in his office, Malcolm continues to leaf through the bills and memoranda and other ephemera from the time of Croombe’s ownership: receipts for quantities of insulating cork, bolts of damask, crates of Bordeaux wine, chairs to be supplied by Maple & Company of Tottenham Court Road. Annotations by Croombe appear in the margins of advertisements and brochures issued by fine hotels in Paris, in German spas, in Swiss resorts, in New York. ‘Flowers in every room, replaced daily,’ he has written beneath a view of the river frontage of the Savoy; ‘140 rooms!’ he exclaims on the back of a print depicting the Baur-en-Ville in Zürich; the single word ‘Cost?’ appears above an engraving of Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, connected by a loop of faded ink to a line announcing M. Cadier’s installation of steam-powered lifts. But the most charismatic of these items are the notebooks, small black leather notebooks with marbled endpapers and finely lined pages that have become as fragile as dead leaves, in which Croombe records his impressions of the building site on the Boulevard des Capucines, his introduction to the ‘captivating and capricious’ Sandrine Koechlin and, in 1872, the week that he and Sandrine spent at the Hôtel Splendide. Every meal that he and his wife ate in the hotel is recorded in detail, with observations on the appointments of their suite and the dining room, and then, halfway through the week, there is a conversation with the maître d’hôtel, a young Swiss by the name of César Ritz. ‘In equal proportion he possesses both ambition and discretion, and he displays a purposefulness that is quite remarkable in –’ he is reading when the phone rings and a woman’s voice says, ‘It’s me.’
They have not spoken to each other for months, but she speaks as if continuing an argument that had been interrupted earlier that day. ‘Hello, Kate,’ he replies. ‘How are you?’
‘What’s this all about, Malcolm?’
‘What’s what all about?’
‘You know perfectly well. This letter to Stephanie,’ she says crisply. ‘What do you think you’re playing at? Going behind my back.’
‘I was not going behind your back.’
‘You didn’t tell me. I’d say that’s going behind my back.’
‘Kate, I was not going behind your back.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because she asked me not to.’
‘She asked you.’
‘Yes, she asked me not to tell you yet, so I didn’t.’
‘So why do you think she asked you to do that?’
‘Because she didn’t want you to know yet, clearly.’
‘And you think that’s OK? She says “Let’s not tell Mum, eh?” and you just go along with it.’
‘No, I don’t just go along with it. Why don’t you ask her to read you what I wrote –’
‘I’ve read what you wrote.’
‘I see.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘That I’m surprised you open her mail.’
‘I found it in her room.’
‘Addressed to Stephanie.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is –’
‘The point is that you read it.’
‘Yes, I read it. I’m not going to apologise for finding out what you wrote to our daughter.’
‘And you think that’s permissible? Reading something addressed to her, a private correspondence.’
‘The point is, Malcolm, that I have a right to know about this. I have a right to know what’s going on.’
‘Well, that was my point exactly. As you know, having read my letter.’
Her breathing becomes quieter, as if she is holding the phone away from her mouth, and then she resumes, at the same pitch as her first words, ‘So she wrote to you? Out of the blue, just like that, she wrote to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t start it?’
‘No, Kate, I didn’t start it. I’ve thought about it, I’ve wanted to do it, I don’t think any court would have convicted me if I had done it, but no, I didn’t.’
‘One day, after all these years, she gets it into her head to write to you.’
‘Apparently.’
‘This is a girl who hasn’t mentioned your name since God knows when. So why does she suddenly get this notion to send you a letter?’
‘Ask her, Kate. I don’t know. I was as surprised as you. You’ll have to talk to her.’
‘I will, don’t worry,’ she says.
In the pause he hears a tapping, perhaps of a pen on a table-top. ‘Kate?’ he asks. ‘Why are you so agitated about this?’
‘I’m not agitated,’ she retorts. ‘I’m livid. Absolutely bloody livid.’
‘But why?’
‘That’s a really dim question.’
‘Then tell me. I know this is confusing. It’s confusing for both of us. But why are you so angry that Stephanie wants to see me?’
‘What I’m angry about is you two scheming behind my back.’
‘We’re not scheming. I’ve explained.’
‘Malcolm, even if you’re not scheming, she is.’
‘That’s not how I’d put it.’
‘It’s how I’d put it.’
‘I’m sure she has good reasons for going about it this way.’
‘Do you now?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And what do you imagine these good reasons would be?’
‘I don’t know, Kate, do I? You tell me.’
‘Good reasons,’ she repeats, and he hears her whisper: ‘Jesus Christ.’
This curse, uttered wearily, as though to herself, sets off an echo in his mind, an echo of conversations he does not want to recall. ‘I can’t very easily –’ he begins.
‘I don’t need this, Malcolm,’ she goes on. ‘I really don’t need this.’
‘Don’t need what? Talking to me?’
‘Oh Christ,’ she sighs again. ‘I tell you what: I don’t even think she does want to see you. And that’s the truth. I think she’s doing this to get
