Eleven weeks, Luca thought, standing at the top of the red carpet’s slow crawl towards the doors, waiting for the car in front of them to clear the step-and-repeat. Eleven weeks since a private dining room and a contract written by a woman who’d brought her own pen. It felt like considerably longer, and also, watching Hattie check her lipstick in the black glass of the car window rather than a compact, like no time at all.
“You’ve gone quiet,” she said, not looking away from her reflection.
“I’m doing maths.”
“Dangerous hobby for a chef on the night of an awards ceremony.”
“Eleven weeks,” he said. “Since Corvo. Since the contract.”
She turned from the window properly then, and something crossed her face that he recognised, because he’d been feeling its twin for the last mile of traffic: the particular vertigo of a number that didn’t match the size…
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