"So that's the third third bedroom done," she said. "Do you need more time to sit here? You want me to keep going?" bedroom done," she said. "Do you need more time to sit here? You want me to keep going?"

Vicki pressed her back flat against the headboard of the mahogany sleigh bed. "Yes, h.e.l.la, I do need a bit more time. In fact I wondered whether there might be something left for you to do downstairs, or perhaps in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I'm finding the noise up here a bit distracting."

h.e.l.la folded her arms and nodded with an apparently grim appreciation of the state of things. "The noise of my working is distracting you," she said. "You know, I'm not used to having to do all all the finishing work." the finishing work."

Vicki drew her hands into her lap. "You don't have to do all of it, h.e.l.la. Most of the downstairs is done. The window treatments are properly arranged, the floors are clean, and the tables are all beautifully set. We've both worked very hard. I've simply asked you to finish the beds, which you do so wonderfully well, and see to whatever details we might have missed downstairs."

h.e.l.la regarded her for a second or two, then took a crisp step into the boy's room and swept her gaze around. "Oh, look. Here's a detail we missed. An entire room." An entire room."

"Tell me," said Vicki, "have you ironed the beds you've made?" Ironing the sheets and coverlets once they were on the beds helped fix the folds of the turn-downs and gave a bedroom an almost subliminal polish. And as a task, it had the advantage of being relatively silent.

"No," said h.e.l.la. "That's always the last thing. And I like to do all the beds one after the other so I don't have to keep waiting for the stupid iron to heat up." She spread her arms. "And I can't do this room."

"Well, I'm sorry." Vicki turned her face away. "I'm not ready to do this room yet. Maybe you could run out for some more fresh flowers."

"Avis is going to be here for her showing in, like, two hours."

"The white callas in the foyer," said Vicki, "are looking a little wizened."

h.e.l.la sighed as she reached back to yank her dark ponytail tight. "Well, I'd go, but I don't have a car today."

"Take mine." Vicki felt beside the bed for her purse, but it wasn't there. Where had she left it? "I think my purse should be sitting in the sink of the guest bathroom downstairs. My keys are in there." Her a.s.sistant persisted in the doorway like a cloud of cigarette smoke. "I would get enough for the foyer and dining room, if they have them."

After another moment, h.e.l.la shrugged her bony shoulders and gave a sigh. "All right," she said, heading down the hall. "I just hope Avis is taking her pills today."

Vicki leaned her head back against the scrolled top of the headboard and waited for the sound of h.e.l.la leaving. Seated this way, with her legs stretched out before her along the bed, she could clearly see the toenail that had caused Avis such distress. It wasn't clear to her how the nail had been mutilated, though she had her Geraldish suspicions. But even now it was as though the nail, the toe beneath it, and the foot itself, belonged or should have belonged to a different person. Lately (perhaps, she thought, it was age) her body and the things she covered it with were becoming less important to her. In the mornings, it was only habit that pushed her through the motions of putting on makeup, and getting dressed. Looking at her toes now, she was faintly irritated that she'd even been made to consider them. It should have been someone else's concern. What she needed here she smiled was a h.e.l.la of the toes.

When she heard the front door open and close she was able to relax and think about what really mattered. For a long while she sat on the unmade sleigh bed, watched the occasional shadows of birds pa.s.s through the circle of light from the bull's-eye window, and listened to the room. She tried to keep her breathing steady, but that was something of a struggle, because never before, never in all her years of staging had it taken so long to decipher what she was meant to do in a single room. She had already considered the possibility that she was trying too hard now, and that she was blocked, the way artists were sometimes said to become. But it didn't feel that way; it felt as though she wasn't trying, or listening, hard enough.

She worked to get a picture in her mind. She pressed her temples and tried to see the child as an extension of Robert and Margeaux, as an amalgam of their contentment. A boy from those two should be fearless, she thought, and of the world, born into trust and steadiness, into impetuous joys and a flood of light. A child like that, it seemed to Vicki, should be easy easy to see. to see.

