The Pound Coin

The partner’s lawyers rang at one, which is eight in the morning in New York, which meant they had been up since five deciding what to say.

I took it in the library with Priscilla and the door shut. There were three of them on the line and one of them spoke: their head of acquisitions, a woman with a voice like a well-made spreadsheet, who began by thanking me for my candour and went on to explain, over nine minutes, that a three-year staff guarantee was not something their people could agree on a Friday.

“Then don’t agree it on a Friday,” I said.

There was a pause in New York.

“The vendor won’t sign without it. I’ve told you that in writing. I’m telling you again so that it’s on your notes.” I was standing at the window with my back to the fire. The walled garden was…