Chapter Three

It didn’t take long for Jack Smith to be in touch. He acknowledged my email by return and copied in his HR director as requested. To my surprise, he sent through the signed documents and completed the questionnaires by the end of the week. He even paid the invoice within the stipulated term of seven days.

The following Monday morning he rang my mobile and, as planned, I let it go to voicemail. The problem was that he didn’t leave a message. This happened several times, but I refused to bend and call him back; not until I knew what he wanted to discuss.

Towards lunch time Celia, our PA, came and perched on the edge of my desk. She was only a few years younger than me, but seemed to live on a different planet. For a start, she regarded her job as an inconvenient break in a chaotic round of dating, shopping and partying. By her standards, I did far too much work and far too little of anything else. I was therefore an object of pity.

But not today, it seemed. She waited for me to finish an email, then pounced. ‘This Jack Smith, does he look as good as he sounds on the phone?’

No way was I answering that. She could ask Google – given that she seemed to spend most of her working day surfing the internet. But her question triggered one of my own. ‘When did you speak to him?’

‘A few minutes ago. By the way, he can’t understand why you won’t answer his calls. Especially, he says, when you earn your living by talking to your clients.’

My lips tightened. ‘For all he knows, I could have been in a meeting—’

‘Oops! I told him you weren’t. But if you want a job swap, I’ll do the four days with him—’

‘Four? I’m only up there for two!’

‘Not any more. That’s the message he asked me to give you – he’s fixed up a customer visit, but the guy’s only available over the weekend. Some sort of outdoor activity thingy in the Lake District, and he’s wangled you an invitation.’

I digested this information in silence. In the absence of a finalised schedule for the Friday, I’d booked my train ticket as an open return. But the fact that I could travel home on the Sunday without additional expense simply wasn’t the point. ‘And if I have other plans …?’

‘Your diary’s blank, I told him you were free.’

We usually blocked out personal commitments in our work diaries, in case we had to travel to Monday morning meetings the night before – or attend coaching conferences, which were often held on a Saturday. Normally, Celia was slow off the mark to establish my availability for anything – except on this occasion.

It turned out that she’d been even more helpful. She went on, ‘He said he hoped he wasn’t tearing you away from a nice relaxing weekend with the man in your life, but I told him that you didn’t have one.’

For some reason, this rankled even more than the previous revelation. ‘In future, please don’t share that sort of information with clients,’ I said tetchily. ‘And before I decide whether I’m going, did you get any details about the weekend?’

‘Yeah, the customer’s name is Bill McGraw and someone called Mitch McGraw will be there too. Oh, and I wrote down the address of where you’re staying … Here it is. Blencathra Lodge, Threlkeld. Sounds like a foreign language, doesn’t it?’

‘A hotel?’ I clicked on Google, ready to check the reviews. Or at least confirm that it was a valid address and not some subterfuge on Jack Smith’s part. When it came to getting his own way, that man would be capable of anything; abduction was probably the least of my worries …

Celia interrupted my train of thought. ‘No, I think it’s where Bill and Mitch live.’

‘Oh. Is anyone else staying with them?’

‘Don’t know. Anyway, Jack said you’d be out and about most of the time, going up hills and things.’

It sounded as if Bill and Mitch were a couple; at least their company would offer me some protection against Jack Smith. And, as there was no mention of any women, I wouldn’t have to watch him hitting on every available female under forty. Nevertheless, I felt uneasy.

‘Thank you for the message, Celia, I’ll give him a call.’

As soon as she’d dawdled back to her desk, I reached for my mobile and looked up Jack Smith’s number. After several controlled breaths, I selected it and waited.

He answered it on the fifth ring. ‘Morning, Alicia.’ Did he have a photographic memory, or had he stored my number in his phone contacts just as I’d stored his?

‘It’s afternoon, at least down south.’

‘What the—? You’re right, it’s past twelve o’clock up here too. Strange to think we’re in the same time zone.’

‘Amazing. Now, about the deep dive—’

‘The what?’

A sudden vision of plunging into the sea, the blue-green-flecked sea, with this man; not side-by-side synchronisation, but a perilous tangle of limbs … Yet I’d used the words ‘deep dive’ regularly in previous client conversations, with no side-effects whatsoever.

I made a mental note to delete the term from my coaching script. ‘I meant the two days I’ve arranged to spend in Grimshaw.’

‘Except it’s now four days – did Celia tell you?’