When that didn't work, and it hadn't before, she tried to see the boy through his parents' eyes. She strove to know Margeaux's expectations and intuit what kind of boy she would love. In an effort to jog her inspiration, Vicki did silly things. She got off the bed and roamed the room carelessly, as she imagined Margeaux might. She walked partway down the hall, turned, and came racing back, as if she had wonderful news, in the desperate hope that when she arrived at the doorway, the boy would appear to her, surrounded by his things. But it was a futile effort that only made her breathe all the harder.

There was never any thought, however, of giving up and filling the child's room with make-do delight a ball and a baseball glove on the side table, an encyclopaedia on the revolving bookshelf, open to the page on gra.s.shoppers, and a framed picture of the s.p.a.ce shuttle mounted on the wall except to acknowledge how desolate the idea made her feel. And she knew anyway that she had more time, that the deadline was not as imminent as h.e.l.la believed. Because when two o'clock arrived, Avis would not be walking into the house, bringing her sorrowful couple with her. Vicki had a plan to see to that.

When she heard the sound of her own car pulling into the driveway at half past one, Vicki went downstairs to meet her a.s.sistant at the door.

"I got all they had," called h.e.l.la as she came in, her arms loaded with linen-white callas. "I'm sorry it took so long. And it came to over two hundred dollars!"

"They're lovely," said Vicki as she walked barefoot across the foyer tiles.

h.e.l.la kicked off her shoes in a rush and started to make for the kitchen, but Vicki greeted her with her arms outspread.

"I'll take them," she said.

"Don't you want me to put them in the vases?"

"No, it's fine." She received them into her arms the way she would a newborn, protecting their fragile blooms. "Now, h.e.l.la," she said, "you've done so much, and I'm very grateful because I know it's been frustrating for you. Why don't you consider your work done for the day?"

"But there's still tons more to do!"

"Well, as you made clear it's time I did my share."

h.e.l.la frowned as if she was confused, and when Vicki turned with the flowers she began to follow. "What about the boy's room? Is it done? Can I see?"

Vicki stopped and faced her again. "I'm quite serious, h.e.l.la. I'd like you to go home now. I'll pay you for a full day."

"Well" h.e.l.la blinked "my husband's not picking me up today. I was hoping I could get a ride with you."

"Take my car."

"But what "

"Please." She stared at h.e.l.la until the angular woman seemed to settle back on her heels. Then she smiled. "All right now, off you go!" And she turned and took the flowers into the kitchen where she stayed, tense at the sink, until she heard the shuffling of shoes, and the closing of the door.

Quickly she cut the tips off the flower stems because the callas were were lovely and it would have been a shame to waste them set them in the sink and ran enough cold water to cover their severed ends. And when she was sure that h.e.l.la had driven off through the arbour of Lightenham Avenue's shapely oaks, she hurried back across the polished floor to the front entrance, drying her hands on her dress as she went. With the practice of years she slipped on her pumps without looking, took the house keys from her purse, which h.e.l.la had left on the floor, and went outside. lovely and it would have been a shame to waste them set them in the sink and ran enough cold water to cover their severed ends. And when she was sure that h.e.l.la had driven off through the arbour of Lightenham Avenue's shapely oaks, she hurried back across the polished floor to the front entrance, drying her hands on her dress as she went. With the practice of years she slipped on her pumps without looking, took the house keys from her purse, which h.e.l.la had left on the floor, and went outside.

There were three doors to worry about: front, rear, and the access from the garage. The front was most important, but all three had to be addressed.

She slid in her key and secured the front door's dead bolt, but she knew it wasn't enough merely to lock the doors, because Avis also had a key. And, under the a.s.sumption that Vicki had finished the staging and gone home or back to the warehouse, she would be expecting to need it.

