Bristol House by Beverly Swerling Read Free Book Online Page B

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    “Geoffrey Harris. How are you?”
    “I’m . . . I’m fine.”
    “That doesn’t sound too sure.”
    “No, it is sure. I am fine.” The scrapes on her left side had stopped stinging about an hour earlier. She had to touch them every once in a while to provoke a reaction and remind herself they truly existed. “I was working. You caught me by surprise.”
    “The sun’s over the yardarm. Time to stop work. I know it’s short notice, but will you have dinner with me? If you don’t have other plans.”
    “No other plans,” Annie admitted. “I don’t know anyone in London.”
    He chuckled. “In that case, perhaps you won’t mind settling for me.”
    She was glad he could not see her blush.
    ***
    Most of the Monday-night crowd in the pub in Cosmo Place, a small and busy pedestrian passage between Southampton Row and Queen Street, were still drinking, not yet eating. Geoff, however, insisted they order immediately when Annie confided she’d had no lunch and was really hungry.
    Their first course arrived. Duck spring rolls for him; mackerel pâté with mint salsa for her. The food looked good and smelled better. Their waiter, a sullen young man with bad skin and worse teeth, asked if they wanted fresh drinks. “Two more,” Geoff said, nodding toward the small green bottles of Perrier. “Lime for me. Lemon for the lady.” Too much wine with his agent at lunch, he’d said. He was teetotal for the night. And he’d remembered her saying she didn’t drink.
    “How was your meeting with Tony Blair?” Annie asked, starting on what turned out to be delicious pâté. “That is who you meant, isn’t it?”
    He looked puzzled. “Meant how?”
    “When you left me the other day, you said bloody Blair would only see you if you got there in twenty minutes. Since you only talk to politicians, I presumed Tony Blair.”
    “On the evidence,” he said, “politicians and curly ginger-heads with green eyes.” He held out his fork, offering her a bite of spring roll.
    Annie shook her head and felt the chin-length curls brush against her cheek. She’d been letting her hair grow lately. When she was drinking, she’d kept it as short as a man’s, cutting it herself with a pair of old barber’s shears, sometimes without even looking in a mirror. In all that time it was the only thing in her life about which she had been consistent. Last fall, when she passed the fourth anniversary of being sober and ran the New York Marathon—it took her five hours, twenty-seven minutes, but she’d finished—she realized that whatever statement she’d been making with her hair was no longer relevant. She threw the shears away.
    “Tony Blair it was,” Geoff said. “But not in his capacity as the unlamented former prime minister. My book’s about modern Britain’s relationship to the Middle East. Lawrence of Arabia to now. Blair’s important because, having landed us with that god-awful cock-up called the Iraq War, the EU rewarded him by making him envoy to the place he’d left in a worse mess than he found it.”
    The boy with the bad skin reappeared with their main courses. Steak for Geoff, lamb chops for her. “To be fair,” Geoff said when the boy was gone, “Blair put me in touch with a couple of Syrians I’m very glad to have met. They were only in London for two days, so it was fortuitous.”
    Was that meant as an apology? He had not called her in the last few days because he had been pursuing two Syrians who would not long be available. But why should three days of not calling a woman you’ve only just met require an apology? “I still have your sweater,” she said. “The one you lent me—”
    “—the other evening in Bloomsbury Square,” he finished for her. “Not to worry.”
    “Are you always so gallant?”
    He took a moment over the answer. “I think probably not. But despite the title and the expertise, you rather invite gallantry, Dr. Annie Kendall.”
    “I do? Why?”
    He laughed. “I