‘She did, but I need to understand what it involves before I commit.’

‘Observing me with a key customer in a working environment. Exactly what you asked for.’

‘Do you normally transact business over a weekend in the wilds of the Lake District?’

‘With this particular customer, yes.’

‘It just seems … highly irregular.’

‘Do you never do work at the weekend, or meet customers away from the office?’

I was silent.

He went on, silkily, ‘Back to what you said earlier. What are we diving into, and how deep?’

Screen the vision out, and the voice. Focus on the words – except even the words radiate danger … I cleared my throat. ‘It’s a metaphor for rapid and total … immersion in a subject or situation.’

There, I’ve said it: total immersion. A phrase that awoke an older memory, an older danger, in the Californian sun …

Jack was saying, ‘So just think how deep our dive’ll be if we’ve got four days instead of two. And we’ll be in the ideal place for it. Did you know that Wastwater is the deepest lake in England, and Windermere the largest? Although we’re actually staying near Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite, if you want to look it up on a map.’

Intriguing names, or was it just the lilt of his accent? In spite of myself, I reached for the mouse. In a few clicks my screen was an intricate pattern of blue, brown and green – the usual colour-coded deception. Because ‘The map is not the territory.’

I wasn’t aware that I’d said it out loud, until he asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, tell me. It sounded like something important.’

A pause, weighing up the risks. ‘It’s a statement about the relationship between objects and their representation. First time I heard it was when I saw Magritte’s painting “The Treachery of Images” in Los Angeles. Do you know it?’

‘No. You’re interested in art?’

The question struck me as unnecessarily personal; I ignored it and went on, ‘Magritte painted a picture of a pipe with the caption “This is not a pipe” – except in French, of course – to convey that the painting is merely the image of a pipe, not the pipe itself.’

‘What’s Los Angeles like?’

Hot and bright and full of treachery. Nothing to do with the painting; I held no grudge against Magritte. Just a pity I hadn’t applied his message to the man standing beside me in the gallery …

‘Hot and bright, that’s all I remember.’ Deep breath, move on. ‘To answer your original question – people confuse maps with the underlying territories, just as they confuse models of reality with reality itself. As Joni Mitchell put it, “It’s clouds’ illusions I recall, I really don’t know clouds at all”.’

‘Or love.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘She said the same about love.’

A non-committal ‘Right’; as if I didn’t know the song off by heart. Odd that he, too … well, I wouldn’t have thought he was a Joni Mitchell fan. I continued, ‘Now, who will I be meeting at the weekend?’

‘I can give you their names and tell you something about them – but, as you’ve just said, how will that help you deal with the reality?’

Oh, for God’s sake! ‘Look, I need to prepare.’

‘Just make sure you bring the right gear—’

‘That wasn’t the kind of preparation I meant—’

‘Walking boots or heavy shoes, wellies, waterproofs and some warm clothes. You never know with the Lakes, even in summer.’

‘I don’t know, I’ve never been.’

An incredulous laugh. ‘You’ve never been to the most beautiful part of England? You ’aven’t lived, lass, you ’aven’t lived. Lakes and trees and proper hills, not those pimples you have in the South. You’ll think it’s wonderful, everyone does.’

I said waspishly, ‘You’d probably describe Grimshaw as the Venice of the North simply because it has a canal. So I’ll reserve judgement on your lyrical waxings about the Lake District.’

The laugh softened to a chuckle. ‘Good to know you’ve got a sense of humour, even if it is at my expense.’ Then, in a more serious tone, ‘Is there anything else I need to tell you about the weekend?’

There was – but whether he would be a reliable source of information was debatable. I decided to throw down one last gauntlet, and lowered my voice to a steely whisper. ‘I want to make something perfectly clear. If I consider that I’m being put in any sort of compromising situation, I will take appropriate action immediately. Do you understand?’

‘Nope. I have a feeling that whatever you think of as compromising I’d call completely reasonable. Let’s put it another way: you’re safe with me, and you have my word on that.’

Safe? I felt anything but! Despite my attempt to take the moral high ground, he’d out-manoeuvred me. As for him giving me his word, how far could I trust that? I brought the call to a close as quickly as I could, and found my gaze flicking back to the map on my computer screen. Blue for water, brown for hills, green for forests – a familiar enough representation; but the territory beneath was totally unknown.

A tingle of anticipation ran down my spine; the thought of seeing the Lake District for the first time, no doubt.