Nor could there be any obvious signs of tampering nothing jammed into the keyhole and broken off because her relationship with Avis was important, and Vicki couldn't be seen to be trying to jeopardize a sale. Which was, of course, exactly what she intended to do. Jeopardize it. Kill it. Because the home she was creating, had nearly finished, was not meant for stricken, woeful people, and they could not be allowed inside.

A plan had come to her the night before, as she was drifting off to sleep. Kyle hadn't returned home and wouldn't, according to Gerald, until the following day. And as she lay in bed she thought about him and tried to imagine, as she had sometimes during the months he was away, the strange, far-off place to which he had bravely, though inexplicably, gone. And the image that had appeared to her most vividly was of her son on a field of blowing dirt and sand.

Vicki looked down. With the exception of the drive, and the flagstone path on which she stood, the ground surrounding the house was the dry, sandy soil of a construction site. Weeks ago the landscapers had shaped the grounds, and seeded them. But the gra.s.s seed they used was slow to root, and what threads of green did show seemed, where she stood, more like the spa.r.s.e hairs on a child's arm.

This plan wasn't tested, there was no way of knowing if it would work, but she kneeled, scooped up a handful of the loose dirt and carried it to the door. The latch she checked to be certain held firm. With her mound of dirt cradled in her palm she bent close to the bra.s.s plate of the keyhole. Then she blew.

The dry granules lifted off her hand like a tiny sirocco. Many of them scattered, useless, against the bra.s.s plate but some, she could tell, flew into the jagged slot. So she kept blowing. She blew across her mound of sand and dirt until her hand was empty and her lungs were sore. Then she tried her key.

It caught and grated against the sand inside, but made it all the way in with a shove. So she went back to the edge of the flagstone and brought back a second handful. She blew until she couldn't any more and then pinched what was left between her thumb and finger and tried to push the last of it in the slot. And this time, when she tried her key, it made it halfway and wouldn't budge a millimetre more.

Madly, Vicki fell onto her hands and knees and brushed the scattered sand and earth, the visible evidence, off the front steps. Then she ran to the rear entrance and did the same to the lock there, this time making sure to keep the rear door open, so that when the lock had been fully sabotaged, she was able to slip inside the house, and shut the door.

In the bas.e.m.e.nt, she found the circuit box, located the switch that controlled the sliding garage doors, and knuckled it down against its hard spring. Then, just to make sure, she came back upstairs, veered through the kitchen and pantry, entered the garage, and walked across the cool concrete floor to take hold of one of the inside handles. And she wrenched.

The metal door rattled upward.

Pulse racing, she shoved it back down. There was no time left to stop up the lock of the door leading from the garage into the house. Even if she could, it would be one thing to attribute two sand-stuffed exterior door locks to a freak swirling wind, quite another to explain how such a wind made it into the garage. She scanned the doors' inner workings, and her eyes went to the clean metal runners that the wheels of the doors travelled. It might work, she thought, to jam something in there. In the kitchen, from a box under the sink, she fetched two silver serving forks left over from the dining room setting. She rushed with them and a dining chair to stand on back into the garage, and rammed the forks home between the wheels and the runner of each door. Stepping down off the chair, she nearly tripped in her haste and took a moment, in the cool concrete room, to breathe.

Inside the house, Vicki ran the water in the kitchen sink, took one of the crystal gla.s.ses she had set out on a Tunbridge ware tray, and held it under the tap with a trembling hand. She brought the gla.s.s with her into the living room and set it inside the bra.s.s railing of a rosewood side table she adored, which would have featured the Meissen candlestick figures, had they survived h.e.l.la's misguided packing. Then she sat in the mahogany-framed Edwardian armchair with string inlay, which kept her hidden but provided a view through the front windows to the driveway and Lightenham Avenue beyond. And she waited.

