2
‘Where,’ I said plaintively, some twenty minutes later, ‘is Jay?’
I’d searched most of the building for him, and then the gardens, too, and found no sign. Ending up at last in the first-floor common room, just in case I’d missed him before, I posed my question to the room at large.
Three people were there: Dave from the treasury (accounts, by any other name; Milady despises modern corporate-speak); lovely, Scary Rob; and a newcomer (she looked about five minutes old) that I didn’t know.
Rob, parked by the open window with a tall glass of water at his elbow, looked up from the magazine he was reading. ‘He’s not here,’ he said.
‘I discovered that for myself just now.’ I flopped into a chair, disconsolate. Searching the premises for Jay had only made me hotter, and without the satisfac
