off out of spite. Like the way we had to keep the window blinds up for take-off and landing, and all the other random hard-to-take-seriously things they insisted on.)