It didn't take long. Within a few minutes, Avis Nye's bronze Jaguar emerged from the mottled shade of the street and turned into the sunshine of the drive. Behind her came a black Mercedes sedan bearing Mildred and Alan Webb. When the car first came to a stop, the two of them seemed frozen in their seats, staring at the house through the windshield of the car, watching it as if they thought it might do something, as Avis, in the middle of a call, hopped from her vehicle and made her little black purse swallow her keys.

Whether by decision or accident of routine, the doors of the Mercedes opened together and the Webbs issued from the car in synchrony, though Vicki's vantage point gave her a better view of Alan. He was tall and patrician, as she'd expected, and tailored in fine charcoal wools, and the features of his face looked to Vicki to bear the wonderment of a man who'd just been struck, and was confused as to why. He walked tentatively past the Mercedes' fender, looking up at the house all the while, and converged with his wife at the hood ornament in the middle, as Avis put away her phone.

"The landscaping," Vicki could hear Avis trill through the window, "was done, from concept to execution, by Tallis and Mauvrey. I mean you can just tell, can't you? The plateaus are so distinctive. And it should all be grown in by July."

As they proceeded toward the house, Avis talked about the pale gold bricks, imported from Portugal, about the reputation of the builders, and the desirability of their signature roofing slate. Neither of the Webbs seemed to hear the specifics of what Avis was saying, in that they gave no nods or glances of understanding, as if a pane of gla.s.s far thicker than the one through which Vicki peered separated them from the living world. They held on to each other as they walked toward the house, almost as if it terrified them. But Vicki could see that Mildred, in a dark blue sheath dress that exposed her pale arms to the sun, made an effort to smile as Avis spoke. As a smile, as an expression of pleasure or warmth, it failed. It was no more than a stretching of lips. But Vicki felt a kinship with Mildred Webb in that moment that she hadn't expected, and couldn't have explained.

Avis had made it to the front steps, and Vicki took a calming sip of water from her gla.s.s. She heard the m.u.f.fled jangling of the house keys outside the door. "When you step inside," Avis was saying, "I want you to notice the breadth and sweep of the staircase; it's quite unusual." Vicki could no longer see Avis or her clients from where she sat, but she could hear the scratching of Avis's key as she attempted to insert it into the lock. "The tiling too," Avis continued, "in the foyer, is something the builders are particularly..." The scratching in the lock grew more insistent, and then came a sudden silence when Avis wrenched the key out.

"I'm sure this is the right key," she said, sounding confused. In it went again, and to the grinding and sc.r.a.ping sound was added an intense joggling of the latch. "I don't understand." Joggling. Scratching. "It worked just yesterday!"

"Is there another door?" This was Mildred Webb's voice, sounding flat and lifeless after Avis's fluty variance.

"Oh yes, oh yes, there's the rear entrance," said Avis. But she seemed intent on making the front one work and attempted to wedge the key in again.

"Perhaps we should try the back door," said Mildred.

Avis, on the steps, sighed. "Yes, of course. That makes much more sense. I'm sorry about this. But luckily there's a lovely stone path just..." Her voice faded out as she led the Webbs around the side of the house. Vicki, careful to stay hidden, rose out of her chair and walked through the living room to the hushed foyer, past the sweeping stairs on the left, the hall to the pantry on the right. She walked by the door to Robert's library, where only one of the Chinese folding chairs could be used (the other having indeed been ruined, as h.e.l.la had indicated, by a mysterious split in the seat), and entered the family room. Here she stationed herself in a niche behind a towering dieffenbachia that she'd set next to the window, which allowed a discreet view of the back porch.

"...of this entire area, which is so exciting," said Avis, as she rounded the corner of the house and pa.s.sed by a large window that looked out onto the rolling steppe that stretched to the edge of the property. The three figures made their way to the porch, with Alan Webb a doleful presence in the rear, and Vicki watched them, through a smaller window, climb the steps to the rear entrance.

