Part Eight: The Suite
The building was in the centre of the city, newer than the neighbourhood, with the specific gleam of a building that had been designed to look quietly expensive rather than conspicuously so.
The guest suite was two rooms, south-facing, with a kitchen and a bathroom and the kind of furniture that had been chosen to be comfortable without being ostentatious. Adrian had offered it to his mother on occasion and to visiting colleagues and once to a member of his board who had flown in from Seoul and missed the last train, and it had sat empty more often than not.
Nora stood in the doorway of the suite and looked at it.
“Adrian,” she said.
“It’s empty,” he said. “It would be empty tonight anyway.”
“I have my sister coming—”
“She can come here. There’s a sofa. Or she can take the second room and you take the main room. It’s fine.”
She was doing the look again.
“I’m not asking for anything,” he said. “I’m not — this isn’t me trying to—” He stopped. He tried again. “You needed somewhere warm for six weeks tonight. This is somewhere warm. That’s the whole thing.”
She looked at him for a moment longer.
“The whole thing,” she repeated.
“For tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow we can talk about — whatever needs talking about.”
She looked into the room. She looked at Luca in the carrier she had across her front, and then at Mia, whom his mother had been holding since the car — Margaret had reached for the baby with the ease of long practice and Nora had allowed it with the ease of someone who was too tired to hold onto protocol.
“Okay,” she said. “For tonight.”
