The Kettle

We were very polite.

We were so polite that by ten o’clock Priscilla, who can hear a price move through a closed door, had looked up from her laptop twice and then stopped looking up at all, the way you stop watching a pan that refuses to boil.

The estate office was on the ground floor of the tower, behind the hall, with a window onto the yard and walls a yard thick. There were two desks in it. One was a long modern table under the window, covered in Isla’s printouts. The other stood against the far wall under a map of the estate: an old mahogany desk with a green leather top and brass handles, and nothing on it at all.

Nobody sat at that one. Duncan had pulled a chair up to the end of the long table instead, with his back to it, and I sat…