Caught

The party ended the way those things do, in a loading bay.

Meera had come down in the west lift at twenty past ten with her coat over her arm and her bag sliding off her shoulder for the fourth time, and Julian, who had come down separately and been waiting by the concrete column for six minutes like a man with nothing to hide and every reason to look like it, put out a hand and took the bag off her without being asked.

That was all.

He held it while she got her arms into her coat, and then he held it a moment longer while she found her keys, and he was saying something dry about the canapés, and she was laughing, and the loading bay had that enormous concrete quiet that empty buildings get at night.

It did not occur to either of them to look…