Part Five: What the Room Knew
The particular quality of a room’s shift in understanding was not always visible, but sometimes it was.
This was one of the times it was.
The guests who worked in finance — several of whom were at tables one through three, near the front, where they had been placed because of their relevance to Renaud’s world — were recalibrating the fastest. Some of them, it turned out, already knew who Thomas Lefebvre was. Not personally, necessarily, but by reputation, which in certain circles was more reliable than personal acquaintance.
LF Stratégie — Thomas’s company, the one Renaud worked for — was eleven years old and had grown in the way that companies grew when the person running them understood both the domain and the people in it. It employed two hundred and forty people. It had offices in Paris, Lyon, and Brussels. It had been profiled twice in a business publication that people at tables one through three read on their phones on Sunday mornings.
Thomas Lefebvre was not poor.
Thomas Lefebvre was the kind of person who did not need to tell you he was not poor, because the people who knew him already knew, and the people who didn’t know him were about to find out.
The man that Isabelle had introduced, with a raised glass and a laugh, as her sister’s future poor husband was someone that, as Renaud had said quietly but clearly enough for the nearest tables to hear, many people in this room would have very much liked to know.
The glances moved around the room with speed.
Some people looked at Isabelle.
Some people looked at Claire.
Some people looked at Thomas.
Thomas himself was looking at no one in particular. He had not changed his expression during Renaud’s revelation. He had not smiled with the satisfaction of a man whose reputation had been established by someone else’s correction. He had not looked at Isabelle with the expression of someone who had been vindicated. He had simply remained where he was, in the same composed stillness he had walked up with.
He turned slightly toward Renaud and extended his hand.
“Thomas Lefebvre,” he said, in the manner of someone meeting a person for the first time in a social context. “Nice to meet you properly. I believe we’ve only spoken on calls.”
Renaud, to his credit, recovered.
He shook the hand.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m — yes. It’s good to meet you.”
