‘Posso avere quella senza aglio?’ he says to his iPhone.
‘What are you doing, Colin?’ says Manon, rubbing at the grit in her eye again. She pulls out her eyelid and blinks downward.
‘My Learn Italian app,’ Colin says. ‘Translation – can I have that without garlic? Can’t stand the stuff, nor can Gwyneth.’
‘P’raps Puglia isn’t your ideal holiday destination then,’ says Manon, the blinking not having made any difference.
‘Don’t see why they can’t cater to our tastes,’ says Colin, ‘seeing as we’re paying.’ He rocks back with his glasses pushed up onto his bald pate. Manon wonders: did Gwyneth look into Colin’s small, bloodshot eyes and say, ‘You are the UKIP-voting misogynist for me’? She must have done – they’d been married for thirty-odd years. And there was luck in that; you were lucky if you could be happy with what life threw your way (even if it was Colin) instead of generally dissatisfied, as Manon is. Colin’s Google searches were testament to the richness of their life together – boutique hotels in Margate, painting courses in Giverny, walking tours of the Tyrol.
‘Look, here’s one of the pensioni we’re staying in,’ Colin is saying, scrolling through some images of wafting muslin curtains framing a view of the sea.
This is one of the many things Manon hates about the open-plan office, apart from the way it favours crazed extroverts – it throws up so much envy. She’s regularly stabbed by it: envy of Colin and Gwyneth’s tour of Puglia; envy of Nigel and Dawn’s gurgling newborn twins; even of Davy and Chloe’s Friday night takeaway in front of the telly.
Stuart is leaning against the wall, his gaze intense into the room so that every time Manon looks up, she seems to catch his eye. Only his third day in the job, yet he has a strangely dominating effect on the department. His hands had brushed her neck as he helped her off with her coat, sending a charge through her, and she made a self-deprecating reference to over-doing the exercise last night. ‘Won’t be trying that again,’ she said. ‘From now on my fat arse stays on the chair.’
Her legs and arms have seized up completely, so that she can barely put on or take off a coat, and her attempts to zip up her boots this morning resulted in her rolling across the floor in a ball like some petrified hedgehog. She takes a sip of coffee. The tiredness has hit her forcefully – a wall she must scale. It’s always worse for a night’s sleep which, instead of giving the mind and body nimble new energy, seems to transmogrify exhaustion into cement.
Edith Hind is all over the morning papers, every front page carrying pictures of Sir Ian and Miriam. Most of it is straight reporting, but Manon noticed a couple of columnists in the mid-market titles commenting on the couple’s demeanour. ‘When all a parent can say of the child they love is that they were “very academic”, we need to look again at our value system,’ wrote one mop-headed moralist.
She looks down at the sheet prepared for her by Davy, detailing Edith’s known movements in the week before she disappeared. ANPR cameras have picked up one trip to Deeping in the G-Wiz on Sunday, 11 December, a week before she disappeared and the day after her affair with Helena began.
‘Looking forward to Christmas telly?’ says Davy, to no one in particular, as if trying to cheer up the room in general. ‘I’m going to be watching Polar Express.’
Manon has clasped her two hands around her mug. ‘Did you notice,’ she says, ‘Edith Hind and Will Carter didn’t have a telly?’
‘It’s not a human right,’ says Davy.
‘Bloody is,’ says Colin, without looking round.
‘I can’t stand people who don’t own tellies,’ says Manon.
‘How very reasonable of you,’ says Stuart, his eyes meeting hers, his arms crossed over his chest.
‘Shall I tell you why?’ says Manon, looking back at him.
‘Think you’re going to,’ mutters Davy.
‘Because they just watch loads on iPlayer and then go on and on about not having a telly to people who do have tellies.’
‘D’you want to know my theory?’ says Colin.
‘Oh God,’ says Manon, ‘close the windows, someone might hear.’
‘I think Edith Hind fancied a meat feast pizza, a movie, and a good ol’ shag without having to boil any mung beans or discuss the metaphysical poets.’
‘Right, yes, thank you again, Colin.’