Read Online Reunion by Andrea Goldsmith - Free Book Online Page B

across the room to the adjacent auditorium where the formal proceedings would take place. In this area was seating for three hundred and ninety, and should his estimates be wrong, too many spaces here would condemn him far more strenuously than a thinnish crowd chatting over drinks and savouries next door. He paused inside the auditorium, took a few deep breaths, then gathered himself up and marched down the aisle to the stage. He mounted the steps two at a time, gazed at the rows of empty seats, just a moment’s hesitation before returning to business. Here the main work of the evening would occur: his own welcome, followed bySir Richard Treat’s speech and Conrad’s keynote address. He waylaid the lighting technician to discuss the stage lighting, he cornered the sound technician and was assured yet again that the body microphones were highly effective, he checked the podium height and the reading light, and with everything in place he returned to the main reception area.
    Just ten minutes had passed but now the room was crowded. Conversation surged, hands waved, mouths worked hard around words, while waiters glided through the throng dispensing drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Harry’s anxieties vanished as he stood in the doorway savouring the scene. He would present the Network’s mission statement and strategy plan; Jack, Conrad and Helen, the inaugural NOGA fellows would be on show; there was Conrad’s speech – whatever Harry might think of his appalling morals, Conrad was an excellent speaker; and among the guests were some of the more beneficent members of the community. If the evening went well, and as he surveyed the crowd he was now convinced it would, NOGA would net millions of dollars and incalculable prestige.
    Harry helped himself to a drink from a passing waiter and walked into the throng. He made his way towards Lady Stiller, whom, he noticed, like so many wealthy women did not carry a handbag.
    2.
    Jack dawdled along the path by the river. Night had already fallen but the area was well lit; in fact, all of the city was lit up these days. The temperature had plummeted and his handsached with cold, but he was in no hurry: a large cocktail party, much less one in which he was on display, was simply not his scene. He checked his watch and continued on his way.
    Renovated to the far more respectable ‘precinct’, this area on the north side of the river had been the domain of derelicts when he was a student, a rat-infested corridor of the city reeking of menace and bad reputation. The contemporary upgrade was now busy with suited pedestrians wearing trainers, and home-bound joggers with their work life crammed into backpacks. There was a vigour and prosperity about both the people and the area, and a youthfulness too, which by the very fact he noticed it made him uncomfortable: he had not realised he had reached that stage of maturation when youth is viewed as other, as not yourself.
    He wandered a little further, stopped and checked the time again. The cocktail party venue was perched at the top of the slope; it was glowing hugely against the night sky, and the terrace out the front was already thick with smokers. He lingered a moment longer, then left the path and made his way slowly up the hill.
    There was a jostle of people at the entrance to the building. He stood aside allowing others to pass ahead of him, amused that his reluctance to go in might be misconstrued as politeness. While he was waiting, a commotion started up at the door, someone struggling against the new arrivals, a woman wanting to leave and making no bones about it. Hats were dislodged, a bag fell to the ground, and amid a chorus of aggrieved protests Helen emerged from the crowd.
    She was furious.
    Jack caught her by the arm. ‘Where are you going?’
    â€˜As far from that insufferable shit as possible.’
    â€˜Harry?’
    â€˜Of course Harry. Who else but Harry?’
    She dragged Jack