"Isn't that a delightful ancon above the door," said Avis, motioning in an abstract way to the carved s-scroll that seemed to spill from the top of the moulded casing like a tiny waterfall. "You don't often find a detail like that at the rear entrance, but these builders..." Avis was not looking at the ancon as she spoke, her efforts and attention appeared to be entirely focused on the keyhole of the door, the key in her hand and the successful merging of the two, and her patter died away as she tried once and then again to push the key into the lock.

"d.a.m.n," she said. "d.a.m.n!" She gave a tiny, furious stomp of her foot, and then turned and looked at the woeful Webbs, helpless. Vicki couldn't help feeling guilty for the trouble she was causing her.

"I just don't understand," said Avis, her face blank with disbelief. "This is is the key." the key."

Alan Webb stepped forward with an outstretched hand. "Maybe if I gave it a try." He accepted the key without enthusiasm and attempted, as Avis backed away, to do what she could not. And then he lowered himself onto one knee and examined the keyhole.

"There appears to be something here."

"Something..."

"Sand or soil it looks like," said the grave Mr. Webb. He tried to push the key in again with a barely audible grunt. "It's no good," he said finally, and rose from his knee. "I expect these locks will have to be replaced."

Avis looked from the lock to her clients to the lock again and gave a tiny cough of astonishment. "I don't know what to say," she said, sounding fragile and possibly on the verge of tears. "I mean, there must be an easy way to fix this. I'm sure there's someone I can call "

"We won't be able to wait, I'm afraid," said Mildred, giving Avis another of her pleasureless smiles.

"I understand. But is there..." The agent couldn't seem to find the spirit to continue and simply watched as the Webbs began to move away from the porch.

"At least look in the windows," she said suddenly. "I mean, it's not the same, but you'll get some sense."

Mildred Webb hesitated on the steps that were taking her away from the house and then moved toward the nearest window, where Vicki stood only partly obscured by the dieffenbachia's broad leaves. She leaned tentatively toward the gla.s.s and shielded her eyes with a lined hand, and Vicki, pressed tight against the wall but watching, thought she saw in the woman's face a flash of something she recognized. Mildred Webb, it was obvious to Vicki, felt forsaken by the world. That portion of contentment that should have been part of her life, that allotment of joy that was rightly hers, was missing. And nothing warming had taken its place. Not even the sense, or the faith, that the emptiness and disillusionment that overpowered her could be accepted or understood. When Mildred looked through the gla.s.s into the Lightenham house, it seemed to Vicki that the woman was searching for what she didn't have, without any hope of finding it.

And when Vicki saw the loss and despair in Mildred Webb's face, and recognized the look from, of all things, the face of her own son...she felt a pain under her ribs that made her gasp and bend into the leaves of the dieffenbachia. She was still there, struggling to breathe, when the Webbs drove away, and Avis marched back to the door to give it a kick.

3.

Authority, Gerald had once been informed, went to those with a knack for dispa.s.sion. The authoritative, he was told, conveyed indifference. Did they do so because of talent? Money? t.i.tle? Was disinterest a rare and innate gift? And how was it distinct from apathy? He didn't know, and he suspected there were nuances to not caring that would always be beyond him, that would keep him, as a leader, from ever being great. But if there was even a chance that he was going to be a CEO CEO, Gerald thought, it was time he started acting like one. And so, though it took an extraordinary act of will, he managed to hold on as the meeting time approached, not arriving five minutes early as he typically did but waiting until an almost blase five minutes past, before he rose out of his chair and headed down the hall to the boardroom.

He took the long way past the photocopy station, where Monik was wrestling with a toner cartridge, and beat back the impulse to stop and help her, because he was already engaged in an important activity and Monik was perfectly capable.

He pa.s.sed the small lunch room where someone had left the coffee maker unattended and found the strength to do nothing about the scorched arabica stink.

