I had meant to stay in East Two with the kettle. At nine Priscilla knocked on the door in a green dress I had never seen, holding two glasses of something.
“Shona says you’re coming,” she said. “Neil says anybody who’s run his pass is staff whether they like it or not. I said you’d hate it.”
“I would.”
“So I’ve brought you a drink to hate it with.” She looked past me at the kettle on the desk, steaming slightly in the lamplight, and at my face, and she did not ask. That is one of the reasons she is the best person I have ever hired. “Put some shoes on. Not the wellingtons.”
The ballroom was the house with its jacket off.
Saturday’s round tables had been folded and stacked against the far wall. What was left was the sprung floor, bare, the six tall windows open on…
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