He continued through the sales area where three of the five salespeople were sitting at their desks not taking calls and not drumming up business. And instead of expressing his irritation by blurting out something pointedly ironic ("Everyone on target for this month? Terrific!"), he made a mental note to have a sit-down with Leslie Morton, the chief sales rep, in the very near future.

But his stamina for high-level disinterest was nowhere near CEO CEO grade, and before he made it out of the sales area he found himself turning and asking, in a voice more plaintive than he would have wished, "Did anyone here leave the coffee on?" And so, after a general mute shaking of heads, Gerald was able to savour the sour taste of his inability to maintain even a pretence of chief executive nonchalance all the way to the boardroom entrance. grade, and before he made it out of the sales area he found himself turning and asking, in a voice more plaintive than he would have wished, "Did anyone here leave the coffee on?" And so, after a general mute shaking of heads, Gerald was able to savour the sour taste of his inability to maintain even a pretence of chief executive nonchalance all the way to the boardroom entrance.

He entered the room angry. He tossed the leather portfolio he was carrying on the end of the table and when it landed with a slap loud enough to make everyone in the room jump, he liked it. A quick scan around the table told him everyone he expected to be there was, and they all looked anxious, and that suited him. He sat with a whump.

"All right, everybody, let's get started." He glanced at Sandy on his left. "Sandy, why don't you go first."

"Um..." Sandy leaned forward, over the table, and appeared to be trying for more intense eye contact. "Do you think I could go last? What I'm doing needs a bit of set-up and I don't want to delay things too "

"Fine. I don't care. Trick, you go first."

Trick, who was sitting across from Sandy and maintaining extraordinary focus on the pad in front of him, looked up, wide-eyed. "I was thinking I'd go last." He glanced at the others, and back at Gerald. "You know, as sales and marketing director."

"Well, as sales and marketing director," said Gerald, "why don't you go first and set the standard."

"Sure, but "

"That's what I'd like," said Gerald. "We'll go around the table, starting with you. Then Phil " He noticed Phil, who was abnormally still, had a tensor bandage around his left wrist. "What happened to you?"

Phil raised his wrist. "Squash with my kid. Hit it with a forehand."

"Ouch," said Doug, wincing. "Hurt?"

"Like a mother."

"Ouch," Doug said again.

"Okay," said Gerald. "So the order's Trick, Phil with the sore wrist, then Doug, then we'll break so Sandy can set up, and then she'll go. Sound good?" He leaned back, set his eyes on Trick, and waited.

Trick had a pen in his hand and he began to wobble it between his thumb and his index finger. He looked at Gerald and wobbled his pen and swallowed. "Yeah," he said. "That's good." He firmed up the grip on his pen and rapped the pad in front of him. "I didn't make up any slides, you know, because I couldn't be sure of getting the outlet, so" he rapped the pad again "I just jotted down some thoughts here." He cleared his throat and edged his chair away from the table.

"It seems to me," he began, "you know, we want to be open to good ideas. And Sandy's got a really interesting one here, with the window filters."

"Thank you," said Sandy, giving him a trim smile.

"Yeah, but there's a lot of issues." Trick drew his pad close as if to review the many issues. "Acceptance. You know, that's a big one. How do you make people accept the idea of a window filter that won't let them see outside? Right? That's something we have to work on, acceptance. Okay, uh, pricing. We have to figure out, vis-a-vis our regular window screens, do we charge more for a window filter because it filters out stuff, or do we charge less because it won't let you see outside?"

Across from him, Sandy emitted a long, loud sigh.

"Well, you know, hey, it's an issue. So, okay..." He drew his pen down the list on his pad. "...acceptance...pricing...Next one, customer service. I think we should plan on establishing a toll-free customer service number, and staffing up with call-centre people, to take the calls from customers who've had the filters installed and want to know how the h.e.l.l they're supposed to see outside."

Sandy had begun to agitate in her swivelling chair like the vanes of a washing machine. "Thank you, Mr. Negativity!"